many before them, leave to go work somewhere where their knowlstill do that today with things that I think aren’t the best. Writing is edge is valued... I don’t know if there are some other countries where erasing, while something worthy also remains.” there is the generally accepted characteristic: clever man, and a fool. One man who was important in Serbia’s 20th century culture, If we consider that politics stands behind everything said today, writer Borislav Mihajlović Mihiz, played a major role in the life of this that is not true, because today’s politics is merely the result of previous writer. As a student of dramaturgy, Kovačević was fortunate enough policy. That which happens in 2017 or will happen in 2018, is merely for his first play, The Marathon Family, to be read Mihiz, performed the result of the systematic destruction of the nation since 1944. If you at Atelier 212, and directed by Ljubomir Muci Draškić: arrive in “liberator’s” uniforms in a city like Belgrade, and in that city, “Mihiz was one of the most precious people I met in Belgrade, and the within a period of just a few months, you shoot between 9,000 and 13,000 most important person to me privately. If not every day, then certainly a week doesn’t pass in which I don’t remember him. And I always have the same question: what would Mihiz say now, what would he do? Whenever I was in doubt during his life, whenever I didn’t know what I would do, I would call him on the phone and would always repeat the same sentence: “Sir, I have a little problem. I would like to ask you what you think...” And he would always give the same answer: “And why does it concern you what I think?” “Mihiz was the first to read my new dramas, all the way until his departure. After his death, I had a major misunderstanding with myself. I could no longer take my texts to him; I could no longer hear the remarks that he would say to me. And I often recall how, after the first premiere, after The Marathon Family, while I stood at the bar in Atelier 212, attempting to figure out what was happening, he said: “Relax and rejoice. This is your first and last HYPNOSIS premiere.” of the most valuable and most I looked at him, according to that rule that advice They foster vulgarity and a educated people, and replace is listened to in order not to be accepted, as Mihiz lack of culture, contempt for them with semi-feral tribes that himself would say, and it was not quite clear to me everything that is human. It is have wandered into that city, what he meant by that. I realised it all a little later, that same year, when I had my second premiere at absurd, but unfortunately true, you have decapitated a nation, yo have killed what was best. Atelier 212, Radovan III. that it is today an insult to be That band came, brought by That was already a different feeling, only for an educated man. The more mindless commanders, led by everything to later turn into “already seen”. educated a man is, the more war criminal Josip Broz, who “I never again experience the excitement of that was never tried. This is immefirst premiere, neither in Belgrade nor elsewhere he is a nincompoop, because diately linked to the unfortunate in the world.” he has wasted his life converting of an agricultural, As a man who built a system of values, not only learning, reading, dealing agrarian country into a partyin his family but also among those who watched and with worthless things based, workers’, semi-industrial, remembered the monologues and dialogues of his semi-social creation that was plays, he now sees all the bad sides of life that is financed externally for as long as that was necessary. When Josip Broz lived ever faster and more superficially: died, if he died, he was succeeded by Milošević with the same arrogance, “People watch television mesmerised all day, with its increasingly but in completely different historical circumstances. We had two men destructive and morbid reality shows. They foster vulgarity and a lack who thoroughly destroyed Serbia. What we are living today is just a result of culture, contempt for everything that is human. It is absurd, but of the dictatorship of domestic and foreign powers. The bill arrived and unfortunately true, that it is today an insult to be an educated man. none of the debtors are there to pay it, so it is being paid by the people.” The more educated a man is, the more he is a nincompoop, because In order to be able to write his latest play, Hypnosis of one love, he has wasted his life learning, reading, dealing with worthless things. Kovačević spent 20 years collecting data that primarily relates to young In short, he has not managed to do anything great. And the term great people who have abandoned the country. When Tito first opened the today implies only grotesque material goods, the grief and misery of borders of the former Yugoslavia, a million of them left, about which vulgarity. I guess that’s why these young and brilliant mathematicians the writer says: of ours seem like a confusing incident. And that’s why they will, like MARCH
|
149
| 81