Although he wrote his first novel when he was just twelve – which he still has in his notebook – he delved more passionately into this literary form in the late 1980s. Writer Dragan Velikić (1953), whom people have addressed as Your Excellency since he was appointed Serbia’s ambassador to Austria in June 2005, took a degree in World Literature with Theory of Literature from Belgrade University’s Faculty of Philology. He has written 14 books and a number of columns that have been published in the weeklies NIN, Vreme, Reporter, and the daily Danas. He worked as publishing editor for Radio B-92 from 1994 to 1999. Prior to writing novels, he published the short story collections Pogrešan Pokret (Wrong Move, 1983) and Staklena Bašta (Greenhouse, 1985), as well as the books of essays YU-tlantida (YUtlantis, 1993) Deponija (Waste Dump,1994), Stanje Stvari (The State of Things, 1998) and Pseća Pošta (Canine Mail, 2006). His first novel Via Pula appeared in 1988, in three editions, and went on to win the Miloš Crnjanski Award. It was followed by the novels Astragan (Astrakhan), Hamsin 51, Severni Zid (The Northern Wall, for which he received the Borislav Pekić Fund grant to write), Danteov Trg (Dante’s Square), Slučaj Bremen (The Bremen Case), and Dosije Domaševski (The Domashevski File). The books of Dragan Velikić have been translated into some ten European languages, mostly German.
His latest novel Ruski Prozor (Russian Window) will appear at the 52nd Belgrade International Book Fair as part of the Stubovi Kulture collection, his publisher since 1996. (His previous publisher was Vreme Knjige). And there may be something symbolic in this: this is the 100th title in Stubovi Kulture’s Peščanik edition.
Next year will be exactly 20 years since your first novel Via Pula was published and which you said determined whether you would delve deeper into this literary form or move on to another. Ruski Prozor is your eighth novel. How would you describe your present position?
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"I am an ex-territorial writer. I write in the Serbian language, therefore I am a Serbian writer, but I give myself intonation. I never sang in a choir. Not to belong to anyone is difficult, but it’s the only thing that makes sense. It’s best for a writer to be on his own if he has something to say. If not, then he stands to lose nothing and can choose a number of strategies. This is the way things are everywhere, not just in our country."
"Russian writer Gaito Gazdanov said that each man has two lives; the one he lives and the one he should be living. Literature emerges within that space between these two lives, where the two touch."
"Once you finish writing a novel, short story or poem, you are back to square one. |
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There is no such thing as materialised labour in literature. You are always in the position of a trainee when it comes to what you want to write about."
What is new in Ruski Prozor compared to your previous novels?
"My readers would be in the best position to assess that. Ruski Prozor is a novel about loves. What love is, what it could be, about all the things we are prepared to do to get it, to fill our hearts with this feeling without which life makes no sense. When I say love, I also mean jealousy – that nuclear power plant capable of making a Hiroshima of our hearts. And, of course, I mean humour. Ruski Prozor offers a lot of room for laughing."
When you write a novel, do you perceive it as a whole, that is, can you sense the atmosphere in which your characters will live?
"I don’t know how others go about it, but I am first of all a poet who writes novels. I have nothing prepared in advance apart from an obsession to express in words and create a world I carry within me. Then the critics come and try to interpret what I have turned out. It all boils down to trying to unscramble eggs."
In this latest of your novels, you insist, if I am not mistaken, not so much on the melody of a sentence as on its rhythm, which is in direct service to the sentence’s psychological meaning.
"When I was young, I was into music. I played the organ and electric piano in Belgrade bands in the 1970s. The experience of music has determined the colour of my literature and of my expression. Naturally, the experience of film is also significant in my case because this technology allows the displacement of a main hero ten years in time and thousands of miles in space with a single cut. It is terrible if a writer needs a whole chapter to get his main character from the bedroom onto the terrace."
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After the promotion of your novel Ruski Prozor at the Belgrade Cultural Centre in April 2007, you said that you would take a break after this book. Is this still your position, or is the creative urge already demanding a new blank page?
"Even if I had not been discharging pages for the past two and a half years, a job demanding that I be on stand-by for 24 hours, I would have certainly made a longish pause. There is a time when one goes fishing, and then there is a time when the fishnets are hung up to dry. A writer does not only write while he is holding a pencil in his hand or sitting at a computer. A writer writes while he is thinking, moving or resting. I have never had a problem with the plot itself, with what goes on in a novel. It’s like joining a grape harvest. One does not return from it with wine. It is a long road to produce wine." |
Your novel Severni Zid is linked to Vienna, where you have been our country’s ambassador for several years. Do you see this Imperial City, as some call it, any differently today?
"I no longer breathe the city; when I say this I refer to the rather different kind of life I am leading. I know Vienna quite well. Before I was appointed to the ambassadorial post, I used to go to Austria often, and I may freely say that I have travelled it far and wide on my reading tours – not only Austria but Germany as well. It is natural that my heroes move through a space in which I also move, through a space I am well acquainted with and in which I have lived. Severni Zid is literally a Belgrade and Vienna novel."
Your books have for the most part been translated in Germanspeaking countries. This is also where your foreign publishers are located. Apart from texts and essays written for various magazines, do you intend to write a novel in the German language and thus remove all the difficulties of translation?
"No, no. I learned German much too late. To be able to write in a foreign language, one must grow up with that language. It’s not enough just to think and speak in it, one must feel in that language. I am not Nabokov. But he too, although he wrote most of his novels in English, once said that the shortest way to wherever he was heading was through his mother tongue – Russian. Only in one’s native language can one know all the shortcuts, each and every cove, blind alley and secret passage. Language is a living organism. No one uses Latin to write literature, only to write medical prescriptions. Of course, literature, too, can be written as prescribed. Pick a current topic, go with the flow – do what the public desires. There is a tendency to overlook the fact that the public wants that which it is offered. Critics at home bear a great responsibility for favouring works that they are able to elaborate on in advance. It’s like sewing a suit, then going into the street to find someone whom it will fit."
Regarding the Belgrade International Book Fair – how would you describe its international standing?
"It is our biggest and most important book fair, and that very fact should be sufficient to mobilise us to try to upgrade its status within the European framework. As Serbia integrates into the European Union, certainly the Belgrade Book Fair will gain in prominence. Also, extensive translation work is ongoing in Serbia. Therefore, there is reason for many world writers to come to the Belgrade Book Fair. And they do come. The word ‘international’ is becoming ever more significant. It goes without saying that such events are worth investing in. Did you know that Austria’s investments in culture are tantamount to its military budget? Austria is neutral, not a NATO member. Its culture is its strongest currency. It is not a good thing that culture only matters to us when there is nothing else on the menu. Culture is neither an aperitif, nor a dessert. It is the main course."
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Our Stomach Determines Our Fate
The only thing that matters is the stomach. Either you have it or you don’t. And there is no help to be obtained from looking into one’s biography, as it contains everything but the stomach. Who has what kind of stomach, no one knows. This is passed on with deadly silence. The stomach is a soft spot and is hidden behind armour, whether you are a turtle, urchin or artist. So, if you have a weak stomach, don’t blame others for it. The problem is not in moral issues, but in the stomach. Our fate is determined by the stomach.
(An excerpt from Dragan Velikić’s novel Ruski Prozor).
My Concentrate of Love
I can do everything with you because you are my concentrate of love, and love is God.
Darling, when one day we meet, do not regret that this had not happened sooner. Why have you not met me on time? When is the right time? Where does it say so? Well, it is natural that we fumble in the beginning. We hook up with the wrong people. What matters is that we do not remain with them to the end of our lives. The world is full of symbioses. Most nurture their own failure. This is why they crucify those who cannot reconcile with this, those who move on at any cost, those who do not close their eyes, but face up to themselves. Do not be afraid, as I am here, we cannot miss each other.
(An excerpt from Dragan Velikić’s novel Ruski Prozor). | |
