THE INTERVIEW ON RADIO-BELGRADE*

Second program — "Road's of culture"

November 22, 1993.

SPEAKER: There is going to be a literary evening in the "House of Djura Jaksic" tomorrow at eighth o'clock p.m., which is dedicated to a new book of Milan Nesic, the winner of prestige literary award "Barbara Bauer". With Milan Nesic speaks our journalist Miroslav Kostic.

JOURNALIST: With our appreciation for coming in our studio, tell us, please, what kind of literary evening is that?

WRITER: Dr Ivan Sop and Miroljub Jevtovic will be speaking about their impressions regarding my new book "Fifty Years to War" — subtitle: "Five stories of Socialism from a Personal Point of View". How they are going to speak, that is what point they are going to underline — I don't know. Of course, I am curious. In that way stories are coming out always again from loneliness of writer's room converting into a special experience. I hope on pleasure of audience itself.

JOURNALIST: Still, it is useful to hear writer's authentic work. Is there anyone, who would read passages from your book?

WRITER: Our famous actor Toma Kuruzovic is going to read. He already read one my story, at one literary evening. Read? That man doesn't read, doesn't play, he carries away. I myself too as if I heard the story for the first time. In the moments of artistic illusion I almost was confused, really, how it's going to end? Will the magic show this time too, I don't know. I did what I could.

JOURNALIST: Yes, you have collected material; you have written the stories, what really is the original artistic aim.

WRITER: Not only that. I even chose the passages. You asked what kind of literary evening is this. I wondered myself too, how, what to choose for this occasion? The one's whole life, all the questions that we have worried whit, stands in a period of fifty years…

JOURNALIST: And what was your choice, when people constantly think how to survive? They become quieted down, or violent.

WRITER: Yes, the war is not finished, yet. I have been thinking where did come the violence and misunderstanding from, when no one doesn't want to think of himself as a violent man, that's for sure. Of himself as a suffering man or avenger, that's something else. Well, where's the line between the noble human desire to survive in a dignified way, to offer his meaning and his role, and, in the contrary, from which beginning imposition and violence?

JOURNALIST: Really, where is it?

WRITER: You wouldn't believe. One gentleman in the bus showed me that, a year ago. I have him never seen again.

JOURNALIST: How's that?

WRITER: It was not so crowded as usually. Still, I have understood that the quiet gentleman, who didn't want to move a step more into the crowd. He stood leaned on the door. It's not necessary to be an engineer knowing some overloaded little electrical motor, for instance. It would be possible for all to hear that moaning every time when the door pointlessly starts to open.

JOURNALIST: O.K., but I don't see the connection?

WRITER: At a bus stop, one girl tries to get through and exit. The middle door. The faster the better, she arrives yet, steps down, but there is that gentleman. She does move around the holder-rod toward the only open wing of the door — but, over, the bus is running. It is too mach even to ask is the gentleman sorry. "I didn't know you are going to exit", he apologies sincerely. Imagine, that he didn't know, it made the girl unnecessary walking. He, from his comfortable ignorance, made the situation, where people should inform him when and who needs to step out. Or go around him. Just that is the moment when violence starts. When a man puts himself (or his idea) in the center of all happening and the world, forgetting that he cannot know about the world unless he heard it, unless he asked the people. Even one little electrical motor has its own law: if you don't hear its moaning, it bit by bit brakes. Nevertheless, when the whole historical movement only guessed that it knew something about this world, then it goes to make the world happy — not even "America and England will be the land of proletarian" — but simply not asking that woman, for example, that man: what kind of happiness do they want.

JOURNALIST: Are you suggesting the one party system?

WRITER: Yes, whether the elitist theory about proletarian's dictatorship is guilty of it or not guilty, it is quite sure that the men from this historical ambient have to learn tolerance yet. To learn sense that the world doesn't have its center, where the only problem would be how to be the most close to the center, even on account of your college, your friend, let alone of someone passing nearby, or even, God save us, an enemy. Every man is a center and a world for himself. That's the criteria how I have chosen my passages. To show for a half an hour how is man apt to ignore this fact, from the negligence or even exactly from any wish. And what irrational roads that forgetting may have under pressure of ideology and despair.

JOURNALIST: Thanks.

(From THE LITERARY AUTOBIOGRAPHY

* Computer's translation

Initiator and operator Alexandra Mijatoviζ)

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