ACADEMICIAN AND WRITER MIRO VUKSANOVIĆ FOR KURIR: ‘Our heritage has global value, we just need to take good care of it’

“People who don’t read think books are written the same way wood is prepared for the winter.” This is one of over many hundreds of notes from the book Never Enough Life – Notes Day and Night, by writer and academician of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SASA) Miro Vuksanović

This book, published by Laguna in late April, is filled with comments, sayings, short stories and essays, prose poems, reminiscences, and various observations. In his interview with Kurir, Vuksanović says that the modern era does not favour thick prose volumes because neither the writer nor the reader has time, but this, according to him, does not mean that short prose notes do not contain exciting fates and characters.

As you have pointed out, the book can be read both sequentially and selectively, forwards and backwards, as everything is geared towards the modern reader and the speed at which we live our lives. Does that constitute pandering to the modern readership? Are long novels a thing of the past in the world literature?

“Yes, fragment is my form of literary narration, and I have used it in several of my books, including the best-known ones, the alphabetically organized novels about words. These short writings can stand alone as well as be concatenated. There is no ‘pandering’ to the readers there because I don’t write with them in mind. My main task is to actually talk to myself, understand myself, and leave a trace of what I like in a way that suits me at a given time. Every person has the need to communicate something to others, and writers have the privilege to leave their stories in books. The modern era doesn’t favour thick prose volumes because neither the writer nor the reader has time – they live in a rush and amid jostling as they compete with themselves and other people. But that doesn’t mean that short prose notes don’t contain exciting fates and characters. A single well-placed word can identify an entire person. This depends on reading. Reading is perhaps more important than writing. Reading can multiply, whereas writing is a single person’s work.”

If the adage that a writer is successful in their work only if their success is acknowledged by their closest of kin is in fact true – as it is true that relatives are among the last to accord recognition to a writer, if at all – are you successful in your work?

“An answer to that would be like denouncing your closest of kin, but I don’t know any writers whose families admire them. They know everything about them, and that stands in the way. Being related is an enemy to reading. A book is only its own and the writer’s relation. The others are occasional guests. They come over, take a look around, and leave. The relations are always there. That’s where the essence might be.”

The beginning of your prose notes coincides with the start of the coronavirus pandemic. We are conducting an interview a few days after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared an end to COVID-19 as a public health emergency. What has the world learnt during the three years of the pandemic? Do you think we have drawn any lessons? Has the coronavirus really “defeated both humanity and global science”?

“The coronavirus has revealed the truth that a human being is truly on their own, that countries are on their own, that alliances between countries are about furthering interests, and that no one stands between a predicament and a human being. One invisible little creature has shut down and defeated the whole world. The powers-that-be, clamouring about being untouchable, caved in to Covid. We have also learnt that science cannot impose order in nature, and, if it does, that this disrupts the balance that brought the world into being. It wasn’t the measures and the lockdowns that defeated the coronavirus. It has in fact become part of us, and it keeps doing its work, until a successor comes along. Caution is a good medicine, always, with or without the coronavirus. For starters, the great ‘brain drain’ of doctors and all young and educated people ought to be stopped.”

You have an interesting claim that some nations enter into their national history records everything that has ever happened in their territory because by doing so they want to make their civilization as long and impressive as possible, while other nations do not know how to go far back into the past and they are not interested in tradition; rather, for them, everything starts from the moment they gained their first property. In addition, you say that there are nations which imitate both the former and the latter, aimlessly roaming and losing their way, and not being aware of themselves and the values that they have created. Which group does the Serbian nation belong to?

“The answer can be precise only when the Serbian nation becomes unified in terms of its traits and its attitude towards its tradition and each epoch. It’s unnecessary to try and convince anyone that Serbs act, think, and speak following different principles at the same time, always in a state of conflict and misunderstanding. Serbs are a nation consisting of layers that clash and do not understand each other. At any rate, no nation is different, but some of them find something that they all have in common and around which they rally. There is no such consensus here because we don’t know how to listen to a different opinion. We are used to talking over each other as soon as anyone starts saying anything. As for our attitude towards the past, suffice it to say that we still don’t know how many Serbs perished in the 20^th century – the only century with two world wars and the only century that opened the door to today’s tumultuous civilization. We compete in numbers and have arguments over the sum total of the fatalities. In this way, we put ourselves in the group of naïve nations and help those that do us ill. Vocal historians and politicians spearhead such misunderstandings, and we are their obedient followers. Our principal goal should be this: saving the best elements of our tradition and creating a good tradition piecemeal. Everything has been provided for us. Our heritage has global value. We just need to take good care of it.”

Why do you think, as you state in your book, that Serbs and Croats can never really like each other, even though they can work and live together, join hands in doing important work, and play host to each other…?

“If you take a close look at the planet and the conflicts going on there, it’s easy to see that religious differences are the primary reason for all the suffering, in wars or without them. It is a source of distress that has been around for thousands of years, and it is here to stay. As for neighbouring countries, not only with respect to us and the nations closest to us, there have always been those that, to put it in folksy terms, sell their soul for a loaf of bread. Converts have two huge difficulties: they know that those that have admitted them do not see them as their own; and they know that those that they have left know why they have done it. This is why converts act in the harshest of ways in conflicts – they want to prove their loyalty and destroy the witnesses – loyalty to those they have joined and a wish for those they have left to disappear. There are a number of neighbouring countries in Europe who have similar relations to those between Serbs and Croats, but it’s not as noticeable because they find someone else to unite against. It’s all quite mixed-up but evident nowadays. The world is indeed an underwater order in which big fish eat small fish. Quite an old chestnut.”

You often bring up your home country of Montenegro, saying in your book, among other things, that “Nowhere else but in Montenegro are there promises without obligations and praises without reasons.” What do you make of that country now? Has the recent presidential election – at which Milo Đukanović lost his power after over three decades – really marked the beginning of a new era?

“What could I say about the developments in my Montenegro that wouldn’t constitute interfering in the internal matters of another state? I’ve had my home become a foreign land. I see what is going on, but I’m not glad that Milo hasn’t gone – because everyone who had been helping him hold his high office for so many years is still there. He will be replaced, but the Milo legacy will remain for a long time. He is claimed to be one of the richest politicians in the world, and yet they started to tear down his renovated village house. Montenegro is the only country in Europe where a political party that wins an election cannot take power. For three years everything has been temporary there except for the man whose powers are symbolic. The small Montenegro has always been a big metaphor. But there are more young, beautiful, and intelligent people there than anywhere else. They come in wearing a sweater, and leave wearing a tailcoat suit. Now the incoming and the outgoing have met. Sparks are yet to fly.”

On the criticism and work of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts

‘As soon as anyone speaks out, they get shot down by the Memorandum’

What is your take on the criticism of the SASA? I mean first and foremost the frequent claims that this important institution does not issue statements about significant socio-political questions. What are your expectations regarding Zoran Knežević, the new President of the Academy?

“The problem is the fact that everyone wants the SASA to say precisely what they think, to guess what their point of view is. This is why whatever the SASA says rubs someone the wrong way, and then they start to criticise, attack, and make demands. I’ve already said that we haven’t mastered the culture of dialogue and that we cut each other off in conversation. There isn’t a country in the world where national academies are in charge of solving political problems at a point when they have metastasized. No one has questions for the academicians when a crisis breaks out or about how to prevent it, and yet everyone expects them to solve a crisis when no one can solve it. The SASA has been reflecting, writing, and publishing books on Kosovo for 180 years. That makes an enormous library, which is read by a small number of people. Furthermore, an unadopted and unread text authored by a group of people of whom only one is still alive is too often the focus of attention, so, as soon as anyone speaks out, they get shot down by bringing up the Memorandum. Each national academy, including the Serbian one, acts as a group of independent thinkers. That is a perfectly conventional state of affairs. The president is not a director. Academician Zoran Knežević is a serious man and a highly reputed scientist, both tactful and experienced. It is to be expected that he will act in this way too. As for the SASA, it must always be what its members are. By that I mean everyone from Sterija and Pančić at the beginning, down to us, who have been given a great honour and duty.”

Kurir.rs / Boban Karović