Goran

It is only fair that in a newspaper dated May 1st there is an article about Goran BabićBecause, if there was a convinced and consistent communist, it was him.

Even when his idea experienced a global collapse, he did not give up. His communism then acquired, I dare say, an even more charming, if it were not an (ideological) sin, I would say - a more aristocratic trait. Great poets can do anything. And Goran was a great poet.

He died the other day in Belgrade, in a nursing home. This closed one of the last chapters of Yugoslav/Yugoslav literature.

He was one of the few poets who published poetry in all republics. I remember the Cetinje edition from 1973, “Vjetrenjače trulo srce”. Well, at BIGZ “Muža zmija”, in Nolit, a great book with a powerful title - “Noćna rasa”. With a nice anecdote. The book had the (certainly, weaker) title “Noćna rosa”. The typesetter in Nolit made a mistake, and when Goran came to see the fold, he saw the title “Noćna rasa”. He was delighted and took a bottle of good brandy to the typesetter responsible for the new, better title.

In the 1980s, he was one of the most hated people in the territory of the SFRY. Everything was falling apart, the Yugoslav idea was sinking into the quicksand of nationalism, and he stubbornly remained, as they said, on the defender of Yugoslavia. The outcome would show that he was one of the rare sincere fighters in this.

Alleged author and/or inspirer of the famous White Book, party intellectual, close to By the sea, a passionate and fierce polemicist.

Accused of being, like every Croat (even if he was from a Jewish mother), is it, still a covert nationalist - that's what the 1971 song "Gori li to Hrvatska" (Is Croatia Burning) was used for, which, despite the fact that the song is about the Adriatic fires, was published on the front page of Vjesnik and took on completely different connotations. The Čaršija never has to be consistent - they spit in all directions, so what passes, passes.

Babić was a guy who had incredible narratives attached to him his entire life, from his birth on Vis in 1944, in the atmosphere of the Supreme Headquarters. His story with a friend from his youth, later convicted by the Hague Tribunal Slobodan Praljak it is - worthy of a movie.

And then it is night race arose on all sides...

In the 1990s, however, he was labeled an enemy and a traitor in Zagreb.

He is moving to Belgrade.

I have to be personal in this story because Goran was a part of my growing up. I remember coming home from school and finding a gathering in the living room - Goran had flown in from Zagreb, Joza Brkic, then editor of "Oka" (circulation reached an unimaginable 50.000 copies even today), and with them a wonderful friend from Zagreb Marko Damjanovic...

By the way, Goran is responsible for my literary “debut”. The year is 1984, one of his visits like that. I show him, rather shyly, my poems, which I haven’t even shown to my father yet, that’s how much I trusted that poet. It’s not like today, USB or sent by email – those were papers, typed on the good old Olympics (sung). Goran carefully read the poems and talked to the author. He took some without actually explaining to me clearly what he was going to do with them. My surprise was all the better when I saw the next issue of Oko, and the column with “Slices from the life of the last Chinese emperor”.

A decade-long arc, also a very personal image: I was still a student in Belgrade, in the ominous year of 1991, Says told me that Goran had moved to Belgrade. I went to visit him right away, it was a small apartment in New Belgrade, where he had moved in with his Bride...

A year ago Jevremova death, he came to Podgorica and spent a few nights with his godfather and old friend. Together, they told a handful of great stories - about poets, friendships, stumbles... That meeting in Podgorica was a beautiful epilogue to a friendship.

First and foremost, Goran Babić was always a poet.

And he was consistent in this, as in his communism. But poetry never failed him.