"Writing about other cities or countries has become somewhat redundant in an age dominated by Trip Advisor and similar applications. Travelogues similar to the 'Continental Railway Guide' published by Bradshaw at the end of the 19th century can no longer be found even in newsagents. Even small towns like my Bar have hundreds of reviews on the aforementioned site and anything you want to find out about a place you can hear from thousands of others who have been there before you. So how to write about cities? Mentioning restaurants, writing about streets, squares, old ruins or works of art will not be relevant until the possible discoveries of other planets and other civilizations. Another possibility is to write exclusively about our experiences, but this is where we run into another problem - by doing so, we only reveal what is 'inside' and do not touch enough what is outside, around us, thus closing ourselves to the reader. What we are left with are two terms with the same root - geopoetics and geopolitics", Stefan Đukić, professor of philosophy, civil activist, essayist from Bar wrote in one of his texts, columns, travelogue "Between the Sexes"...
He found access and freedom in the travelogues in which he allowed himself to travel through time, civilization(s), city(s) - philosophy, history, culture, politics, architecture and many other things... Đukić started a series of his travelogues two years ago. Between the Poles" which were published in "Vijesti" and he recently published a book published by the Belgrade publishing house "Sumatra", although at the beginning he did not even think about it. Nit appeared by herself and cried out to unite 32 columns from 19 countries and four continents between two covers, in one book. Since last week, the book can also be purchased in Montenegro, namely in Podgorica, in the Narodna knjiga bookstore, Novaka Miloševa Street 12, in the same bookstore in the shopping center Bazar and City Mall, as well as in Nikšić, in the Narodna knjiga in the "Laković" shopping center. . "The essence of a travelogue is to relive and enrich the journey," wrote Đukić about his book, and he says more in an interview for "Vijesti" and reveals that he relives each trip three times...
Your collection of columns, i.e. travelogues, reports "Between the Sexes" that you published in "Vijesti" was recently published... How did you come to combine your texts into one whole?
Somewhere from the fifth or sixth travelogue I published, I noticed that there is a certain common line between them and that these are not just scattered texts, but they somehow fit together, they deal with similar topics from different angles. I realized that it would be valuable for them to exist in some common entity so that some reader, whether he read those travelogues with "Vijesti" or not, could find something valuable in that book by reading them all at once, as a book, instead of reading them once in two weeks.
Did you choose only certain ones or did you combine all the travelogues that you published in "Vijesti" and did you connect them and in what way did you connect them with a thread that you use to guide the reader from one text to another?
All the texts are there, although they are not all of the same quality, but I believe that every reader can find something interesting in each of them. Perhaps someone who seems to be my favorite is not to the liking of another reader... Since I believe that in each of the travelogues there can be found something, even a part of a sentence, which is valuable, I did not want to throw out any of it, but I tried to I go over, edit, shorten, expand or change each of the texts, depending on how it fits into the whole. Also, their schedule has been changed. They are not published chronologically as they were published, nor are they arranged in any geographical sense, but they are arranged according to the topics they cover, starting with Lebanon and ending with "Travels in the Age of the Corona Virus".
You have written about various topics and in your travelogues you can find reflections related to culture, history, politics, philosophy, modern life, but what are you leading the reader through now and what is the schedule? What did you want to bring closer, present?
The very idea of writing a travelogue and publishing it is, in my opinion, a convenient way to present various topics. I can't say that travel writing is of interest to everyone, but in general it is close to a wide range of people. Today, there is no point in writing travelogues as they used to be written, such as what to see and visit where, what is the food like from place to place, because the age of the Internet has brought some new opportunities and there is simply no need for you to cover the same topics, because anyone can see what he wants and read similar impressions. However, there is another level, that is the theoretical one, where we can write, not only about the Parthenon, but also about what it meant for Greece, and what Greek culture means for all of us, how we experience it, and in this case how is what I experience as an author. As for the schedule itself - it also makes a certain sense. The idea was to connect the texts somehow. The first are the texts of old civilizations, in this case Lebanon - the Phoenicians and Greece, Rome. Then we rise, we move to some aesthetic topics such as the architecture of Barcelona, the religiosity of Thessaloniki, Russian drama and human tragedy in Moscow, then we move on to political topics - from the aesthetic we move to a socially active person and there we talked about the Basque Country, the European Union in Vienna, and also in Bar about the "Cempres protests" in which I also participated, and so we go on and on. No text is in its place by chance, but each one builds on the previous one, and the previous one on its predecessor, and there is a certain line that can be followed. At the same time, the book can be opened at any place, so whoever wants to read something from the middle or the end, or whatever, will not go wrong. But the best experience would be the one who would read the book from the first to the last page.
You have already said that both the form and the goal of the travelogue have changed over time. In what way did you approach it by processing the topics and places you visited and thought about?
There are different topics... The story about Bratislava is interesting, in my opinion. We all know that there is a Bratislava, that there is a Slovakia that was part of Czechoslovakia, but we do not know that the name Bratislava is relatively new, that it was chosen by chance and that the city could very easily have been called in a different way. So, for example, through that story about Bratislava that we heard about, about which we don't think too much, but we know it exists, the opportunity was used to tell how things that we currently understand as fundamental and set in stone - didn't have to be like that at all and in 15 years they may be different again, for example. This is the opportunity that travel writing gives, that you can write about the architecture of a certain city and its inhabitants and its streets, but at the same time you can cover topics that you think are important and that will be better received when you are already thinking about those cities.
Looking back on the writing process, you said that "we write to present something to others, but also to ourselves." How much did this kind of writing help you to get to know yourself and your own attitudes, again, but also the places you visited?
It not only helped me to get to know myself, but also to get to know those cities, anew. I didn't write any of those travelogues while I was there. They say that people who write travelogues are the ones who get bored on their travels. I don't think I've ever been bored on any trip I've been on, but writing travelogues has allowed me to think about those trips again. To give the example of Bratislava again - I did not know a good part of these things about the way its name changed, and also the peoples who inhabited it. Writing a travelogue gave me the opportunity to learn something new, to change some preconceived notions I had, and to better understand the way everyone works. It also helped me to read about the island of Lesbos, for example, where I learned not only about myself and that place, but also about civilization in general. All this was a kind of journey for me. I can say that I had three ways of traveling in this case: the first was traveling to a certain place, the second was thinking and reading about that certain place and the third travel was writing itself.
When you mentioned travel, I would say that they have become more accessible compared to before, but how much has the concept of travel changed?
The same thing happened that happened with many other things, which is a byproduct of globalization, which did not bring multiculturalism and all the breadth, but brought us much more uniformity. Unfortunately, when we travel somewhere, we go as if on a conveyor belt, we run to enter McDonald's - the hamburger production line and likewise when we go to Paris we go to another production line: the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre... and generally not we can experience that certain city in the right way. Some cities have changed and become closed museums, inanimate beings, although cities once had their own souls. On the other hand, this does not mean that some individual visitor, traveler, cannot experience the city in his own way. It is only necessary to overcome the instinct to go to some top-list of the main things and dare to experience what is most important to us. Also, traveling today allows us to see some places that are not so touristy, such as Paris, London and similar cities... And in this book there are places that are not standard (Beirut, Sao Paolo, Lesbos) or are not on to that travelogue/top-list...
"In order to present any destination to ourselves, we must penetrate into its essence and connect it with what is essential in us. In one place, it will be nature, in another, politics, in the third, art", you wrote, and I would somehow add that the essence of man or society is (somewhat) reflected in these three segments - nature, politics, art... What kind of is the relationship of that in Montenegro when it comes to our society?
That is quite a difficult question. Montenegro seems to live in two parallel realities, and these realities do not hear each other, whether they differ in politics or some other attitudes. People who read one media - go to some of their specific places and other people who have different views are quite different and that is quite ungrateful for the story. When we talk about the relationship with nature, we have the farce that we are an ecological country, but we do not behave ecologically. However, last year we had so many environmental protests that we cannot say that this awareness is bad or poorly developed. We have many people who we can say work and create according to their capabilities despite not having any material satisfaction from it. It's the same with politics. We have a whole partitocratic machinery both in the government and, by God, in the opposition, which lives off it and watches them as businesses, and we also have a whole series of activists and people who engage in politics to their own detriment and get nothing out of it except to waste their free time and sacrifice it the time they could, for example, spend with their family... They sacrifice if there is no social improvement. Even though you have parallel realities, we can't give just one rating, because that way we would be looking either too good or too bad, and the truth is somewhere in between.
When we put everything together, what would a travelogue of Montenegro be like?
I think it would be very interesting, with the fact that I would like someone who would write those travelogues to try to get deeper into the essence of our country, not to talk about the beautiful hills, the sea, the coast and how everything is close, but to really try to capture the details of our society and even to stay a little longer with us. I think it could be a very interesting read for someone from abroad. Some good writer could write a very good book on the level of some of the greatest travelogues, such as Miloš Crnjanski, for example.
What are your plans for the future, how much did the corona hinder you or did it give you inspiration for something else?
We'll see. Corona has definitely disrupted some plans. It's possible that this will be the only thing I've written, and it's possible that this book is just the beginning. We'll see. It all depends on what the weather brings. When I started writing the travelogue "Between the Sexes" two years ago, I did not plan or imagine to combine them into a book, but it happened. So... We'll see.
Would you like to add something or tell the readers of "Vijesti"?
What I would always recommend to everyone is to create. Today, we have the possibilities of modern technology that offers us to write, shoot movies, make games, who knows what, and even though we are not all good at it, we need to find some segment in which we can express ourselves and create. Creation is the process that allows the currently average to become above average, the above average to become exceptional, and those who already make a living allowing themselves to have even more fun. My message would be to take advantage of modern opportunities and let people create - it can only get better.
A grain of sand that will help in the general understanding of the world
To what extent can everything that makes up the book "Between the Sexes" be seen in a global context of getting to know societies today, as an analysis or an impression, given the variety of travelogues, topics, countries... how much can all of this make up a global picture?
I have no pretension to explain the whole world, or even any of those cities, through my travelogues, but in this way, with my microscopic move, I tried to bring the world closer to the way I experience it or even to enable someone else to find themselves in similar interpretations , maybe I will open a dialogue with those who have different attitudes and points of view... It is possible that in some big game this represents a small grain of sand which, perhaps, will help some general understanding of the world or ourselves, which we all strive for.
Real tourism is active travel
You are one of the more recognizable Montenegrin activists. Can activism and travel be connected and in what way, that is, what travel brings - getting to know other societies, systems, cultures?
It is certainly related and a lot of my travels were related to it, because many of them happened as part of participation in some international conferences, political gatherings, where I went as an observer... So I had the opportunity to see how some other people think, how they work, and I also gained practical experience. The previous thing I dealt with, the documentary "What the Left Wants", was just filmed at one such political meeting of the parties of the European left. Even so, the trip itself can be used to observe other societies, the way certain individuals react to certain things, talk about them, and the like. This is real tourism, active travel, which would entail not only visiting some new beautiful places, but also getting to know different cultures and people, and then looking at us and where we are, to ask ourselves why we are not there or whether do we want to be there at all, do we maybe want something else... Definitely that these two things are connected, sometimes directly like an umbilical cord, which can be seen in some of my texts, and sometimes these things also indirectly found their way to cross paths.
Can it then be said that this book of yours is a kind of reading tourism?
Well, it could be, in a certain form. I would consider the book absolutely successful if I could make the reader - not to travel to those places because someone doesn't have the opportunity, someone doesn't have time, someone wants to do something else - but if a person reading one of those travelogues would have the desire to read or looks at some of what is stated in it. Of course, if people would then have the will to go and experience what I experienced, and in some other way, it would be ideal if they would write something about it... Well, that would be a hyperbolized success about which I could not not even to dream.
Bonus video:
