Ivan Dobnik - Vilenica

22 · Mircea Cărtărescu
the core of literature. Demythologising the image of the writer, the artist, he
paradoxically presents it in a different form. He is one of the contemporary
writers and intellectuals who do not close their eyes to the world they live
in – at a local or global, universal or personal level. One of his latest poems,
the autobiographical poem The West (Occidentul), is a parodic description
of his encounter with the West, of his position in the global context of literature
and life, where “I don’t find my place, I’m no longer from here and
cannot be from there”. We read him as an author who uses his loneliness,
his otherness, his existential questions to create a game – one that is deadly
serious, real, and fatal.
For Mircea Cărtărescu, a Romanian author who is now fifty-six, Romanian
readers are keeping their fingers crossed that he will go to Stockholm to
receive the Nobel Prize for literature. It is good to know that our Vilenica
prize, awarded to him for everything that he has written, published, created,
as well as for all his works still to come, has anticipated the Swedish
Academy.
Translated by Nada Grošelj