The reality to which Borislav Pekić wants to testify cannot be fully explained, academician Tonko Maroević pointed out at the scientific meeting held yesterday in Podgorica, at the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts, on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the birth of one of the most important Yugoslav writers. The meeting was attended by academics, professors and writers from Montenegro and abroad who presented their views and analyzes of certain works by Pekić, as well as the specifics in them and his creativity. The scientific meeting continues today at 9 a.m. in CAN.
Maroević also added that Pekić "is a writer who takes care, argues with reality, takes factual elements that he surpasses with fiction", and he was particularly impressed by the book "How to appease a vampire".
Radomir V. Ivanović added that Borislav Pekić has one particularly good feature...
"...To lead you into mysterious regions, never in a straight line and never in the form of a circle but in the form of a spiral, because the spiral is a guarantee of dialectics and singing and thinking", he pointed out.
Associate member of CANU prof. Dr. Siniša Jelušić, reminded that Pekić was also a very important screenwriter.
"I'm a little sentimentally sensitive here. His first job, as far as I know, was in Budva's Lovćen film. He has written more than 10 original screenplays. In earlier times, there was a very interesting magazine called 'YU Film' edited by Severin Franić. When you look at his scenarios, they have a kind of special value that is only a prerequisite for his later realization. The script for Zdravko Velimirivić's film 'Dan 14' was written by Pekić, and it is his first screenplay, as well as Velimirović's film, but also the first achievement of Yugoslav cinematography, which was shown in the main competition of the Cannes Festival and was nominated for the Palme d'Or," he pointed out. Jelušić, and then added and quoted Pekić's views on literature:
"He says that literature, among other things, is also philosophy in its aesthetic correlate. He also says that 'literature is a painted model of my philosophical representation of the world'. And then one can ask what kind of philosophy we are talking about...", said Jelušić.
And Pekić's philosophy establishes the truth, prof. Dr. Sonja Tomović Šundić. She also emphasizes that Pekić comes from "a rare layer of the bourgeois class of Belgrade, that aristocratic layer, especially through his mother, even through his wife. His wife is the cousin of Milan Stojadinović, the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia...", she says and adds that Pekić offers "a completely different angle of looking at post-war history that comes precisely from the defeated bourgeois class. We have that in all of Pekić's works and it is, after all, a lament over a defeated post-war caste".
"The time when Pekić wrote 'The Time of Miracles' was truly a miracle of time and Pekić could not freely present his political and ideological criticism, so 'The Time of Miracles' could also have been created from the brilliant thinking of Pekić. Pekić is one of the best writers we have after the Second World War. He interpreted ideologies much more clearly, more critically, more comprehensively, more precisely than pro-regime historiography did. That is why the merits left to us by Pekić and (Danilo) Kiš are enormous, not only in the literary but also in the political-ideological sense, because they really spoke freely at a time when it was not desirable and that is why the price was very high. Pekić served five years, first he was given ten years by the Montenegrin interrogator, then when he appealed he was given 15 years, then he served five years... People do not understand that those who once received the stamp of the regime - it followed them throughout of life. Pekić still continued, and it was his great mountain-Dinaric energy and justice that led him to participate in the political life of the regime. And in '68. in XNUMX, he was in conflict and at the end of it all he left Yugoslavia and went to live in London," said Tomović Šundić.
Mr. Tijana Rakočević added that "the scholars of Pekić's oeuvre are right who claim that the book 'Time of Miracles' is a book about the search for truth, that is, the truth whose bright face can survive the death of an individual", and then she touched on Pekić's work.
"When it is said that in the novel real frogs jump in imaginary gardens, then it is not difficult to imagine the entire literary engagement of Borislav Pekić as a unique combination of the fantastic and the real. It's about constructing a value scale, a kind of poetic radar, the purpose of which is contained in the rejection of those literary forms that, in principle, do not coincide with predetermined poetic regularities", said Rakočević.
Mr. Zora Jestrović pointed out that "nobody and nothing should be trusted".
"In every era, man is, in some way, broken and lost between right and left orientations, between right and, as Pekić says in the original, 'fool' - a narrow door for an honest man, or as Njegoš would say 'The door is narrow for an oil man. '", Jestrović concluded.
A writer who always and in everything asks the question of meaning
In his presentation, Siniša Jelušić pointed out that Borislav Pekić always raises the question of meaning in everything.
"At the presentation of Nino's prize in February 1971, Pekić said something that corresponds to what he said in 1961: 'The first problem of literature is not what and how to write', so not 'How?' what the Russian formalists insist on and Pekić calls it into question, but 'What?', so quite contrary to the principle of a very modern theory that is based on the text as autonomy and its own immanence. So not 'About what and how' but 'Why and how to live'. This, I would say, is his explicit understanding of the role, function and interdisciplinary meaning of literature. It is a three-minute presentation recorded by Pekić and entitled 'On birth and death'. In two minutes, excluding the opening and closing speeches, he speaks the truth. He formulates his anthropological and existential vision, according to which existence is understood as self-deception and self-defense determined by suffering and fear. These are important categories of his outlook on life," said Jelušić.
Bonus video:
