Harpoon to the heart! It is precisely this image of a stabbing that guides the language and structure of the novel "Minister" by the Montenegrin writer Stefan Bošković, who is one of the 13 winners of this year's prestigious European Union Award for Literature... The image of a stabbing is a guiding principle, because:
"You always have to poke and prod, with sentences, meanings, images. Sometimes you stab with a stinger, sometimes with a phallus, sometimes with a harpoon," says Bošković in an interview with "Vijesti", presenting his latest work, and on the occasion of receiving a prestigious European award.
However, he adds that for him the prize never represents an incentive or motive for creation. When it comes to ideas or will, it doesn't fail, but it often lacks time, which sometimes seems to flow too fast.
The plot of the novel follows the Minister of Culture Valentin Kovačević during nine "turbulent days in which he struggles with the difficulties of business pressures, cultural customs, administration and the inevitable bottom of family history. And with myself". In an interview with "Vijesti", Bošković recalled the process of creation and creation of "Minister", video games and socializing as an outlet, "dead material" in the "matter" folder, as well as the feeling when the last sentence of the first version of the novel was put to an end. .
In addition to talking about the novel, he also talks to "Vijesti" about the Montenegrin literary scene, which he does not believe in, because "in Yugoslavia there was a scene, these are all attempts at scenes today", he talks about the approach to artistic/literary writing and script building (on the other hand ), and has a special message for "Vijesti" readers.
Your novel and you as an author were included among the 13 best writers this year, as chosen by the jury of the European Union Prize for Literature. You said earlier that you did not expect the award, but that the author always hopes for it, which is expected. Now, I guess, the impressions have settled, and congratulations are probably coming from all over. Is the enthusiasm perhaps greater now, and has there been an incentive and motive for a new work?
Rather, I would say that I suppress expectations. In my case, the prize was never an incentive and motive for creation. Even in this sense, the reward is more likely to be a counter-incentive, a burden for further work or a snuggle. So far I have had no problems with motivation, will, or ideas. My only regret is that I don't have more time, or that it doesn't flow more slowly. All in all, it's a nice feeling, and the harder the road, the stronger the feeling and I really enjoyed these days, I reset some doubts and ate about four kilos of ice cream.
The novel "Minister" is your latest work, the second novel in a row. How did it come about? Could I ask that you introduce it to the readers yourself, although it is ungrateful to ask the author?
I spent November and December 2018 on the coast, in a house in Krašići, with a large terrace that goes into the sea. When I write a piece, say for a couple of months, I usually choose winter at the sea. Baudelaire feels an increase in the quality of intimacy when the house is invaded by winter (says Bašlar). I memorized and adopted that sentence. Before writing, I thoroughly think about the idea, about the characters, about the frame and form. It is very important for me to remember dreams in the meantime, and to write down some, because I experience dreaming as a primary observation. When I get down to writing, everything I've been thinking about, dreaming about and remembering disappears. The process of writing itself is for me the activation of a bare field of intuition that touches memories. And that process lasts, roughly, several hours a day, maybe twice for three hours, sometimes even less, and I'm very upset while I'm writing. That's why it's very important for me to plan the day after I finish writing. During my stay in Krašići, my friends Stika and Vlado were about ten kilometers away from me, and I went to visit them during breaks to play "Red Dead Redemption 2". That video game created a favorable atmosphere for my novel, I learned something about the hero's personal resistance to structure and the idea came to me about dressing the minister, about his closet that hides colorful clothing treasures. I absorbed these details and created an environment that would help me write. Traveling through Boka, I listened to the all-too-famous Filip Glas every day, but his repetition helped me to maintain my daily writing routine, and to credibly write some pictures that needed melancholy. That's more or less how I work. That morning, when I finished the last sentence of the first draft of the novel, I think I drank under water.
"The contemporary is the one who looks at his time, not to see the light, but the darkness. Being modern is, above all, a question of courage", is the quote from Đorđe Agamben that opens the book, after the dedication to his parents. Is it possible to find in that quote a specific message that you wanted to send or a principle that guided you during the creation of "Minister"?
I can't remember if I chose the quote, so I was writing a novel guided by meaning, or if I finished the novel and put the quote together as a missing piece, or even in the middle, the idea of the quote appeared, because I was reading Agamben in that period. I needed that thought, and not only for the novel, but also for my relationship with my own expression.
It's interesting to me and I'm interested in why you decided to place the Minister of Culture, Valentin Kovačević, in the center of the store?
I could say, because culture is the producer of identity, and identity is an important issue that this novel deals with. But I didn't start from that premise. I didn't start from a thesis or a metaphor. I've never been a stickler for metaphors or allegories. A metaphor must not think. It exists in every work, most often as a premise, a point from which you start, but I also avoid that approach in essence, because the metaphor has no real root, deep and true. I started from the specific performance, during which the minister kills the artist. I started from the harpoon that sticks in the heart. Let me remind you, that image "the minister kills the artist" in a metaphorical sense can mean "the institution destroys the individual". But that was not my starting point, because it is quite banal for my view of society. The hero Valentino Kovačević is just a naïve, who responded to the invitation to participate in the performance, the cable broke and he killed the person on the other side. That's my set up, the microbe from which I start, the thought I believe in - that you can't insure anything, build and protect that life won't surpass in a single second. Life always comes first. And he shows us that every day.
I ask because it seems to me that ministers of other activities, such as foreign and internal affairs, defense, education, economy, health, are often much more current and in focus.
Harpoon to the heart. That image of the stab guides my language and structure throughout this novel. As well as its essence, as well as the essence of the previous books I wrote. You always have to poke and prod, with sentences, meanings, images. Sometimes you sting with a stinger, sometimes with a phallus, sometimes with a harpoon. There are many reasons why the hero is the minister of culture, and what I was focused on was that this story does not turn into a local toadstool, that it does not allude to this or that minister, to that business man and this parish priest, because what happened is already that Montenegrin novels tend to focus on certain people that the audience will recognize, but when they are left without local provocation, they are left without everything else. This is the so-called "Podgorica fame" acquired - me to you, you to me, "don't talk on the phone", "the one from Splendid", "that one's wife" once you enter the simulation and Jean-Luc Godard becomes Jean-Luc Gordan.
"Every now and then the reader may wonder who is crazy here: the Minister, society or himself. There are no easy answers to such difficult questions, so no matter how fascinating this book is, its effect is dissecting and sobering..." says Kruno Lokotar, editor of the edition of novels for Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, "Buybook". Did you intend to open up these topics, prompt the question of "who's crazy here" and did you state or come up with an answer during the writing?
The key sentence or thought at the beginning of the novel is when Valentino Kovačević says to himself: I decide, I am the minister! From that moment everything begins to fall apart, his function, his family life, his body, as well as the future he had planned in detail. The paradox is found in the hero who is convinced that he is still in control of the situation. Although obstacles are encountered, Valentino thinks that he overcomes them with more or less difficulty. This is the tragedy of Valentino's character, he is a Schröderian hero, a lost soul yearning for redemption. Readers learn about his tragedy at the very beginning, just as they assume that it will end ingloriously, but the hero does not know, but rather goes convulsively to the bottom, to redemption. Although at the beginning he is set as a conventionally speaking villain, in the novel there are also bigger villains who bring Valentin back to zero point. It is the line from which empathy springs. My intention was for the reader to get attached to the hero, to root for him to succeed because he tries so hard. For any character, his effort is of fundamental importance, regardless of the outcome. Valentino is a character from outer space, that's why such crazy things happen to him. My Valentino is human, insecure, timid, well-intentioned and crazy.
On the first day, along with the so-called hashtags #memoari #pisac #literatura #montenegroart #performans #smrt, #otacmajka and others, it seems to me that the function of subtitles or intertitles introduces us to the action that you narrate quite calmly in the first person. Why and how did you decide to use “#”? I notice that with them you explain the circumstances of the novel's plot, through the minister's memories and biography we enter his character... And at the same time, at least for me, by telling the story in the first person, the feeling of identification or entry into the character and life of the minister was further enhanced, so how much did you like important to achieve that and did you yourself, as an author, enter into Kovačević's nine days of life, with all the points/moments of his life that you describe?
It is the form and it is the voices. Comments are voice, hashtag is voice, television is voice. In order to tell "The Minister" the way I wanted, I had to resort to all the necessary procedures and means. I wrote both novels in the first person, because that angle allows me to enter the necessary madness that I don't have to objectify. I knew very little about the daily routines and protocols of ministers, how Government sessions function, administrative mechanisms, the work of European Union agencies. Then I researched and collected the necessary materials. That material is actually the decoration of the novel, which is always too much and I call it dead material, almost useless statistics. I use the small part that I need for the book, and save the rest in the "matter" folder. When I finished writing the first draft of the novel, I read it several times and went back to the "matter" folder. I rummaged through the "dead material" and found potentially wonderful things that I could insert into the novel. The magic of writing is that when you cross the path from idea to end, you realize that it is no longer the same idea, that it is not even a similar novel to the one you imagined to write. Then the "dead material" suddenly becomes usable. The whole narrative line with the insect and the failed metamorphosis was just plucked from dead material. The intimacy of man and the intimacy of matter then gain full importance.
You also credibly describe parts of Montenegro, society, maybe relationships... You talk about the correlation with the family, you also mention the presence of reality shows, and the minister tells all this through a certain distance, at times with a cold-blooded attitude, but at the same time (perhaps too) closely the reader seems to be listening to the interlocutor over coffee, brandy, or even in certain segments talking to himself, about himself. How important was it to you to approach certain segments authentically and credibly, did you want it or did it come naturally, as a part of you?
Writers are often burdened with excessive stylization. The sublime language that creeps like an attractive, mysterious mist stands before our eyes, and when we tire of its sublimity, then let's look for what we embarked on the adventure for. The story. For me, writing a book has always meant telling a story. What story, who tells it and how he tells it. Three Holy Points. When I say who, I mean the author's vision from which authenticity must speak. I'm not interested in books that are so beautifully written that that's their only function. Language should be at the service of vision and idea, not the other way around.
Would you like to add something, tell the readers?
To read as many different books as possible, with greater attention and to listen to Valentin Bošković, if possible: a-syn-chrono! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPNSh4QCZvw)
He always gives a different answer to this question
You are one of the most prominent contemporary Montenegrin screenwriters. You are also a part of award-winning cinematographic productions... Is there a difference in the approach to writing a literary, artistic and dramatic work, how do you approach one and how do you approach the other?
I always get this question and I always give a different answer. There is a big difference. I used to claim that it doesn't exist, that everything belongs to the same corpus, now I claim the opposite. Literary talent is very different and distant from story talent. It refers to the literary defamiliarization of the usual and ordinary, while the power of storytelling lies in the domestication of life, in strong, meaningful images that you lift above the everyday. There are differences between the power of language and the power of the moving image, about their mutual dynamics, rhythm, duration, and therefore different mechanisms of use. Literally, a well-written sentence, with a strong context, does not have to mean anything for a film, if the image or sound does not correlate with its function.
I don't believe in the Montenegrin literary scene
What is the Montenegrin literary scene like, in your opinion, from the author's point of view, and from the reader's point of view? And is it difficult to find a place for yourself and then make a living from it?
It is very difficult to make a living from literature anywhere. I don't believe in the Montenegrin literary scene, just as I don't believe in the Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian... It's been a long time since a group of writers gathered around the same idea appeared. Only individuals flash, here and there. There are very few significant authors to create something called a quality scene. There was a scene in Yugoslavia, these are all attempts at scenes today, and these are mostly the same people who rotate from country to country, from festival to festival. When we talk about individuals, about the diversity among national scenes, I believe that the Montenegrin scene, even though it is the smallest, has particularly expressive individuals, completely different, in extremes dislocated and distant, stylistically and thematically.
Bonus video:
