Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Monday, February 7, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
latest issue of Literary magazine, I did as editor/in/chief http://www.skd.rs/magazin-112-113-114.pdf
Friday, February 4, 2011
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Novica Tadic - Death of poet
When I've heard Novica Tadic, greatest Serbian poet of our times have passed away I was terribly sad and upset in that special way. I am not going to share personal memories on short conversations we shared, throughout last 15 years. I want to capture darkness and feeling of hopelessness I was overwhelmed by like most of us , who live in the house of modern Serbian literature, being told about Novica's departure.
No one can come even close to his dark and courageous visions put so marvelously and disciplined in the frame of Serbian language. We are always fascinated with this special kind of doomed poets, poetes maudits or lets say in american manner : haunted. They are well known dark avenue of poetic expression, we could name classical. Those visions ceratinly appear in prose writing, delivering ultimate dark truths in a different, more direct way. In poetry horrors are petrified, barking and screaming their tune to us, but in a shape of cold, dark gem stones, elaborated in the concise, poetic way.
When I was younger didn't completely understand the essence of their expression / I was thinking about those poets as adorable princes of darkness, beautiful and picturesque emanation of horrific artistic origin. Loved haunted poets, so many of them, Lautreamont, E.A.Po, Baudelaire, Rimbaud or novelists, like Conrad, Celine, Ballard and many, many more...Today I know those were/are men who simply did /do care. Their unique talent delivered this horrific visions as their expression of empathy with hardest and most hurtful and dangerous conditions poisoning and tearing apart our human essence.
Takes genuine human dignity to rise to this level of complete expression of poet's vision. The very idea elaborating the most unbearable conditions of our existence is possible, it is a healing by itself, salvation in a word. When it is accomplished with such genial talent, like Novica Tadic did, we can't but feel being saved by one man's human sacrifice and courage. And kindness, above all. Kindness is the key the word I would use as essential hallmark of this great writer and unusual man.
When he is gone/ if he is gone / the world is more dangerous and ugly place, without God again. That's why Novica's departure makes us feel abandoned and unbearable alone again.
Me, also - to the highest extent of human sorrow.
Zen masters say absence of master is infinitely long.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
How I wrote Hadrian's memoires
Still enjoying Voltaire. What a style! I envy, envy him. Studied Latin and Greek/ maybe I am a probably soft and prone to roman architecture of language. Not to mention I was brought up in the family where kids, including my father, were thought French from early childhood, before WWII.
I don't speak French, except some love French, we all have to know, as we have to be good in English to use technology or Italian to enjoy pasta.
Need to say my personal library is fairly packed with equal number of French and English writers, Americans are on the separate floor - they are dangerous, Latin Americans are partying in the penthouse all the time, Serbian writers live on the ground floor to meet and greet foreigners in our part of the world. Russians play chess in the salon and occasionally have firearms duels in he woods. Afraid to follow them to the woods, I carefully enjoy this vintage gents stories on paper / loving Puskin madly. In fact, all of the writers inhabiting my mental haven make my face pale and my heart trembling with fear, from time to time!
Those deeply personal favorites I take everywhere with me/ from kitchen to bedroom.
Conrad, V.Hugo, Lispector, Cortasar, Duras, Coetzee, D.W. Foster, Ballard, Lispector, Pynchon, S.F. Fitzgerald, Blok, Bartelmi, Twain, Cvetaeva, Carlyle, Simone Weil and many, many more.
Once we played game in the office , choosing which writer we would like to be, meaning the classic book we would like to be written by us. Well, I killed other competitors/ choosing for myself Hadrian's memoirs by Marguerite Yourcenar.
The rest was silence in the office!
This has to do with that ghostly, cannibalistic quality of literature - like baying typing machine used by some famous writer, pilgrimage to places where our hero was drinking, living and writing, or this little game we played in the office. I almost can't describe how joyous this game was and all fellow journalists took part in it with same deep, serious thinking.
Well, my inner vampire got the first prize!
So, my favorite authors- watch yourself.
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