The literary program of the 37th Grad Teatar Festival has begun

On Friday, the literary program of the 37th Grad Teatar Festival began on Poets' Square in Budva's Old Town, hosted by Đorđe Matić.

Matić presented his first novel entitled "Nowhere with Love", while the moderator of the evening was Nebojša Grujičić, journalist and publicist.

Svetlana Ivanović, editor of the festival program, welcomed all those present to the literary program, who said that the program conception of this year's literary program was guided, first of all, by respect for aesthetic criteria.

"When we talk about literature, we are talking about a linguistic work of art and then about the possibilities of every successful literary work to resonate with the meanings it tries to create the challenges of existence and to answer the secrets of all time," added Ivanovic.

The moderator of the evening, Nebojša Grujičić, after the introductory speech during which he introduced the audience to Matić's biography, said that Matić's work can be summed up in the title of his collection of essays "Secret Connections".

"In this culture of our South Slavic peoples, there were two predecessors of Đorđe Matić in his obsessive search for secret relationships, namely Tin Ujević and Miloš Crnjanski. Not knowing about each other, they said the same sentence about themselves: "I am a relationship seeker," Grujicic said.

He added that Đorđe Matić it looks for connections between South Slavic cultures and the so-called big world, Eastern and Western, and it looks for connections between the past and the present, which indicate the contours of a better future that lies behind us.

"The last book that Đorđe published is a novel, this is the first time he has tried it in novel form, until now he was a poet and an essayist, but all that he does is his sense of the world, his search for secret connections between people, cultures and time, is in this book," said Grujičić and added that it is, conditionally speaking, an autobiographical novel.

Most of those who make up the canon of South Slavic cultures, he added, suffered from the same disease, which is the feeling of homelessness and longing for a homeland that is constantly fleeing and disappearing.

"This novel is full of references, his intimate and our common culture. If an index were made of the names that are associated with or mentioned in this novel, it would certainly take up to thirty pages. These are coded names because it addresses people who share a culture to which he belongs. When he says "Stateless" we know that he is talking about Danilo Kiš, when he says "Old man" we know that he is talking about Miroslav Krleža, when he mentions a lost actor from Zagreb, Džo, who acts in some series for young people, we who share culture testified to by Đorđe Matić, we know that it is about the "Smogovci", Grujičić noted.

Inside, as he said, Dis, Leonard Cohen, Bulat Okudžava, Chet Baker and those who have read Matić's previous works know that his intimate universe is made up of heroes of popular and high culture in which he miraculously finds and reveals secret connections .

"And the novel is named after a line from one of Brodsky's poems, and he is also one of the homeless displaced persons," he added.

He, said Grujicic, is one of the key poets who missed that feeling of homelessness, articulated and defended it in his verses, comparing the Neva and the Hudson, Siberia and New York, Venice and Saint Petersburg".

Matić: In Montenegro, I have the feeling of coming home

Montenegro is one of the important points in Matić's opus, even though he only recently visited Montenegro for the first time, and his visit to Trg pješnika is his first encounter with Budva.

Matic said that he is very happy to be here.

"Usually when a person finally arrives somewhere, there is always the inevitable disappointment. Montenegro is more than what I expected, you have a million problems there like we all have, but it was magical in many moments. I found things I didn't expect to find and the things I expected I found with bonuses. Only when I return home will I gather my impressions and probably write something about it. I don't see the superficial things, only the deep ones and they are great. "Montenegro came to me primarily through literature and through one single name, Njegoš," said Matić.

I discovered him, he said, during the serious years in exile.

"Reading it, I have never found that feeling of homelessness as fixed as in Njegoš, and that in the tragic and tragicomic element. There is no passage from literature that I have read as many times as I have read "Duke Draško in Venice": Whenever I had a hard time in In Holland, I would read "Mountain Wreath" aloud to myself. I also read others like Stefan Mitrov Ljubiša, but Njegoš always stayed in my head," said Matić and revealed that he has roots in Montenegro on his father's side.

We are all, he added, a little bit from Montenegro.

"When I first came to Montenegro, to Podgorica, I really felt at home. I've never had that feeling in this area, and then I had the feeling of coming home," added Matič.

The most beautiful poetry is when the poet lies a little. The relationship between so-called high and low culture is something that runs through many of Matić's works, and he spoke most subtly about folk music.

Matić explained that in exile he managed to carry out a kind of cultural revaluation within himself in terms of valuing the so-called low culture.

"I was looking for some kind of distant pearl in that shell, which looks ugly from the outside, but when it is opened, I guess there is some kind of authenticity and poetry in it. Most often I found it, if not textually, then certainly musically. If not in pure music, then arrangement-wise "Cune Gojković was interesting to me, I discovered the refinement of his vocals, but he is not so kitsch and therefore not a good example. Lepa Lukić, that kind of duo from Šumadija without any exaggeration and with a tonality that is almost spoken, where there is no singing and Eastern influence ", Matic said.

In the poem "Od izvora dva putića", as he said, written by Petar Tanasijević, there is a psychosexual problem of acceptance of the daughter-in-law by the mother, an imaginary situation that certainly did not happen.

"It is the most beautiful poetry, when the poet lies a little. When he says the way he would like it to be, and not the way it is in reality," added Matić.

Talking about music, Grujičić and Matić also referred to jazz, and in the context of secret relationships and everything that was previously discussed, Matić pointed out that Life's Tragedy is the connection that Matić found between Chet Bejker and Toma Zdravković.

"In their biographies there are the same Aristotelian steps towards tragedy. Excessive pride, pride which is a mortal sin in Christianity, wrong steps the hero takes. There are no such personalities today because tragedy requires a hero or even an anti-hero. They are the last tragic figures in that sense. It is important to get rid of any kind of romanticization of those tragic failed lives. I despise it when we look at it from a safe petty-bourgeois distance. Of course, both of these tragic personalities, each in their own way, left their own sound, a manuscript that is only theirs and no one else's. If they were only tragic figures, that would not be enough, behind them was an incredible manuscript made up of the strangest things," said Matić.

At the end of the evening, Matić read a passage from the novel "Nowhere with Love".