Goran Marković at Poets' Square: Story has power

Terrified by the thought that he will start living off of memories and the past, encouraged by the thought that the most important thing is yet to come, in the meantime crowned with numerous awards and recognitions, the director, screenwriter, writer and retired university professor Goran Markovic He works constantly, both then and now. In addition, circumstances forced him to do so, although there were periods when he could not film, one of which is right now, and there was another during Milosevic. However, in such periods, he wrote the most significant texts, both in the theater and in literature.

He said this while visiting the packed Poets' Square in Budva on Monday evening, when the literary program of this year's Theatre City festival continued. On that occasion, Goran Marković presented his latest book entitled "Zavod", and the interview with him was conducted by Danka Ivanovic, writer, French language teacher and translator.

The evening was spent in an extensive discussion about Marković's artistic and life biography, his understanding of success, his relationship to literature and film, as well as his novels "The Belgrade Trio", "The Institute" and "Hamlet in Pavilion Number Six". The audience had the opportunity to hear detailed testimonies about the author's views, working methods and literary and film poetics.

When asked by Ivanovic about his attitude towards success and what he considers to be the measure of success, Markovic replied that he was always terrified by the thought of living off the past.

"I have given myself a life maxim or point of view - that success corrupts, and failure hardens. I have also received many, many awards, both film and theater. I tried to push it aside because I was terrified of the thought of starting to live from memories and starting to live from the past. I constantly had the impression that the main thing was yet to come. Although the years passed, I constantly suggested to myself that I should throw it aside. Secondly, circumstances also forced me. There were periods when I could not film, now is exactly such a period, and there was another one during the Milošević era. And then I wrote the main things in both theater and literature," Marković emphasized.

Speaking about writing, he stated that writing is learned only through the act of writing itself, recalling advice he received from a colleague. Zivojin Pavlović.

"He simply told me: Well, you know, there's no school for writing, you just sit and write and there's no other way. And I, when writing scripts for my films, tried very hard to solve in writing what needed to be recorded in front of the camera. So, I wrote versions and versions of the script at a time when there were no computers yet, but six sheets of paper, five indigo and on a typewriter like a typist used to be. But, for example, for "National Class" I think I wrote about eleven or twelve versions of the script. Each one had over 100 pages, that's thousands of pages that I typed like a typist used to be. That hitting those keys actually teaches you how to write," said Marković.

He added that his tendency to combine documentary and fictional in literature came from his film work itself.

"It helped me that I wrote those scripts, ugly and ugly versions of the scripts, because later when I was working on, say, books, when I was working on "The Belgrade Trio", I was actually directing. Which means that the entire novel was made up of real and fictional documents. What I had previously done as a director was to invent things that were supposed to look credible in front of the camera, to look real, and I simulated the inventions as reality. And I transferred that to literature, I invented documents and they seemed authentic to people..."

Ivanovic pointed out that in "Belgrade Trio" and "Institute", Marković created a special narrative framework through the play of fact and fiction, in which it is not crucial whether something is true or fabricated, but whether it appears convincing and coherent within the work. Marković responded that we live in a time of lies, which are becoming the main activity of many.

“But I was thinking about what cannot be faked and what cannot be lied to. Poetry cannot be lied to. I don't mean poetry in the sense of written poetry. Any kind of poetics, if something is poetic, it cannot be a lie. And conversely, if something is a lie, it cannot be poetic. And poetics is actually the basic yardstick by which, in my opinion, this world can be oriented.”

Speaking in detail about “The Institute”, Marković explained that the idea for the novel came about by chance, when he came across information about the Institute for Treatment with Cold Water, Electricity and Swedish Gymnastics in Belgrade from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The search for this detail led him to the personality Huga Klajna, the first Serbian psychoanalyst and theater director, who particularly fascinated him. In the continuation of the conversation, Marković described his process of writing Klein's Lost Diary.

“Well, the main game is that I, by questioning Hugo Klein, established that he had been engaged in self-analysis all his life and that he had written it down in his diary, which, unfortunately, burned down during the Allied bombing in 1944 and disappeared. And then I sat down and wrote his diary. What else could I do, I wrote his diary based on what was left of him in other scientific works. And since he was a director, then I imposed on him my directorial knowledge and my taste and my directorial conception, and then I said “well, that man could think like me”. So his diary is actually half my diary, but it is kept as his.”

Ivanovic then read a passage about theater from that diary, and Markovic then reminded her that Klein was Freud's student and that he had direct access to his lectures, and that he left authentic records of psychoanalysis.

When asked about the importance of story in literature and film, Marković said:

"If I were to put everything I've done in a pile and someone were to ask me what I do for a living, I would say - I'm a storyteller. I tell stories. That's what has intrigued me all my life. And I even quoted Christ somewhere, where Christ in the Gospel mentions "I speak to them in stories because they don't know how to understand otherwise". So, a story has the power to make things that are obviously there, that are obvious, that are around us, when they take the form of a story, suddenly gain meaning, gain an idea. Because every story has an idea. You can't tell something that doesn't have a goal, doesn't have an idea. And that idea is usually what's most important", Marković emphasized.

The audience then had the opportunity to hear an explanation of his novel "Hamlet in Pavilion Number Six", which was born from an encounter with the practice of actors in psychiatric clinics working with patients in a play.

"Two parallel threads run. The question of who is normal, what it means to be normal, and the question of what Hamlet is. And this happens in three places - in a psychiatric clinic where the main character, an actor, goes for therapy; in a theater where he plays Hamlet; and in a mental hospital where he works with patients and prepares Hamlet. And those three threads were interesting to me and I dealt with them a lot," Marković pointed out.

Speaking about his personal research and inspiration for the novel, he cited specific examples from France and experiences with psychiatric hospitals.

“I was preparing to shoot a film in France that takes place in a psychiatric clinic and I was looking for money in France to shoot it. I was in contact with a famous Parisian psychiatrist who took me to a provincial psychiatric clinic where an actor was preparing a play with patients. The hospital hired him to direct, young actors. I asked him if there was any result, was it being watched? He said: “No, the important thing is the process”. What is the process? In that while the actors are preparing a character, they somehow come out of themselves and enter that character. And here in the hospital I try to make these patients come out of their illness in order to enter the character. For example, this one no longer stutters. He stuttered before, before those rehearsals he stopped stuttering. And so on. That was very, very impressive to me.”

Marković further highlighted the historical and cultural context of psychiatry, including the first home for the mentally ill in the Balkans.

“It is about the institution “Home for the Mentally Ill”, the first mental hospital in the Balkans. It exists, it is wonderful, but it is completely neglected, devastated and locked. There are medical histories that are a hundred years old on the floor. Someone threw them away. It is a cultural crime. What kind of country do we live in? The building of the first mental hospital in the Balkans is rotting, the fates of these people are lying on the floor. I think it is terrible.”

The evening was rounded off by numerous questions from the interested audience, who filled Poet's Square to the brim.