(Radivoj Cvetićanin, Konstantinović. Chronicle, Dan Graf, "Stanislav Vinaver" Foundation, Belgrade 2017, p. 815)
In addition to the many discouraging signs of our times, the book is its encouraging sign. No more big state publishers. Several smaller private publishers are participating in the book market competition. Specialized, they do not complain about competition. In addition to current production, previously - for various reasons - unpublished books are published. Books published a long time ago and then - again for various reasons - forgotten. Historical sources of different provenance. Translations... If Ivo Andrić was right when he said that there are no useless books, then the book resource in the Serbian language is by no means insignificant. This summer, that resource was enriched with an excellent book by Radivoje Cvetićanina Konstantinović. Chronicle.
* * *
The main character of Cvetićanin's work is Radomir Konstantinović, writer and thinker (1928-2011). That is: a person who, since his appearance on the literary scene in the early fifties of the last century, caused division, and did not agree to do so even after his death. Which represented a reaction to the generation of intellectual writers established in 1945, and influenced the creation of new generations. On whose work two paradigms were created: Constantinović's and anti-Konstantinović's - parallel but in a changing balance of power. Finally, a personality that became the center around which the space of freedom expanded as if in concentric circles, making its relationship to the ruling ideology and political regime much more complex than it seems to some of its interpreters today.
Radivoj Cvetićanin stood in front of a personality in "Pečalbar poverty" (Konstantinović himself interpreted his fertility as an existential necessity) and a monk's dedication to work (Cvetićanin writes that Konstantinović put on some kind of white, loose robe, which was invented by Kaća Samardžić, in order to in an overheated room at the top of their narrow house in Rovinj, could, during the summer, work for hours) - created for fifty-five years. In front of an extensive and varied body of work (poems, novels, radio dramas, essays, historical-philosophical writings, history of Serbian poetry in the 19th and 20th centuries). At the same time, in front of very numerous sources (Konstantinović's books, books about him, books by authors about whom he wrote, magazines and newspapers, correspondence, conversations with contemporaries - colleagues, friends, relatives - while working on the Chronicle)... One only has to imagine everything those sources in one place!
In writing the book about Radomir Konstantinović, Radivoj Cvetićanin entered this intellectual adventure during which he himself changed, well prepared. He is an expert in literature by education. But even though he did not deal with it professionally, he is an above-average connoisseur of both history and literary theory. And then, he is a researcher with a passion. It is difficult to imagine a detail from the life and work of Radomir Konstantinović that escaped his attention. This resulted in exceptional meticulousness that gives the book a scientific character, making it indispensable.
There is no doubt that Cvetićanin's meticulousness to the point of his own suffocation, which is transferred to the reader, has a function (planned or derived in the end result). Cvetićanin tries to be historical, objective, with a distance towards the hero of his book, in order to prove who he really was in space and time. Cveticanin succeeds in this, although there are places in the book where strong emotion leads to exaggeration of the role of the book's hero. Such is Cvetićanin's interpretation of Konstantinović's text Our Necessity, which was published in 1952 in the newspaper Mladost. Konstantinović was then 24 years old. Rejecting static as fate, he does not want to surrender to it, but he also does not absolutize his way, because he does not believe in "one and only possible way". The editorial team was behind the text, and Mladost stopped publishing because of that text. Cvetićanin gives this text the importance of a manifesto and considers it more important than Miroslav Krleža's report at the congress of Yugoslav writers in Ljubljana.
However, there are facts before which Cvetićanin pauses with understandable admiration for his hero. It is about Konstantinović's relationship with the writer Dragiša Vasić. But it's not just the attitude towards this specific writer. This relationship contains the basic principle that Radomir Konstantinović adhered to as a man and creator from beginning to end. Only Cvetićanin's research, to once again confirm the importance of research for real history, shed light on this relationship.
Konstantinović was invited to compile a selection of Serbian prose about the First World War for the edition Serbian literature in one hundred books (1964/65). In the selection, he included one story by Dragiša Vasić, who was silent after 1945. On behalf of Matica Srpska as co-publisher of the aforementioned edition, its official Živan Milisavac expressed reservations. Konstantinović answered him: "I cannot help you, because, when invited to present a literary opinion about Dragiša Vasić, I would simply reject his prose, such a gesture would not only conflict with my literary conscience, but would be in collision with my by calling and competence".
Evaluating Konstantinović's response to Milisavac as a document "of exceptional literary and historical importance", Cvetićanin, with undisguised admiration for his actor, says: "Today it is difficult to convey the dimensions of Konstantinović's courage. "Only someone who would give everything for literature could advocate that a Chetnik ideologue be printed under the guise of the partisan regime." Cveticanin's choice of book genre was very intelligent. The chronicle is a broad enough framework for the history of the work, even for other genres: the first step in the biography. But before that, it should be said that Cvetićanin was helped by the experience of the journalistic profession, which he practiced for most of his life. He firmly followed the course of his hero's life, pouring new branches into him. He intrigued the reader: he reminded him of what he had read, raised questions and announced the answers. Without these features - a scientific study, with them - Cvetićanin's voluminous Chronicle, packed with facts, reads like a novel.
* * *
Through thorough research and exemplary meticulousness, Cvetićanin's book finally provided an insight, and an equal one, into two perceptions of the life, above all of the works, of Radomir Konstantinović. According to one whose progenitor Cvetićanin, with reason, considers the literary critic and historian Predrag Palavestra - Radomir Konstantinović is a foreign body in Serbian culture, foreign to "our soil", hermetic, lonely, without influence. According to the second, which, not coincidentally, has no progenitor, Konstantinović's work is anti-dogmatic, in each of its several forms (novel, reading of the Serbian literary tradition, essay, radio-drama, historical-philosophical writing) open to re-examination and innovation. What Kasim Prohić said about the eight-volume Being and Language, of which he considered the cult book Filosofija palanka to be an integral part, applies to the work of Radomir Konstantinović as a whole: "It is about a unique pathos, a single force of critical elan... which is unrepeatable".
Both perceptions of Konstantinović's work have a foothold in recent Serbian history. They reflect divisions between generations, but also within each generation (the writer Danilo Nikolić, whom Cvetićanin consulted, wrote to him that the writers who belonged to the generation that arose after 1945 were divided into those of the Montagnards and those of the citizens. They were the first to gather in Balkanska Street, the other - on Terazije). However, it is still turmoil in which the young Radomir Konstantinović participates. The divisions, in the center of which will be found his already mostly completed work, will crystallize in the last two decades of the last century. But let's go after Radivoje Cvetićanin.
All four of Radomir Konstantinović's first novels were contested, but each of them was shortlisted for the prestigious Nino Prize, and the fourth (The Exit) won it. However, the first novel (Daj nam danas), which was recommended for publication by the poet Dušan Matić, saying that it was "crazy and ingenious", won the award of the Writers' Association of Serbia. The juries included representatives of various generations, representatives of various poetics, and the jury's decisions were not unanimous. After the Exodus, members of the new generation appear. Unlike Palavestra's like-minded people, they do not think that the novel is hermetic and foreign to "our soil", but rather, in terms of expression, a new novel.
In the spring of 1962, Radomir Konstantinović, with his lifelong companion, Kaća Samardžić, embarked on a long journey across Europe (Vienna, Hamburg, Amsterdam, London, Paris, Italy, Switzerland). Without a specific goal, but, obviously, with the need to see Europe. Oto Bihalji writes to them: "so that you know that there is nothing more beautiful". They meet Becket in Paris. In his diary, regretting that he did not guide him from the beginning of the journey, Konstantinović writes: "Belgrade is my true and only destiny... I would like to return home, even though I know that only bitterness and bad mood await me there." It will feel like that, once again: at the beginning of the war in the nineties.
After returning from a trip to Europe, at the age of thirty-five, he wonders, perhaps under the influence of the trip, where to go next? New novels follow: Ahasfer (1964) and Pentagram (1967). He notes in his diary: "This is where my new era begins." He writes essays, "flips through magazines", but at the beginning of May 1966 he announces work on the Dictionary of Serbian Poets, which will appear in 1983 as Being and Language in eight volumes. He interrupted that colossal job, and from 1966 to 1969, he wrote the Philosophy of the palanquin. He starts reading it on August 4, 1969, at 21:21, Radivoje Cvetičanin is precise, in front of the microphone of the Third Program of Radio Belgrade. It is published in its entirety by the magazine Treći program (2/1969).
The word about the Palanka Philosophy goes, first of all, from "ear to ear". It does not escape the attention of ethics professor Vuk Pavićević, publicist Milan Vlajčić, Miroslav Krleža, who refers Predrag Matvejević to it... "As if this oral tradition, says Cvetićanin, foreshadowed that we have before us an achievement that is historical in its format". Soon, there is a burst of interest. In Politika and Komunist there are reports. In the Youth Center in Belgrade, a meeting is held where the Philosophy of the palanquin is discussed. Nolit publishes her edition. The book received two awards: "Đorđe Jovanović" Library and Radio Belgrade. In the midst of the Yugoslav crisis, a meeting was held in Sarajevo (1989) on the occasion of the 2004th anniversary of the book's printing. In the war of the nineties, Milorad Belančić, in the book Genealogy of the palanquin, deciphers its meaning as current. But that unique dynamic does not weaken. From 2010 to 2010, Otkrovenja Sava Dautović published four editions of Filosofija palanka, Sarajevo (2003) published its own edition. Returning to this book after the Yugoslav disaster seems healing. At the meeting in Sarajevo (XNUMX), in which intellectuals from all over the former Yugoslavia participated, except from Slovenia, the focus of the discussion was the philosophy of the palanquin.
The concept of palanquin occupied Konstantinović. Cveticanin reminds the reader that throughout his work he followed "every sign" of the announcement of the palanquin. There were, he says, but all of them, until the 50th anniversary of Dis's death - were stingy. Then Konstantinović will identify the palanquin as he identified it in his writing Philosophy of the palanquin:
"Palanka is that world which invariably suggests to us the idea of our immutability. What is most disgusting in any provincialism is the suggestion of the absolute about order, in relationships, in me with me: the absolute originates from the province (Konstantinović underlined) in which everything is as it is forever, in which there is no change, no unexpected encounter, in which dragons cannot live, demons and good angels - saviors, robbers and miracles, in which everything is order from the beginning and forever, to that measure and proportion, also the image of my Self, as the image that I created in that immovable, to the final 'world', one blind and deaf 'final' image".
Seven years passed from this text by Radomir Konstantinović to the Palanka Philosophy. In fact, much more has passed, an entire epoch. There is much more left for the new epoch, and perhaps the most important: The philosophy of the palanquin, Being and language, and the death of Descartes.
* * *
The sixties of the last century are the end of one and the beginning of another era in the life and work of Radomir Konstantinović. The first epoch (1945-1965) is characterized by his enthusiasm for external freedom and reservations about the limitations of internal freedom: dogmatism, suppression of diversity and pluralism. It begins with his criticism of the relationship towards the West and his artistic prose about the First World War. It was as if he had already taken Stanislav Vinaver's point of view: before leaving, one should know the tradition. This will affect his quiet departure from the Party. But, challenged and attacked, Radomir Konstantinović was recognized and accepted after his first novel (1954) and Nino's award for his fourth novel (1961): very busy. Describing his summer in Rovinj in 1961, Cvetićanin says:
"He does... actually a hundred jobs: to one pile of essays he published in Danas (1962, editor Steva Majstorović - LP) he added another, which he - in parallel - scattered across other papers. He played with them like a juggler with balls: three or four at a time in the air. His typewriter 'Olimpia Monica' worked non-stop".
Even if he did not bring anything new, Konstantinović could not be ignored because of his fertility. By the end of the decade that ends with the Philosophy of Palanka, Konstantinović was included in the edition Serbian literature in one hundred books and in school reading. His plays are in the world anthology of radio dramas. It starts to translate. The novel Daj nam danas had a second edition. He is in correspondence with Beckett. He wrote two more novels (Ahasuerus and Pentagram). He made selections of prose and poetry for the edition of Serbian literature in a hundred books. In that job, in the already mentioned correspondence with Živan Milisavac, he had his historic moment. He wrote essays that will be the keynote for Philosophija palanka (The Life of Tola Dačić and Who is the Barbarian?). At the same time, "Radomir Konstantinović flips through magazines" on Radio Belgrade's Third Program. It was a special way of communication for intellectual movements in Yugoslavia and in the world. Radivoje Cvetićanin is precise in his description of this effort by Konstantinović: "Two hundred and thirty-five appearances in front of the microphone, twenty minutes each, 14 years... close to five thousand minutes, or about eighty hours".
Exactly in the middle of the 1s (July 1965, XNUMX), Konstantinović, as he says in his diary, feels the border between the two eras of his life and work. It will be shown, however, that half of those sixties is not the limit only in his personal life.
In the second era (according to me: from 1965 to 1983), Konstantinović, according to his own words, will start work on the Dictionary of Serbian Writers. He will interrupt it, in order to finish the Philosophy of the palanquin, but in an interview (May 1966) he will explain his undertaking. According to him, it will be "history, and something more than history... an interpretation of the works of certain poets and at the same time talk about certain aesthetic, moral, philosophical and political tendencies not only of our poetry, but of the culture of that era". In April 1967, he began reading essays on the Third Program of Radio Belgrade; the magazine Treći program began to publish them in 1970 and it would last until 1981.
Belgrade publishers, Prosveta i Rad, and Matica srpska in Novi Sad published in 1983, in eight volumes, Dictionary of Serbian poets (113 of them) under the new title: Being and language in the experience of poets of Serbian culture of the twentieth century. This unique undertaking met with a great response, and Radomir Konstantinović was crowned with awards (Nino Award named after Dimitrije Tucović, October Award of the City of Belgrade, Award of the Sarajevo magazine Odjek named after Miroslav Krleža). These and previous awards will be joined by the Lifetime Achievement Award (Sedmojulska in Serbia and Avnojeva in Yugoslavia).
After the end of Being and language, emptiness. He writes to a friend (August 3, 1983) - "When a person suddenly stops a big job, it's like when you suddenly brake and find yourself in a ditch... If you're 55 years old, like me, it's not particularly cheerful, it's a bit ominously empty, but that, as you can see, I don't tell anyone. Rest is a terrible thing, idleness is terrible: then only worms work. And the metaphysical ones, and the real ones". But what happened until then?
* * *
A young politician from Vojvodina, Živan Berisavljević, took the position of Minister of Culture in the Government of the Republic. His mandate lasted from 1967 to 1972. With the mediation of Oskar Davič, he invited Radomir Konstantinović as his adviser. With hesitation, Konstantinović unexpectedly accepted the invitation. Formally, he was not appointed by the Government. "It was about a profane employment contract," clarifies Radivoje Cvetićanin. Advocates of the anti-Konstantinović paradigm, especially after the regime change in Serbia in 2000, treated Konstantinović's advisory function as an act of cooperation with the communists, that is, as an act of betrayal. Using the exact method, Cvetićanin proved that the advisory function did not change anything, but absolutely nothing, in the intellectual engagement of Radomir Konstantinović.
In the period 1967 - 1972, Konstantinović writes the Philosophy of Palanka and Being and Language. Continues with Flips. In "The Trials of Critical Consciousness" it is written that it cannot "separate itself from everything that threatens it". On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution, he questions the concept of freedom in artistic creation ("True art cannot sing in a cage... Talent that adapts to a cage turns from a nightingale into a goldfinch, from a crow into a hen"). Participates in the debate on traditionalism. He notes the "fever for continuity" ("Hence comes the immense, extremely unsustainable and sometimes even grotesque simplification of our culture, its history, by reducing /its/ variegation to a single line"). The first and last time, as the ideologue of that "single line", he marks the literary critic Predrag Palavestra. He writes an article on the occasion of the student rebellion in 1968 - "in honor of the unreasonable, in honor of the utopian-romantic spirit, the one who does not know the reasons for reason, its fences, its proofs and apologies". The newspaper Politika does not publish this article of his. Konstantinović returns to Tin Ujević. It is written about Matos...
On the eve of the publication of Filosofija palanka, as an adviser, he participated in the talks between Miroslav Krleža and the Minister of Culture Berisavljević in Belgrade. The topic is work on the Encyclopedia... But scrupulous researcher Radivoje Cvetićanin found nothing about this meeting either in the diary of Radomir Konstantinović, or in the books of relevant authors, Dragoslav - Draža Marković and Enes Čengić.
The essence of the drama is the meeting of multiple voices and absolute unity
In October 1971, the Congress of Cultural Action was held in Kragujevac, the largest gathering of the intelligentsia in Serbia after 1945. Konstantinović hesitates to participate out of fear that the Congress will not turn into a manifestation of Serbian nationalism.
Nevertheless, he comes, and in his speech ("Between polyphony and absolute unity") he states that "we are heavily burdened by the belief that truth is only in absolute unity", and he stands up against this burden: "I think we are experiencing an extraordinarily dramatic moment in which with polyphony expresses on all levels, and precisely because of him, this aspiration manifests emphatically, and in such a way that it reaches, sometimes, forms of aggression". The essence of the drama is precisely in the meeting of multiple voices and absolute unity: "All our temptations are there. All strength and rehearsals are from there".
Konstantinović's speech, in which he articulates the goal of the Congress of cultural action, had a great resonance. It was published by the Belgrade newspapers Politika and Student, Sarajevo's Odjek, and was broadcast on the Third Program of Radio Belgrade. Radomir Konstantinović already had behind him the philosophy of palanquin. The characteristic silence about this "emblematic book", according to the people's book, that in the hanged man's house one should not talk about the rope, had already stopped. The intellectual public of Belgrade was shaken by a small revolution caused by her appearance. The Congress of Cultural Action was held in the echoes of that explosion. It was boycotted only by the Serbian literary association headed by Dobrica Ćosić. Cveticanin says that the Congress hinted at future clashes in the Serbian intelligentsia. In fact, it was already an expression of a collision, and it was held in order to attempt a dialogue before it. But that would require new research: without prejudging either side of the collision.
(End in next issue)
Bonus video:
