"Nationalism throughout the former Yugoslavia was not a misunderstanding. It was a political choice. My political choice was on the opposite side." (Dubravka Ugrešić, "Vreme" no. 632, 13. II 2003)
The awarding of a literary award can be very tense, perhaps even more tense than the content of the awarded and non-awarded works from the competition. The most significant Montenegrin literary award has had an aura of controversy since its foundation, the influence of politics on the judging process, the random determination of literary excellence and thematic conservatism. Of course, there is also the unavoidable identity semantics of Njegos, which has not yet been subjected to socio-historical contextualization. Unfortunately, this accompanying phenomenon during the Montenegrin festival of culture should remain in the deep shadow of Njegoš's poetics and aesthetics.
During this year's awarding of the Njegoš award, there was almost nothing of the above. The posthumous laureate is among the most recognized writers of the former Yugoslavia, she was an exceptional theoretician of literature and a lecturer at several higher education institutions around the world, the winner of several international literary awards and a persecuted writer! Besides Desanka Maksimović, Dubravka Ugrešić is only the second winner of this award! This is the first point of interest related to the 60th Njegoš award (according to the years since its establishment). Namely, during the 80s of the last century, Ugrešić promoted gender equality with original wit in Yugoslav literature and effectively dealt with misogyny. Thanks to her genre irony, she played socialist censorship and in her novels dissected the hypocrisy of Yugoslav culture - patriarchy, inaction of institutions, mercantilism and protectionism in literature, as well as the persecution of talents. How does all this irresistibly allude to Danilo Kiš, as well as to the later circumstance that instead of him, the Njegoš award was awarded to Desanka Maksimović?
Another interesting circumstance, tailored to the symbolism of the moment, refers to the ostensibly literary, but essentially chauvinistic attack on Prof. Draginja Vuksanović, Ph.D., by the Hague convict and non-memorial. This, another in a series, vomiting by the leader of Serbian radicals happened on the eve of Njegoš's birthday and all her public condemnations were announced during the holiday of Montenegrin culture. Connoisseurs of literary events know that during the 90s, Dubravka Ugrešić, speaking out against destructive nationalism, was exposed to a brutal media lynching and that she was called a "dirty liar", "a woman with mental problems", "a patient with Southern nostalgia", "a traitor to the homeland", " feminist", "enemy of the people" and "witch". The fates of Dubravko and Draginja are bound together by some strange string of Njegoš's philosophy that "without the dull eyes of fools" "minds could shine bright."
Ugrešić described in her own unique way in the collection of essays "Culture of Lies" from 1996 that "a soul filled with poison and blinded by envy... will never see the path of truth, nor taste immortal happiness." In an anti-nationalist manner, Dubravka used her novelistic essays to dissect the social mechanism that made the war acceptable to the majority of the Yugoslav population and at the same time imposed on them the common belief that there is no alternative to the conflict! In this encyclopedia of memory, the tactics used (and still used) by the nationalist oligarchies that arose at the time are exposed. All sides in the ex-Yu conflicts have created "new realities based on lies, including "terror by forgetting (forcing you to forget what you remember!) and terror by remembering (forcing you to remember what you don't remember!)."
Many willingly participated in this process, including writers whom Ugrešić considered particularly responsible for contributing to the culture of lies. Certainly, among them are some of the winners of the Njegoš award!
Dubravka's term "culture of lies" refers to the entire area of the Balkans and includes problems that are still relevant after more than a quarter of a century. "Although they have become clearer in all their awfulness" we still deal with them. That is why it should not be surprising that "prose fascism" comes to us uncensored from Serbia.
In the written bequest of D. Ugrešić, as well as in her recognizable public involvement, we observe that people from our area "indulge in self-forgetfulness" and "we cannot expect the current set of people in power to ever start the process of defascisization, because that would be expecting them to castrate themselves ".
"I think that today's education, which particularly refers to the humanities, history, national languages and literature, and the introduction of religious education in schools, is one of the biggest crimes with incalculable consequences in the entire Yugoslavian region in these quarter of a century," she concluded in one of her last interview of the winner of the Njegoš award.
Admired and even persecuted for her change to a different view of a different world, Ugrešić in the essay "What is European in European literature?" from 2005 claims that as a writer she does not want to carry the burden of imposed identities, but that she wants to be seen only through her work. Perhaps this is also an answer to one of the questions related to Njegoš's character and work?
Bonus video:
