(Continued iz in the past number)
The end of the previous year and the beginning of 1965 was marked by a historic dispute with the editors of the Serbian literature in one hundred books edition. Konstantinović, as an editor, advocated for the publication of Dragiša Vasić's prose about the First World War, the editors censored his choice. Vasić was the ideologue of the Chetnik movement of Draža Mihailović. This by no means means that Konstantinović sympathized with the Chetniks. Never, and by no means, quite the opposite. But it was Vasić's good literature, and he doubted those two things.
The Matica Srpska Chronicle publishes his essay "On One Silence" in its March issue, about the neglect of literature about the First World War.
Makes minor changes to Pentagram. In the diary, under July 1, he writes: "With this book, an era has ended."
In September, in Rovinj, he broke up with his old friend Mica Popović. "Narodnjačenie", he wrote about Popović in his diary.
He begins work on the Dictionary of Serbian Poets, which he will later rename to Being and Language.
An English translation of the Exodus is published in London, which Beckett mediated.
Year of termination
Please register this 1965 as an important, perhaps even turning point, year for Konstantinović. Breaking up with yourself, breaking up with yesterday's friends, drawing a new path, that's the sixty-fifth.
On the Third Program of Radio Belgrade on April 1, 1966, he read the famous essay "Who is Barbarogenie" - a kind of precursor to the Palanka Philosophy; will publish it in the magazine Treći program, in the spring of 1969.
On November 11, 1966, the series Radomir Konstantinović flips through magazines begins, which will be broadcast for the next fourteen years. At first, as a rule, every other Friday, later - from time to time.
In April 1967, on the Third Program of Radio Belgrade, he began to read the first works from Bić and language. This unprecedented effort lasted fourteen years, 113 discussions, about the same number of poets.
Historical moment: from August 4 to 15, 1969, he read the Philosophy of the palanquin on the Third Program of Radio Belgrade. The text of this philosophical essay was then published for the first time in the magazine Treći program, 2/1969. it became a classic work of Serbian culture.
Here it is already 1972: in the book Postwar Serbian Literature 1945-1970, Predrag Palavestra directs many objections to Konstantinović as a critic, and in Filosofija palanka he finds an "absence of historical responsibility" towards the Serbian literary tradition.
He puts an end to Being and Language - on August 28, 1981, on the Third Program of Radio Belgrade, he reads the last part, "Luftballon in the nothingness of Mona de Bull", without mentioning that the series has ended. An extraordinary intellectual and human endeavor, which is widely believed to be incomparable in Serbian criticism, has been completed. The reading on the radio began in 1967 and continued for fourteen years with short occasional interruptions. The publication of essays about 113 poets, which followed the readings on the radio, began in the autumn issue of the magazine Treći program in 1970, and lasted for eleven years.
In 1982, the novel Daj nam danas entered Nolit's selection of Fifty Novels (of Serbian literature).
In Zagreb, on January 4, she attended Krleža's funeral.
His father Mihailo dies in Belgrade on February 1.
At the end of 1983, three publishers - Prosveta, Matica srpska and Rad - published Being and Jezik - in the experience of poets of Serbian culture of the twentieth century, in eight books.
In 1984, he fell out of the competition for the Njegoš Award because, in the opinion of the president of the jury, Radonja Vešović, Konstantinović "encroached on Montenegrin literature for some poets" in Bić and the language.
Oto Bihalji Merin, in an interview for Front on February 22, 1985, declares: "If books such as The Philosophy of Palanque and Being and Language had been born in large linguistic centers, their resonances would have been similar to those of the works of Beckett and Sartre."
In Sarajevo, on March 21, 1989, on the eve of the war, a gathering on the occasion of twenty years since the publication of Filosofija palanka. "Our heads are playing, you know that," said Konstantinović on that occasion.
With a group of intellectuals, on January 25, 1992, in the Student Cultural Center in Belgrade, he founded the Belgrade Circle, of which he was the first president. The Belgrade Circle organizes anti-war and anti-nationalist debates at the Second Serbia forum.
Konstantinović's house in Rovinj usurped and devastated. Destroyed most of the correspondence with Beckett, who was there. He lives in Belgrade, in extremely poor living conditions. He did not emigrate, although he had invitations. "This is my country, which I will never leave," he said. Kaća Samardžić dies on April 13, 1996, life companion and translator of Becket.
In the fall, the Novi Sad publishing house MiR Živan Berisavljević published Descartes' death for him. Critics' reactions are almost unique in that it is a masterpiece. "Maybe this is the best thing I've ever written," Konstantinović confided to a friend. The publisher and the author are withdrawing the book from competition for the Nino Prize.
In an interview with Radio Free Europe, broadcast by Danas on March 16, 2002, Konstantinović uttered the classic, timeless sentence: "If you are asked what the Other Serbia is (what was, what is, what will be), feel free to say: The Other Serbia is the Serbia that does not put up with crime".
Died in his apartment on October 27, 2011. Cremated only in the presence of his wife Milica, according to his personal request. Nenad Prokić, Mirko Tepavac and Latinka Perović spoke at the commemoration organized by friends.
Bora Ćosić posthumously pointed out that Radomir Konstantinović is "the most important writer of contemporary Serbian literature".
"Who is Barbarogenius"
In the summer of 1965, Konstantinović retired to Ivanjica, where he began preparations for studying the poets of the Serbian culture of the first half of the XNUMXth century. He studies the avant-garde from the twenties, and, of course, Ljubomir Micić, and his zenitism. That will be the immediate reason for the essay Who is the Barbarian, whose story you will now hear. Before that, just a note: the meeting with Micić was the immediate reason, but the whole approach to this essay was built on different occasions before that - when he thought and wrote about tradition, about expression, when he wrote about Vuk and Dositej, about Matavulje, about Bora Stanković, when he wrote about our soil, responding to complaints that there is no our soil in his novels.
On April 1, 1966, Konstantinović read the text "Who is Barbarogenje" on Radio Belgrade, with which, like a blade, he would penetrate the fabric of the Serbian collective being. "The name Barbarogenija has been forgotten," says Konstantinović in the first sentence. And he immediately warns: "But Barbarogenius is still present among us today." And so he began and will end: "He is here, Barbarogenius, the darkest genius of Serbian culture; he is here - that's all I wanted to say this time".
Between the first and the last sentence there is an extensive clarification. Barbarogenie embodies one of the deepest and most terrible traumas of Serbian culture (this is exactly how Konstantinović writes), a trauma that is all the deeper and stronger because it does not find impetus only in that culture or only in the spheres of literature.
"It is based on a historical being, and represents a metaphor by which that being can, at times, illuminate itself more clearly than any other light". That's why, he writes, they tear him away from the past ("from the fate of a dead name"). He believes that it was made possible by Dada, in its rebellion against Western European civilization, immediately after the war and Lenin's revolution. Dadaism, his belief in "salvific barbarism" is embodied in Barbarogeny. And our Zenitism and its creator Ljubomir Micić drew the conclusion from that practice of Dadaism that "Europe dreams of becoming Balkanized".
What used to be an insult is now a compliment for us. Konstantinović writes: "Our so-called backwardness - the one to which the propaganda of imperial Austria-Hungary referred when, as the bearer of 'enlightenment', it raised gallows around Mačva, and when it beat Belgrade from Mackenzie's cannons; that our backwardness is no longer a reason for our shame, it is now a proof of our advantage". Zenitism, however, will evolve from Dadaism to chauvinism, and this (he says) better than anything expresses the true content of its barbarism.
Konstantinović maintains that Micić's Barbarogenie is not only Micić's. "Barbarogenia is a twisted glove of our ideology of Europeanization of the Balkans". And in this context, he mentions Bogdan Popović, Rakić, even Skerlić, who ("no matter how paradoxical it may seem") undoubtedly "collaborated" with Micić. More precisely: they were with him, he says, in a certain deeper collusion. The Barbarogeny, however, is not just a thing of the past. "Alive", he says, "as the barbarism that pursued him is still alive, he remains Barbarogenius even when he changes his name and when he speaks in other languages and invokes other reasons but according to the rhythm of history: he did not die with the literature that she tried in vain to say him, him who is inexpressible and who is against any expression". And then comes the thing: he's here, and the thing: that's all I wanted to say this time. It was undoubtedly the key word for the "Palanka Philosophy".
She comes three years later.
Spoken on the radio, the essay "Who is the barbarogenie" apparently went not only to the air but also to the wind, as soon as the reactions followed only after it was printed in the magazine Treći program. The magazine appeared in the spring of 1969, and the first text in its first issue was this one by Konstantinović, about Barbarogenius.
(It stands there like a flag; as if it wanted to be given some programmatic function.) In the next, summer issue, "Philosophy of the palanquin" will be printed, so this sequence also testifies to the fact that the essay and the study had an organic connection. The essay was a kind of preface. In any case, Konstantinović's views on Barbarogenius seemed somewhat shocking; not necessarily because of Micić, least of all even because of him. Namely, what was said about literary greats like Bogdan Popović resonated more strongly (and has been resonating strongly ever since). However, the murmur was heard more in the backroom than in the public. Almost five years after the essay was read, and almost two years after it was printed, the art critic Zoran Markuš dared to take on the role of a spokesperson for the couloir, appearing in Književni novine, December 5, 1970. He says that he read the text "with some delay", that he read it several times, but did not understand it. ("I didn't understand most of the essay"). However, he stuck to two of his findings. The first is: contrary to what Konstantinović claims, there is nothing in common between Dadaism and Zenitism. On the contrary, he says, Dadaism was the only artistic movement with which Zenitism waged war, denying its aesthetic, moral and sociological foundations. He refers to the publication "Dada-jok" written by Branko Ve Poljanski and Ljubomir Micić, as evidence. The second message to him is: he cannot accept the assessment of Micić's poetry as a Bengal fire. He says he felt embarrassed when he read Konstantinović's essay. "It was written by our writer about the movement that represents our authentic contribution - regardless of its dimensions and assessment - to the world avant-garde".
Konstantinović, who rarely responds to his opponents, responded, but not in Književni novine but on Radio, in his Perlistavanje (December 18, 1970). "There are certain challenges that it is reasonable to keep quiet, but there are also those that one must not turn a blind eye to." He says that he was hoping for this challenge. He points out that Markuš also appeared in the December issue of Samvremenika with the text "Metamorphoses of Zenith", in which Barbarogenia is completely silent, just as in the aforementioned letter to Književne novine. "This silencing of Barbarogenius, when it comes to Zenitism, is the silencing of the truth about Zenitism." Instead, he says, Markuš finds a number of Zenit and there claims that "Zenitism is the son of Marxism". Konstantinović will say to that: "The monster, which is called Barbarogenie, is now dressing up in the skin of revolutionaries, and is presented, in Savremenik, as the true embodiment of the proletarian rebellion." The real face of Zenitism, he said, is still on the other side. Because Micić himself - Konstantinović points out - in his novel "Barbarogenie, le Decivilisateur", exalted fascism and Bolshevism as movements that will have an effect on the health of Europe! That is why the surrealists wrote (Konstantinović cites Đorđe Jovanović) that "the Zenitists were really the literary Hitlers of that era".
"I wouldn't answer, I'm not using this moment to argue with this apologist of Zenitism, I'm absolutely not interested in Zenitism, on that scale," Konstantinović said that evening on the radio. "Speaking the truth", he added, "Zenitism, as an ideology, is really a hoax, a mystification that is not worthy of greater attention, especially in the aesthetic sphere". He denied it the characteristics of the avant-garde, and on the same line, then challenged Markuš's claims about the high international position of Zenitism. "Zenithism can be understood as opening the door to modern painters and sculptors of the world, but that's all." He also gave an argument: zenitism does not possess non-seriousness and humor, as the basis of the avant-garde, only the gloomy, dark faces of its two protagonists. His rebellion rests on slogans. Even the court will not change Konstantinović's basic assessment that Ve Poljanski has "some poetic moments" here and there. Etc. However, Zenitism is barbarogenism, and barbarogenism is what binds us. "Now more than ever before," he said. And underlined: barbarogenism was and remains a great danger for the true spirit. "And not only for him".
I said, let's remember, that this essay is a kind of prelude to the Philosophy of the palanquin. The repertoire of ideas in the Palanka Philosophy is, of course, incomparably wider, but the echo, but the spirit of this essay, has passed into that great classic book of Serbian philosophy and culture. The theme of barbarogeny symbolized a patriarchal civilization that suddenly believed - extremely confident, extremely arrogant - that the monstrous mistake of Europe, embodied in the First World War, could and should be corrected by the vitality of a supposedly young Balkan race, which was uncorrupted in the ravines of the Balkans, forgotten from the modern world and civilization. In the Philosophy of Palanka, Konstantinović will say: history has forgotten us in its distraction...
Konstantinović did not see it as a harmless delusion. He is here - he warned. He is dangerous - he also said. Konstantinović feels that something dangerous is lurking behind the hill, something to which barbarogeny is born. Most of you weren't even born when what Konstantinović was referring to was happening, so it's just history for you, but then, in the seventies, nationalisms were on the rise in Yugoslavia, only to destroy it two decades later, in blood. Konstantinović - I know that - did not like us to consider him a prophet. Ali was a prophet.
If we stick to Konstantinović, Konstantinović clearly said that barbarogeny is not only hidden in literature. I will repeat what I said a while ago: "He is alive," says Konstantinović about Barbarogenius, "as the barbarism that pursued him is still alive, he remains Barbarogenius even when he changes his name and when he speaks in other languages and invokes other reasons according to the rhythm of history : he did not die with the literature that tried in vain to say him, him who is ineffable and who is against any expression". Therefore, he did not die with Zenitism and Ljubomir Micić, nor with those who were in collusion with him. He appears like this, and like that, and in every way, "but according to the rhythm of history."
Bonus video:
