I have just finished the play based on Tvrtko Kulenović's novel "The History of Disease", which begins with a beautiful and sad sentence: "When we fall asleep, we enter the dream from which we wake up." When we die, we will enter a sleep from which we will not wake up. But even when we were born, we entered a dream from which we did not wake up."
Recently we saw off perhaps the last one who was ours in Belgrade as well as Zagreb, Sarajevo or Split, Mostar as well as Rijeka, he was ours everywhere because he was his own and in his own, in the field of music and art. The departure of one of the greatest and best, such as Đorđe Balašević, united all the major cities of the former country that sang his verses as an oath and a generational fact of identity. It was the same with the departure of Mira Furlan, who was an ex-Yugoslav film and theater diva, when we remembered her roles and the sublime civil gesture of opposition to nationalism, which destroyed all social values.
This is usually how it happens when the great and the best leave, to whom collective emotions are attached, remembering the vanished values of unity and faith that we could have done more together in good and bad, in life and death. 30 years have passed since then, and only the fact of death remains as a place to remember the former common homeland. Artists, writers and members of various academic communities can play a key role in the reconciliation process after the wars. It is clear how the artistic language of emotions leads to a convergence of our views on what happened in the past. Unfortunately, history as a science in the former Yugoslavia continues to be used to strengthen the national. The writing of history on these sites is characterized by the organized innocence of "theirs" and the orchestrated guilt of "theirs". No one was the perpetrator and everyone is the victim of others.
History is still used to propagate and strengthen national identity. The culture of memory is extremely important for the dimension of the future in this area because it opens up the possibility to face the past through a way to morally reconsider the role of institutions and individuals in the violence and terror of the nineties. Institutionalized denial and lies as a political agenda strengthen the power and role of those individuals and groups who do not want a process of reconciliation and trust. That's why we wait and we have "some new kids" who have been leading the idea of fighting against indifference for years. Among them are a large number of artists who have a leading, protagonist role in restoring trust, and thus reconciliation. It is clear that we cannot forget what happened, but it is also clear that we must also forgive. For that to happen, every word must be written, every tear weighed and every sacrifice recorded. The only way to do this is to foster a culture of compassion and empathy so that future generations never repeat the cruelty towards those of a different nationality or religion.
If the "rift" between court verdicts on the one hand, and the expectations of the victims on the other, continues to widen, we will never have cathartic years when justice and satisfaction can open the way to reconciliation.
The great in life and in death owe us their spiritual endowments, work and beauty that breaks the chain of intergenerational transmission of violence and hatred.
Bonus video:
