Svetislav Basara

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Svetislav Basara, 2014

Svetislav Basara ( Serbian Cyrillic : Светислав Басара; born December 21, 1953 in Bajina Bašta , Yugoslavia ) is a Serbian writer .

biography

Basara is considered to be one of the most respected and provocative contemporary writers in his country, and also on the international book market as one of the most successful Serbian authors, from whose complete works of over forty volumes to date there are already single or several works in Bulgarian , German, English , French , Italian , Dutch , Romanian , Slovenian , Spanish and Hungarian translations have appeared.

After graduating from high school in Užice , he began studying at the Philological Faculty of the University of Belgrade , which he dropped out in 1976 after two semesters. He then lived and worked as a freelance writer, since then has written numerous reviews , features and essays for various daily newspapers, news magazines and literary magazines , was temporarily editor-in-chief of the literary magazines Književna reč (1983-86) and Međaj (1989) and has been writing the famous column since 2009 ( Famozo) in the daily Danas . He is a member of the Democratic Party (DS), in the meantime switched to the DSS , to the DHSS ( Christian Democrats ) and ultimately returned to the DS. The writer, who has received several literary prizes from his country, including the NIN Prize (2006) and the Isidora Sekulić Prize (2015), was the FR Yugoslavia's ambassador to Cyprus from 2001 to 2005.

In June 2014, Basara expressed himself critically and with a sense of humor in a conversation with Elena Messner under the title Before reading one should smoke a pack of Marlboro about the theory and reality of human life and about world views in general as follows:

“When talking about theories, I always think of Baudrillard's definition, according to which - I paraphrase - the theory is a trap into which reality should fall. Too often, to the chagrin of itself and ours, reality falls into these seemingly naive traps. I consider the farce , the exaggeration and the irresponsibility to be the very best tools for writing about the so-called "serious things". I also have a quote ready for this claim. In the fifties of the last century, an Italian actor and comedian with a strong connection to religion wrote a letter to Padre Pio , the famous mystic and stigmatic. In it he complained that he was unable to turn to the ghost because he had to go on stage every evening with make-up and make a fool of himself there. Padre Pio gave him the following answer: “My son, these scruples are unfounded. We all make fools of ourselves in those places that Providence has determined for us. "Great misfortune happens when a person takes himself and the world in which he lives too seriously."

His novel Angel of the Assassination (Anđeo atentata), published a year after the centenary of the beginning of the First World War , is a sarcastic and ironic profound book about the futility and ridiculousness of historicizing mystifications , about the bold portrayal of history in the style of the boulevard , on nationalist destructiveness and the close connection between European culture and barbarism. Heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Este dictates his secretary in the afterlife his personal view of the assassination attempt in Sarajevo , a posthumous avowal and political testament that reveals the genius of his personality in all its contradictions. With a great deal of cultural, intellectual and historical knowledge, but above all with literary means of farce and burlesque , Basara draws a cultural panorama of this time that reduces stereotypical interpretations from both Serbian and German-speaking sides to absurdity and, above all, moral defeat and questionability of violence as a political means as a fatal consequence of such collective self-images in the reader's mind. A conclusion of the book: Answers to questions about the past are given faster than answers to questions about the present and future. The title of the book is inspired by the historical-philosophical essay On the Concept of History by Walter Benjamin and the picture Angelus Novus . A bon mot from the book's panopticon to illustrate: There would be no Serbs, no Croats, no Czechs, no Slovaks, no Hungarians, no Romanians and perhaps also no Russians without German and Austrian poets, philosophers and musicians of the Romantic period , at least not in one such sinister shape. The home of all these wandering peoples is not the Asian steppe, but the Vienna National Library . A decade before the publication of this novel, the author anticipated the content of the book with a metaphorical statement about Serbia's recent past: “And the bullet fired by Gavrilo Princip ninety years ago is still circulating in this region. He recently met Zoran Đinđić . "

He is a signatory of the 2017 declaration on the common language of Croats , Serbs , Bosniaks and Montenegrins .

German translations

credentials

  1. ↑ Biography in: Ko je ko u Srbiji '96: leksikon , Bibliofon, Belgrad 1996 ( WBIS Online )
  2. ↑ Personality of the day: Svetislav Basara , Serbian-language article by the Danas, accessed on November 27, 2018.
  3. ↑ Silvia Gabler: Time and Space in the Works of Svetislav Basara (Google Books) , GRIN Verlag, Munich 2002, ISBN 978-3-638-12791-2 , accessed on November 27, 2019.
  4. ↑ Before reading, you should smoke a pack of Marlboro , interview with the author, Textfeld Südost, accessed on November 27, 2018.
  5. ↑ Ferdinandovi memoari s onu stranu groba , Vreme, accessed on November 28, 2019.
  6. ↑ Derk, Denis: Declaration on the common language of Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrins is adopted . In: Večernji list . March 28, 2017, ISSN  0350-5006 , p. 6–7 ( vecernji.hr [accessed on May 9, 2019] Serbo-Croatian: Donosi se Deklaracija o zajedničkom jeziku Hrvata, Srba, Bošnjaka i Crnogoraca .). (Archived on WebCite ( Memento from May 23, 2017 on WebCite ))
  7. ↑ Review , NZZ , accessed on November 27, 2018.
  8. ↑ Svetislav Basars furioser Höllenritt ( Memento from December 9, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) In: Die Berliner Literaturkritik , accessed on December 8, 2018.
  9. ^ Foreword by the author to the German edition ( Memento from November 27, 2018 in the Internet Archive ), Traduki Network, accessed on November 27, 2018.
  10. ↑ Bicycle tour into heaven , review in the literary criticism forum, accessed on November 27, 2018.
  11. ^ Conspiratorial heretics on bicycles , Deutschlandfunk , accessed on November 27, 2018.
  12. ↑ Review , Blog Read Ost, accessed on November 27, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Basara, Svetislav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Serbian writer
DATE OF BIRTH December 21, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Bajina Bašta , Yugoslavia