Svetlana Velmar-Janković

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Svetlana Velmar-Janković (

humanist
values which unite her and her country with the rest of Europe.

Life and work

Svetlana Velmar-Janković was born in

communist Yugoslavia, and that was not easy to endure for the remained family members. At the beginning of the 3rd millennium, late efforts of his daughters to get him officially rehabilitated, ran into opposition. A brief statement by his famous daughter gives an idea of the long-term suffering of the family, and a question asked at the beginning of this millennium by a contemporary witness and representative of the post-war state, who was nobody else than Tito's official German language interpreter during state visits and receptions, brings up this issue to the point.[2]

That's why we've been branded all our lives. Svetlana Velmar-Janković, 2005[3]

To explain my today’s position, I have to say that when I returned from the German concentration camp, I lived as a winner in the time of Svetlana's greatest suffering as a girl from a family of the vanquished. On the day after the liberation, everything was not only taken away from her and her family, but she and her sick mother were thrown on the street in the middle of winter. Should the guilt of an enemy of the people be passed on to family members, underage children? Ivan Ivanji, 2017[4]

After completion of her

essays
of numerous Serbian authors.

She was elected corresponding member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts since 2006, and became a full member three years later. From 2007 to 2013, she was chairwoman of the board of directors of the National Library of Serbia.

Svetlana Velmar-Janković was married twice, her first marriage to journalist Miodrag Protić ended with his death in 1974, after twenty one years of wedlock, and her son Đorđe (born in 1966) comes from this relationship, he emigrated to the

United States of America. She is interred in an honorary grave of the Belgrade New Cemetery. Her second husband was Žarko Rošulj (born in 1940), who worked at Nolit publishing as a graphic editor from 1978 to 1996 and died in 2018.[5][6][7]

In its obituary, the newspaper Politika cites the deceased lady once again who will never be passed away in collective memory and lives on in her books about places, people and generations.

I write about the past so I can see it, and I see it as I write. Remembering, which is a rediscovery, always leads us to a deeper understanding of the world. I grew up in Belgrade, and without that ground, I don't know how I would exist and live. I deal with the past of this city so that I can understand and endure its present.[8]

Her complete work is already including one or several editions in Bulgarian, German, English, French, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Macedonian and Spanish translation, most of all published in French. Internationally best known book from her complete work is the novel Lagum, which has also been published in Bulgarian, English (two editions in 1996 and 2002), French, German, Italian and Spanish translation. Lagum, a term of Turkish origin, refers to a dark dungeon-like underground passage, in which no light falls, as are numerous under the

extermination camps in the Independent State of Croatia during the war and therefore co-operated with Serbian Quisling government, the couple became increasingly estranged. Above that, Milica hides a wounded partisan in the servant room of her apartment without her husband's knowledge and children. The takeover of power by the communist resistance fighters become the fate of the family: Dušan is executed as a collaborator, the apartment is ransacked by neighbors who hastily turned into zealous and cruel henchmen of the new regime. Milica is reviled as a traitor by people whom she and her husband had saved years ago. So also from that partisan who recovered hidden in family's flat. It is a sensitive but relentless portrait of society, a profound analysis of human contradictions, character weaknesses and political opportunism.[9]

Celia Hawkesworth, English translator of the novel Lagum, describes this work as follows:

Lagum is a product of the new political climate following the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. It is an understated subtle account of the distortions in human relationships engendered by social upheavals. It bridges the wide gap between post-war communist rule and pre-war society in Yugoslavia by opening up previously taboo questions about the nature of the war in Yugoslavia and the meaning of collaboration during the occupation. Tracing the life of a middle-class woman whose husband was executed by the communist authorities, and who is obliged after 1945 to live with her two children in a small part of their large flat in Belgrade, it reveals the complex misunderstandings and false perceptions resulting from social divisions, resentments, and revolution.[10]

For the past three decades of her life, Svetlana Velmar-Janković was not only a recognized Grande Dame of Serbian literature, but also a loud voice of conscience who courageously and unequivocally advocated

Yugoslav wars and her statement about the Serbian declaration on Srebrenica massacre. She was also a member of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Komisija za istinu i pomirenje).[11][12]

These protests should have started much earlier, when the first shots were heard and when attacks on people and towns began. I am afraid that it already too late. Still, let us not allow them reduce us to their subjects who have become malicious, let us strengthen the better side of our personality, let us continue to walk and to support each other![13]

I can only say that once again the opportunity to clearly condemn what has been done to Non-Serbs, thousands of human beings in Srebrenica, has been missed to have the moral right to speak tomorrow about what to the Serbian population happened in the 1990s. If we refuse to face the horror of the violent deaths committed ten years ago, how will we fight for the truth in the world?[14]

Bibliography

Novels

  • Ožiljak (Scar), 1956
  • Lagum (Dungeon), 1990
  • Bezdno (Bottomless), 1995
  • Nigdina (Nowhere), 2000
  • Vostanije (Uprising), 2004

Essays

  • Savremenici (Contemporaries), 1967
  • Ukletnici (Cursed Ones), 1993
  • Izabranici (Chosen Ones), 2005
  • Srodnici (Kinfolk), 2013

Memoirs

  • Prozraci (Ventilation), 2003 and 2015 (second volume, posthumous)

Short Stories, Narrations

  • Dorćol, 1981[15]
  • Vračar, 1994
  • Glasovi (Voices), 1997
  • Knjiga za Marka (Book for Marko), children's literature, 1998
  • Očarane naočare: priče o Beogradu (Spellbound Spectacles: Stories About Belgrade), 2006
  • Sedam mojih drugara (Seven of my Friends), 2007
  • Zapisi sa dunavskog peska (Danube Sand Records), 2016 (posthumous)

Monograph

  • Kapija Balkana: brzi vodič kroz prošlost Beograda (Gate of the Balkans: Quick Guide Through Belgrade's History), 2011

Theatre Plays

  • Žezlo (Sceptre, contains
    Mihailo
    ), 2011
  • Knez Mihailo, Premiere at Yugoslav Drama Theatre, 1996
  • Lagum, dramatized by Gordana Gocić, Premiere at Atelje 212, 1995

English editions

Honors

References

  1. ^ Draško Ređep (1971). Živan Milisavac (ed.). Jugoslovenski književni leksikon [Yugoslav Literary Lexicon]. Novi Sad (SAP Vojvodina, SR Serbia: Matica srpska. p. 559.
  2. ISBN 978-3-11-021773-5
    , p. 32.
  3. ^ Moj otac nije bio narodni neprijatelj, Blic, retrieved 2020-01-17.
  4. ^ Pobednici i poraženi, Vreme, retrieved 2020-01-17.
  5. ^ Ko je ko u Srbiji, Bibliofon, Belgrade 1996 (WBIS), retrieved 2020-01-18.
  6. ^ Preminula Svetlana Velmar Janković, Večernje novosti (Wayback Machine), retrieved 2014-04-09.
  7. ^ Biography, National Library of Serbia, retrieved 2020-01-18.
  8. ^ Преминула Светлана Велмар Јанковић, Politika, retrieved 2020-01-19.
  9. ISBN 978-0-7546-3234-4
    , p. 104.
  10. ISBN 963-9116-62-9
    , p. 218.
  11. ICTJ
    , retrieved 2020-01-15.
  12. ^ Truth and Reconciliation Commission, United States Institute of Peace (Wayback Machine), retrieved 2020-01-18.
  13. ^ With Shame Against Fear, Vreme NDA of Rutgers University Library, retrieved 2020-01-15.
  14. ^ Nova čitanja Svetlane Velmar Janković, RTS, retrieved 2020-01-15.
  15. ISBN 978-0-312-22175-1
    .
  16. ^ World Literature Today, Vol. 65/No. 3/1991, p. 518-519.
  17. ^ J’ai été le témoin de maintes trahisons, Serbica of Bordeaux Montaigne University, retrieved 2020-01-12.
  18. ^ Kroz lagume duše, Sve Vesti, retrieved 2020-01-10.
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