Four decades of artistic creation of the highest order

The innovative potential of the writer, director, playwright and essayist Gojko Čelebić is almost limitless, this is the conclusion of the literary evening where the book "Celebrić spoken values ​​1982-2022" was promoted, edited by Dr. Radoje Femić.

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From the promotion, Photo: Jadranka Ćetković
From the promotion, Photo: Jadranka Ćetković
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

The book in which critical texts on Gojko Čelebić's work in the last four decades, entitled "Celebić speech values ​​1982-2022", edited by Dr. Radoje Femić, was held the night before last at the Cultural Center in Bjelopolje.

Presenting the book, Professor Radoje Femić said that it is a kind of capital edition of local literature and culture.

On the occasion of the jubilee, 40 years of the author's work, a 30-minute film by Goran Perović and Pavel Bajazet about the literary and stage work of Gojko Čelebić was shown during the promotion of the book.

Femić stated that Čelebić has an enviable continuity of artistic creation of the highest order, which has been intensively going on for four decades.

"From the Balkan area, Čelebić brought into his work exactly those juices of authentic irrationality that make this climate an exotic corner of former and contemporary Europe. Čelebić created a work that only conditionally belongs to South Slavic literature, which, truth be told, surpasses it in terms of its artistic reach and insatiable desire for contact with otherness," Femić said.

He noticed that the literary criticism essays on the work of Gojko Čelebić, collected in the book "Speech Values ​​(1982-2022) indicate the existence of daring literary criticism texts that timely recognized and noted the avant-garde spirit of Čelebić's work.

"Such texts serve to honor not only critical production, but also the science of literature which, interpreting and evaluating the work of Gojko Čelebić, abandoned the conventions of academic restraint and appropriateness, showing boldness in understanding a literary phenomenon that was and remains far ahead of local poetic currents. Gojko Čelebić's creative syntax gave birth to an enviable literary criticism reception, which for this occasion we can limit to the considered period, from 1982 to 2022, although the corpus of literary criticism texts goes back even further, up to the moment of publication of "Speech Values". "The fact that one topic of the prestigious Yugoslav literary magazine "Creation" is dedicated to the linguistic creativity of Gojko Čelebić is evidence of the undoubted establishment of the writer's work in the South Slavic area," said the author.

He added that the most eminent writers and critics of that time contributed to the interpretation of the writer's work: Milorad Pavić, Branko Popović, Moma Dimić, Miodrag Vuković, Aleksandar Jerkov, Sonja Tomović, Tomislav Sl. Novović, Miloš Đorđević, Gordana Stojkovska and Ivan Dorovski, and that the texts of the aforementioned authors give a lasting stamp of literary critical recognition to Celebić's artistic creation.

As the author explained, the writer's intimate feeling for the other and different was minutely documented by the great Serbian literary critic, Draško Ređep, testifying that the novel "The AGV Murder and the Pursuit" was written by a citizen of the world.

"With his work, the writer returned the debt to the reader's homeland," Vojislav Gledić will judge, positively evaluating the image of the world in "Knight's novel about women's tears", in which "a mosaic of life in the Montenegrin capital Cetinje, as well as complex events in the court and in the environment of the Montenegrin prince and lord Nikola Prvo Petrović". The writer's contribution to the evolution of genres in contemporary Serbian literature will be codified by Neven Varnic's critical assessment, naming Čelebić's novel "The Twins" as "the first novel report or narrative novel in Serbian literature". The judgment about Čelebić as a comparatist scientist is presented by Mladen Šukalo, arguing that the study of Cervantes is "a form of stepping out of the scientific-essayist discourse". Based on the above, it can be concluded that the innovative potential of Celebić, a writer, director, playwright and essayist, is almost unlimited, and that the grace of embodying great ideas and concepts touched almost all genre forms in which he was reflected", said Femić.

He reminded that the documentation related to books and texts created in Prague, Paris, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, New York, Rome and Alexandria was arranged by his wife, Lenka Blehova, classical philologist, historian and paleographer, guided by the habit of scientists who value facts and context first. with the work itself without underestimating it.

He concluded that for the meticulous help in reconstructing the locations and circumstances of the creation of certain works, starting from the Montenegrin and Yugoslav environments, as well as for the selfless sacrifice in recording the bibliography, critical texts and benevolent observations, he owes thanks to his collaborators: for the bibliography Ljiljana Lipovina Đorđević, for help in the editorial work to Aleksandar Ćuković, MSc, for chronological cataloging and translation to Dragana Obradović and Olivera Krivošić from Matica Srpska.

Asst. Dr. Gojko Čelebić is a Montenegrin writer and diplomat born in 1958 in Podgorica. He is the author of more than 40 books, written in the genres of novels, short stories, essays, drama, poetry, literary theory and diplomatic literature. winner of the Thirteenth of July Award, also known as the former Minister of Culture in the Government of Montenegro.

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