A Literary Conversation with Milovan Djilas
BUTLER, THOMAS J.
A Literary Conversation with Milovan Djilas By Thomas J. Butler On December 10, after a brief one-month stay in the United States, Milovan Djilas returned home to his native Yugoslavia. He has...
...And if so, what was his own philosophy of good and evil?which triumphs in the end...
...Dostoevsky is my favorite author...
...Djilas' kindly smile enveloped his whole face, from brow to chin...
...Djilas began to laugh at his future predicament...
...he was probably guilty, although it was all circumstantial evidence...
...Did this have any relationship to the so-called Montenegrin Manicheanism...
...But he came to my door one Sunday morning a few weeks later, with a shy Aleksa, to have coffee and to meet my wife and children...
...When I was released I felt unsure of myself—I was afraid to walk across the street...
...For other characters in Djilas' stories, murder of the innocent or helpless is the ultimate proof of fidelity to an ideology...
...I once knew about 40,000 lines of poetry...
...Some of it appears to be purposeful variation and embellishment—such as you might find in folk poetry...
...Significantly, "The Anatomy of a Morality," the document that began his fall in 1954, was an attempt to protest the cruelty of some hierarchs' wives toward a general's young bride...
...On the morning of our first meeting, Djilas himself opened the door...
...I also had to change the meter from iambic pentameter to our heroic meter...
...Did you really think the peasant was a spy...
...I think it's rare for a male writer to describe women so well...
...My first imprisonment was very difficult for me...
...He seems to be almost the angel of death—he has some biblical quality...
...At this he gave a mischievous laugh, with a glance for my reaction...
...That's because I was never a woman-chaser and was always idealistic about women...
...I went to church sometimes when I was a young boy, but I am an atheist...
...Djilas smiled...
...Djilas put an arm around his shoulders: "This is my son, Aleksa...
...For example, here in 'Woods and Waters,' you and Ilija are running through the forest to meet the outlawed revolutionaries, and you're thinking of the Spanish Civil War, and you write: 'We were perspiring, for we were leaping from rock to rock and were hampered by the denseness of the undergrowth...
...My mother could recite a lot of poetry...
...Yes, I am too repetitive, and my themes are very similar . . ." "I didn't mean to imply that all your repetition is bad...
...With the self-knowledge that came from deep introspection during his first prison term, Djilas wrote in his retelling of this folk epic: "That song is my life...
...Djilas was most gracious to my wife, and I saw another side of his nature—the sensitive gentle charmer...
...I am not to blame for having lived, for having relived in myself the song of Vuk Lopusina—that is to say the life of Vuk Lopusina himself...
...There had been student demonstrations in New Belgrade, and some of the students had been called "Djilasists" in the press and over the radio and tv...
...Did you read my book Njegos, about our Montenegrin poet...
...By the narrowest of margins...
...We were invited to meet his wife, Stephanie, and our meetings became more frequent in the next few months...
...I think it is the best one in that book...
...Maybe there was a subconscious intention...
...It would be hard to choose just one—I liked several of them very much...
...In fact, I started out as a writer and only later became a revolutionary when I opened the first Communist cell in Belgrade at the university, without any contact with the Yugoslav Communist party...
...What it had less opportunity to learn is that Communism's famous heretic is also intensely interested in literary matters...
...I knew the real Miliko...
...I witnessed the execution...
...Earlier this year, in Belgrade, I talked with Djilas at length about this...
...Perhaps 'The Song of Vuk Lopusina.' " When I added that I thought it was a bit too long and that his editor should have cut it, Djilas seemed to wince...
...He was not displeased by the association...
...You said 'The Foreigner' was based on a true incident...
...So it is not surprising that while he was here attention focused mainly on his views concerning a wide variety of global problems...
...You may be an atheist," I said, "but you also seem to be a very spiritual person...
...Tell me, what did you think of the story "The Foreigner...
...It seems to me that there you come very close to a spiritual message...
...I think it is my best work...
...Miliko seems to be a kind of brother or logical extension of Raskolnikov...
...So, you know our language...
...But I did speak well of her, I think, in my new Njegos...
...It seems to me that once I saw a reference to another book by you, The Legend About Njegos...
...now interlocking the fingers of his two hands to show a fusion of two points...
...the blinds were open, as they always were on my subsequent visits...
...I asked Djilas about his boyhood disagreement with his father over the authenticity of his own favorite version of the song, the one in which Vuk beheads his beautiful Moslem captive, Zika Kajovic...
...Djilas laughed...
...Turska, inolim vas...
...I was writing a review of The Leper and Other Stories and merely wanted to ask a few questions...
...It seems to me that many Yugoslav Communists got their training there...
...First, I should say that I am an atheist and a materialist...
...As we were leaving, I asked if there was anything I should not write...
...The Leper and Other Stories...
...They were from a band that had killed a number of captured partisans...
...The war was terrible and brutal, and there were many atrocities...
...Djilas thought...
...I thought that was a great story—a 13-year-old boy killing his father's murderer...
...His hair is sparse and gray with hardly a trace of the vital black bush he sported in early postwar photographs...
...This quality shows in his amazingly lifelike characterizations of women and his strong sympathy for them...
...Yes, that was a bad book...
...Yes, I wrote that in 1952 to attack a book by Isadora Sekulic [To Njegos: A Book of Deep Devotion...
...they reminded him too much of his father's imprisonment and their nine years of separation...
...were you working in church this morning...
...What about your story on the ruins of that old church—Sudikova...
...If there is any biblical influence it would not be from the Bible, but from folklore...
...Every man must live in the spirit...
...Djilas' father felt it was not in the Montenegrin tradition for a hero to cut off a woman's head, because it was inhuman and because woman was considered an inferior being—an unworthy victim...
...His face was white, calm and ascetic, and had a sheen not unlike fine marble...
...But Milovan Djilas, both as a boy and later as an aging prisoner, felt that although the murder was terrible it was somehow right, "a way of settling accounts with something within himself, with reconciliation and wavering towards the Turks...
...When my wife and I came to say good-bye in June, both Djilas and his wife were quiet and subdued, she more than he...
...I could tell you understood it so I didn't stop...
...It is beautifully written, but it is too much, too cruel...
...He paused and then wrote a dash for semifictional...
...I didn't get writing paper for two years...
...All of your women seem so real and so full of life...
...Without being asked, Djilas autographed my copy and wrote an inscription...
...It is just like it was when Milovan was in prison," his wife said...
...This doesn't mean that good is gloriously triumphant, but that it wins in the end...
...I asked Djilas if he thought that the revolutionary struggle had been worth it...
...Yes, that also happened...
...Do you agree with Blake that the Devil is the real hero of this poem...
...I pointed out that in seven out of 10 of his stories, evil is the victor...
...One can never wipe away the sins of the past...
...And so our last meeting before his visit to the United States was brief and uncommunicative...
...Yes, I identify with that devil...
...Is he named after your grandfather Aleksa, the one you mention in Land Without Justice, who killed Akica Corovic...
...On one occasion Djilas discussed the basic conflict in his life, the conflict between the artist and the revolutionary...
...Yes...
...The story reveals how epic poetry and the Montenegrin tradition of struggle with the Turks influenced Djilas' life...
...Some others have said that...
...Belgrade...
...He has spent close to nine of his last 10 years in prison there, the victim of a series of closed trials for his outspoken political writings...
...He quickly went down the table of contents until he came to "The Leper...
...No, I have already sent it to Bill Jovanovich, president of Harcourt, Brace...
...Although we were neighbors, living only a block apart, I thought this would be our only meeting...
...Did you like it...
...No one comes to visit, we are isolated once again...
...The study faces the street and the apartment buildings opposite it...
...At one point in our conversation a tall, athletic-looking boy came into the room...
...The iambic will not work in Serbian because too many of our words are stressed on the first syllable...
...Let me talk to him," he said, "I will liquidate him quickly...
...Djilas smiled...
...He flexed his right arm and laughed, but immediately became quiet...
...I tried to remember what I had written about his style, while those two words "Soviet Union," so significant for his life and career, dominated my mind...
...Even before I finished uttering a few words of self-introduction, he spread his arms in welcome and said "Please come in," speaking English unhesitatingly...
...there were no interruptions for telephone calls or visitors...
...This is not the Soviet Union...
...He is 15 and he speaks English better than I, although I know more words...
...he asked...
...It is often impossible to find either an intellectual or emotional process of association, but such abrupt changes of direction leave him the initiative...
...now a clenched fist over the heart to signal that one should be silent, there is yet another idea to come...
...This was wartime, and there were different rules . . ." "The young executioner—Strahinja—he's quite scary...
...After all, these men have some sense of honor...
...This was before my heresy...
...That is correct...
...I was a fierce Communist, and I did my job well...
...I pointed out that Isaac Deutscher had given a nobler picture of Trotsky and his idea of a "permanent revolution," and said that I myself would have supported such an idea if I had been a Communist...
...Is there anything in life that is completely funny...
...But how did you manage to get your manuscripts out of jail...
...Some of the images take the reader completely by surprise...
...I wrote it for ideological reasons...
...Over the Turkish coffee brought in by the sprightly housekeeper, Mica, I explained that I had not come for a political interview...
...We had both climbed into the same tree...
...I felt very bad because I could not tell her I was sorry for that book...
...He died later during the war...
...From press reports, an excellent television interview and other appearances, the American public learned that he remains a fearless and eloquent, if soft-spoken, reformer...
...I wrote Legends and Realities—my publisher changed the title to The Leper and Other Stories because he thought it would sell better—I wrote Legends during my first imprisonment, from 1956 to 1961...
...Which of my stories in The Leper did you like best...
...Our breasts ran with the blood of Spain.'" Djilas perched on the edge of a chair, listening calmly, his index finger on a lip, seeming far away...
...Sometimes he dropped in on a Sunday to chat briefly with us...
...Mile is short for Milovan, and Nikolic is from my father's first name, Nikola...
...During a different meeting I asked if he thought the revolution in Russia had been a good thing...
...Who would want to read that stuff...
...Which do you like, Turkish coffee or Nescafe...
...Djilas reacted...
...Good...
...It is not far from his "Vuk" to Dostoevsky's rebels...
...He is of medium height and wiry, and he was dressed in a woolen pullover and reddish homespun pants similar to those peasants wear...
...I had intended to ask him about the eroticism of some of his imagery, but turned instead to the negative aspects of his style, which I described as repetitive and diffuse...
...But I was too high up in the command to play any active role in the killing...
...Aleksa was introduced to my oldest son, Chris, and they went into an adjoining room to play chess and listen to rock records...
...It was not difficult to find him...
...I learned later from Stephanie, Djilas' wife, that Aleksa could not bear to read these stories...
...What do you think of my writing...
...And that is my religion...
...But during my second sentence [1962-66] I . . . yogaized myself [Ja sam se jogizirao...
...My host invited me to sit down, but he remained standing...
...His laughter is a bit high-pitched and always seems to have a question at the end: Was that really funny...
...When I was in prison I heard that Isadora Sekulic had died...
...he asked...
...Why didn't you go to fight in the Spanish Civil War...
...Raskolnikov—that's interesting...
...We have American coffee...
...Did you purposely give your characters this biblical dimension...
...I came earlier but you were out...
...No, write anything you wish," he said, "but please don't say anything bad about Yugoslavia...
...Djilas expressed surprise that there was much interest in his stories in America and asked me what I thought of them...
...Of course...
...Tolstoy had the same experience after a period of great despondency...
...Djilas had a caller...
...He went over to a bookshelf and took down a bound manuscript...
...a Djilas neologism, I think], nothing bothered me, and when I got out of prison it was as though I had not been away a day...
...One has to be an optimist...
...Mica entered seeking advice...
...Djilas stopped, waiting for me to continue the discussion of his style...
...When I inquired whether he had taken part in the killing during the war and if being an intellectual had inhibited his effectiveness as a fighter, he replied: "It had no effect...
...Have you read William James...
...That is now outmoded...
...Those memories bothered me in prison...
...Didn't you write an earlier book on Njegos...
...Sudikova is spiritual life as pure as it can ever be...
...Will you have something to drink...
...Both Louis Fischer and I agree that Trotsky was responsible...
...Good, we can speak Serbian...
...Weren't you tempted at the time to stop it...
...I already had been there two hours, and I looked uncomfortably at the manuscript, pencil and reading glasses waiting on his desk...
...The old government was rotten and had to be destroyed, and if we hadn't taken over there would have been two separate states of Serbia and Croatia...
...Sudikova has not passed away...
...Nobody will publish it...
...I mean the scene in which Miliko kills his wife for so-called 'Party discipline.' Gordana seems so real and so beautiful that one wants to reach out and hold back Miliko's gun...
...This is possible...
...I always intended to be a writer...
...Is that the manuscript of Paradise Lost on your desk...
...I was a fierce fighter...
...Trotsky was a romantic and impractical...
...To T. Butler, an American professor, in memory of an unusual, pleasant and instructive conversation...
...For example, the patriarch in 'War' and the mother and her two children whose throats are slit in 'Fire and Knife,' and Vuco?the Judas—and even the name Lazar in "The Leper...
...I opened my copy of The Leper to search for places I had already marked...
...The Russian Revolution was good, and Stalin was a great leader until Trotsky drew out the evil thread in his nature...
...Did you read his Confession...
...Did you understand the joke...
...his name and address are listed in the telephone directory...
...When he finished he said, "You understood it all...
...Tito asked me to stay behind, he wanted me to help rebuild the Party organization...
...I replied that they seem dark and pessimistic and almost unbearably cruel...
...And another time I killed a German in a tree...
...Would you say that folk poetry influenced your style...
...Well, I like your style—it's lyrical, intimate, at times highly poetic...
...I asked...
...The apartment was unusually quiet...
...Yes, he is named after my grandfather, and also after' my brother who died in the war...
...I don't believe in God but I do believe in certain rules of behavior, an ethic that has evolved historically from man's relations with man, one that is timeless and must not be broken...
...no man can escape eternity—is not that the message of Sudikova...
...They both kill women for ideological reasons...
...Would you like to hear some of my Serbian translation of Paradise LostT' He read several excerpts, including Satan's address to the sun in Book Four, with warmth and tenderness and deep commiseration...
...What about 'The Execution...
...Not in the simple Marxist sense...
...Father and son both laughed, Djilas playfully hugged him, and Aleksa left...
...Here, read what I have written...
...First let me say that I am, in principle, an optimist about life...
...he came to me for consolation after he had killed her, but there wasn't much I could say...
...And at one time I knew all of Njegos' Gorski Vijenac [The Mountain Wreath] by heart...
...In one corner by the window stood a massive walnut desk on which lay only a tidy manuscript, a pencil and reading glasses...
...Well, I did not intend to draw any parallels with the Bible, but the point you raise about Lazar is interesting...
...They provided a kind of ideological preparation for his partisan days and later...
...I asked if he would check in my book those stories which were autobiographical and those which were fictional...
...They would never take them from me...
...He wrote a book called Varieties of Religious Experience in which he described incidents very similar to what happened to you when you first discovered those ruins...
...I have a large dictionary [vocabulary] in English from translating Milton's Paradise Lost when I was in jail, but Milton's language is bookish, schoolboy...
...Perhaps a slivovica or a cup of coffee...
...Then after the war I wanted to return to writing, but the break with Stalin was coming, and Tito asked me to help in the fight...
...He continually moved his hands and arms: now a slow straightening out of the arm from the shoulder to denote the full range of an idea...
...I translated 15 pages a day, dictating to a secretary...
...I could not adapt myself to outside life...
...Do you know Feuerbach...
...He led me through an inner hallway to his study, a large comfortable room lined with books...
...Again he laughed the familiar laugh...
...Milovan Djilas, January 18, 1968...
...I was in solitary confinement for 20 months, it was very cold, and I wrote with gloves on my hands, on toilet paper...
...Maybe now I can do some writing...
...When he returned I stood up to say good-bye...
...He lives in the center of the city, a block from Parliament, over which he presided as Vice President and heir apparent to Marshal Tito until shortly before his fall from Party grace in 1954...
...As for the cruelty in these stories, such things did happen...
...He seemed healthy enough...
...Also, I think the fact that I wrote these stories in prison had a great influence on their mood...
...Djilas' sudden shift from "the Soviet Union" to "my writing" is typical of both his conversation and work...
...As he answered he moved across the room slowly and softly, not nervously...
...Once I did have two Chetniks sentenced to death...
...No, this is part of a long novel I am writing about a Montenegrin massacre after World War I; it will run over 2,000 pages...
...He will publish it but he will lose money...
...Then I was put in jail for three years in the '30s, and when I got out I wanted to return to writing, but Tito said 'No.' He said that the Party organization had been destroyed and that I must help to rebuild it, that there was going to be a war...
...So I lived in Belgrade on false documents, making my living by translating Gorki under the name of Mile Nikolic...
...I asked Aleksa whether he read his father's stories in English...
...In principle I am in favor of every revolution which succeeds and against every revolution which fails...
...His apartment is on the second floor of a fine old building, and his name is engraved in large letters on the brass nameplate over the door...
...The parallels between persons and events in his own career and those in this fable where leprosy is a symbolic disease were obvious, and I felt the story was too sensitive to be discussed...
...He added a third category: semifictional...
Vol. 51 • December 1968 • No. 24
