A Word Like a Remedy

Success is when a man who lives in a community employs the best qualities of his own personality for what he does and who does not attain his achievements in an immoral and ruthless manner. A very limited amount of ends justify by-all-means attitudes, says Vida Ognjenović.

By Željka Trninić
Photo by Milan Melka & Zoran Milošević

The year of 2011 is of great importance for the Serbian literature. Half a century of the day when Ivo Andrić was awarded the Nobel Prize, 150 years of the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad, 25 years of the Theatre City of Budva, the book fairs in Leipzig and Moscow, where Serbia is going to be the guest of honour, make a pretext for an interview with Vida Ognjenović, the writer who has already been ranked among classics of the Serbian literature, one of the best theatre directors of ours, the winner of many national and international awards, the president of the Serbian PEN Centre, the ambassador of Serbia to Denmark. Her latest novel "A Viewer of Birds", as countless many believe, is her greatest work and one amongst best contemporary Serbian novels. The book went to its second edition in less than three months. Mrs. Ognjenović is the only woman in Serbia whose novel "Adulterers" has been nominated for the IMPAC Award to be bestowed in Dublin this June in a competition of works of respectable world’s writers such as Margaret Atwood, Paul Auster, Dan Brown, Orhan Pamuk, William Trevor, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Vladislav Bajac…

In March everybody, at least once a year, think of women of whom even their professions have masculine gender. You are a successful woman, an intellectual in the country where men are still unchallengeable. How did you manage to achieve success in tilting at windmills?

– Yes, it seems that women are awarded with just one day in a year. It’s not a joke, at least on a day devoted to them they can lounge at their will, dive into the sea of carnations’ fragrance and lavishly enjoy freedom. Sufficiently enough to more easily put up with the remaining three hundred and sixty-four days – the days of men. I’m joking. In fact, gender equality is not really disregarded here. Even during the former regime a lot was achieved to that end. A quota of women was also existent in earlier social forms, and it is existent now. Still, I see quotas as certain kind of discrimination, too, and hope they are imposed and temporary measures. Selections should not be selections of men at large with few women in order to fulfil an obligatory percentage but selection of unconditionally finest candidates. Otherwise, here and elsewhere, women’s striving to equally participate in solving life-oriented issues is a question of undeniable struggle and not with windmills. Enthusiastic knight Don Quixote, wishing to protect the weaker, tilts at windmills believing that they are evil knights, which they are not. It is an opposite case with us, women wage a struggle against evil knights who pretend to be harmless windmills but are still far from being that.

Bestselling books at books fairs are those written by showbiz figures or books about them. Should literature be protected from being showbized or should it be left to develop disorderly, i.e. be renounced to market "requirements"?

– The world is flooded with volumes of showbiz literature which is being created by recycling and countless variations of the same theme and plot. Those are the books printed in millions of copies, which have excessive market circulation, booksellers are wresting for them but one should not lump them together. There are also among them interesting biographies and autobiographies about distinctive film and entertainment figures. However, these are rather rare. It is true that literature which is not created for brief and fleeting leafing through pages, which does not surrender to the audience’s hunger for cheap content, is deemed to bring less amounts of currency but it has, I’m certain about it, long-lastingly significant effect. This is why I think it is necessary to protect it from the market’s tyranny and managerial pragmatism, defend it from any sort of showbiz and at the same time ensure conditions so that it can fight for every serious reader.

You have won a great number of awards for literature and directing. What do awards mean to an artist of Your volume?

– Awards are a wonderful way to highlight an art work. It is very important to me to learn that somebody seriously read my book or saw my theatre production. In addition, it is an encouraging fact that certain and valuable exchange of ideas is established in this manner.

How does it affect an artist when his/her work is better received by the public and is left without echo with a jury or when it, owing to incorrect or bad review of the jury, escapes attention of the audience? In other words, to what extent do you think awards are unbiased?

– In regard to awards being bestowed by a certain jury I think we can rather talk about biased assessment. A jury makes evaluation independently, unanimously or by majority of votes. It is, therefore, about an opinion of a certain number of meritorious evaluators. They act in compliance with their professional and moral responsibility and are not obliged to adjust their decisions to side influences. Of course, it is understood that they advocate their criteria in the face of culture audience which still does not mean that the evaluation is unbiased. But, my belief is, that it does not really affect an artist. I don’t believe, let’s say, that Andrić suffered from complexes because his novel "The Damned Yard" had not been, at the time, bestowed with the NIN Award. One may suppose that he knew better what he had written. Anyway, we have seen how much that assessment influenced further destiny of that extraordinary book ...

Why are injustices made in time of peace harsher and hurt more badly than war as is the case with Vasya Kirov, the main character of your latest novel "A Viewer of Birds"?

– Injustices always hurt, only war is a severe circumstance when nearness of death makes all other adversities appear to be easily conquerable.

Your book tells a story about betrayed ideals. Is disappointment the defeat against or victory over negative system of value in society?

– Yes, we know about the regime when practice denied ideals upon which it had been set up, and it did deny them severely, in blood. Extermination of people in camps of Gulag and Goli Otok (Barren Island), and further on the creation of a new man who accepted all political extortions and licked any obnoxiousness of political hypocrisy, betrayals, spying and thievery - all for his own slight, stinky, and after all, stringently controlled, comfort. A man cannot but feel sorrow for people, let’s say such as a great intellectual Petar Komnenić who, among hundreds of thousands others, endured unprecedented tortures and humiliation believing in the possibility of ideas on equality, brotherhood and free dom. To him it is the defeat. And it is easy now to say that it is well that a hard line wing of communism did not end in victory. But who can claim with certainty that that was a monolithic hard line and who can tell that they would have behaved like those yolpaz people (a Turkish word for a scoundrel) to whom the soil under their feet slid away with the demolition of the Berlin Wall?

How betrayed ideals can affect a man – do they lead him to a state of surrender or further struggle?

– The hero of my novel decides to befriend with birds. I believe he is not an exception.

Your novel, inter alia, tells about disclosure of dossiers after World War II. Will the book eventually initiate opening of dossiers in Serbia?

– I don’t think it can be achieved with the book. Not even Basara would foist it with his column, let alone a novel.

What is, in your opinion, the task of an intellectual in the contemporary society – to educate or change the world?

– Firstly, to educate oneself as it should be, and change the world and oneself afterwards.

Many see your narrative character as the greatest value of your work. You especially cherish the language and culture of expression which we more and more grow to lack in our daily life. To what extent do the language and manner of expression reflex personal culture and education, and to what extent do they reflex the time and environment that we live are living in?

– The language is a glossary of the world, the most perfect means of communication. Unfortunately, we treat it in the same way as we treat nature, arrogantly and primitively. Maybe it is about the time we are live living in, but we have infringed the communication system that had already been instituted and thus marked our time. That’s why our verbal communication is rather shallow and superficial. Nowadays, a spoken word is neither binding in conversational nor moral sense. We express our thoughts in lingual simulations so that eruption of the filthiest slights and slanders be justified on the ground of spontaneous sincerity. A man with scarce vocabulary, verbal jumpiness and slackness cannot be persuasive in other than pumped-up verbal aggression. It is then said here: "You did jump well down his throat!" As a consequence, we do not converse we just jump down each other’s throats on the edge of a blade of irresponsible piffling.

You have numerous duties and inexhaustible creative energy. How many hours does your clock tick away?

– I don’t have a clock. My time is measured by my steps...

A congress of PEN, the international association of writers, is going to be arranged in Belgrade this autumn. This first-rate event will attract a few hundred globally recognized writers to our city. What can Serbia and Serbian culture expect from the congress?

– As of September 2^nd this year Belgrade is going to be PEN’s congress city until September 18^th. Literature will be the in the media and readership spotlight during that week. There will be numerous meetings between writers and readers, literature evening events, discourses. Bookstores are going to liven up, writers from around the world will be signing their books published in our country whilst our authors will be signing those published in foreign languages. I think it should be an exciting literature experience.

You often take flights on Jat Airways. What Jat should do to improve its service?

– That’s right, I often take Jat’s flights but it doesn’t make me an expert at providing managerial proposals for the improvement of the company’s business. I only want to emphasize that I feel like being at home when, after transoceanic flights, I have a connecting flight on Jat.