Милорад Павич: балканские притчи
Milorad Pavic: Balkan Parables

This Serbian genius, who is unfortunately no longer among us, none-
theless continues to agitate the world of literature with dedication and
courage of a mine worker and insolence of the most defiant politician.
no, not agitating – mocking it, like a big city dandy would mock a
newly arrived county girl and her outdated look. Poor literature is left
with no choice but to retreat and tolerate everything with a pitiful smile
– what else is there to do…what else is there to say. I bet Borges would
have something to say, but unfortunately for the past twenty years he
has been giving literature lessons only to his students in the afterlife.
as it stands to this day, our beloved old man would easily leave any
modern writer in the dust. Coelho with his vain attempts at mysti-
cism looks like a child who just discovered aBC book. Pelevin should
have asked Pavic to teach him a few tricks about stylistics and mythol-
ogy (for money). and I’m sure even Sir Conan Doyle himself would be
honoured to have a diner with this restless Serb.
My first impression from Pavic’s work can be easily described in
just one word – shock. It seems as if he steals the words directly from
his reader, snatching and spinning them with the agility of a juggler,
twisting them into an uncontrollable hurricane just to pour that chaos
back onto the poor reader’s head. What he does to words cannot be
analyzed or explained, we are left with no choice but to sit with mouths
wide open watching how he turns literature into alchemy.
Pavic is not only intelligent, he is also wise and you don’t come across
this combination very often. His wisdom connects centuries together
allowing them to be combined in just few words:
“Her teeth were dented from highs and lows of Serbian and Italian
words”
What else is left to say when in just one sentence he managed to put a
brief description of the entire era of language development with under-
lining the highs of Serbian and lows of Italian and their combined influ-
ence not only on one individual but on the entire nation!
His intellectual capacity is mesmerizing, he manages to grasp and
hold on the very tip of his pencil the entire spectrum of details of any
era, whether it’s the death of french king in the fifteen century or nuan-
ces on correct diner service for a greek olive trader in Constantinople.
To say that Pavic knows world mythology is to make a heavy under-
statement. He doesn’t simply know it – he breathes it. He inhales it and
then exhales a different form creating something bizarre, surreal, even
terrifying and yet still harmonious. and I think I managed to solve this
riddle – the answer lies in pagan aspects of both ancient greece and
Slavic countries. let’s take a closer look into this statement.
Here is a good example – when Pavic says “woman” he doesn’t mean
a regular woman – her doesn’t write about regular women just like he
doesn’t write about regular people even though he describes their char-
acteristics and feelings. He implies The Woman, the initial woman like
Eve, Venus, lada – in other words The Mother. That’s why any erotic
description in his books is not erotic in the standard meaning of this
word; moreover it’s rather unfamiliar and even frightening. Why? Be-
cause Pavic’s notion of erotic scene is a magical ritual filled with heav-
enly meaning of the oldest process of birth and existence of Life itself.
This analogy reminded me of Tarkovsky’s movie where one of his
characters was supposed to sleep with the witch in order to eliminate
war (not to stop a particular war, but to get rid of all wars in general). I
feel that Pavic is implying something along the same lines in the erotic
scenes of his books.
But that ultimate Woman is not even the oldest representative of
human race. When humane race was basically a newborn, the world
was ruled by an ancient and far more powerful civilization of andro-
gynies – people of neutral gender (or maybe zero gender) that combined
both male and female essences. Pavic resurrects the fragments of this
ancient half-humans-half-gods civilization in our contemporary world
believing that these bearers of old wisdom and magical powers couldn’t
have just disappeared without any trace. you can find them practically
in every book, but ultimately it is “unique Item” that gave one of the
main roles to them. That is why it’s important to understand the notion
of androgynies; without basic knowledge you will never be able to
understand the book and for the same reason I do not recommend start-
ing your acquaintance with his works with this particular novel.
Before I decided to write my brief review of Pavic works, I kept
asking myself the same question over and over again: what is it that
he writes? I must admit I still cannot find the answer. His prose is the
cauldron of an alchemist where novels, essays, historical articles, mys-
tical novels, pagan tales and Christian parables are all brewing togeth-
er. They swirls and spin taking different shapes, going from one form
to another and back in such a smooth way that the reader doesn’t feel
or notice any flaws in these seamless transitions. I believe the word
parable or tale will be most descriptive for his work, although it’s hard
to imagine a parable size of a novel isn’t it? I will leave this discussion
to historians and literary critics to determine the exact name of the
genre, but personally I am satisfied with the name “Balkan Parables”
insisting that this niche of literature is solemnly occupied by nobody
else but this genius Serb.
another interesting moment to look at is how he writes. Why his
texts differ from those of thousands of his colleagues, so called broth-
ers of the quill? Primarily because he doesn’t look upon humanity the
way ordinary people do, he takes a different, unexpected approach.
for example, what would you say about the eyes of the person in front
of you? The color, the size, the shape…they might even give away the
mood or certain emotion trapped inside that person. If you decide to