"As for me, I know a higher power and I need to walk a long time side by side with my strange heroes, to contemplate, through laughter and tears apparent unsuspected, the infinite unfolding of life. " (Nicolas Gogol Dead Souls singing VII translation Ernest Charriere)
"Cinéroman" is the strange subtitle of the work of Goran Petrović we propose the allusive in this literary season. Roger Grenier, in 1972, had made this neologism the title of a column of provincial life of the 30s. It is unlikely that the Serbian novelist, born in 1961 and won several literary prizes in his country, wanted to pay tribute to the almost forgotten French writer, but his work is also gratifying a chronicle, that of a small town in the former Yugoslavia. Under the sky flaking , whose translation into French, due to Gojko Lukic, was published in September 2010, closely following the publication of the novel in Serbia, held in a theater, the Urania, some Some residents of Kraliévo. Time travel enclosed in a unique space, both ordinary and unusual, this novel takes us into a familiar and strange, a place of dreams that fits on the screen, but also witnessed a historical reality.
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Urania's story begins with the comical story of the creation of the Yugoslavia Hotel, built by the shoemaker Iovanovitch Laza, a character worthy of those films of Emir Kusturica or Aleksandar Petrovic. A juicy case of mismatched boots allows him to realize his dream of building a luxury hotel, its mismanagement led to pass from hand to hand, changing their destination, eventually leading between those of the projectionist Rudi Prohaska, who , from the room ballroom, a cinema landscape in "heavy curtain of dark blue velvet" and painted the vault of constellations. This place fixed but a witness to history is an interesting microcosm, and together, when the action begins, thirty disparate audiences and representative. The darkness of the room absorbs intended, the closer, to give readers a rich field of observation and alive. On May 4, 1980, is in fact met in this place to watch a movie which we know almost nothing, a concentrate of humanity, ordered in a hierarchy unchanged. The novel, organized in short chapters, presents these characters one by one or two by two, depending on whether they came alone or not, and from the place they occupy in the room. Thus we discover, through an anonymous narrator, witness nostalgic, warm and amused, fragments of lives, destinies tragic, funny or absurd. First, the opener, Simonovitch, whose existence is closely related to that place that never leaves. Locked in a shed of eight square meters equipped with a window too high, it covers the world with a particular look: However, his aspiration freedom finds expression in poetry. Indeed, the court of the concrete hotel, which served as a time of outdoor cinema, he created a wonderful garden, paradise plant which is the sole occupant. Simonovitch, who speaks little - through a formal address at the beginning of each session, for example - a companion to a bird that has left him Prohaska, who never leaves, even if not cage. This "parrot" (which is not one) through the novel survives and those that it accompanies, disappearing when violence occurs. The bird flies away, dreams of taking Simonovitch height, this window unattainable symbolizing freedom.
It's the old opener that puts the other characters in a fixed order. The first rows, one to nine are occupied by people of little importance in society: Comrade Avramovitch a dignitary removed from office, and who has retained his political activities that a strange muscle twitching leads him to raise his right hand unexpectedly, sparking anger or amusement. Behind him, a drunken gypsies, married people, college students ... a precious sample, comic and touching by the bonds that develop and affectionate look upon them as the narrator relates. Each fate is discussed with brevity, but the art of Petrović gives depth to each. It is not a gallery of characters juxtaposed, but the vivid evocation of lives subject to the vagaries of history. Thus, J. and Z, two mischievous schoolboys, who selected victims for the couple Erakovitch are pledged to a tragic fate that the author evokes tenderness and lightness. Mobilized in the Yugoslav People's Army in the early 1990s, they were both cut down by the same bullet:
" In this confusion, nobody could say where the ball continued its course. Or how many people it has killed again. Or how many others, and from what angle, it would perhaps kill the years to come. Or maybe decades. Although one can also consider the centuries.
J. and Z. have just collapsed. They did not look dead, but they were. No, except for the bloodstains on their temples, they in no way resembles the dead boys. Instead, both bareheaded, his mouth open, looked like mischievous kids about to say
- Excuse me, sir, could you down a bit, you can not see anything ".
Lightness and gravity mingle, meet, merge into a fragmented narrative but a great consistency. These snippets of life come together to form one, that of Yugoslavia subject to vagaries of history. The site takes care to retain the imprint, through assorted graffiti: "DD hereof his royal ass," or "white-haired bastard Lost / answers to the name of Noiraud" or "Comrade Tito, you have our word" ... The disorder is organized in an exuberance that is reminiscent of Kusturica's films - the end of Brindillon, sickly person living in his raincoat XL , which flies like a kite, reminded me of the man-cannon Promise of i-mo, who can not land. And Urania home and memories of times gone by, witnessed the debut, with silent films and sentimental trifles, also laying on the film which is doomed to disappear - the memory of the Hotel Yugoslavia remain engraved on film a movie in 1932, the very history of films in room immortalized in a movie-river rose eight hours from images stolen over the years by the barkers projectionist turned filmmaker. From this place doomed to oblivion, hidden by a false ceiling, the vault remains Stellar, immutable though fragile, this "super stucature" ...
"symbolic image of the vast universe. With the Sun placed exactly in the middle, darting rays flamboyant, stylish, a sleepy moon, just a little "bite", the planets arranged in a relatively free order. All around, a scattering of constellations of both hemispheres: Andromeda, the bird of paradise, the Charioteer, the Altar, the Big Dog and Little Dog, Cassiopeia, Compass, the Hydra, the Southern Cross, the Lyre, Table and Orion, the Peacock, the ECU, the Big Dipper and Little Dipper, the Virgin, and then galaxies, nebulae and even two or three incandescent comet tails ... Above us there was this brilliantly executed stucature at the time of the "master" Laza Iovanovitch still curved like the heavens, beaded in places of moisture droplets and bristling with 'Needles mold that after so many years had finally broke through the precious old smooth coat. "
So even if the fates of these characters are fleeting, even if their lives are part of a limited duration, the sky appears gradually peeling the slow crumbling of a world in which events repeat The war of the 1990s in response to the German occupation, Comrade Avramovitch regaining its status and the loser again ... This universe disappears but his memory remains, just like the picture resurrects the past, the time for a moment on the screen fragile and elusive - evoking fleeting, elusive and nostalgic for a past that exists only in memory.
Goran Petrović Under a sky flaking , translated from Serbian by Gojko Luki ć, allusions, 2010
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