─ The place of birth is just a detail in the biography. ─

Mirko Kovač, an important Yugoslav writer, was born in Montenegro. He was one of those writers who do not care about the nation. He said that he has no sense of belonging to a community, society, or religion, least of all to a nation.

He left home early and supported himself during his education in Belgrade, all in order to become a writer. He said that, living in various places from Belgrade to Zagreb, he felt that he belonged only to his friends, the people he loved. Despite the fact that, in his own words, he belonged only to himself and literature, he stood up for the society in which he lives. Defiantly, during the Milosevic regime, he stood up against him. This was tantamount to madness at the time. He participated in many protests where he was often the main speaker. In 1991, because of this, he changed his long-standing Belgrade address to Rovinj.

The writer and the sea

Mirko

Dino

The famous writer was a book thief in his youth. - Life is made up of extremes! - he concluded in his later years.

Writer Mirko Kovač read the authors who were his greatest role models in his later work quite by accident. They came into his hands when he was a teenager. Namely, he often visited the Belgrade reading room. After the war, it was managed by a printing worker, a great communist ideologue.

Having obtained a management position, he decided to clean the institution of all undesirable, dark and ideologically destructive writers. So he condemned several dozen books by Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky to the stake, which he stuffed into boxes, intending them for waste.

He entrusted thirteen-year-old Kovač with the task of taking the boxes of those books to a nearby dump. But Kovač then showed the first sign of intellectual resistance that would later mark his entire life and work.

He dragged the forbidden books home and, despite his mother's opposition, hid them in the attic. The mother was afraid that they would all be arrested because of the stolen books! And little Mirko enjoyed discovering literature that, because it was forbidden to him, seemed even more attractive and intoxicating.

He read Tolstoy's "Childhood" more than twenty times, and it remained one of the most impressive literary works for him. The introduction, in which Tolstoy writes that there are only two ways to write - from the head and from the heart, remains one of the passages that he would often return to, even in the old days.

The book thief

An unusual friendship between UDBA spies and the accused Kovač.

The first book published by this famous Yugoslav writer was the controversial novel "Gubilište". The work was well received by most of the critics, while the other part was extremely controversial. The novel caused controversy in the Yugoslav public due to its pessimistic view of reality.

The authorities began to follow the young writer because of his suspicious writing. Every week he had to report to a Montenegrin udbas who was in charge of him, and that unusual relationship soon grew into something more.

At first, Mirko had to come to the inspector's office, and then he started calling meetings in bizarre places - in the Drina cafe, on Kalemegdan, on a bench, and later he drove him to some stables with horses outside Belgrade, even to canteens in Udba.

But Mirko never had any problems with him! These unusual meetings started to happen because the spy from Udba was obsessed with literature. He adored Mayakovsky, he could quote him by heart in Russian. For the spy, the young writer's mandatory reporting ceased to be a job. Spending time with Kovač every week and their discussions about literature became a pleasure for him.

The agent and the man he was supposed to supervise became friends. Later, they often used to sit together in the cafe of the "Majestic" hotel, where they would reminisce about the old days and the beginning of this unusual acquaintance, and they remained friends for the rest of their lives.

Spy and target

- I prefer those who destroy myths, than those who glorify them! –

Mirko Kovač, one of the greatest Yugoslav virtuosos with words, wanted to write since he was a child. He was not too interested in politics, but somehow it always touched him. To which he, daring and just, always had to react.

Politics first blocked his way at the time of the publication of his first book, the novel "Gubilište", which was accompanied by significant condemnation of the rulers. Back then, the blacksmith was lonely, poor and in fear for his existence. At first he naively defended himself, once he even said in self-defense that it was the duty of a young writer to be a communist. At that, his friend Bošković scolded him and said: - What a communist, he was miserable, what's the matter with you? It is the writer's duty to stay in literature, and let them deal with communism. It will pass them too. And you write and read Dostoyevsky! - Kovač followed his friend's advice. Although labeled as a reactionary, he continues to write.

He never wanted to be publicly involved in politics, but witnessing the rise of fascism, he had to react. During the rise of Slobodan Milošević, he publicly protested against him and his statements. He led public meetings where he advocated against nationalism and nationalist hatred.

In 1990, at a rally in Dom omladine, he was hit in the head by a camera thrown from the hand of one of the supporters of the protested policy. The following year, Milošević fully established his rule over the truth. The vast majority of Kovač's previous friends saw the Messiah in Milošević. Kovač then decided to leave Belgrade and settle somewhere on the Istrian coast.

He lived and wrote in Rovinj until the end of his life. With the founding of the Republic of Croatia, he became a regular writer for "Feral", in which he condemned Tuđman's nationalist policy and warned against corruption and populism. He warned that the two policies of the time - Croatian and Serbian - were flowing into and out of each other.

He diligently wrote literary works until the end of his life. In the work "Writing or Nostalgia" he expressed his opinion on nationalism: – The fact that I was born somewhere is not a matter of my ability. It's just a detail in the biography. A detail that must not determine my fate. –

Mirko Kovač will be remembered for his brilliant writing. With it, he indebted the entire Yugoslav literature and became its modernist classic.

The writer and the sea

─ The place of birth is just a detail in the biography. ─

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The book thief

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