Balša Brković on Poets' Square: Communication is inseparable from the being of literature

The literary program of the 37th Grad Teatar festival continued last night at the Poets' Square in the Old Town of Budva, and writer Balša Brković presented his new novel "Aurora" to a large audience.

The moderator of the evening was professor and writer Božena Jelušić, who said that Brković's new novel is completely different from the previous three.

"This novel is a kind of dedication to Podgorica, it is Podgorica as it should be or as we only know in some parts of it. It takes place from March 1932 to January 1, 1933, that is exactly 90 years before our time and when you look at the novel you have the opportunity to see the negative from which the positive of this moment of ours can easily be read. All possible connections, unresolved conflicts, frustrations, everything that is tearing apart now and will tear apart not only Montenegro but Yugoslavia and the whole world for a long time to come. The novel is framed by two games, chess and football. The story of the formation of the chess club in Podgorica opens up space for a completely new dimension of the novel and shapes and structures the novel in its own way. The second game is soccer, and it seems to me that in this novel, Balša Brković is the most homo ludens, a man who plays. The novel is written in such a way that you feel the ease with which it was written, the love for the city and the love for writing. The novel is imbued with an optimism that is contagious," she said.

At the very beginning, Brković emphasized that he was very glad to be on Poets' Square.

"Because this space played a role that may have been forgotten, but long ago in 1996, it happened here for the first time, in the sharply divided Montenegrin reality at that time, that four Montenegrin writers Igor Marojević, Aleksandar Bečanović, Andrej Nikolaidis and my little , came to Poets' Square and performed here. It was a sensation then, even some parties attacked us. My own father attacked me because of that, but I was convinced that the boycott was pointless and that communication is what is inseparable from the being of literature. In that sense, I perceive this Poet's Square as a meeting point and a type of what was the intention of the founder, that it should be in the best Hellenic tradition of a square and meeting space. Something of that exists in this novel, that Podgorica, where this novel takes place, is only like that in my novel," said Brković and explained that he chose the year 1932 because it allowed him to mix facts and purely fictional characters.

"There is an urban myth that Tin Ujević stayed in Nikšić for two months in 1932 with Nikša Kokolj. I couldn't resist because I love Ujević and I consider him a great poet that one of the reasons for 1932 was Ujović's stay in Nikšić. was a way to bring him to the opening of the chess club in Podgorica to sing one of his poems and that it has, in a double way, a cathartic effect. He sings the poem "Russia", and it is important to point out that a quarter of the characters in the novel are white Russians. that my characters found a chess club, and then you couldn't do that without including Russians who were mostly good players and by chance the three best players in Montenegro at that time were three Russians. My intention was that through that mix of literary imagination and in reality, I show how society can actually be changed from those nuclei, those who have vision and guts, who have the need to change society in an essential way. In this novel, this takes place through the story of the chess club, and there is another, that age "mortal sin". They want to establish a women's section, which was impossible at the time. There were only two women's sections at that time in Maribor and Subotica, that tells you how far it was. I needed it for several reasons, but I wanted this novel to be different from the global attitude that everything serious concerns only men".

Brković also revealed that there are several personal reasons for setting the novel in 1932.

"I was 13 years old and my family spent the summer with Radovan Zogović's family, and I asked him when he saw Titograd for the first time. He corrected me, he told me that Titograd was called Podgorica and that it happened in 1932 and that wandered around Podgorica for a few days due to certain circumstances. It remained somewhere in my mind when I started planning this novel and I realized that it was a good opportunity for me to bring him and his aunt's brother, Milovan Đilas, as young students to my Podgorica in 1932, since the two of them represented two different genders from the leftist and communist story in Montenegro. Metropolitan Dožić also appears there, that character has a certain weight, is literary interesting and has a certain role in the structure of the novel. Of course, there is and Bora Kostić, a famous chess player whom I don't know if he was in Podgorica. I brought him, as well as Tino, to Podgorica for the opening of that chess club. Of course, the most important question for Montenegrins was which Kostić was the main grandmaster. Some personalities are welcome for that story and that's why they are there. And in fact, it's a story about the power to move things, to change society and to conquer authenticity in the way it should".

Jelušić said that structurally, the novel owes a lot to chess.

"He has a slow opening and then the story strongly gains momentum and results in an extremely effective finale," she said, and Brković added that chess is an inexhaustible game. "Like literature and poetry are inexhaustible. In a way, that game is a zone of pure artistry. It is a game with clear rules, but those rules do not prevent the space of endless imagination. That is what is important about chess. There is one place when one of my heroes talks to Boro Kostić and tells him that he believes that chess is a way that society is changing, and Kostić tells him that it is very unusual that a game that is incredibly ancient, that is ancient, can serve as a method of modernizing a society. In fact, it is so and that is part of the magic of chess".

While reading Brković's novel, Jelušić had a completely clear impression that she was reading a distinctly feminist novel written by a man.

"For me, it is extremely important that a feminist novel is written by a man and that the game of chess, where strategy helps him, where talent is much more important, and female talent in patriarchy always and irrevocably fails, becomes a way to change society a little bit," she said. Jelušić, and Brković added that his intention was absolutely such.

"I'm not a woman and I can't write a feminist novel in a woman's way. But I want to and I can do it in a man's way. I think that has weight and significance. Every poem I've written is feminist because all poetry is essentially a woman's work. Milan Kundera said that a writer is born in the house of a woman, and that is absolutely true. In a certain sense, I consider the nature of my art and its being to be female. So that intention is not disputed. On the other hand, I wanted to invoke a kind of natural feminism that I remember, which always existed among us southerners. That's why there is an older respectable lady who at one point explains to the younger women and says: "What equality, we were equal when we were growing up, we were equal with men without any problems, we fought with them, they couldn't do anything to us. But when they explained to us that we are women and that we should get married, that's when that kind of natural equality stopped." That was important to me and I wanted to invoke that kind of awareness that goes with Southerners. Southern women made history and civilizations and there is no story, the fact that only men are remembered is a completely different matter. A journalist who did an interview with me a few years ago and who knew Montenegrin literature told me that only in our country there are female characters. I didn't think much about it at the time, but then I realized that Montenegrin literature is traditionally incredibly lacking in female characters. It's not that there aren't any, but they are always like Batrić's sister, the witch grandmother, they are always some kind of radical illustration and function. Here I wanted female characters who bring a different way of thinking and feeling".

Jelušić pointed out that the novel has 15 parts, that each part has its own scenes and that a quality TV series could be created based on it.

"The novel was made into a film. It seems to me that it would provide a real gallery, an army of chess pieces, character formations that would be extremely productive for the television genre. I think that Montenegro would then speak of itself much better and more beautifully than it speaks of some other mini series that peddle an empty national narrative. Of course, there should be pride, but primarily human and only then everything else," said Jelušić, while Brković explained that one of the matrices for writing the novel was precisely a television series.

"I was a boy when that series about Split was broadcast and it was called "Velo misto". It covered about thirty years, and my intention was different. A kind of topos, a city, a barber shop, a journalist's buffet, a Russian reading room, I wanted it will be part of the novel and this story. It seems to me that in a way the filmic story is also interesting, it was my way to make it easier for myself while writing, to present things to myself. It was important for me to have a visual clarity of everything about I write," Brković said.