The program of the third day of the 28th edition of the Nikšić Literary Meeting was marked by guest appearances Dragana Jovanović Danilov i Dragan Lakićević.
This year's event is being held in honor of the 110th anniversary of his birth. Branko Ćopić and 55 years since the publication of "Gardens of the Color of Mallow", organized by the Public Institution "Njegoš" and under the slogan "Only beautiful things, because that's the only thing that remains after man". In this spirit, the promotion of the book "My Ćopić" was also held Dragan Lakićević, and the program moderator was Darko Nikolić.
The idea of unifying all the texts he has written about Ćopić over the decades was born this year, Lakićević revealed, partly because of the anniversary.
"This came about more out of love for Branko and his world than from literary theoretical considerations and the like," he said.
He spoke about the memory of his first encounter with the work of Branko Ćopić, recorded in the prologue chapter of the book “Introduction to Ćopić”.
"He described the role of literature and the cult status of books in a very striking way during his childhood. Raised in such an environment, he says, it was easy for him to experience fiction intensely, to find himself and others in the heroes of stories, and to recognize his mother's village in a village from a completely different part of the country," the Library announced.
The author emphasized that all of Ćopić’s literature is at the transition “from the old to the new”, a poet who grew up on old wars and old rebellions, and then participated in one himself. He emphasized that he was a poet, an apologist for that rebellion, and even its critic in the end. When analyzing the texts that the rebellion gave rise to, Lakićević focused most on the collection of stories “The Garden of the Mallow Color”, but also on the novel “The Experiences of Nikoletina Bursaća”. He also deals with the phenomenon of the success of the book “Eagles Fly Early”, Ćopić’s language, his alchemy of storytelling and the dominant role of the defense motif in his poetry.
The book "My Ćopić" was published by the publishing house "Partenon" from Belgrade. It contains all the texts he wrote about Branko Ćopić over the course of half a century, starting from his student days.
The program ended with a literary evening by one of the most translated and awarded contemporary writers - Dragan Jovanović Danilov, and the moderator was Ksenija Rakočević.
"The evening was marked by a conversation about the writer's philosophy of creation and literature, about the vitality and 'bloodiness' of poetry, which must be deeply experienced in order to be true. Danilov emphasized that a writer must deal with topics that are authentically his own, then read a poem dedicated to his grandmother as an example of a personal, sincere starting point," the Library announced.
Special attention was drawn to the idea that "voices open hearts", and that a literary evening should resemble a concert - a lively gathering where the poet reads his verses, because it is his voice that is the most faithful interpreter of what is written, and poetry is actually nothing but music.
He also spoke about translation, emphasizing the important, but thankless, position of translators, without whom a work could not survive in other languages and cultures.
"The conversation also touched on the topics of prose - the author's ambivalent attitude towards his prose work, from which he would single out the novels "What the Snow Tells" and "The Deer of the Night" - a novel about Sava Šumanović. The author also pointed out that it is not easy to impose your novels when you are already marked as a poet, and that it was a challenge that required a lot of strength," the Library summarized.
At the end of the evening, the writer greeted those present with a striking message, symbolically rounding off the literary encounter with words.
"All of us here, it seems, as if we are on a ship, as if we are passengers who have set sail on some distant journey... And when a ship sets sail, usually 40 percent of the passengers on that ship are believers, 40 percent atheists, and 20 percent of them are undecided. However, when a storm hits and the ship starts to rock, 100 percent of the passengers are believers. When the storm passes and the ship returns to its previous state, we again have 40 percent believers, 40 percent atheists, and 20 percent undecided. I think that, after all, all of us here tonight were, as Branko Ćopić said, believers in poetry," Danilov said.
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