Palanca spirit" says Konstantinović, "is the spirit of uniformity", in Palanca "everything that is individual is ridiculed, with hatred for all diversity, the right to contradict is denied".
Konstantinović is a special phenomenon of modern Serbian culture. I will quote a passage from my book "Konstantinović. Chronicle" from which, I believe, it is easy to see what is Konstantinović's specialty.
"The child of a university professor, a minister and the king's teacher, who spoke not in Serbian but in French, a gifted and capricious student, a boxer, in 1944, a background figure in the war for the liberation of Belgrade, a youth activist, a poet, a journalist, the so-called companion of the Communist Party, literary, art and film critic, writer of literary manifestos, novelist, literary historian, editor, playwright, advisor to the minister, philosopher, memoirist, engaged intellectual and finally - the leader of the anti-Milošević Second Serbia during the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia. Beckett's friend. Friend of Bora Ćosić, but also of Mića Popović, Krleža and Zika Stojković, Zika Berisavljević and Ivan Stambolić, Kasim Prohić and Oto Bihalji Merin, resident of Subotica, Belgrade, Ivanjica and Rovinj. Hedonist and ascetic. Multiple laureate and forgotten man. That's Konstantinović, when you read this "Chronicle". In its old, good meaning, the word Renaissance suits him precisely: he is a man of abundant gifts. He is not the author of one book and one thesis. On the contrary, he is the creator of a diverse, classic work of Serbian literature and philosophy. Writer of pages of unattainable beauty, wisdom and cheerfulness."
I told you that from what I read, you will easily see what Konstantinović's specialty is, but I immediately bit my tongue: typical Konstantinović's story, and you could have seen it, but you didn't. In the quoted passage is what would remain if eighty-odd years of Konstantinović's life and fifty years of writing were put under the press. What is not seen well enough from that, is a tension that existed during his entire existence as a creator. One, I would say, a Manichean destiny, crucified and torn in half to such an extent that Konstantinović was perceived by some as a god, and by others as an emissary of the devil. And that is what made him not only a special phenomenon, as I said, but also a case in Serbian culture. Last fall, that was the title of the round table about my book at the Belgrade Institute of Philosophy: The Konstantinović Case.
"Konstantinović Case"
For some people from Konstantinović - when they saw the announcement of that round table - the word case was a bit harsh. They believed that the word "case" does not fit with Konstantinović, because it scandalizes him in some way. Why is it scandalous? You younger participants in this conversation do not have immediate memories - we older ones do - of times when in the former state the word case in culture was almost necessarily a public and political scandal. Sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller, but a scandal. Predrag Matvejević has a book about, if I am not mistaken, 27 cases. And above all, it was about ideological disputes, less often about aesthetic or some others. Disputes were followed by harassment, public humiliation and purges. That's what the tabloids tend to do these days. Hence the certain suspicion that Konstantinović also liked the fate of the case, that the philosophers also decided to tabloidize him in accordance with the custom of this time.
I take it that the use of the word case today is much more innocent than these fears suggest, certainly far removed from the past circumstances I have mentioned. But I must still say that a certain noise exists, and that we are not completely free from it. I even thought of saying that there is a certain discomfort, that there is discomfort when you say the Konstantinović Case. It seems to a person that it is about something problematic, questionable, controversial. Let's ask, for example, analogous questions: does the Andrić Case exist? Or: does the Crnjanski Case exist? Of course not. There are no such names as cases. Am I sure of what I say - I can already hear the question. Mostly I did. The perception of those names is that they are innocent, that they are almost angelic, and that they are more and more so as they age historically. But the experience of Konstantinović seems to be different.
If I were to follow that fatalistic logic - even temporarily - I would have to say the following: Konstantinović, in the sense of: the writer Konstantinović, was born as a coincidence, and he died as a coincidence. His first novel ("Daj nam danas") was cut in half by the publisher, and only then printed. His first program work "Our Necessities" was the reason for canceling the magazine ("Mladost") in which it was published. His walk with Oto Bihalji, in 1952, around Lake Bled - the walk of a young man and a mature intellectual - which Bihalji described, and the description was published, was the reason for Oskar Davičo to write that the actors of that walk "send socialism to a hundred devils". A dangerous accusation. Konstantinović's collection of poems, the first and only one, was the reason for him to be attacked by the main ideologue of Tito's regime, Milovan Đilas. No less, no more. Imagine today that strict time and that beardless young man being ridiculed by someone from the very top of the state. It is not surprising that Konstantinović immediately gave up poetry.
It is not surprising then that he unmistakably remembered those moments, decades and decades later - when he spoke, for example, about his conviction in the Belgrade Youth Center in 1995.
Or when Konstantinović criticized Sartre, that he was abusing literature for the propaganda of his political ideas - the Novi Sad Youth Tribune stood up to defend Sartre from Konstantunović; from Konstantinović, who was accused of being an existentialist just a few years earlier. At that time, also a serious accusation, although today it seems folklorically funny. Predrag Palavestra - let's go further - constructed the anti-Konstantinović paradigm as something foreign in Serbian culture, something that "does not let a vein into our country". The man who received the award last year with the name of Živojin Pavlović - Radomir Smiljanić - wrote on the occasion of Nolit's Fifty Novels that how can there be a novel in that anthology - Konstantinović's novel "Daj nam danas" - if it does not talk about a "Serbian man". I jump from case to case like from a pumpkin to a pumpkin (as Crnjanski would say) to speed up the story and to say something related to these regions: and what a case it was when the jury of the Njegoš award did not want to give him the Njegoš award because allegedly appropriated some Montenegrin writers for Serbian literature in the grandiose research "Being and Language". Or when, in opposition to the editorial board of the Serbian literature in a hundred books edition, headed by Ivo Andrić, he demanded that Dragiša Vasić's selection of prose about the First World War be printed without fail. It was 1965, when the literary expansion of Draža's ideologue required crazy, unprecedented courage. The case was - almost an affair - and when he showed affection towards Tito, and that only in the obituary, never before, later on two or three benign occasions. There were other cases: when he dramatically ("Chújete li šta se prica", he said on the radio) rejected the concept of the Bosnian spirit in the literature preached by Muhamed Filipović, saying that Andrić had brought more misfortune to Bosnia than all the armies that crossed it. . The case became special in the works of Milo Lompar, which discussed "Titoism and secular clergy": Lompar developed entire theories about the so-called the Serbian point of view and the spirit of self-denial in which Konstantinović - after his death - will be the central object of criticism and defamation: the Beelzebub of a demonology, as I formulated it in three words in my book, which young listeners will easily decipher.
But anyway, the case above the cases is the philosophy of the palanquin. When it appeared in 1969, it was a cultural shock, and when it revived a second time, at the time of our new wars, it was already a war target. Croatian writer Slobodan Šnajder says that then the heroes - his Croatian Faust and Konstantinović's Palanka - came under their window. The most evil ideas were attributed to that book - that it splits Serbia and the Serbian people in two. And Konstantinović - it seems to me - would not be talked about as a case if there was no Philosophija palanka. Especially with the arrival of Milosevic's era, he began to be pushed aside. Both political and literary. We would forgive you everything, if only you didn't go to Sarajevo with balls on your feet, Dobrica Ćosić said to him at an airport, in passing. Let me remind you: Konstantinović provided the greatest possible moral support to Sarajevo while the city was under siege by Serbian forces. Konstantinović did not fare better even when democratic nationalists were in power, as he called Koštunica and Tadić: equally rejected. He lived as an internal emigrant. He does not stand better even today, in the institutions of the Serbian government, although the president of Serbia quotes him little by little as his teacher of life. It is a kind of hypocrisy.
He was experiencing the drama of oblivion as the drama of death. This sentence is actually a paraphrase of his words. And so it was until the actual death and funeral, when he voluntarily disappears in the flames of the crematorium, far from the public and even from his friends, "like Empedocles in the Mount Etna", as one author said.
But, paradoxically, death revived him. If not popular - he never was - he became a trendy writer. But the writer. He actually returned from case status to writer status. Professor from the University of Nottingham, Vladimir Zorić, says that today the memory of Konstantinović is the most vital and diverse commemorative locus (lieu de mémoire) in Serbian culture. He adds that the only parallel, but in a different field, is the memory of Đinđić. If this speech of mine today has its own teleology, then it is that this memory - in our fragile culture of memory - expands and deepens.
"Our necessities"
Elem: Konstantinović, born in Subotica, 1928. Father Mihailo, bearer of the Albanian monument, after the Great War obtained a doctorate in law in Lyon, at the time of his son's birth he was an assistant professor at the Faculty of Law in Subotica. Mother Radojka, maiden Popović, incomplete law student. She also studied in Lyon.
Baptized in the Orthodox Church of the Ascension of the Lord in Subotica; godfather at the baptism Nedeljko Divac, pre-war politician. Radomir was an atheist, although he respected his father's glory, St. George, and when his father died, he brought a glorious cake to the consecration.
The Konstantinovićs are originally from Čačak, that is - even further - from Sandžak. Radomir's grandfather was a day laborer. The poet Jovan Dučić claimed that they were Cincars, but they were not.
In 1935, the father was transferred to Belgrade, where two years later he became a full professor at the Faculty of Law. Then, in 1939, he joined the Yugoslav government of Dragiša Cvetković. He is the creator of the Cvetković - Maček Agreement, which created Banovina Hrvatska within the framework of the Kingdom. He is a professor to the minor King Peter. He rejects the pact with Hitler, which was made by Regent Paul and Vlad, and resigns from the position of minister. He did not join the putschist government of General Simović, March 27, 1941. With the beginning of the war and the occupation of the country, he emigrated.
Radomir spent the war years with his mother and sister in Ivanjica, Čačak and Belgrade. Literature professor Spasoje Vasiljev notices Konstantinović's literary talent and encourages him to write. A large-format notebook has been preserved in which Radomir wrote the novel "Nina" in the student's handwriting; was created between January 28 and May 2, 1943 in occupied Belgrade. During the war, in 1942, his first poem was also composed, which he published in the magazine Mladost in 1946 under the title "Kao i lane".
In September 1946, he enrolled at the Faculty of Philosophy of Belgrade University, in the group for South Slavic languages and literature. Completed his studies, never graduated. In 1947, he was a member of the Main Staff of the youth labor action on the Šamac - Sarajevo railway, in charge of agitation.
In 1947, the magazine Mladost published his first literary reviews.
In the conflict between Tito and Stalin, 1948, clearly on Tito's side. He later said that Yugoslavia did not really liberate itself in 1945, but in 1948, when it said no to Moscow.
Senior associate in the Literary Department of Radio Belgrade from May 1, 1949. Formally employed at the radio until 1951. It was his only employment in his life. Two years.
In August 1949, he began a relationship with Kača Samardžić, nine years older, wife of critic Eli Finci, mother of two children. He will live with her in marriage until her death in 1996.
With the article "A Few Impressions from the Congress of Writers", he makes a departure from the doctrine of socialist art. He publishes it in the January issue of Mladost, 1950.
He was admitted to the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in 1950, despite his father's "bourgeois origin".
The brochure Đura Jakšić was published on May 20, 1950 as his first book.
In March 1951, his collection of poems The House without a Roof was published. Milan Bogdanović writes about Konstantinović's poetry in Književni novine, as an "offensive of poetic nonsense and nonsense", placing him in an ideologically problematic group with the great poets Dušan Matić and Vasko Pop.
He writes the editorial "Our necessities - a letter to a friend as a sign of the coming year" for the New Year's issue of the magazine Mladost. In 1952, the editorial became a manifesto of free art, and the subject of sharp party reactions.
He made his debut that year with prose, in the magazine Svedočanstva. The main party ideologue Milovan Đilas writes in Književni novine that "such poems and verses and prose a la Radomir Konstantinović can be written by the kilo, because the creation of such literature does not require anything at all, least of all talent, knowledge and effort".
After returning from the army in 1953, he left the Communist Party. At the end of 1954, his first novel Daj nam danas was published, half the length of the original version, and immediately entered the inner circle of candidates for the Nino Prize. In the February issue of Savremenika, 1955, Predrag Palavestra writes that the novel is based on something foreign, establishing a paradigm that considers Konstantinović an outsider in Serbian culture.
Miloš I. Bandić evaluates the novel as "unique". He compares Konstantinović with Joyce. The novel receives the annual award of the Writers' Association of Serbia.
Let's stop and say: Konstantinović is 27 years old.
The second novel, Mousetrap, was published in the summer of 1956.
The Mousetrap is also in the narrow circle of candidates for Nino's award for the novel of the year.
In Paris, in June 1957, acquaintance and first meeting with Beckett.
Beckett, 1958, in Belgrade, with Konstantinović; Kaća Samardžić, Konstantinović's wife, translates Beckett's novel Molo.
Clean and dirty, Konstantinović's third novel, was published in October 1958 in Sarajevo. And Clean and Dirty in the shortlist for Nino's award.
It appears for the first time, in 1960, in the Encyclopedia of Yugoslavia, with an encyclopedic unit on Vojislav Ilić. Later, he will also write about Laza Lazarević.
(Lecture held at CANU, Podgorica, October 9, 2018; end in the next issue)
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