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Do you remember Vladimir Konstantinović, a Banat man who became rich in the world and became Vadim Konstantini, bought an island in the South Sea and celebrated the national cuisine through various restaurants with all possible bean specialties? Although such a fate is no stranger to our talented people, he is not the face on the covers of newspapers and magazines, but the hero of Ivan Ivanji’s novel “Billionaire”, a book that continued in the play “Billionaire’s Sons” ( published by Laguna).
Vadim, very much in keeping with his adventurous character, with a Hungarian woman from our region and a fatal noblewoman from France, had two sons, Nikola and Louis, two personalities compared to heaven and earth, who were raised by other parents. When the time comes to share his wealth with the heirs after Vadim’s death, Nikola of Belgrade emerges from an aimless existence, from today to tomorrow, and sets out to meet his half brother, to see the world and transform completely. his character …
Ivan Ivanji is our famous writer and translator. He was also Tito’s translator for the German language, and his works have been translated into German, Italian, English, Hungarian, Slovak and Slovenian. At the beginning of World War II, he lost his parents and himself was arrested in March 1944, awaiting April 1945 at Auschwitz and Buchenwald.
Like the hero of your novel “Billionaire”, and in this sequel, the heroes cross the borders of Serbia and go out into the world. Why is it important for you, as an author, to always see a wider and more universal context?
For the human curiosity and longing of almost everyone, the entire globe is small, now we are moving towards planets like Mars. This is not a special feature of Serbs, the whole world is on the move. I can no longer go physically, but I can imagine everything. We can all. Also, I started studying architecture, I didn’t finish it, I escaped to study German, but I like to draw projects for apartments, villas, so when that wasn’t enough, I invented an island in the South Sea. I could map it.
Suddenly, a great legacy of a charismatic and unknown father, in the form of a paradise island, is the dream of many. Why did you allow that dream to come true in the novel not only for that son who is already a “prince”, a Frenchman, but also for a son who is a Serbian, who looks like a “beggar”?
In that way, I wanted to show that money in itself does not make people happy, friendship, love, interpersonal intimacy are more important. What does a sudden gain mean for a person about to commit suicide because of poverty, like Nikola, who believes that his father is a bad football player and drug dealer, and what about Louis, recognized as the son of a nobleman? , cousin of the Spanish king, whose wealth sometimes costs more? , of what it is worth, because it consumes too much. Nikola quickly finds true love, Louis has many girlfriends, one tells him “you are not a good lover, you are a sex machine”, and in the end he enters a boring marriage.
Is it now the fate of the Serbs to make a mark somewhere in the world, like their “billionaire” Vladimir Konstantinović?
No, I was not referring to the Serbs in particular. Some of my heroes are from here, but I am convinced that the desire to “make a mark” is universal. In several of my books, I deal with current life in our country, Serbia, I do not escape from that story, but in this book, it is not primarily my subject.
Things around us get more difficult. Is that why you came out of reality and turned a heroine into a fantastic being, a creature close to the pagan deities?
Esmeralda – Es – comes to my island from the water, from the sea, from the imagination. I made up that character every night before going to bed for years. In the first novel about Vadim, I found it, I just had to develop it further. And maybe her me? She imposed herself on me, I was surprised by the new exchanges with her. Many writers have also admitted that their characters have simply been taken away from them.
Paradise Island, however, is not intact and drug routes reach it. How, according to the reputation of your heroes, can a person return to purity?
You will hardly ever be successful, but you should at least try. Goethe in “Faust” says that only he who strives forever will be saved.
The Holocaust, its great theme, runs here at least through some symbol, an image reminiscent of sinister chimneys. How do you see the memories of the genocide in daily politics today and as a motif in art?
I didn’t want that, I didn’t even realize it. I didn’t think the Holocaust had anything to do with this issue. I repeat often: I am not interested in remembering the Holocaust in everyday politics. I know what happened, I don’t care what is said. I leave it up to the younger generations how to deal with it now, especially since, in my opinion, terms like the Holocaust or genocide are being abused and therefore devalued. Check with Elias Canetti how many genocides there have been in history.
In his previous novel “Villa en Dedinje”, one of the themes is the restitution of stolen property. Tens of thousands of art objects stolen from Jews during World War II have yet to be found in the world. To what extent is a legal and legal problem to deal with the past, and how much is it a matter of ethics?
Honestly, I never really thought about it. Through that Mimara, and also through other channels, many things came to our museums in a strange way. I don’t think who owns it is so important, but where it is exposed to the public.
What is it like when we talk about Jasenovac, for example?
Personally, I am attached to Jasenovac to the extent that my uncle, his wife, and two young children were killed there. He was considered the most beautiful man in our family. I would like this issue to be approached scientifically, as the Germans do at the memorial centers at the site of their great camps, or as at Auschwitz, and not politically. I don’t understand why this terrible topic is loaded with petty lies, as if Tito had never been to Jasenovac. He was twice, the second time with Bogdan Bogdanović, the creator of that fantastic flower, when he personally approved, against the wishes of the Alliance of Fighters, what Bogdan told me.
Vienna, Europe, world languages, all this is close to us while we read your novels. How far are we from that in life?
Like who. Yes, the Iron Curtain fell, in its place a paper fence was erected, but whoever really wants can go wherever they want.
As Tito’s German translator, you were a kind of diplomat. Have you ever “loosely translated” an expression or thought to make it sound “better”?
It is, and more beautiful and, above all, more correct, more understandable. In principle that should not be done, today translation is studied in universities, so it is strictly prohibited. In my day, when there were no trained translators yet, we treated each other as individuals, not as machines. Of course, it also depends on who you are translating for. Tito knew German very well. When I once thought I was wrong, I didn’t correct it, but kept quiet, I just didn’t translate. He paused, changed the text, I translated and when the conversation ended he squeezed my upper arm and said, “Thank you, you were right.” Zoran Djindjic spoke German not as a middle German, but as a German philosopher, super-intellectual, but I would correct him once, by the way, he said “… as a nationalist” in German. That sounds terrible in Germany after Hitler. I would say instead “… as a nationalist …”.
How did you think then of the position of the country you represented and how do you see the situation today?
I represented a country that I was sincerely proud of and believed in. Today? I am not a supporter of this government, but I would still recommend it, especially to the leadership, to pay more attention to protocol. I would never advise the president to speak to generals at the Ohio level or to host the German butcher Tennis, who is also despised in his country. If our embassy in Berlin did not warn the president, it is his fault, because his cabinet cannot know everything.
Are you surprised by Israel’s position on the recognition of Kosovo?
I am not. I don’t like Netanyahu’s politics, and I don’t think it is anti-Semitism to criticize the Prime Minister of Israel and his politics. I also don’t like Trump’s politics. The fact is that an important, but unfortunately minority part of Israel, such as the recently deceased Amos Oz and David Grossman, have friendly relations with the Palestinians. We need to go back to the ideological creator of the Jewish state, Theodor Herzl, who dreamed of a common state of Jews and Palestinians. And it really is something to call Kosovo a “Muslim state”.
In your stories, follow the “money trail.” However, when you think of a new virus pandemic, where does it take you?
I don’t understand why the world economic order was destroyed because of that disease, but you can see who makes money from it. By no means do I want to convey that I recommend that the mother be inactive.
There are many questions and few see a way out of this “viral” crisis, in which culture and economy suffer equally. Do you see any solution?
Is. I see. The virus will never go away. Man, homo sapiens, lives with viruses. We will hysterically stop looking for the positive. As a child I learned to wash my hands without pandemics, and also not to kiss strangers, at least in my mouth.
How do you handle the imposed restrictions yourself?
Probably easier than many others, because I am old, my back hurts, otherwise I cannot walk much, I have never been a bohemian and my companions have long been to the other side of eternity. I belong to the riskiest group, I follow all the prescribed rules, as do my children and grandchildren. Having mutual pneumonia and suffocating on a respirator for days or even weeks is worse than dying in the Auschwitz gas chamber, where it was all over within minutes.
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