In view of the fact that this story was planned to be a part of The Encyclopedia of the Dead, Kiš wrote a note that was supposed to be included in a general postscript, which we have appended to the story in this volume, rather than place here among the notes. It was our view that the subsequent revelation of the hero’s identity retrospectively underscored the nonfictional nature of the story, whereas the typical novelistic feature of a “note” would broaden to too great a degree the world of the basic narrative. In terms of form, we find this is justified by the fact that the story “The Short Biography of A.A. Darmolatov” (in A Tomb for Boris Davidovich) concludes with an italicized postscript.
The Lute and the Scars
“The Lute and the Scars” was also conceived as part of The Encyclopedia of the Dead. We have already made mention (see previous note) of some of our hypotheses about the reasons this story, as was the case with “Jurij Golec,” did not make it into the collection. Two versions are preserved in manuscript form: the first, without a title, contains seventeen typed pages (fifteen of which are sequentially paginated, though among them are inserted two pages with the designations “2a” and “6a”); the second, entitled “The Lute and the Scars,” consists of fourteen unfilled pages. Versions of the introductory section of the story make up most of the content of another sixteen pages. And, again, it is to the story itself that we attached the “note” that was foreseen as a general postscript. In this case we acted with much greater hesitation than with “Jurij Golec.” The reasons were that this note has primarily a theoretical and meta-textual function: it specifies the genre (creative nonfiction), with an additional reference to the story “Jurij Golec.” The gulf between Kiš’s narration and his commentary is much wider here. The fact is, however, that the word “note” itself seems intended to strengthen, even to guarantee, the truthfulness of the story (even, if nothing else, by comparison with the foregoing story, in which the inclusion of the fictional was a kind of obligation).
Let us now shift our attention to the thematic uniqueness of this story in the context of Kiš’s literary oeuvre: this is the only piece that one could label a “Belgrade story.” The piece was written at the start of 1983, as a late look back at his own younger years, with a double distancing from the objects he is describing: in terms of space, since at that time Kiš was living in Paris, and likewise at a chronological remove (the story takes place during the 1950s, with one episode from the end of the 1960s). Everything in the piece is tied up with a quintessential story of emigration, the roots of which reach back to the Russian Revolution. And it is precisely this aspect of the story that links it, along with “The Book of Kings and Fools” (from The Encyclopedia of the Dead), to the world of A Tomb for Boris Davidovich. The reference to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is not simply part and parcel of Kiš’s memories of his youth (and an indirect reference to two treatments of the subject that Kiš penned much earlier, both published in the newspaper Ovdje (Here): “On Céline” from April 1971 and “Anti-Semitism as a Way of Looking at the World” from June of the same year), but also a representation of the subtle affinities between these two stories. (For example, the profession of the hero of “The Book of Kings and Fools,” Belogortsev — a forestry engineer — along with a few other details that the attentive reader will unearth.)
The Poet
Although the title “The Poet” is not mentioned in any of the tables of contents for The Encyclopedia of the Dead, one handwritten fragment, found among texts that can with certainty be linked to that book, shows us to be justified in placing the story into this context. This is the fragment:
A story about a professor who writes a
sonnet against Tito and the Party.
After years of a sentence of hard labor,
this sonnet has been reworked into
a paean.
They bring Ranković to see him, etc.
Two sonnets.
On the back of one page of notes to “Jurij Golec” we find the following written by hand:
For the story:
1. The mayor destroys the park.
2. Sonnet (of a reactionary)
The manuscript of “The Poet” consists of thirteen continuously paginated typed pages. Corrections were made in three rounds: with a pencil and with fine blue and black ballpoint pens. There are no other related papers: the story came into existence in one sitting, with only superficial changes.
The appearance of this story among Kiš’s short fiction is not, however, accidental. Traces of his reflections on the postwar years are to be seen in his notes, in his sketches of imaginative literary subjects, and in fragmentary autobiographical notes relating to the Cetinje period of the author’s life. From among the large number of such notes we will reproduce here a few that correspond to this story:
“[P]arty spirit” in literature; the revolution isn’t for young ladies; terror in schooclass="underline" tight pants (“knickerbockers”), haircut, etc. morale; Lenin-Stalin in physics, history, math, etc; language: the manner of speech of politicians and peasants; warehouses belonging to government ministries.
In addition, we include a short character sketch:
Cetinje: secret policeman/tennis player: he has an odd way of walking, not peasantlike, or clumsy, not at all, but rather a gait that you couldn’t help but watch (even though a gait cannot be viewed or seen): it was, how shall I say, the walk of a peasant who is walking as if he were middle class, who thinks he is walking as if he were a middle-class person who plays tennis.
Subsequent to the first publication of this story in the initial edition of the collection The Lute and the Scars, we found amid some newspaper clippings a bundle of Kiš’s papers that contained several relevant items, including a bibliography that the author undoubtedly composed in the course of preparing his collected works. On one sheet from this bundle we found the following note that indicates the “sources” of this story, its nonfictional background:
People told me a story about a man somewhere who was arrested after the war on account of some subversive poetry. They threw him into prison and forgot about him. Then someone remembered he was there and ordered him the opportunity to clean up the mess himself: in place of his subversive poem (semiliterate slapdash work) he must write a poem with the opposite content. The man accepted the offer. They gave him a distant, very distant deadline, provided him with paper and a penciclass="underline" and said write, and erase, until it is first-rate. From time to time they summoned him and he read aloud his panegyric. “It could be better, more sincere!” they told him. People from the most prominent circles of the police force visited him and read through his variations. After ten years someone told him: “Well, see, now it is first-rate. The poem is sincere.” And — they let him go.