A STORY IS ALWAYS A RESISTANCE TO FORGETTING: Interview

I was guided by the idea that the book shows the suffering of the Serbian people in Kosovo and Metohija. That suffering is not always open, with force; it’s not just the shooting of automatic weapons or the destruction of a man by rockets. I am aware that the topic can be interpreted as anachronistic; historically, politically and emotionally prone to asynchrony. Some heroes in the novel testify that they do not exist without Kosovo and Metohija, just as some use the money from the necessary sale of property as an opportunity for relaxation and hedonism.

Sunčica Denić (1956), university professor, poet, prose writer and literary critic, points out this, on the occasion of the novel “Selfie from Bergen”, published by SKZ.

One gets the impression that in the book you tried to present the tragic fate of the Serbian people in Kosovo and Metohija as faithfully and authentically as possible.

– My writing is almost autobiographical, although it is often in the middle of large and broad pictures and stories, similar to epics, to a dramatic structure, reduced to the framework of monologues, dialogues and narration; to writing by asking questions, assuring yourself and the world about the importance of what was said. Like the importance of fighting, for example. By speaking even the most difficult, we advertise ourselves as someone/something that exists, that lasts, that can be useful to something/someone. Something that opposes the cruelty of various misunderstandings, non-existence, unhappiness, lack of love…

The novel begins in an unusual way, citing three newspaper interviews, two of which are from “Večernje novosti”…

– The novel begins with interviews of nun Fevronia from the Patriarchate of Peć, nun Isidore from the Gorioč monastery and nun Anastasia from the Devič monastery. I believe that such an introduction is the closest to what will be discussed in the further course of the novel, first of all about women, i.e. about the state in which female characters are either actors or narrators. There you can see a kind of authenticity of the situation in question. This model of narrative opens many perspectives.

Primarily, the focus is on the most valuable thing that a person carries, which even goes beyond the rational dimension, when he stands on the line in front of Jesus himself, to whom the nuns swore to protect the holy land of Kosovo and Metohija, as well as the church. Mati Fevronia quotes her mother’s words before becoming a monk before World War II: “Don’t leave the living church!” That and a similar connection with those who are important and dear (parent, God, homeland) created a special canon in the entire monastic “Kosovo Guard”.

You write that not only is the fate of those who remained in their homeland, in Kosovo and Metohija, difficult, but also those who left. They are really sick: “and what are not there” and what are “where they are”.

– In the novel, nostalgia is partly a kind of literary knot, key to shaping a living legend and the cause of not finding a place of happiness. In most cases, this turns into the so-called utopian chronotope. It occasionally leads to that Bakhtinian disunity, when time-space provisions are separated in the distance of that line, such as Kosovo and Metohija, with all values ​​and courage. Persecution changes the historical path; persecution also changes the way of life.

From the novel, one can sense your concern with the paths taken by modern civilization, in which many things become uncertain.

– And that is the general picture of seeing and experiencing. Man cannot be immune to the world around him. Literature too. A literary work reacts to “slips”. One of the burning current ones, i.e. of contemporary conceptions in today’s society is the drowning of cultural geography in the collective space. In one-sided modeling. This, on the one hand, could be good when it comes to art, but also a risk and a warning for possible target global creations, such truths which, as the only sustainable ones, are powerful, but also dangerous. On the other hand, creations of destruction and self-destruction give birth to a story of uncertainty. And the story should come as an extension, as a duration, as a resistance to oblivion and as an incentive for constant renewal and struggle.

One of the heroines of the novel is Vera Cenić, a strong-willed woman whom you knew well and with whom you were friends.

– Yes! A decades-long friendship with Vera Cenić, the first female doctor of literature from Vranje, author of two cult novels about Gol otok, and with her husband, Dr. Gradimir Cenić, a legendary surgeon, also from Gol otok, enriched my life. From the first day of my arrival in Vranje, until their death, we were like a family. Elem, writing in the book about Faith, I draw a parallel between Bergen in Ugljar near Pristina, my Bergen, a settlement for refugees from various places in Kosovo and Metohija, Kosovars who did not leave Kosovo, imprisoned in their silence and sadness, and the infamous Goli Otok, a real prison in which Vera and Gradimir, then students in love, spent the best years of their youth. It is possible that the story of our prisons brought us together during the creation of our freedom in Vranje.

What does the literary and social life in Vranje look like today, which you also touched on in the novel?

– Writing about the literary and social life in Vranje, Borina, as more and more often it goes together, presenting a not very popular image of the city where I live and which I consider my second homeland, I actually expressed a kind of mild criticism or loss , bearing in mind not only the situation in Vranje, but the relationship that comes from bigger, stronger, better cities, “more cultured”, as they say here. Literary life from Vranje is famous for its marginal space. I believe that many border towns could find themselves in this qualification. That localism, from themes to language, is seen as the most valuable real element from here, yet it is a certain kind of neglect of the literary voice. In the book, I quote the often present sentence of distinguished writers and critics who come to events in honor of Bori:

“Well, Bora has already said everything!”, which is a kind of inability to engage the few writers and too many authors from here. Well, it’s that image of observation, like self-observation, the selfie state, unrealistic in a large amount. “The head doesn’t hurt from the cold,” say the people of Vranje, relying on southern hospitality that is more than nine centuries old.

We learn from the book that you did not listen to your mother’s advice: “Shut up when you are being talked to the most.” Still, does it make sense to write in the time “When hopelessness piles up”?

– I think about this more and more often over the years, you should listen to your mother’s words, especially when you least like the advice or some kind of task. That would perhaps make sense for this type of communication with the media, for what is exposed to the public, for those times when one does not know whether it is better to do something or not to do something. This does not mean only escaping from responsibility! In that, one could find a kind of logical, but also emotional silence, in which there would be room for a solution, for forgiveness, or for a decision to more boldly actualize an important undertaking. Arrogance, like that speaking/state when “you are spoken to the most”, carries with it an uncritical attitude, just as it can carry an insufficiently well-done job, hasty joy of success, without first seeing the “no”. It is also possible, and that is what I usually started from, that those words were the words of a caring and considerate Kosovar mother, the guardian of a large family, house, land, order and peace.

Modesty became a flaw

Are you less present, like you seem to have chosen that kind of inconspicuousness yourself?

– It would be redundant to talk about the importance of media presence of artists, especially when it comes to literature. Unobtrusiveness seems to be a drawback today. I remember the commemoration at the Leskovac House of Culture on the occasion of the death of Nikolay Timchenko, when a certain gentleman spoke of Nikolay as an important person and a good journalist, ending his appropriate speech by saying that “Timchenko had a big flaw. He was overly modest.” To this day, that is the saddest thing I can say about the deceased. And I’m not sorry if I’m wrong.