Dictionary Of The Chazars (The Female Edition) - Milorad Pavić

*** O Knjizi ***

A book can be a vineyard watered with rain or a vine-yard watered with wine. This one, like all diction-aries, is of the latter variety. A dictionary is a book that, while requiring little time every day, takes a lot of time through the years. This loss should not be underestimated. Especially if one takes into account that reading is, generally speaking, a dubious proposition. When used, a book can be cured or killed in the reading. It can be changed, fattened, or raped. Its course can be rechan-neled; it is constantly losing something; you drop letters through the lines, pages through your fingers, as new ones keep growing before your eyes, like cabbage. If you put it down tomorrow, you may find it like a stove gone cold, with no hot supper waiting for you any more. Moreover, today people do not have enough solitude to be able to read books, even dictionaries, without harm. But to this too there is an end. A book is like a scale—it tilts first to the right until it tilts to the left, forever. Its weight thus shifts from the right hand to the left, and something similar has happened in the head—-from the realm of hope, thoughts have moved to the realm of memory, and everything is over. The readers ear may perhaps retain some of the saliva from the writers mouth, words borne by the wind with a grain of sand at the bottom. Over the years, voices will settle around that grain, as in a shell, and one day it will turn into a pearl, into black goat-cheese, or into a void when the ears shut like a shell. And least of all does this depend on the sand.

In any event, to read such a thick book means to be alone for a long time, to be for a long time without the person whose presence you need, because four-handed reading is still not customary. This gives the writer a guilty conscience, and he will try to atone for it. Let that lovely woman with the quick eyes and languid hair who, in reading this dictionary and running through her fear as through a room, feels lonely, do the following. On the first Wednesday of the month, with the dictionary under her arm, let her go to the tea shop in the main square of town. Waiting for her there will be a young man who, like her, has just been overcome with a feeling of loneli­ness, wasting time by reading the same book. Let them sit down for a coffee together and compare the masculine and feminine exemplars of their books. They are different. When they compare the short passage in Dr. Dorothea Schultzs last letter, printed in italics in the one and the other exemplar, the book will fit together as a whole, like a game of dominoes, and they will need it no longer. Then let them give the lexicographer a good scolding, but let them be quick about it in the name of what comes next, for what comes next is their affair alone, and it is worth more than any reading.

I see how they lay their dinner out on top of the mailbox in the street and how they eat, embraced, sitting on their bicycles.

Belgrade, Regensburg, Belgrade

1978-1983



*** O Autoru ***

Milorad Pavić je rođen 15. oktobra 1929. godine u Beogradu, Srbija (znak zodijaka “Vaga”, podznak “Škorpija”, po astečkom horoskopu “Zmija”). Srpski prozni pisac, pesnik i istoričar srpske književnosti 17-19 veka, stručnjak za barok i simbolizam, prevodilac Puškina i Bajrona, profesor univerziteta. Član je Srpske akademije nauka i umetnosti od 1991. godine, član je Societe Europeenne de Culture i srpskog PEN-a. Poznat kao pisac nelinearne, interaktivne proze (romani, priče, drame). M. Pavić je jedan od najčitanijih savremenih pisaca sa Balkana, preveden na tridesetak jezika. Od strane stručnjaka iz Evrope, SAD, Izraela i Brazila, Milorad Pavić je nominovan za Nobelovu nagradu u književnosti. Oženjen je Jasminom Mihajlović, koja je pisac i književni kritičar. Žive u Beogradu. Rekli su o Pavićevim knjigama: - Pavić je prvi pisac XXI veka (Paris Match) - On misli kao što mi sanjamo (Robert Coover,New York Times) - Pavić je jedna od velikih figura svetske književnosti (Tiempo, Madrid) - Svaki primerak Pavićeve knjige imace svoj zasebni život (Davar, Izrael) - Pavić je želeo da podigne knjigu, ili Knjigu, tojest Kutiju Organizovanog Znanja na nivo magičnog predmeta poput poluživotinje koja može da opšti sama sa sobom i sa drugim knjigama, da stvori knjigu kao smrtonosno oružje (Anthony Burgess, Observer, London) - Postoje knjige koje u čitaocu izazivaju nešto kao hemijsku reakciju...Pavićev roman sadrži tu vrstu "otrova" (Mainichi Shimbun, Japan) -Pavić nalazi mogucnost da nadvlada romanesknu tradiciju dvadesetoga veka putevima koji se razlikuju od puteva "francuskog novog romana" i "novog novog romana" (Nezavisimaja gazeta, Moskva) - U njegovom delu imamo mistiku Vizantije sjedinjenu sa energijom Balkana, njegovih predanja i mitova (Elefteria, Atina) - Kakva fantastična građevina, kakva neutešna priča između dve smrti! (Reinischer Kurier, Nemacka) - Pavić je jedan od najvažnijih pisaca današnjice (Veja, Sao Paulo)