Srbija - nacionalna revija - broj 54 - engleski - niska rezolucija

The wolf is, I suppose, the voracious
everyday life, into which jaws we have to
throw a piece of our life, in order to get permission
to continue our journey. Time is a
badly determined, in a certain way nonexistent
category. With our presence and activities,
we fill and design it, sometimes make it
beautiful, sometimes pollute it.
In today’s world, within which forms of art
are multiplied and new artistic means discovered,
what does it mean to be a Writer?
A writer is a human being, who mediates
between life and its possible meaning,
an observer and a witness, a spectator who
compensates his inability to participate in
real events by transferring them into the
area of imagination. Writers are neurotic,
frustrated beings: we are all missing something,
so we write to overpower the lack, to
fill the fatal emptiness. The means are technical
jests, more or less inspiring. The same
objective is reached through very different
paths. Everyone is the creator of their own
values, the parent of their own readers.
I succeed, or fail, in the degree of achieving
my aspirations and possibilities, not
someone else’s requests: I consider them
only incidentally and artificially. Writers are
badly paid, sometimes even free of charge
filters of the spiritual and social situation of
a land.
THE DOOM OF INTELLECTUAL
SERVANTS
It seems that the neoliberal corporative
manipulation rests on excellent knowledge
of literature and philosophy. Most of
those who produce mass entertainment
programs, meaning stupefying things, are
highly educated. What do you think about
this paradox?
The practice of the ruling class to keep
their subjects in ignorance and illiteracy is
very old. The present day rulers of the world
saw that semi-education and semi-literacy
give better results, while pop culture is a
convenient spice to the consumer view of
the world. The exploiting classes always
have educated staff on their side, willing to
defend and justify the enslavers. Intellectual
servants often rush towards the strongest
ones. So it happened that the sixty-eight
leftists became advocates of American military,
economic and geostrategic interests. It
is sad, but not paradoxical.
You never deny the personal in prose, regardless
whether it’s labeled as pantheistic,
evocation-lyrical, or on the border of dailyrealistic.
How much was your life a basis
for fiction?
Although I have seen and experienced
many things, my knowledge of life is restricted,
and my will to transpose the experienced
into fictive situations and characters
is very weak. I feel phenomena and
people intuitively, on a blurred, lyrical level.
I am often astonished by the insights and
assessments of my friends and acquaintances.
Such things would never cross my
mind. It’s only that I feel myself and nature
a bit deeper and have a more trustworthy
knowledge about them, so this is what I
liked to write about most. Speaking about
others, I was mainly speaking about myself.
How Dobrislav Ran through Yugoslavia is my
autobiography. I am in everything and the
entire world is within me. I am no exception
in this aspect; it’s only more visible in my
case than with others.
Is the so often mentioned freedom a replacement
for the world fate, or is it only
another word convenient for manipulation?
My freedom is determined by the consciousness
about general circumstances and
own limitations, or, as Hegel said, the recognition
of objective necessity. The most difficult
slavery is the one we unconsciously carry.
There is the public and there is the inner
freedom. The latter does not need the possibility
of holding speeches at demonstrations.
If I cleared things inside me, I can breathe
and think freely even though I am enslaved.
Danger begins from the point when we start
down the path of self-denial, when we succumb
to pressure. There are numerous traps.
The one featured by the “Stockholm syndrome”
– the tendency of hostages to accept
and defend the logics of the kidnaper – is
especially dangerous and can be noticed in a
part of our would-be elite, the part supporting
our accession to NATO.
LANGUAGE, THE LAST LINE
OF DEFENSE
“Even if not identical, the senselessness
and mystery of existence are equally sublime”,
you wrote in Snake Slough?
I don’t remember the mood I was in when
writing it. Senselessness covers unreachable
With wife and
children
SERBIA • N O 54 • 2016
75