I have been a writer for two hundred
years now. Long ago, in 1766, a Pavic published a collection of poems in Budim
and we have considered ourselves a family of writers ever since.
I was born in 1929 on the banks of
one of the four rivers of Paradise, at 8:30 in the morning, under the sign of
Libra (ascendant Scorpio), or, according to the Aztec horoscope, the Snake.
The first time bombs rained down on
me I was twelve. The second time I was fifteen. In between those two bombings I
fell in love for the first time and was made to learn German under the German
occupation. I also learned English secretly from a gentleman who smoked fragrant
pipe tobacco. At the same time I forgot French for the first time (I was later
to forget it twice more).
Finally, in a kennel where I had
sought shelter from the Anglo-American bombing, an emigre Russian imperial
officer started teaching me Russian from books of poems by Fet and Tyutchev,
the only Russian books he had. Today I think learning languages was a kind of
transformation into different bewitching animals.
I have loved two Johns - John of
Damascus and John Chrysostom (the Golden-Tongued).
I have been far more successful at
love in my books than in my life. With one exception, which continues to this
day. In my sleep night sweetly clasped both cheeks.
I was the most unread writer in my
country until 1984, after which I became the most widely read.
I wrote one novel in the form of a
dictionary, a second in the form of a crossword, a third in the form of a
clepsydra and a fourth in the form of a tarot book. I tried to be as little
trouble to these novels as possible. I believe the novel is a kind of cancer -
it lives of it’s metastasis.
To my astonishment, my books have
already been translated 73 times into different languages. In short, I have no
biography. I have only a bibliography.
Critics in France and Spain have
remarked that I am the first writer of the 21st century, but I lived in the
20th century when innocence not guilt had to be proven.
I knew I should not touch the living
with the same hand that had touched the dead in my dreams.
The greatest disappointments in my
life have come from my victories. Victory does not pay.
I have not killed anyone. But they
have killed me. Long before my death. It would have been better for my books
had their author been a Turk or a German. I was the best known writer of the
most hated nation in the world - the Serbian nation.
XXI century started for me avant la
date 1999. When NATO airforces bombed Belgrade and Serbia. Since that moment
the river Danube on whose banks I was born is not navigable.
I think God graced me with infinite
favor by granting me the joy of writing, and punished me in equal measure,
precisely because of that joy perhaps.
http://www.khazars.com/en/autobiography/
© 2008 Milorad
Pavić & khazars.com. Production: TIA Janus
[Second Paper] [Introduction] [Biography] [Plot] [Time] [Conclusion]
Academic year 2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Dolores Nácher Rubio
donaru@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de Valčncia Press