To write to live

We start the conversation with Novica Milić on Sunday, March 16, the day after the big protest in Belgrade. We ask him what happened yesterday. "A watershed event, I would say, for both sides: the regime reached for sonic weapons, which is a terrorist act of the state, and the protest reached a moment when one phase, one type of demand, is unfulfillable under this government. Vučić has now mentioned the possibility of elections in early June. Yes, but under the conditions that the student movement could determine: a technical interim government for the elections, review and correction of the electoral legislation, cleaning of the voter lists, decisive taming of the wild media, control finances in the campaign. That's the minimum and you should insist on that."

Novica Milić is a literary comparatist and theoretician of literature by education who, however, refuses to be only that. He is a philosopher by vocation, but he refuses to call himself a philosopher. He is undoubtedly a writer, but that designation seems pretentious to him. He does not want to choose any identity because, he says, he does not believe in one identity. He worked at the Department of General Literature at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade, then at the Faculty of Media and Communications. By invitation, he taught in several European countries. He entered the theoretical scene at the beginning of the eighties of the 20th century, to become one of the most prolific domestic writers to this day. In the last five years alone, he has published a dozen books - we highlight them Feasts, Political narratology, Criticism of the Serbian mind, A brief history of the soul, Introduction to democracy, Post-aesthetics, Proyce & Joust...

"WEATHER" Judging by what you write on the libretto portal.rs, A new book is on the horizon., Rabble and mob, book "in real time", about the ongoing protests...

NOVICA MILIC: Yes and no. Yes, because I'm trying to write, in my mixed register style, the second booklet in the series Ambiviolence (these are ambivalences that lead to violence, ambiguities when they are violently "reduced"). It's challenging to write about something while it's going on. And no, because you're never sure what will come out of the event and what you write. Maybe we'll succeed - both the protests and my writing - and maybe we won't, so it won't be the book I want.

We never really know what will end up writing "to fall out". How do you know when a book is written?, when to stop?

I stop when another one emerges as a new obsession. This means that she was the first to decide to leave me, to go out into the world. From that moment, when I release it (publish it, which is the release of the book), I don't think about it. I forget it because I have a new toy. To answer more seriously: most of the books I have published in recent years I wrote much earlier in unorganized notes, excerpts, versions. So now I mostly finish and edit, which is always a bit boring, because then there are fewer fresh ideas, which is what I care about the most. Why write if writing does not bring new ideas? Marquez has a memoir under the title Living to be told. I prefer to "write for a living". I can't do otherwise. Life is about new people, new experiences, new ideas. Without it, we live biologically, but not spiritually.

You published in 2023. a two-volume book Feasts(800 pages), a kind of mixture of the history of literature and the history of philosophy, without it being possible to make a clear distinction between literary theory and philosophy. No one has written in this way before you.

I loved Heuzinga a lot, long ago Autumn of the Middle Ages, Kashaninov Serbian literature of the Middle Ages, Latin Middle Ages Curtius, not because of the Middle Ages, but because of the style of those books, when as a reader you have the feeling that you are sailing on the ocean of history or culture. Feasts have the subtitle "Thinking and Singing in Antiquity and the Renaissance". They were lectures to students of world literature reworked into essays that combine philosophy and literature, both thematic and research. The so-called literary theory, which I once engaged in to earn a living, is worth it either when we let it be led by literature and suppress its pretension to teach poets, or when it recognizes in itself the fundamental philosophical questions of being, knowledge, values. I gladly use various writing registers, mix "genres"; my ideal is a genre that I call "everything but not a cabbage". A book is everything that is put between the covers, and it becomes worthy of the reader if it arouses his curiosity, to further invent or make his own. Feasts relate to two millennia of European culture, literary and philosophical, from Homer and Parmenides to Bruno and Shakespeare, and I would like someone, prompted for example by the chapter on Boccaccio, to read again decameron. And that chapter on Bočac, like all the others, is my view of this writer. Although created from lectures, Feasts they are not pedagogical literature for learning purposes, there are many such books, and better ones than mine. This is a very personal book review from a reader who is a writer.

Along with literary theory and philosophy, you also write about politics, or theoretically-political books like Political narratologies. Where does this urge come from??

I try to understand the world whose time I share. You know the saying "if you don't deal with politics, it will deal with you" - and since I'm too much of a fan of practical politics, I prefer to write about it. It's a kind of philosophical journalism for me, it gives me a break from more demanding endeavors. My last published book, the one on Proust and Joyce, haunted me for about five or six years. She was leaving me and coming back to me. In between, I am annoyed by wars, Putin's in Ukraine, Netanyahu's in Gaza, so I made a book about ongoing "ambiviolences" under the title The world today and us from yesterday (coming out at the end of this spring), about how today's world is constantly overtaking us with its technologies - both algorithmic and those in the area of ​​governance - so we find ourselves again and again as if we are "from yesterday". Or my short one Introduction to democracy: elementary. At first I wanted to title it Democracy for beginners, but only then they would say that I am new, because here everyone understands politics, including democracy, although we are a tragically politically illiterate nation, especially its bazaar, which considers itself the "elite". It is similar to Criticism of the Serbian mind: I was interested in why the European Enlightenment, its idea of ​​legality, or individual emancipation, was hard to accept among us Serbs, why we are trapped in authoritarian collectivism (by the way, there is also my view of Kant and his famous Reviews). And with the one mentioned at the beginning With rabble and mob is similar: it fills my time between protest walks, and while I'm waiting to check out some Venetian squares in a "novel" about Shakespeare (the "Italian" one) at the beginning of May. That book about Shakespeare has also been haunting me for years, there are already several versions, I guess in the summer they will finally decide that it is finished.

I would dwell a little longer on your last book, about Proust and Joyce. Why did you like that book?, you say, "haunted"?

Because I was haunted by reading Joyce and Proust. I went back and forth on that otherwise complicated manuscript for several years. I wanted to turn everything upside down, even technically the book is unusual, it starts on both sides ("freedom for the reader, down the dictator the writer"). One side of the book is more of a travelogue, the other a memoir. Interpretations turn into experiences and events, and the "I" who reads, writes, talks is not really my personal self, but is at a distance from me. At a Nietzschean distance, because it is for him Dis-Dance was a "play-play", playing around. I included Kish, some family stories, pictures and music in everything. The book "gemišt", "mućkalica", narrative essays. Well, who likes it, there probably aren't many of them, but "we sing in the desert", right?

photo: iva milic

You say that it was difficult to accept educational projects in Serbia. Therefore, your idea is similar to Latinka Perović's thesis about the permanent conflict between modernists and conservatives in Serbia...

I know about Latinka's thesis, we were friends. But we are very different in diagnoses, her division is basically between the modernizing left and the conservative right. I am not close to such an ideologization of history. In my opinion, it is the replacement of two European projects: a failed enlightenment project and a domestic variant of national romanticism. The latter won, and quickly. I have a fond memory of the Latin woman, but the two of us had heated private arguments, from which we both profited, from that fruitful disagreement on key issues. Why the European Enlightenment of legality, social rules, personal freedoms, democracy was defeated in our country - and experienced defeats despite the valuable efforts of individuals and certain groups - I wrote about this in Critics of the Serbian mind. Due to the difficult history of the Serbs, and the Balkans in general, a history that imposed the tendency of the masses towards authoritarian collectivism, a poor understanding of history and politics by the so-called elite, a national mythology without cover, hasty decisions at critical moments (the Czechs are our antipodes in this sense), tendencies to violently break "over the knee" and look for historical shortcuts - these are the most important reasons for our downfalls in the last two centuries. Technical modernization (meaning modernization) and national maturation are two different things. We are poorly culturally, ethically and politically educated. This requires patience and learning, not a mere desire to hurry.

Boža Grujović is, for you (and not only for you), an important figure in the research of the history of Serbian byways. In the book Introduction to democracy you dedicated a nice chapter to him.

In my opinion, Boža Grujović from the beginning of the 1807th century is the progenitor of the idea of ​​the Serbian state as a state of legality, justice, equality, and therefore democracy. And he is hardly known. He deserves more than a chapter in one book, the name of the big square, rather than Pašić and similar government maniacs. When Serbia pays tribute to the memory of Boža Grujović (Teodor Filipović, before he changed his name and surname), we will know that it has become a civilized country. Doctor of legal sciences from Pest, professor of the history of European law in Kharkiv, then the first secretary of the Governing Soviet, died prematurely, in 31 at the age of XNUMX. His (unread) speech for the founding session of the Soviet was preserved in Memoirs Prote Mateje (only in the first edition, then consistently omitted), was published by my publisher Most art Jugoslavija, i.e. Dragan Stojković, under the title A letter about freedom. Not SANU, SKZ, Matica srpska. Which says more about them than Grujović.

Democracy contains within itself the germ of public ruin: democratically destroy democracy. America is, for example, democratically committed the suicide of democracy. Can democracy be defended by undemocratic means??

Democracy, that ancient Greek invention, requires patience, tolerance, the public, discussions about reasons (and not just attitudes), checking decisions, changeability not only of people but also of options. Modern democracy, from the middle of the 18th century onwards, is almost entirely mediated: people are directly involved only when they vote, one day every four or five years. After the First World War, there is a slow but persistent process ("cooking the frog") in which the executive subjugates the legislation (governments determine with the parliaments how and what to vote for), and now, we see with Trump, the legal apparatus as well. There are other oases of democracy, the Swiss model of combining direct and indirect democracy, the search for consensus, a combination of stronger local and weaker central government, and the like. The meaning of democracy is freedom, collective and especially individual, and its principle values ​​are - I never stop repeating it and elaborate on it in books - replaceability (elections are only a technique of replaceability), full public (everything concerning the community must be public, police secrets are invented to preserve the so-called state reason, that is, scoundrels in power, everywhere, including here), real responsibility (not only "criminal-legal" or "moral", but responsibility of everyone in the community to search for answers, where does that expression come from, to the constantly open questions of why we are together), and most importantly - equality, the equality of everyone before the law. These are four axioms that are dynamic in history (one can prevail over the others for a while, but all four principles should be put back into motion), and the obsession of the legal mind that only laws, constitutions, courts, etc. are sufficient is wrong, even dangerous. independent institutions, so everything will be fine with democracy. It will not be okay if the political culture is not developed, with its active literacies, with the participation of all or the majority in the daily work of maintaining that order. Democracy is demanding, that "worst of all governments, except for all the others occasionally tried", as Churchill said. Tyranny, left or right, is easier when we hand over the brain, the will and the freedom to make decisions about life to others. And the latter is what people often do, unfortunately. And - yes, democracy must be defended by all means, including the so-called undemocratic ones.

How would you define your political position?? Levice, right, center?

When I rant, I tend to center. If I am active, in action and not in words, then I am on the left. The intellectual, especially the academic left has become extremely hollow. That's why it was defeated, because the right is always clearer in its positions. What does the left recognize? For me, she is active if, when in power, she uses the budget to strengthen culture (the culture of creation and not the culture industry), education (innovative for the age we live in), health (this includes ecology). And when there are bigger economic inequalities. The right, on the other hand, can find its place in preserving the fundamental values ​​of history, tradition, culture, and even democracy. But in our country it is easy to go to extremes, both left and right, so it is difficult to stay in the center, in the middle. Let me remind you: the division into left and right occurred two hundred years ago according to which side sat the parliamentary buttocks of reformists, that is, supporters of the status quo. And you walk on both legs, both the left and the right, only if they are not spread too far (allegedly, Solon said this, although he did not, but it is still true). And in Serbia, the division into left and right is still far ahead of us - the students have shown it - no matter what our "left" political bazaar, popular intellectuals, social drones of various factions say. The domestic right is populist and authoritarian, occupying the country to rob us.

In this conversation, we intertwined culture and politics. Is it even possible to separate culture and politics??

Politics could also be defined as the culture of governance. Maybe actually politics mostly depends on cultural habits, patterns, behavior, values. I disagree with lawyers who think that it is enough to have good laws (valid repression) and then have a valid policy. Laws are certainly important, but they are only a part. And the state is only a part of politics, also important, but not everything. Politics is a whole field that refers to the polis, the community, and the circulation of power, one form of which is power (giving authority over others in accordance with responsibility for those others). Unfortunately, too often politics is reduced to the issue of power, then to the apparatuses of the state. This banalization can be resisted precisely by culture, if it is creative, innovative, and wise. One good musician, or painter, or writer, or thinker is worth more than all the main committees of all the parties, all the members of parliament, all the ministers in some imaginary government. They are - or should be - interchangeable. Artists and thinkers by their gift and type of intelligence are not. Culture is art, hence the art of life.