"Intimate" Tijane Rakočević (Fokalizator, Podgorica, 2023) is a unique book of terrible defeats and small, almost imperceptible victories that grow into hope.
From the title to the last point, this book "tortures" the reader, reminding him that even the slightest drop in concentration makes understanding impossible. It's a book that won't let him leave, although the reader, vain and selfish, doesn't even try. How would he allow himself, because he does not understand her, to capitulate in front of a book by an author. "Intimus" is not a book that we will read on the way, to entertain ourselves or while waiting for water to boil for coffee. It requires dedication, because reading implies creation - images, visions, opinions, conclusions, and creation is not a casual activity. It takes us through the whole world without leaving ourselves. We learn, it's interesting, different, details give authenticity to the story, but the essence is in us, not in Tutsi girls, Ethiopians, hunters and Montenegrins.
Spatial and even temporal determinants contribute to the universality of stories. Life, no matter where you live it, is always the same for those at the top and those at the bottom - stronger kachi, or shut up with horned don't sting, but also "until one person faints, the other does not dawn". The imperishable achievement of humanity, the only skill whose progress and survival are not questioned, is satirizing the weaker, the subordinate, the one from whom no danger threatens. How pitiful for the powerful figure the man considers himself to be. And Rakočević forcibly averts our eyes to this very horror, with a finger in his eye, as if to say, don't squint, they are'live but look, these are you, your heroes, saints, idols. Carelessness, lack of awareness of the committed sin, is the same no matter if the victim is (if he is weaker!) a human, an animal ("it's just a fucking rabbit") or an insect.
Each of these stories means the absence of a stronger consciousness, convinced "that the fact that he uses a plate and not a trough makes him worth keeping", about his own maturity. And "Intimus", like life, and that is why it is convincing, shows that the matrix is the same on all meridians, and in our heart; everyone is prey, only people are prey to each other.
This book should be read as a lexicon of human suffering and a lexicon of his sins. The task of literature is, among other things, to depict reality. It is unnecessary to point out fictitiousness, just as it is rude to think that everything is fiction. Each story reveals a part of the personality, not literary, imagined, fictitious, but real, ours, mine, which was transferred to the world of fiction, inserted into the story of fictional and real characters in order to show itself, to slap us - for our sake and our good.
The cohesive factor is vulnerability, and with it comes stigma, experiencing, torture, fear, constant (self) questioning, suppression of what you see, feel and know - because everyone around you says you are wrong. A book about suffering, injustice and crime. And crime filled the air, it is on every corner, even where there should be a safe harbor for all those who have been denounced, stigmatized.
Crime is man's belief. And only rare cases (therefore recorded) have shown that man as a species has individuals who do not strive to satirize the weaker, or that life, with its unpredictability, puts in that position (example of Speciosa and Pauline). It is the boundary that insurmountably separates the sexes. There are two antipodes in this book. On the one hand, there is an unequivocal power that, through its manifestation, cancels everything human not only in the tyrant, but also in the victim. And on the other hand, it is "weaker". It's a law of nature - the weaker one suffers in the food chain. Nevertheless, the civilization that was established after the first healed thigh bone should (just in the spirit of the story about the healed thigh bone) have different models of functioning. Unfortunately, only those whom fate has placed in the camp of the weaker, know how much each force played with them. Again for two reasons - because of the hound's urge and because of the fear that paralyzes the mind and action. In the wild, the stronger eats the weaker. In civilization, the stronger satirizes, destroys, erases from the face of the earth all the outlines of the existence of the weaker. And the weaker ones here are men, women, nations, blacks, whites, plants, animals, Others.
The language of "Intimus" is a treasure, hence the impressiveness of the narration. With a lot of inserted sentences and small intelligent digressions, the narrator manages to complicate the story without losing the thread. If the inserted sentences and digressions were omitted, the reader would easily understand the main thought, but would be deprived of the whole experience of struggling with his own language to grasp the meaning. The sentences are hermetic, condensed, layered, with many forks and branches. It will happen to the reader that he will go back to the beginning of the sentence, and to the previous one, and even to the beginning of the story, and then he will think that he is under the influence of impure forces (of course, what men from a position of power often call women's writing). The narrator does not allow the reader to think that he will catch the thread later during the reading (it is a kind of sacrilege). And then, annoyed, disappointed in his powers, saddened, realizing that he is not as magnificent as he thought he was until a while ago, when he turns off all receptors for the outside world, he isolates himself and swims through the text, a new miracle is revealed before him and he is surprised again, defeated, reset, but clean. He sees that everything is simple, transparent, clear, written in our (whatever you call it) language. And understandable!
Then he discovers the endless spaces of the beauty of language, opening new horizons in understanding the everyday, ordinary, ours. The connections of "big" things with those that are under taboo are interesting from the perspective of demythologizing and desacralizing not people, but topics. By reducing them to the level of the ordinary, these topics do not lose their significance, on the contrary, they are only positioned in the lives of ordinary people so that we understand them as they really look. The birth of a child, that pinnacle of the natural or divine, becomes more down-to-earth and, for those who have not experienced the pangs of childbirth, clearer.
Rakočević succeeds in activating all the reader's senses precisely through the skillful use of language. The richness of the language is also in the use of words that could be described as archaic, but which are still used locally today, and are typical of some Montenegrin dialects/regions, which would mean that not everyone in Montenegro understands them. However, the author did not jump in her stomach with this; the wealth of language is used consciously, in situations that require it, or in which it is expected to say začovio, ustabrio, raspučio, raspeljivši, kamliejeje, čivrlovnje, frcale, prokameni, isproshupljivanog. Therefore, the language of "Intimus" is not forced, imposed, artificially grafted onto situations, and therefore not incomprehensible. On the contrary. Rakočević has a developed sense of detail - a hand that plunged into slimy rabbit guts full of wilted clover - which the reader can again feel with all his senses. And then pointing out the sacrilege, because "human hands should never touch this". There is no shortage of sacrilege in "In the Land of the Immortals" in which Jesus (not the one from the iconostasis) silences the sexual urge in dead women. His father's vision fills with blood when he finds him. In that phrase we also find izandjalo in everyday speech darkness fell on his eyes, but also more than that. Neurasthenic, and in the context of the Orthodox interpretation of this disease (body or spirit?!), this hero is ideal for the name Jesus. And that in a situation where the anomaly becomes visible, which, rather than understanding its defect, succeeds in encouraging contempt and the inside of the stomach to spill out.
The last paragraphs/sentences in the stories are the most symbolically and meaningfully loaded, because they stand at the exit from the fictional world and must be effective. In each story, accounts are settled explicitly, accurately and painfully. The message was sent that the world, ruled by God, Satan, some force visible or invisible, is always kept in balance. A killed rabbit leads to a dead child, a killed fly leads to a pierced eye, a raped girl leads to the suffering of the client, the reality shown leads to the one that is hidden, threatened with embers and we are convinced that there and where it is not shown, the settlement has certainly taken place.
The quasi-feminist myth of women's solidarity has been shattered. A woman is an individual, self-aware, but also a victim as a weaker one. She is a torturer, like Paula's or the obstetrician's sister, but also dignified like Specioze, defiant, sometimes out of spite, sometimes not. The woman, who is in labor and has no husband, who bears her maiden name, is denounced, but self-aware. The woman does not wear the sleepers because she is single, but because she is proud of her origin. It's a level pro, they trust the modern man - be it a woman or a man. Being/doing something for oneself, not for another's sake. Nevertheless, "she longed for someone to tell her all the respect" and this is where the psychology of the smaller, weaker person who longs for acceptance is manifested, because it is a human, daily need sewn into the story effectively, but unobtrusively, as something that can simply be passed by. Like in real life. That's why "a female creature with a small excess of iridescent skin around her neck does not have a particularly wide choice of lovers."
"Intimus" talks about society's relationship with the weaker (woman, minority, different), about stigma, about the (mis)use of power, about the fear of punishment and the struggle/cross that each of us fights/carries individually. Both the powerful and the weak are responsible for someone/something and are consumed by (the same!) fear.
Bonus video:
