The second day of the Booka Writers and Books Festival shows the consistent quality of the announced guest writers. This Monday, this was confirmed by the guest appearance of Serbian writer, Nenad Google, who presented an original view of the modern pace of life to a wider audience with his novels.
Google has published three novels so far, “I Died on Friday,” “The Splendor of a Second,” and “I Lived a Thousand Years.” The central thematic thread that connects all of these novels is an exploration of the human position in the context of spirituality, universal order, and morality.
Google said the title of his first novel, "I Died on Friday," shows that death can be a transformative process.
"So why 'I died on Friday'? That sentence 'I died on Friday' cannot be uttered by a man who is truly dead. So, only a living man can utter it, so then the death is either metaphorical, or maybe the man has crossed over to the other side, but it turns out that he is alive on the other side. Of course, this is about both in some way, but above all it is the death of the old man and the birth of the new man. I mean, we are usually the killers of our own possibilities in life," he said.
He adds that people use their own will to kill their opportunities because they strive for comfort, but a person must use their will to lead a fulfilling life.
"You can't just do what suits you, what pleases you, and so on. However, we use that power of ours in the wrong way, killing possibilities. And we should be killing bad habits, that bad self. The book 'I Died on Friday' is actually that. So, a man who lives, a modern man, a mathematics professor, who lives through an ordinary modern world, but it is very unusual and destructive. He simply betrays his family, he betrays himself. And he has the opportunity to improve, but he doesn't recognize it. And that man simply thinks that it is important to live long or short. That is wrong. Because we can only live shallowly or deeply," believes Google.
After promoting his first novel, Google told "Vijesti" that he believes that the spirit is the most neglected part of the human personality in the modern era.
"In essence, the spirit is perhaps the most neglected part of our personality in the modern world and in the spirit of this time. But without the spirit, there is no man. We have four parts, of which, so to speak, like a puzzle, we form a whole. These are the body, heart, mind and spirit. And I have the impression that somehow the spirit is the most neglected. That body has come to the fore, today, materially, economically and so on. On the other hand, the mind and heart are somehow always there at hand, which is to say, a person uses them as tools to go through life. However, this spirit is often neglected," said Google.
Speaking about his novel "I Lived a Thousand Years", he states that his goal was a thematic whole consisting of eternity, future, past, and present.
"In the novel 'He Lived for a Thousand Years', I tried to create these four narrative streams. Eternity, future, past and present, and to embrace them. However, I think the essence is that we need to be focused on eternity, because man is a human being, and that is a being whose forehead is turned towards the age, towards eternity," he explains.
He adds that, in addition to the Danish philosopher Serena Kjerkegora and other philosophical schools, the greatest influence on him is left by Orthodox patristics and the teachings of the Church Fathers.
"Here, Kierkegaard, for example, I really liked that book 'Fear and Trembling'. As for philosophy, I even wanted to study philosophy and I am very interested in ancient Greece, and German idealism and so on. However, if we can consider it philosophy, the greatest influence on me was still the church fathers and the Orthodox patristics. And that is some literature that, if we consider it philosophical literature, it had the greatest influence on me, with the fact that I am very curious and open and, of course, for others as well. However, that is some kind of foundation, at least as far as I am concerned," he says.
Mass relativization of beauty, truth and goodness
Google believes that the cause of the decline in aesthetic qualities in modern art lies in the massive relativization of beauty, truth, and goodness.
"As for aesthetics, you used to have this triad in ancient Greece, beautiful, good and true. Beautiful was associated with good and true. When you look at cartoons, when you look at stories, once good characters were beautiful. What happened in the 19th century was the French symbolists who created a new triad. They took beautiful out of the triad, and put ugly in. Now when you look, you have cartoons where the main characters are ugly, for example Shrek, he is good, but he is ugly. And, simply, that aesthetic has started to change. Of course, then the modern world and civilization relativize, even goodness, so now the question is what is good, and even truth. That, I think, is the problem," said Google.
Bonus video:
