Time For Summing Up

VREME: Do you feel cut off from your past and your past environment?

KOVAC: I write about the past, and as regards isolation, it all depends on me. I had wanted to disassociate myself from all of this and to devote myself to myself and my books anyway. These are the years when one should slowly begin summing up one's life and I have some plans, I have the need, I am simply obliged to say something more about these tragic topics of ours and to make them lasting in the way books are.

What you write, is it part of the Croatian, Serbian, Central European, South European or some other literature? Do you ever think about that?

I sometimes myself wonder what literature I belong to. Some say I am a Croatian writer, others that I am Serbian, but I try not to attach importance to that, I neither negate, nor emphasize, nor deny it. As a writer, I was formed in the Belgrade school and, from that viewpoint, it is appropriate that I belong to Serbian literature, there, where my friends are. On the other hand, intimately, and vocationally, linguistically and stylistically as well, I am closer to Croatian or Bosnian writers. Once, it was easy to reconcile this by opting for the attribute Yugoslav, but, as this is no longer possible, we are left with shutting up in our own little national groups or totally ignoring any kind of affiliation.

Do you consider Serbian and Croatian two distinct languages or two versions of the same language? Do you think the polarization of the two languages was caused above all by politics?

That is a political issue too, unfortunately, as politics interfered with all its coarseness, ignorance and manipulations. Political impact on linguistics is very prominent in Croatia, because it creates a language distinguishing patriots, or what is even more ridiculous, (Croatian President) Tudjman's admirers, while actually none of these so-called philologists know their own language. An eminent Croatian linguist recently said it was easy to recognize a newly fledged Croat because he stuttered when he spoke in public. This was well said, because the newly fledged Croats stutter from fear of making a mistake, of revealing and politically undermining themselves by their language. Serbs are more tolerant in that respect, they do not fear loan-words and borrow anything they like.

How did you feel the expulsion of Serbs from Krajina?

I feel it not only as a Serbian, but as a Croatian tragedy as well. The Serbs in Krajina had greatly contributed to the violent resolution of numerous questions. All they had done to others, burnt their homes, killed old men, destroyed churches, has turned against them. They have now undergone a kind of self-expulsion, self-punishment, self-hate, because they had done a lot of evil there.

You are of the opinion that the Serbs in Krajina are to blame for what happened to them?

Yes, they are extremely to blame, not the Serbs, not the poor people there, but the primitives who played at being politicians and listened to bar windbags. Had they went about it peacefully and raised international uproar for each injustice done to them, they would have had the world's support, they would have played an important role in the development of democracy and they would have remained in their homes. But, they wanted force and they were thrown out by force! I don't regret that the primitive yokel political gendarmes were thrown out, the Serbs themselves should have thrown them out a long time ago, I feel sorry for the innocent people, who were in the majority. And now these people have been left in the lurch by the greater Serbian nationalists.

Before any side employed force, Croatia changed its Constitution and the process of re-evaluating the (WW II Nazi) Ustasha movement as a significant link in the chain of the "thousand-year dream" of Croatia's independence was at its climax. I gain the impression that you consider these facts of minor significance?

Yes, you are right, I do consider them to be of minor significance, because constitutions change and can be changed, but not always violently. The Serbs opted for the violent way, we know the outcome. Not only are they no longer in the Constitution, they are no longer on their land. I think Serbia is to be blamed the most, because it had reevaluated the ominous heritage of Serbian Nazism, Chetniks and Ljotic movement (WWII fascists in Serbia), this time together with the Socialists. Had the Serbs opted for a democratic method, things would have been completely different today. Serbian representatives would exert strong pressures on the Parliament, they would unveil the "Ustashas" to the world public, they might be able to change the course of the elections, they would influence the world opinion, they would have autonomy and hold their own destiny in their own hands. Serbia had always stood behind them with its strong trump cards - democracy and human rights. But, as you know, Serbia is not democratic today. Along with certain African countries, it is considered one of the grossest violators of human rights.

Let's go back to literature. Do you feel it as a paradox that interest in the literature of the former Yugoslavia was intensified by the outbreak of the war in it?

Yes, this is true unfortunately, the lime-light has shifted to us now, but it won't remain there long. At the end, only the valuable things will remain, while all the superficial things translated and marketed abroad, all those heart-rending booklets on this or that, all of it must be thrown into a general dump, together with the war trash. I believe literature will win.

Do you believe you have a readership abroad?

Writers in these parts cannot have a reading public; even a writer like Andric, a Nobel Prize winner, does not have it, although he is currently in fashion because of Bosnia. My short novel "Malvina" appeared in France in paperback, in 20,000 copies, which is a great circulation for us but that does not mean anything. I've never had a large public of readers, I've been read only by my "doubles", as Nabokov would say, but I will do nothing to curry favor with public.

Is the fate of a man in exile always unhappy?

People usually think that immigrants are unhappy. I don't know how I would feel in immigration, but I believe that exile is not enough for someone to feel unhappy, unhappiness is something deeper, it is almost a metaphysical fact. There are various kinds of exile: I think that the way someone views the world can be a kind of exile!