"Stefan Mitrov Ljubiša" award to Drago Jančar

This year's Literary Program of the Budva Festival ended on Sunday at Trg pjesnika with the ceremony of presenting the prestigious regional award "Stefan Mitrov Ljubiša", which the "Grad Teatar" festival traditionally awards for the field of literary creativity. The new, 24th laureate of this high award was the Slovenian writer Drago Jančar, by the unanimous decision of the jury, which included Nadežda Čučinović (professor of philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb), Slavica Perović, university professor of linguistics from Podgorica, and Mihajlo Pantić , writer, literary critic and university professor from Belgrade who chaired the jury.

Milena Lubarda Marojević, the director of the "Grad Teatar" Ju-ju, presented Jančar with the "Ljubišina" award, and as Pantić pointed out at the beginning of the ceremony, explaining the decision of this year's jury, he was particularly excited.

"25 years ago, I was one of the first members of the jury that in some way designed and formatted the 'Stefan Mitrov Ljubiša' award. The most deserving of this award was certainly the academician Novo Vuković, and a few of us, then young critics. Meanwhile, the "Ljubiša" award received some of its historical significance from the fact that it establishes, that is, keeps alive the name of the writer who witnessed the spirit of this climate. Another important fact is that this award, despite everything that has happened to us in these quarter of a century, in my deep conviction, still preserves an integrative feature and has an integrative significance in that it unites different cultures, in the meantime also different languages, and different literary traditions, but by respecting these differences, it harmonizes them. we announce the new winner, Drago Jančar, important also because the list of names of its winners shows high literary and aesthetic quality," said Pantić.

For Drago Jančar, as he pointed out, the "Ljubiša" award is a great honor, both because of the writer whose name it bears, and because of the members of the jury who awarded him this recognition, whom he knows by their work.

"Now that my name somehow became associated with such a great writer Stefan Mitrov Ljubisa, whom I must admit, I knew only by name, because there were long ago when we studied the literature of other peoples from this area in a common state, then I immediately went to library and took everything possible about him and his works. When I started reading I was very attracted, because Ljubiša's literature is interesting not only because of the time and historical circumstances in which people lived and about which he speaks, but also because of the life itself of the fate of Ljubišina, who was also a scribe - a lawyer of the municipal administration in Budva, later became a deputy in Vienna, and that was a political part of his life. But I was most intrigued by his literature, which always has a man and human destinies at the center, like a story how he loves a Montenegrin woman, which has the strange title 'Skočidjevojka', and is a poignant, tragic drama about love that is forbidden, like Shakespeare's kind of 'Romeo and Juliet.'' And when I was driving from Lake Skadar down towards the coast, somehow all of that was familiar to me, precisely because of Stefan Mitrov Ljubiša," said Jančar, pointing out that such meetings of people, such as this event on Poet's Square, restore his faith into literature and what he does.

"And literature has been the meaning of my life for a long time, since my young days, when it was a kind of compensation for all my life and school failures - I was bad at math, I played soccer poorly, but when my texts were read in class, it was success. And later it was like that, all the misfortunes were somehow compensated, including in the awards. So, I am joyful, happy and proud, and I thank the 'Grad Theater' festival and the jury for awarding me such an important award," said one of the most important Slovenian, regional and European writers.

The only Yugonostalgia is the one for culture

During the ceremony on Poets' Square, there was also a conversation with the new laureate, so Jančar answered the questions put to him by the members of the jury. That's how Čačinović wanted Jančar to explain his nostalgia for Yugoslav culture, and in what sense this space determines his broader perception.

"My only nostalgia is really for the culture, I am also a passionate reader, not only a passionate writer, but in addition I believe that you should write from your experience, and the time and space in which you live, not to say local, because that is a word which has a pejorative meaning. Even if I am writing a historical text, it is some of my existential experience. And here, it was shown here tonight that some stories, novels, are more widely recognized - that some local incident, the end of the war that happened in Slovenia, which I wrote about in the novel, is interesting for the French, and it was awarded as the best foreign book year, because in it they discovered something that is universal in literature. That is why I spoke about Ljubisa who, although it is difficult to break through some words, saw those human destinies that are in some existentially special position, and that is also universal. That's why I think it is necessary for the writer to start from something that is ours, that we have experienced, in which we see the meaning of transferring it to the level of art", said Jančar.

Maybe the topic chooses the writer

Slavica Perović pointed out that it was a great pleasure for her to be a member of the jury for the awarding of the "Ljubiša" award, and especially of "this kind of jury", and of course, for that jury to award the award to a writer like Drago Jančar, whose work left a deep impression on her , especially when she read the novel "Derisive Lust". This, as she stated, prompted her to ask the writer a question about how he chooses his topics and how he shows what is local, but actually universal.

"Perhaps the subject chooses the writer, in this particular case of the novel 'The Ridiculous Experience' there is an autobiographical experience. I spent half a year in America as a Fulbright scholar, and there I saw how big the gap is between a European, Central European or Yugoslav experience and American dynamics. He noticed how that American optimism is taught there from a young age, so in this novel there are chapters about laughter and optimism, and we think more, the whole of Europe, that life also has its practical notes, we think about the end, why they deceived us, betrayed us , and those are more our topics. I saw, on the one hand, that cultural clash and I experienced things that changed me. I once told the director Dušan Jovanović something about it, and he told me that I had to write it. Often themes also come from reading, from one sentence, this is Borges' thought, although he is not my writer, but he is a genius who invented a new formula and way of storytelling. He says somewhere that books grow from books - you read something somewhere and think about it - so it's something that happened to me, that is close to me from my life and the lives of people close to me, or from the life of our history, political events, so the topics they themselves bring the writer closer," said the new laureate of the "Ljubišina" award.