Serb poet and academic Matija Bećković emphasized that the Serb people are poetic, that they live through their words, and that their entire wealth is in their speech.
- “Every true poem is a love poem, patriotic, and thoughtful. If it’s not, then it’s not a poem at all. It’s good that this division has been abolished. In my time, poetry was categorized in this way in school, impoverishing it,” Bećković told Nezavisne Novine.
Bećković noted that in some way, the entire reading public has grown tired of fiction and fantasy and has longed for truth and reality. It is no wonder, then, that memoirs, biographies, testimonies, and legacies are now popular.
- “There is another phenomenon; I’ve seen writers who, when writing something real and true, become almost illiterate, but when they start lying and inventing, not only do they have as much imagination and ideas as they want, but they also become literate. It’s a real phenomenon. Lying and inventing become easy, even literate,” Bećković added.
Regarding “Ćerandum,” as an allusion to the memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Bećković said it has become the main answer to all questions.
He noted that he neither read it nor was it ever adopted, nor would it have been adopted, but those who declared it the main culprit for the breakup of Yugoslavia were the ones who titled, stole, and published it.
- “The Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts should have simply condemned that barbaric act when the document was stolen from the Academy. Instead, the same story was prolonged, and people kept talking about a document that doesn’t exist, was never finished, and would never have been adopted,” Bećković said.
He described the situation as a scheme that has persisted for easier remembrance, so people don’t have to burden themselves with thinking about how and why everything happened.
Speaking about the monograph published less than two years ago when the 100th anniversary of Duško Radović’s birth was celebrated, Bećković stated that the Serbs have never had such a work or a writer like Radović, who passed away so many years ago but has never been forgotten.
Regarding his autobiographical prose work “Majka Zorka” (“Mother Zorka”), Bećković said that his mother left this world forty years ago, but she wrote her autobiography much earlier.
- “I only recently looked into her notebook and could only write an afterword,” Bećković added.
Bećković mentioned that his book “Naćertanije” is a continuation of his epic “Ćeraćemo se još” (“We Will Continue to Fight”), and “Ćeraćemo se još” is a continuation of “Načertanije,” which, as he noted, is often talked about but never seen.
Bećković is the recipient of the Kočić Award for this year, which will be presented to him at the ceremonial academy of the 59th Kočić Gathering on Saturday, August 24, at 8:00 PM at the National Theatre of Republika Srpska.
Source: RTRS
