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N O V E L S
First Movie It was Viva Zapata, which I saw thirty times, because it was shown in the Čajetina cinema. The film was shown in the school gym, where beds were placed for us, village children, who lived there. There was probably something from the dramaturgy of the movie that remained in me, and there was something I didn’t like, such as Zapata dying at the end. That, for instance, helped me suggest Krvavac, who made the movie about my brother-in-law Vladimir Perić Valter, not to have the hero die at the end, which Šiba accepted, as the wish of Valter’s family.
In Thailand, on the bridge that was demolished when the movie “The Bridge on the River Kwai” was shot
Young Ljubivoje in Užice in 1956 and later in Belgrade with poets Brana Crnčević and Milovan Vitezović
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for tomorrow about the most beautiful mountain we are living in, Zlatibor. I wrote “Zlatibor, you are golden, that is why I love you”. She said that a poem has to be longer, and that I should continue in that manner. So I wrote a few more verses: “Zlatibor, oh, mountain dear, / people all live nicely here. / No one can touch you, / your calm streams too. / My family also lives there, / Zlatibor, you’re a fairytale.” She sent the poem to Pioneer Newspaper and I was awarded with a graphite pencil with an eraser on top. This is what decided that I would become a writer. The support in childhood from the teacher and parents is necessary. First journey. Departure. My first departure “into the world” was the trip from Ljubiš to “the city”, Čajetina, to the Lower Gymnasium. I was surprised to see so many trees “in the city”. In the village I imagined the city shackled in concrete streets, packed with houses, skyscrapers,
without any greenery at all. I liked Čajetina because it was full of trees. The departure to Čajetina was the first step of my gradual but definitive leaving the country. The idea of “returning one day to be a teacher in Ljubiš”, as I wrote in my diary those days, has been with me all the time, but in vain. Some of my poems have traces of that idea. “In mid-spring in Paris, / people wear Japanese silk / and in Ljubiš nearer to me / they are wearing April flowers” (“In Mid-Spring, 1973) Or another, older one: “The sky fell on the chest of the stone / Like unexpected rain / In the place where my shoulder is touched / By the breath of summer in Ljubiš” (“Evening”, 1966) I have traveled throughout the world as a reporter of Radio-Television Belgrade, I’ve seen many wonders, filmed them and wrote about them, but none of the world wonders could outwonder my Ljubiš and my Zlatibor. Important stops on my way. From Ljubiš I have taken the fascination with verses and ambition to write. From Čajetina – the first serious love experience and the first written sonnet dedicated to Sekulić Olivera, starting: “A sonnet wreath I make for you / You who are not far / I, who is cheating myself / That someone could love me too!” From Užice, even today I carry the doubt in everything I do, healthy doubt which doesn’t encourage, but initiates, makes me work better, write wittier, live more naturally, love more convincingly. I made first real friends