Milorad Pavic (1929-)
Serbian novelist, short story writer, poet,
translator, and literary historian. Pavic has tested with a fresh and
innovative approach the limits of narrative structure. His multi-layered Dictionary
of the Khazars (1984) is considered one of the most intriguing works in
postmodernist fiction. In Paris Match Philippe Tretiak called the work
"the first novel of the twenty-first century."
"Suffice it to say that his dreams are faster
than those of other people, that he dreams more swiftly than a horse, and that
his telephones neigh like a stable full of stallions, reporting on these
dreams." (from Landscape Painted with Tea, 1988)
Milorad Pavic was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now
Serbia), into a distinguished family of writers. He graduated from the
University of Belgrade and received his Ph.D. in literary history at the
University of Zagreb. Pavic started his academic career at the Sorbonne and
continued in Vienna. After teaching literature at the universities of Novi Sad,
Freiburg, Regensburg, Belgrade, he devoted himself entirely to writing. His
first collection of poetry appeared in 1967. With his wife, the writer and
literary critic Jasmina Mihajlovic, he settled in Belgrade. In 1991 Pavic was
elected a member of the Serbian Academy of Science and Arts.
"I was the best known writer of the most hated
nation in the world - the Serbian nation."
Pavic made his debut as a poet in 1967 with
Palimpseti. It was followed by Mesecev kamen (1971) and several books of short
stories, including Gvozdena zavesa (1973), Konji svetoga Marka (1976). Lyrics
such as "Rejoice Eleventh Finger Reckoner of Stars" and "But I'm
the One From Whom They Stole a Button From His Trouser Leg" reveal Pavic's
fascination with paradoxical and unconventional images. He has also published
monographs of literary history from Serbian Baroque and Symbolist poetry,
reviving and re-evaluating some older Serbian writers and editing their
neglected works. Among Pavlic's studies are Istorija srpske knjizevnosti
baroknog doba (1970), Vojislav Ilic, njegovo vreme i delo (1972), and Radjanje
nove srpske knjizevnosti (1983).
Hazarski recnik (1984, Dictionary of the Khazars),
Pavic's first novel, is a playful mock-history of the Khazars, located
somewhere among Turkey, Russia and the Slavic countries to the west. In the
late 9th century A.D., the great Khan, ruler of the obscure Caucasian people,
summons the three leading scholars to determine which religion his people will
adopt. The story is told in three versions according to the "sources"
– the Christian in the Red book, the Islamic in the Green, and the Hebrew in
the Yellow, referring to the fact that there is no single correct point of view
to any fundamental question. "And so, when I began to read the proffered
pages, I at one moment lost the train of thought in the text and drowned it in
my own feelings. In these seconds of absence and self-oblivion, centuries
passed with every read but uncomprehended and unabsorbed line, and when, after
a few moments, I came to and re-established contact with the text, I knew that
the reader who returns from the open seas of his feelings is no longer the same
reader who embarked on that sea only a short while ago." (from Dictionary
of the Khazars, female version)
In the story there is no distinct line separating
reality from fantasy, the past from the future. Pavic has explained, that each
reader can "'put together the book for himself, as in a game of dominoes
or cards." Pavic's lexicon novel continues the long tradition of histories
of imaginary lands, starting from Jonathan Swift's islands for his Lilliputs,
Brobdingnags, and continuing in Lewis Carrol's Wonderland, L. Frank Baum's Oz,
etc. The book within a book itself comes in two editions, a "male"
and a "female" version, which differ by one paragraph. Behind a net
of legends, facts, metaphysical philosophizing, and quasi-historical stories,
the reader can decipher a plot, in which the Khazar dream-hunters try to attach
themselves to the body of the angel ancestor of mankind. They "plunge into
other people's dreams and sleep and from them extract little pieces of
Adam-the-precursor's being, composing them into a whole, into so-called Khazar
dictionaries..." The Khazars are said to be a mythical tribe, who
flourished somewhere in the Balkans between the seventh and ninth centuries.
The present dictionary is based on a destroyed book, which was reconstructed
from the dictionary of the Khazar dream-hunters. "Everybody can discover
and read in my books many things," Pavic said in an interview. "The
reader has nearly the same rights as the author."
Pavic's second novel, Predeo slikan cajem (1988,
Landscape with Tea), is a playful combination of a crossword puzzle and modern
Odyssey. Atanas Svilar (alias Razin) is a failed architect, who tries to find
an answer to his question "why had his life been barren and futile,
despite the enormous effort invested?" He joins a monastery on Greece's
Mount Athos, where his father who disappeared during World War II had been.
Svilar's search for his roots and for the meaning of life becomes entwined with
the history and secrets of the most ancient of all monasteries. In Book Two
Svilar changes his name to Atanas Fyodorovich Razin, leaves his family, and
moves with the beautiful Vitacha Milut to the United States where he becomes
rich. The plot is constructed like a cryptic crossword, with chapters which can
be read 'down' or 'across.' The solution of the puzzle is supposed to lead to
the solution of life.
Poslednja ljubav u Carigradu (1994, Last Love in
Constantinople) has an innovative game-oriented twist as Landscape Painted with
Tea: Subtitled "A Tarot Novel of Divination,'' the book is accompanied by
a pack of Tarot cards, which the reader may use to read in a new way the books
21 chapters. This postmodernist experimentation has much in common with Julio
Cortázar's novel Hopscotch (1963). Last Love in Constantinople is a colorful
romance set in Eastern Europe during the Napoleonic Wars. The protagonist is
Sofronije Opujic, a young cavalryman, whose service in Napoleon's army is
complicated by a mysterious prophecy and love for the daughter of his father's
enemy.
Characteristic of Pavic's novels is mastery of form
and language, brilliant metaphors, playfulness, and his interest in such basic
philosophical questions as what is the truth, and how can it be obtained?
"There are no strict divisions between Pavic's representations of
reality," David A. Norris wrote in Contemporary World Writers (ed. by Tracy
Chevalier, 1993) "His works demand, like all literature, that readers
suspend belief and surrender themselves to the text. Paradoxically, Pavic's
resistance to traditional generic classification is a recognition of their
power." The magic of the narrative is taken to its ultimate conclusion in
The Tale That Killed Emily Knorr (2005), in which Pavic imagines a tale that
can kill and be killed.
Together with such writers as Jorge Luis Borges, Julio
Cortázar, Italo Calvino, and Umberto Eco, Pavic has charted new territories in
modern fiction. The writer and literary critic Jasmina Mihajlovic has noted,
that Dictionary of the Khazars, Landscape Painted with Tea, Inner Side of the
Wind, and Last Love in Constantinople have characteristics of the hypertext,
and they could be read most effectively if they were transferred into a
hypertext format. Her view was shared by Robert Coover in his review of
Dictionary of the Khazars. "Since the computer radical and prophet Ted
Nelson first invented the word ''hypertext'' to describe such computer-driven
nonsequential writing nearly a quarter of a century ago, there has been a
steady, now rapid, growth of disciples to this newest sect of dream hunters. A
new kind of coverless, interactive, expandable ''book'' is now being written; there
are no doubt several out there in hyperspace right now; and ''Dictionary of the
Khazars'' could easily take its place among them as inspired hackers, imitating
Mr. Pavic's Father Theoctist Nikolsky, gleeful inventor of saints' lives, add
their own entries, helping to fashion Adam Cadmon's body." (Robert Coover
in The New York Times, November 20, 1988)
Extracted from: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/pavic.htm