Imi’s Reviews > Birth Certificate: The Story of Danilo Kiš > Status Update
Imi
is on page 199 of 376
Raised in a culture that prized epic consistency and pan-Slavic loyalty, many Montenegrin communists could not accept that Mother Russia, cradle of communism, leader in the anti-fascist struggle, might be wrong. One of them summed up their confusion: "I do not know what all this is about, but I know that Russia is great and Stalin is mighty."
— Apr 11, 2018 12:55AM
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Imi
is on page 302 of 376
Kiš grew convinced that words had played a part in his illness. [...] He also told an interviewer that he had written his cancer into existence by describing the father's tumour in "The Encyclopaedia of the Dead". For doctors had told him that his own cancer dated approximately from the time when he wrote that story. To someone with his belief in the power of language, cause and effect were all too clear.
— Apr 11, 2018 08:06AM
Imi
is on page 293 of 376
Yet, as before, finishing a book plunged him into despair and self-doubt, leading to a long period of what he called "chronic idleness". He wrote to his German translator, "I'm not working at all. (Reading isn't work, reading is therapy.)"
— Apr 11, 2018 07:49AM
Imi
is on page 279 of 376
Nostalgia is memory's brooding double, the twin that saps the energy of recollection, channelling its creative juice into stagnant sumps. As remembrance was his literary element, nostalgia was a perennial temptation, impossible to disown. "And so, gradually and quite unconsciously, my mother poisoned me with memories," says Andi in Garden, Ashes, "nurturing a passion for old photographs and mementoes..."
— Apr 11, 2018 07:43AM
Imi
is on page 271 of 376
It would be called Serbo-Croatian in Serbia, and Croato-Serbian, or 'Croatian or Serbian', in Croatia. This compromise did not mollify cultural narionalists in either republic, who refused to commit themselves to a single linguistic standard. Croatian writers in particular insisted on the primacy of the Croatian literary language.
Kiš publicly despised this linguistic nationalism.
— Apr 11, 2018 07:28AM
Kiš publicly despised this linguistic nationalism.
Imi
is on page 270 of 376
The anomalous oddity of Serbo-Croatian was not lost on Kiš; to the contrary, he liked its inauthenticity: the very feature that offended nationalists. As he told a conference in France, in spring 1989, "I was a lector for a long time, but I never managed to explain to my students which language they were learning! [...] was the language spoken in Yugoslavia, but [...] it isn't the only language spoken there."
— Apr 11, 2018 07:25AM
Imi
is on page 270 of 376
...he saw this language [Serbo-Croat] as the foundation of Yugoslavia's unity as a state. [...] He was also defending [...] his hybrid origins, his refusal to opt for the sectarian identities that were available (Serbian, Montenegrin, Jewish). He wrote the Ekavian variant of Serbo-Croatian, which is the more Serbian vowel form; but he used the Latin alphabet, which is more Croatian than the Cyrillic alphabet.
— Apr 11, 2018 07:21AM
Imi
is on page 248 of 376
After the dreary confinement of Cetinje, Belgrade meant liberation. As well as the cafes and social life, it had a cultural scene that was neither overshadowed by a heroic, folkloric past nor tyrannised by provincial communists.
— Apr 11, 2018 06:26AM
Imi
is on page 212 of 376
By praising his White Russian teachers, Kiš delivered a mild and-communist snub. More to the point, he was paying respect to the resilience of political exiles who refused to be capsized by history. [...] For Kiš was immune to Serbian and Montenegrin empathy with mystic Russia's sufferings and greatness. Saturated in Russian literature, he was appalled by the unbroken pageant of cruelty in Russian history.
— Apr 11, 2018 01:37AM
Imi
is on page 200 of 376
...he could not write about [his mother] [...] Kiš's father, by contrast, was remote and enigmatic even before he "disappeared" in Auschwitz, so his fate could only be imagined. Where Milica's mute suffering, compliant and self-sacrificial, rebuked the playfulness of fiction, Eduard's life could be re-created as a vagrant spirit, a Wandering Jew, blessed and cursed with a yearning for unattainable liberty.
— Apr 11, 2018 01:02AM
Imi
is on page 187 of 376
In 1982, he told an interviewer: "I owe myself a book about my Cetinje years [...] Some sort of book, a novel—this exists in me. Whether and when I will write it, I don't know [...]
[Montenegro's] patriarchal clan structures, cult of martial heroism, droning oral poetry, ferocious traditionalism [...], backwardness, and poverty could not stir Kiš's creative imagination, compassion for victims of terror [...]
— Apr 10, 2018 09:32AM
[Montenegro's] patriarchal clan structures, cult of martial heroism, droning oral poetry, ferocious traditionalism [...], backwardness, and poverty could not stir Kiš's creative imagination, compassion for victims of terror [...]
