(Continued from last Saturday)
Jeremic, in several places it threatens It's raining that literary history will swallow him up as a plagiarist. Faithful Hegelians The idea that a work of art originated from the absolute creative spirit does not accept that it is in the vestibule of a new poetic practice in which Kiš's combinatorics will revive the spirit of the avant-garde, resurrecting the idea of the death of the author as creator. This is the birth of an author who, having experienced two world wars in the 20th century, writes according to the principles of postmodernist poetics.
Judging by this, Jeremić managed to become, years later, a representative of dilettantism in literary criticism, the creator of accusations that did not essentially touch Kiš's text, let alone his way of processing well-known or less well-known topics, nor did he offer attractive ideas that would devalue his topicality. Disgusted by Kiš's literary tricks, with which he achieved that his Anatomy class, read by even those who don't normally read novels, Jeremić only tickled our imagination, pointing out the full extent of the time of dishonor in which accusations rained down on true creators.
Within the framework of such an interpretation, it is rightly noted that Kiš does not only use the creative transposition of reality, but also takes over other people's literary ideas, in order to respond to social challenges. But, of course, all the pieces that make up the Tomb for Boris Davidovich, do not discredit his literary skill, based on Borges's literature. Jeremić is bold in his explanations: Borges is a creator, Kiš is an imitator (p. 83), according to which his work has no literary value. Reducing Kiš to an imitator of Borges' literary design, it is claimed that it is an artificial creation, without the invention of the spirit who created it. Apart from formal similarities, Kiš is, according to this, the author of an ephemeral work that lacks innovation.
In an effort to destroy Kiš's mode of storytelling, Jeremić develops an entire theory of epigonism that disavows the unworthy role of epigones - followers in literature. Jeremić constantly notes that he wants to stand in defense of creativity, against usurpers and epigones, to create a study that will serve as a reading of general importance for literature. His merciless criticism should enlighten and educate readers, and lead to the expulsion of epigones from our literature. This mechanical - passive repetition, superficial imitation of certain layers of someone else's text, imitation of the Argentine writer, because Jeremić is for this purpose determined that Borges' original work is incomparably more valuable than Kis's poor imitation, represents the crowning evidence of a insightful - scientific criticism, which was based on hasty remarks and unfounded positions, with a parrot-like repetition of how our writer takes over other people's texts. Jeremić makes a self-important statement, while Borges lists the names of the authors and the works he uses, for example Shakespeare, Coleridge or Coffee, Kiš skillfully hides his bibliography. The only truth in this is that Kiš takes from the books of real authors in literature or philosophy, but from this material he creates his own authentic creation. Jeremić missed the basic idea of the postmodernist writing technique, based on the interweaving of civilizational symbols, in accordance with the powers of his own imagination. Regardless of whether Kiš always provides a precise register of the used parts of the text, incorporated into his stories, his work is not a literary chrestomathy, an order that cannot be labeled as a personal creation. Jeremić cites the opinion as his crowning argument Cajoa flowers in the afterword to the French translation of Borges' texts collected in A history of dishonor, for example, his story is: The Masked Dyeer Hakim of Merv, a completely original creation, although the similarity to the historical framework of the Arab and Persian chroniclers is obvious. Alas, sue benevolent critic Jeremic: How fortunate that such a conclusion can also be drawn about Kiš's book The Tomb for Boris Davidovich.. Need I repeat that these remarks contain an entire arsenal of unworthy weapons aimed against Kiš, a sarcastic disparagement of his literature, with no less an aim than to prove that he is archaic and ignorant?
Obviously, the fact that Kiš directly mocked Stalinism, which, despite the split in 1948, was still not dead as a concept in socialist Yugoslavia, could have been the hidden motive of his persecutors, who included university professors, writers and journalists. If in this case there was also vanity due to Kiš's international success, this does not diminish the guilt of the persecutors, their shameless intention to discredit his literature by quasi-aesthetic standards. The orchestrated attack began in late 1976 with an attack by a journalist from the magazine Duga Dragoljub Golubović Pižon, when he accused Kiš of using excerpts from the works of other authors in his stories without citing their sources, only to ignite polemical passion in the Zagreb magazine About, including writers Miodrag Bulatović i Branimir Šćepanović, also inspired the Corypheus in the anti-Kišov struggle, Professor Dragan Jeremić. What most unites his critics is their closedness to new tendencies in literature and their inability to destroy the writer's cosmopolitan ideal of writing, and the latent jealousy that looked with disgust at his early fame and success showed something else, how much the spirit of Stalinism was still alive. Kiš's book Tomb for Boris Davidovich, was an open attack on communism and its brutal practice of torturing victims, even its former like-minded people. The lesson that Kiš gave, not at all gentle in Anatomy class, was a matter of life and death for him, because allowing his reputation as a plagiarist to spread could have completely destroyed him. Kiš rejected the role intended for him by ill-wishers and envious people, and entered into a fierce polemic to prove his innocence and send a message to the literary public about the futility of his opponents, otherwise he would have been dead as a writer, before his physical death.
Jeremić maliciously warns that unlike Borges, who is a creator, Kiša is forced to emulate his a great desire to write books despite not having the skills necessary to realize this desireNow we are delving into Kish's psychological profile, and the idea of his unhealthy ambition to become a writer is imposed, despite to the fact that he is untalented and incapable of that profession, As an allegedly good connoisseur of Kiš's literature, Jeremić goes a step further, calling out that the latter is not just an epigone, but a crude forger who plagiarizes other people's themes, motifs and material. He does this without the persuasiveness of the proto-text, insofar as he lacks the natural talent to achieve the desired aesthetic impression. As a significant deviation, it is insisted that with Borges what is real is what he himself invented, while Kiš tries to present as real what he took over from others. Jeremić denies Danilo Kiš the right to not be obliged to cite his sources precisely, as a scientist, nor to unravel the facts that created the tangles in his literary magic. Writing is not re-writing, because the re-writing itself, inserted into the fabric of the text, acquires a new meaning, increasingly richer in meaning, and more inscrutable by its position within the dense texture of literary language. This refutes the basic objection that Kish in his palimpseistic procedure advocated the concept of imitative (compiler) literature, nor, except metaphorically, did he use magician's obsession to cover up his unoriginality and essential ignorance of the meaning of creativity. And when he writes on the basis of borrowed texts, literature is his own creation, a wonderful world created in his creative imagination, a building in which the contours of his imaginative ability to imagine the mysterious contours of life are outlined. He is not an apologist for what came before him someone already said it well, by downloading other people's thought and stylistic formulations, but an author of a stature that can be considered a unique literary creator.
It is obvious that Jeremić flaunted his knowledge of literary theory and aesthetics, philosophy and culture, reproaching Kiš for his lack of systematic education. He seeks evidence for his ignorance of the theses of the Russian formalists, his ignorance of the Prague linguistic circle, his being stuck in theory. Shklovsky, the use of outdated positivist ideas Hippolyta The Real, anachronisms that should refute his modernist approach to literature. Jeremić believes that his critical pen should have a therapeutic effect so that the writer is freed from a maniacal need to copy other people's books. In a way, he is a doctor who should investigate sick writer, in order to experience inner enlightenment in some kind of inner catharsis.
The objection that a writer must cite his sources is, for Kiš, misplaced, because sources are decomposed to that extent, already by their very displacement from para-literary reality to the center of literary reality, becoming, through the process of literary mystification, fiction - a river into which all its tributaries flow, all trace of which is ultimately lost.
Kiš's literary significance lies in his knowledge of tradition, his comprehensive insight into the diverse methods of modern storytelling, his dedication to the symbols of the spirituality of ancient civilizations and modern poetics, his ability to combine old myths and present them in a new unity. And like every great mind, he was a cosmopolitan who was close to all cultures in equal measure, to everything that prevails and appears in the fundamental mythical images of the world.
In contrast to this, Jeremić in Narcissus without a face wants to push the thesis that Kiš is a superficial interpreter of literary theoretical orientations, an inadequate interpreter of ancient philosophers, Russian formalists, without any serious foundation for his views expressed in Anatomy classJeremić is trying to seriously considers the literary theory on which Kiš's practice of modeling stories is based, with the a priori accepted thesis that he is creatively powerless, and his literature strange vase someone else's flowersAccording to this, Kiš's uncreative way of writing could not find support in any theory, which is why his poetics is actually overbearing, a manner in which the use of artificial aids is declared to be art. Jeremić extends his indictment to the entire literary opus, revealing that the writer is already in Sandstone used the method of gluing together other people's texts and compositional solutions, which was perfected to the point of absurdity in Tombs for Boris Davidovich. However, this attempt to reject the creative impulse in a literary work ends in sterile constructions, incessant repetitions of the same or similar arguments that in formal and substantive terms it is an unscrupulous copyist. These stiff phrases hide the arrogance with which the professor, from the height of his learning on Olympus, vainly tried to erase Kiš's name from literature, to throw him into the wastebasket, branding him as an imitator, and an unoriginal scribbler, and also a dishonest being, capable of stealing other people's achievements.
Precisely because of the misunderstanding of the documentary character of the work, a group of critics, among whom Jeremić was the leader, revealed to the public that it was plagiarism. In fact, Kiš's conscious intention to demystify Stalinism, and indirectly all communist regimes, including the Yugoslav one, which were founded on the revolutionary achievements of the class struggle and inspired by the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917, was a hidden trigger for attacks on his literature. Danilo Kiš wrote The tomb, as a testimony to the collapse of revolutionary ideals, the collapse of a utopia that showed in practice all the brutality that was denied even by the Western left-wing intelligentsia. Critics correctly observed that Tomb for Boris Davidovich, the explosive force of a huge detonation, bomb, whose explosion destroys the essential communist ideology and practice (Alen Mikec, 2021). Basically, the incrimination of Kiš's book dedicated to the downfall of revolutionaries in the post-revolutionary period had political motives, which his critics concealed, trying to belittle his literary authenticity. However, the legitimacy of his transposition of texts from other writers has not been questioned in any way, since it is an already adopted project of world literature, mixing fictional and documentary plans, and introducing a historical document into the reality of the book. After all, Kiš nowhere denies that he took over the themes, the fact that understands a work of art in terms of form through associations with other works of artKiš's poetics emerged in communication with other writers, primarily Borges and memoirs. Karel Štajner 7.000 days in Siberia.
Adhering to the idea of an aesthetician Benedetto Croce He who repeats, creates nothing, that is, he is not an artist., Jeremić persistently defends the position about Kiš's inauthentic literary production. For the umpteenth time, he warns readers Narcissus without a face, that his literature is a chrestomathy, a compilation, a retelling of ideas, plots, descriptions, tones, stylizations, which has little to do with true literary creativity. The writer is only masterful in the epigonic use of other people's transpositions of reality: In the novel The Garden, the ashes follow Bruno Schulz, in The Sandbox - Joyce, in The Tomb for Boris Davidovich - Borges (p. 138). Jeremić sarcastically states that the writer's epigonic love for Borges, with some delay, in relation to Borgesian writers in Croatia. However, Jeremić tries to wholeheartedly refute what cannot be refuted, that Kiš has the right to use literary texts as documentary material, as well as para-literary, biographical and memoir material, and to decorate with your signature.
Dominantly, the accusation refers to the first story in Tombs for Boris Davidovich, Knife with rosewood handle, which is taken from Štajner's autobiographical book. Jeremić quotes Štajner verbatim, pointing to the thematic framework adopted by Danilo Kiš. However, the writer developed the basic motif as a unique plot pattern, created dramatic tension, changed the composition, pointing to the culminating darkness of the entire case and the senselessness of the investigative procedure.
Jeremic finds source to expand your accusation u to the second story (p. 165), The Sow Who Devours Her Farrow, also in a plot that the author takes from Steiner. Namely, Steiner states that the Irishman Gould Verskoyls, after he confessed that he was a republican, not a communist, was arrested by the NKVD and sentenced to prison. Jeremić meticulously establishes that the description of the Irish fighter in the introduction to the story is a quote from the book Jeanne Paria: Jam Joy for the Sams. Kiš thematizes the fate of an Irish hero on the side of the anti-fascist front in the Spanish Civil War, who was deceived by zealous Komsomol members and sent to a Stalinist camp. The writer decisively responded that not distinguishing the plot (memory material) from the plot's plot, not knowing the basic distinction between plot and plot, and being a lecturer in aesthetics, that's a possible thing, I guess only in our country.
(Continued in the next issue)
Bonus video:
