Take one: Totalitarianism
When Raymond LLull, after a spying worthy of Renaissance Italian novels, finally managed to meet the lady of his heart, she unbuttoned her nightgown in silence and discovered breasts riddled with cancer. This shock was the catalyst of a metamorphosis: Llull left secular life, became famous as a theologian scholar and a missionary.
The stories on Raimond Llull, Peter Abelard, Rimbaud or Vassily Tomovich
are not by chance benchmarks in the topography of my writing: each of
them is the allegory of a deep scare or a dark fear.
I had my own encounters with the rotten breasts of the world. The first was at the time of the student revolt and the rebirth of socialism, this oh so just and humane society. We were sitting on the deck of the ship named „Adriatic”, an evening of August ’68. I remember the insignificant detail that Tatiana was wearing a beret and some weird sunglasses. It formed a contrast with the old gentleman sitting behind her, in white clothes and with a straw hat. Just like a vision, two men went up on the deck. I barely noticed them. One of them was inspecting around him, while the other approached our neighbor and shot him with a pistol, like a dog. They disappeared, spectra. We had barely time to look at each other, when two sailors appeared. The first dragged the body by the feet under the deck, while the second washed the bloody trail with a bucket of water. He turned to us and almost whispered almost: „Go away, kids. Do you want to be killed as witnesses?”
Art begins as a ritual: I became a poet after a ritual sacrifice – deflagration, lapping of water, drops of blood falling silently.
The meaning of this rite is complex and sly: each art is a legacy and a reminder, in its essence is hidden the tragic realization that even gods are mortal; each art is an ideology because there isn’t memory without emotion nor reflection without experience, and, at the same time, a struggle against ideology, because ideology begins with forgetfulness.
That’s why I want to preserve from oblivion millions of books burned during the wars without purpose and without names, the clamor of sirens and the bombs on cities, all sisters and all innocent, and the cynical smile of the assassins; I would also like to save the memory of my dead friends, the stories of my father on the misery and hunger after the war, and the innate melancholy of my mother.
Totalitarianism is not only a global neg-entropic trend of evolution of the society: it is repeated in each microcosm: always in the name of truth, always in the name of justice, always in the name of humanity.
We went up to Kalemegdan. We then sat for the last time at our usual place on the ramparts. Tatiana tried to say something, but she could not. I contemplated the Danube and the playful moon whose reflection danced on the waves. I felt it mocked me, and that my dignity was sinking more and more deeply. I remembered the verse: „My brother walks on the burning tar – while death lurks.”
Théophile Terrail used to tell stories, at times, of his stay in Germany before the war, and his studies at the Bauhaus, reminding us every time that the most dedicated craftsmen had taught him the job.
Among these memories, these images, there is one particularly striking, and I will convey it to you: Leipzig in 1936 or 37, the raging Germanic Volks transported, by wheelbarrows, public and private libraries, books of authors put on the Index, and threw them in the fire. SS with flamethrowers, a blaze so high that the sky could crack.
In the flames disappeared Kokoschka's „Self Portrait in black velvet”, and the first version (of three known) of the painting „The Scream” by Munch. At the corner of the Schillerstraße and the square, in front of the broken door of a vegetable shop, a man cried.
In Kosovo, sixty years later, we have burned a lot more books than in Leipzig, and that no one shed tears, leads me to the conclusion that the „fight against fascism” was a joke, the darkest of this century. Millions of men are dead, but fascism survived, more treacherous, stronger and more circumspect. It owes its resilience from being derived from the mentality of the village and the peasant, and of being an instrument of society against the individual. It speaks to everyone, and its language is the language of interdiction.
This nomenclature of interdiction is illustrated by this story and the following ones: we are forbidden to think first. To learn then. Then we are forbidden to love. And in the end, it deprives us of the right to be human beings.
The nomenclature of the interdiction is complemented by a nomenclature of lies. When she said, „I didn’t know you were such a coward” – it was actually her that lacked courage. The essence of existence is composed of artifices and impostures, whoever we lie to: to ourselves or to others.
Moreover, literature is born from a lie.
I tried once to make an inventory of lies we embrace, and which, as a φαρος, illuminate our travel over troubled and deep waters. I asked myself, in the end, if there was one abstract word that didn't mean the opposite of its definition.
It was then that I discerned the essence of totalitarianism: the degeneration of society, of life, was the consequence of the degeneration of language.
Four years later, we were again sitting on the ramparts, and we watched a shimmering Danube. She repeated: „Everything was a lie. We were too young, we expected too much. Now, do you think it will be different?”
She continued.
„I think... I have to tell you, I didn’t love you, then. I didn’t love me either. As if I was looking for a reflection on a fuzzy window... Me, perhaps. Somebody. I do not know. Life. Yes. I was simply looking for life.”
I had my own encounters with the rotten breasts of the world. The first was at the time of the student revolt and the rebirth of socialism, this oh so just and humane society. We were sitting on the deck of the ship named „Adriatic”, an evening of August ’68. I remember the insignificant detail that Tatiana was wearing a beret and some weird sunglasses. It formed a contrast with the old gentleman sitting behind her, in white clothes and with a straw hat. Just like a vision, two men went up on the deck. I barely noticed them. One of them was inspecting around him, while the other approached our neighbor and shot him with a pistol, like a dog. They disappeared, spectra. We had barely time to look at each other, when two sailors appeared. The first dragged the body by the feet under the deck, while the second washed the bloody trail with a bucket of water. He turned to us and almost whispered almost: „Go away, kids. Do you want to be killed as witnesses?”
Take one: Memory
Art begins as a ritual: I became a poet after a ritual sacrifice – deflagration, lapping of water, drops of blood falling silently.
The meaning of this rite is complex and sly: each art is a legacy and a reminder, in its essence is hidden the tragic realization that even gods are mortal; each art is an ideology because there isn’t memory without emotion nor reflection without experience, and, at the same time, a struggle against ideology, because ideology begins with forgetfulness.
That’s why I want to preserve from oblivion millions of books burned during the wars without purpose and without names, the clamor of sirens and the bombs on cities, all sisters and all innocent, and the cynical smile of the assassins; I would also like to save the memory of my dead friends, the stories of my father on the misery and hunger after the war, and the innate melancholy of my mother.
Take two: Ideology
Totalitarianism is not only a global neg-entropic trend of evolution of the society: it is repeated in each microcosm: always in the name of truth, always in the name of justice, always in the name of humanity.
We went up to Kalemegdan. We then sat for the last time at our usual place on the ramparts. Tatiana tried to say something, but she could not. I contemplated the Danube and the playful moon whose reflection danced on the waves. I felt it mocked me, and that my dignity was sinking more and more deeply. I remembered the verse: „My brother walks on the burning tar – while death lurks.”
We were silent, but I knew she hated us. I noticed suddenly how her
hands had aged, and her long fingers trembled. She said: „I did not know
you were such a coward.”
I ignored it too. „Why did you not attempt anything?”
Because I don’t understand. I don’t know anymore.
„I begin to wonder what kind of man you are. Is there anything else but your interest? Could you made a sacrifice for anything? Where are your ideals?”
Our love was unraveling as gauze.
„Everything was a lie,” she added.
On page 521 of the Talmud is a note on Elisha, son of Abu, named Acher – the Foreigner, for its refusal of the true faith. It is noted that he said, looking dogs gorging themselves on the flesh of Rab Judas, who the Romans had tortured and tormented: „There is your knowledge, and here's your salary!”
Just like Tatiana would have said, revealing a more substantial truth: „Everything was a lie.”
I ignored it too. „Why did you not attempt anything?”
Because I don’t understand. I don’t know anymore.
„I begin to wonder what kind of man you are. Is there anything else but your interest? Could you made a sacrifice for anything? Where are your ideals?”
Our love was unraveling as gauze.
„Everything was a lie,” she added.
On page 521 of the Talmud is a note on Elisha, son of Abu, named Acher – the Foreigner, for its refusal of the true faith. It is noted that he said, looking dogs gorging themselves on the flesh of Rab Judas, who the Romans had tortured and tormented: „There is your knowledge, and here's your salary!”
Just like Tatiana would have said, revealing a more substantial truth: „Everything was a lie.”
Take three: Nomenclature of Lies
Théophile Terrail used to tell stories, at times, of his stay in Germany before the war, and his studies at the Bauhaus, reminding us every time that the most dedicated craftsmen had taught him the job.
Among these memories, these images, there is one particularly striking, and I will convey it to you: Leipzig in 1936 or 37, the raging Germanic Volks transported, by wheelbarrows, public and private libraries, books of authors put on the Index, and threw them in the fire. SS with flamethrowers, a blaze so high that the sky could crack.
In the flames disappeared Kokoschka's „Self Portrait in black velvet”, and the first version (of three known) of the painting „The Scream” by Munch. At the corner of the Schillerstraße and the square, in front of the broken door of a vegetable shop, a man cried.
In Kosovo, sixty years later, we have burned a lot more books than in Leipzig, and that no one shed tears, leads me to the conclusion that the „fight against fascism” was a joke, the darkest of this century. Millions of men are dead, but fascism survived, more treacherous, stronger and more circumspect. It owes its resilience from being derived from the mentality of the village and the peasant, and of being an instrument of society against the individual. It speaks to everyone, and its language is the language of interdiction.
This nomenclature of interdiction is illustrated by this story and the following ones: we are forbidden to think first. To learn then. Then we are forbidden to love. And in the end, it deprives us of the right to be human beings.
Take four: Words
The nomenclature of the interdiction is complemented by a nomenclature of lies. When she said, „I didn’t know you were such a coward” – it was actually her that lacked courage. The essence of existence is composed of artifices and impostures, whoever we lie to: to ourselves or to others.
Moreover, literature is born from a lie.
I tried once to make an inventory of lies we embrace, and which, as a φαρος, illuminate our travel over troubled and deep waters. I asked myself, in the end, if there was one abstract word that didn't mean the opposite of its definition.
It was then that I discerned the essence of totalitarianism: the degeneration of society, of life, was the consequence of the degeneration of language.
Take four: Words
Four years later, we were again sitting on the ramparts, and we watched a shimmering Danube. She repeated: „Everything was a lie. We were too young, we expected too much. Now, do you think it will be different?”
She continued.
„I think... I have to tell you, I didn’t love you, then. I didn’t love me either. As if I was looking for a reflection on a fuzzy window... Me, perhaps. Somebody. I do not know. Life. Yes. I was simply looking for life.”
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