Schneider

It is difficult to explain to today's reader what a phenomenon it was. Schneider drama from 1981. “Croatian Faust”. The drama revolves around the setting Faust during the Ustasha regime, and is partly based on facts - a later communist dignitary Vjekoslav Afrij then he directed Geteov a play at the Croatian National Theatre.

Such a framework gave the author the opportunity to focus on everything that was being avoided at the time in Croatia, the “silent republic”. The relationship between politics and art, the question of responsibility, the moral dilemmas of the actors and much more “below” the text. A Homage Mephisto Which Clause, too. It sounds incredible, but “Croatian Faust” has not been performed at the Croatian National Theatre to this day. It can't be a coincidence, of course.

I met him in Budapest in 2001, at a meeting of Group 99. In fact, our friendship began with a “chat”. Schneider was reserved about the idea of ​​Montenegrin secession from the so-called FRY. And I had the need to convince him that he was wrong. As soon as we agreed that the fuel of that act (the independence of Montenegro) was not nationalism, but emancipation, his “reservations” disappeared.

This was followed by numerous visits to Montenegro, the promotion of selected works in the Library, a nice guest appearance in Budva...

I remember how, on one of these occasions, he spoke brilliantly about a play he was writing, partly inspired by Tito. There is a scene where the Austrian soldier Josip Broz returns from revolutionary Russia via Lithuania. A German officer questions him if he is a communist. The Austrian soldier, JB of course, denies it, but the officer is suspicious. He orders the gypsy orchestra that happened to be there to play the Internationale, and he puts his ear to the suspect's chest. He listens to see if his heart will betray him... Being a leftist is also a matter of the heart, always.

Šnajder actually lived two literary lives. In the 1970s and 1980s he was an authentic follower of the Krležian spirit, a writer of brilliant prose and great dramas. In the 1990s he had to emigrate to Germany, returning after the change of government.

This will be followed by novels, a true masterpiece "The Age of Brass" (2015), and then "The Angel of Disappearance" (2023).

From today's perspective, it is probably even clearer (if it wasn't crystal clear to anyone back then) how much the 2017 novel "The Age of Brass" deserved the Njegoš Award, or, everything else aside, how simply - just it would have been. First and foremost, for literary reasons.

Of course, the idea of ​​justice is difficult to connect with the literary world, anywhere, and yet, that year, Šnajder's book made such a splash that it was truly a question of justice. After all, Šnajder's name on that plaque in Billiards would undoubtedly be an honor for both the Njegoš Award and Montenegro.

But, as is well known, the idea of ​​justice usually easily backs down in the face of all possible forms of baseness.

Then, unfortunately, even the serious literary experts on that jury agreed to the provincial play of a national commissar and patriarch of the literary čaršija and awarded his book - which almost no one remembers or mentions anymore. ("There is no such award that can make a book better", Šnajder noted beautifully at the time.) To make the cynicism and hypocrisy more explicit - the members of that jury mention Šnajder's novel in all possible surveys about the great works of our time. If nothing else, this adds to the bizarreness of the whole story.

Finally, Schneider found himself in a better team, "overlooked" when it comes to that award, with By rain i Black people. And that's it Vidmar and political service.

At the end of an email from a few weeks ago, he wrote to me: "I finished Mara Leib's novel, which closes the trilogy with Brass and Angel." Maybe that's all from me. Greetings from Šac.”

Although we often talked about illnesses, I didn't understand the true meaning of this sentence at the time - “Maybe it's all about me.” The other day - I did.

Only great writers can fit so much into one seemingly "ordinary", seemingly unimportant sentence.