1.

Some African tribes believe that birds in their ignorance can see the hidden star-lit sky together with the sunshine. It seems that only that kind of birds'view can reach for a part of the truth. I used that view in writing my book of political essays about Yugoslavia, titled YU-tlantide. By using such a view, I would like to tell you something about the position of a writer in Serbia today. I will try to remain unbiased and the most I can give you are a few personal reflexions. You must draw your own conclusions.

2.

First, I would say that a writter is best represented by his work. When I take part in literary evenings or round tables in Austria and Germany, it is much easier for me to represent myself as my books have been translated into German. Since I have not published any of my works in English yet, I am afraid that my biografical note will be a bit longer.

I have been travelling a lot in Western countries in the last two years and I know well what it means to speak as a writer who must describe himself as a Serb without taking into consideration whether he is supporting the Serbian regime of Slobodan Milosevic or is against it.

Belonging to a nation is not a quality in itself. I was born in Belgrade, and brought up in Pula at the Adriatic coast. This makes me more of a Mediterranean man than anything else. I am also a professional writer, and have had some succes with my books: short stories The Wrong Move and The Glass House, novels Via Pula, Astraghan, Hamsin 51 and a book of political essays YU-tlantide. But, despite all this, I do not wish to deny the adjective "Serbian" as I do not want to evade the responsibility hypocritcally. A lot of evil has been committed in the name of the nation I belong to, and the fact that evil exist on the other side too, offers no comfort. Before concentrating on our topic, I'll give some details from my own biography.

3.

I was born in Belgrade 40 years ago. I spent my childhood and youth in the Croatian town Pula at the Adriatic Sea. Pula is the last point on the path that James Joyce followed up at the beginning of the century, travelling with Nora via Zurich and Trieste to that boring town - "a Seaside Siberia" - as he called it in his letter to his brother Stanislaus. He spent four or five gloomy months there before going back to Trieste. Joyce taught English at the Berlitz School near the Sergians'Triumphal Arch in Pula. The Berlitz School was situated in the building which is a guest house nowadays. The cafe "Ullyses" was opened on its ground floor a few years ago. There is a house in Medulinska Street (Via Medolino in Joyce's time) number seven where James Joyce lived with Nora during his stay in Pula. Today, there is a "blind window" on it which belongs to on of the rooms Nora and James used.

Of course, Joyce who figures in my novels Via Pula and Astraghan, is "just" a litetary hero. So my coming to Dublin is not an accident. But I'll keep my thougts about Joyce for some other time. The book I have been working on includes four biographies: Italo Svevo, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov and Danilo Kip. The story about Joyce titled Possibilities of a Portrait describes his days in Pula.

In the Guide and Almanac of the City of Pula from 1905, (Guida Scematica ed Almanacco della Citta di Pola per l'anno 1905) at the number 2362 found the entry: Joyce Dr. James A., a teacher of English at Berlitz School, Clivo San Stefano.

When I was writing my novel Via Pula in the eighties I was entertained by reading old newspapers and magazines from a very rich collection of the Scientific Library in Pula. And there, skimming through a newspaper ( the copy was from the early sixties) I found an interview with Giovanni Petek, a famous taxi driver in Pula. He was about eighty years old at that time. Petek spent his best years as a chauffeur of the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne, Crown Prince Franz Ferdinanad. He was also driving the car in which Ferdinand was assasinated on that tragic day in June 1914. It was he who drove Ferdinand along the streets of Sarajevo towards his assasins.

But, at the time when Nora and James were living in Pula, Giovanni Petek was only a coachman who would sometimes see, on his drives back arround the outskirts of the city, the thin figure of a stranger whom the citizens of Pula called "Inglese" ("Englishman"). Several times Petek drove "the Englishman", the teacher in the Berlitz school in his coach. A few years later when he had changed his coach in a car, he found on its back seat a forgotten issue of a Trieste newspaper with a photo of his client. Joyce's popularity was growing at that time. Maybe the last time they missed each other was in trieste three days before the assassinaton in Sarajevo. A photo of Ferdinand's chauffeur, Giovanni Petek, in Austro-Hungarian uniform, has survived.

4.

I remember the night train which took me away from Belgrade, my native city, running through the night towards the most western part of Yugoslavia as it then was, the Istrian peninsula. I was five and did not know anything either about the people or events that has created my country. My earliest memory is of arriving at the railway station on Pula where the platforms seemed to be sinking into the sea. As a child, I used to stroll through Pula's cementery "Monte Ghiro". On the marble tombstones I would find different names: Slav, Italian, German, Jewish, Hungarian, Dutch, French... Some of these names can be found in the melodies of Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. Perhaps it was at that time and at that place I began my journey toward a larger cosmopolitan world.

5.

I come at last to one topic for today: The Position of a Writer in Serbia Today. Before "today", of course, there was "yesterday", and - I think I should say something about the responsibility of the intelectuals and writers for the Yugoslav catastrophe.

As it is, in Serbia there are too many writers whose preference is for "singing in the choir", and this "chorus of nationalistic writers" bears a great part of responsibility for the war in Yugoslavia.

When I say "writers", I mean a group in which there are authors with different levels of artistic potential. And this fact is very important for our topic. It was instructive to watch the metamorphoses of intelectuals and writers in the pre-war period in Yugoslavia.

Writers and intelectuals have been supported, among others, by the present Serbian regime, in their development of warlike policies . It seems that they have been prompted by the painful knowledge of their limited talent as writers, to adopt a new public role as politicians, in which their mediocrity was not so apparent. Such writers remind me of those outrigged canoes in Polynesia that maintain their stability in the water with a long fastened on one or both sides. They keep their minor literary talents afloat with the help of a "political log".

Many of the leading Serbian writers and intelectuals keep a STAND BY arrangement with the regime. On the surface, they seek to be individuals, but in secret, an underground tunnel connects them with the center of power. They are against the war in principle, and that is the way they represent themselves to the cultural world, while at home they convive at the tyrant. They have mastered the art of adressing the public in empty syntagms, they managed to agree with all versions of official standpoints, and yet, somewhere in the darkness they are hiding a boat by which thy could reach the other bank of the river if needed.

The fact is that in the years before the war some well-known Serbian writers and intelectuals helped prepare the ground for the Milosevic's regime. They helped his war aimes by simplicistic interpretation of history and by making irresponsible and inflamatory statements. Even a superficial skimming through a newspaper of that time can show us what nonsense was being written and uttered by well-known figures. How can one explain the depth of that irresponsibility on the part of the most articulated members of society?

Perhaps, a possible explanation lies in the fact that only a writer who is the author of an authentic work has something to lose and only he behaves like Don Quihote and is committed to the defense of an individual to the end. Such figures, of course, are rare in any society. The official Serbian elite consists of writers of very fluid minds who adapt their attitudes to the twists and turns of official policy.

An author can never be more ethical than he is gifted, for everyone's measure is one's own talent.

6.

When the war in Yugoslavia broke out the thing that kept hurting me from its very beginning was the silly arbitration of the Western countries which did a great deal of harm without solving our problems. I think here of the premature recognition of Croatia and Bosnia, imposing sanctions on only one side, minimising or completely clearing from the responsibilities of two other sides at war.

Not being a politician or a diplomat, perhaps I do not understand those complex games, however, it was, and it is clear to me, that throughout the teritoty of former Yugoslavia, the name of democracy was being used in vain by the opposition and separatists, not because democracy was really their choice but in their hope of using it as a winning combination. The state of affairs in different parts of ex-Yugoslavia, today independent states shows to what extent they are really democratic.

The tragedy of the Yugoslav peoples lies in the fact that the governing communist caste desintegrated vertically, and after 40 years of being in power, each ethnic group went back to its own nation and once again emerged in leading position in the new governments. That was one of the main causes of this war. In all ex-Yugoslav states Tito's men have reapeared as members of the power elite. Those men who are including hatred among Serbs, Croats and Muslims, want to escape from their political roles of ten or twenty years ago. But, anticommunism which they use in their new political roles derives from their communist heart. I do not believe in their metamorphoses. They can only change their image. May I say: one is not a policeman by profession, but by nature.

When people began taking Tito's pictures down all over Yugoslavia a couple of years ago, a member of the opposition from Vojvodina noticed that it is very important to pull the nail out from the wall, so that Tito's place wouldn't be taken by someone else. Unfortunately, that nail is still in the wall.

7.

I do not wish to hide behind a sophisticated text. I am only a writer. In my novels both the Mediterranean Istria and Continental Belgrade exist as different shores of a single world. It is my world, a world with no flags, no frontiers. I have always seen Yugoslavia as a magnificent pallete of different cultures, and it is still culturally as rich as ever. I could not divide it, even if I wanted to.

When one is ready to accept that the Evil that others do can never be an excuse for one's own Evil, then everything becomes easier and simpler. There is no flag in whose name I would take up a gun.

I come from Serbia, where during the war in Croatia, the regime kept repeating that the country was not at war, although fresh graves appeared all around. Hundreds of thousands young people have left the country emigrating to other countries in Europe and elsewhere, because they neither trust nor accept the logic of violence. And they, too, are Serbs.

I am tired of the plague that has been raging throughout my country for the last two years. Although that country does not exist as a part of my newly defined homeland, I can still feel the ex-parts of my country like the patient who has had a limb amputated and for a long , long time keeps feeling the body as a whole.

It is a truism to say that an author is a fighter for truth, for that statement impies a conscious intention, an imposed duty, and one claim that expects a reward. The need of an authentic author to speak or write the truth is more of a psychological drive than an ethnical impulse. And those drives do not expect any rewards.

8.

The truth becomes a synonim for reality, and the present Serbian government has created a symbolic reality by confronting the individual with the collective way of thinking. Those who neither create our culture nor use it, have become the most passionate defenders of that culture. The present Serbian government has created the model of nationalistic culture made the nation believe in reality of that model. We can see the main creators of that nationalist model cynically invoking the values of Byzant, and yet, most of them had never been inside a church. The key word of this new policy is DIGNITY. The dignity of the Serbian nation should be restored", they say. And how the nationalistic elite does it? They create the war, and suddenly, there are thousands and thousands of killed, hundred of thousands of refugees. Twenty-year olds return crippled from the front. And the intelectuals have a great responsibility in this war because they gave their support to Milosevic.

However, there are of course islands of sanity in this rump Yugoslavia, as well as the parties whose leaders and members have always been striving for democracy. That is why there is a danger that those individuals could be destroyed by the UN boycott. The main intention of the UN was to drive Milosevic to the conference table with the help of sanctions. Nevertheless, results was the strenghtening Milosevic to oppose the whole world. The Saddam Hussein's syndrome has been in action.

9.

Someone once remarked wittily that exile develops the intelligence. It is poor comfort for those three hundred thousands young people who have left their country because they did not want to be involved in a senseless war. And they did not lack the intelligence. However, Belgrade has not grown smaller because of the exodus. Milosevic's laboratory has succedeed in changing the profile of the population of the capital. It is swollen by a river of refugees and returning dissapointed warriors from Bosnia, cynical and violent. The streets are packed with black marketeers and Serbian parliament has degenerated, as psychopaths and war criminals take up their seats as MPs. These new MPs are quite content to be more and more isolated from the outside world and so that they could blame it for Serbia's misfortunes. And the world is helping them.

One of the results of the sanctions has been the decision of Disney Company to ban the printing of Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Pluto and the others in Serbian magazines and newspapers or on TV. The Serbian regime will offer different heroes to children. In this case, too, the sanctions work in favour of the regime.

The last of MilopeviÊ's achievements as the leader of Serbia has come in the form of a gift by the world community: sanctions. Thanks to sanctions the Serbian regime has been able to fullfil the paranoid formula with which it started to evocate the war option in 1987.: " The whole world is against us". A disease is not cured by strenghtening its cause. However, there are far too many sponsors around MilopeviÊ that I could believe that he is not a purely domestic product.

10.

In an essay written in November 91, I spoke about the Sect of Normal People spread all over the ex-Yugoslav territories. At that time, Western countries and the whole world were not interested in hearing the voice of the Sect of Normal People, because they were not attractive enough for journalists avid for news. The world was in search of arbitration, quick recipes, temporary solutions. However, from the very beginning of the war, it was clear that Milosevic and Tudjman kept play military marches on the same piano, with four hands. To opt for one of them, meant deciding on the war option. And that is exactly what happened. The Western preference for Croatia, and its acceptance of that country as a new self-determined and democratic nation, triggered the war. Probably Milosevic helped the formation of Tudjman, but it is no comfort for the Sect of Normal People on the ex-Yugoslav territories.

11.

The world got tired of the horror film "Yugoslavia". At first, people believed that it was a classical scenario with good and bad guys. Unfortunately, the war has brought into existence an army of experts- diplomats, politicians, journalists, academics. I have no doubt that many of them were well intended, but to a patient who is dying on the operation table their presence makes no difference.

After two years of war, the reality of Bosnia has exceeded any science fiction. There are three sides at war, and the fourth, civilian side, which does not want to be at war. But when a civilian is forced to don a uniform, he stops being a Bosnian and becomes a Serb, a Croat or a Muslim. In our hell where criminals and psychopaths are in change, nationality or religion remains the best excuse for the crime.

The outcome of war is obvious: the peoples of ex-Yugoslavia have been changed into chips on the green cloth of a gambling table called Europe. The triumph of a yellow over a red chip or a blue over a green is miserable. There are no winners in Bosnia, but the dogs of war will have to count their defeats as victories in order to stay in power. How does it look like to live under the sign of one of the chips?

12.

In August last year the population of Serbia found itself being offered morning and evening rates of the German mark which was the unoffical currency. The Yugoslav dinar had become confetti. The average sallary was ten or twenty marks per month, and average pension five marks. Hospitals were, and still are, without medicines, the shops were empty and the city transportation kept collapsing. The inflation amounted to 30 % per day.

Serious Belgrade newspaper such as the independent weekly VREME published the frightehning statistical data. The rate of suicides among retired persons rose from 20% in 1980. to 70% in 1992. The last August average is four suicides a day.

There was a well-known case of a pensioner from.

13.

What about the future?

One can forsee the signing of a peace agreement in Bosnia which will largely fail to meet the aspirations of the signatories and will be followed by an uncertain peace. The International Community will look for the culpits to put then on trial in a new Nurnberg War Crimes Tribunal. It is not likely that the real culpits - those nationalist politicians who unleased the dogs of war - will be brought to justice. Their presence in power both in Belgrade and Zagreb is too important for the negotiations to guarantee the unsatisfactiory peace agreement. Other culpits will be found - those who carried out the massacres.

The night has fallen over the Balkans. And that reminds me of Goethe's verse: " What was near is getting further away in the twilight".

A new formula should be set so as to bring peoples of the Balkans together again. And that formula says: As long as we are only a nation we are not human beings.

[ Text of the lecture given in the Irish Writers' Centre with a grateful acknowledgement to the British Council, Belgrade ]

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