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An excerpt from the novel
"SACRED OAK" by Ratko Adamovic
Published in Belgrade, first edition 1990
and second edition 1992 Publisher: Prosveta, Belgrade
"The Sacred Oak" is the sixth book of Ratko Adamovic,
the fourth novel. It is written in the form of a fairy tale.
The main hero, Kir-Stephan travels through time and
space on his black horse Falcon. He visits "strange"
countries and people. He can make himself invisible.
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After each journey he returns to the Great Valley and the Column.
The Column delivers shadows of future famous men which white postmen
take and carry in white bags to various countries and peoples. But soon
humans discover the Great Valley and trade, black marketing and
auctions of the shadows begin. This is Kir-Stephan's second return to the
Great Valley after visiting a country whose people call it Nothing and who
call themselves Nobody. 
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An excerpt from the book
"CARAVANSARY" by Ratko Adamovic
Published in Belgrade, 1993
Publisher: BIGZ, Belgrade
As he made his way toward the path that was marked
through the undergrowth, he didn't think he had passed
that way earlier and he wondered how anyone could
pass that way at all. However, it was not the
energy he lacked, for the very thought that the next |
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day he could start working on that stretch of stone with his easel, under
the sun, on the comfortable carpet of moss, made every new thorn that
pricked or branch that lashed him in the face seem less hostile and
painful.
He finally reached the large iron gate. It looked so mighty, framed by the
enormous stone wall, with wrought-iron decorations he had not seen in a
long time, that he decided at once it would be the trademark of his new
cycle and the major exhibition he had announced.
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Branislava Jevtovic
THE SPIRIT OF THE HERALDIC
"Caravanseray", by Ratko Adamovic
And thus I, my Lord, Your servant, by submitting to You this book as the
offer of my confession, who from You asks merely to fulfill this vow, being
confident that You created, by the word, things visible and invisible.
St. Augustine
The meticulously built construction of the Super-Meaning, this book of
Adamovic's is a rarity in our parts. "Caravanserai" is a real string of pearls,
a series of shorter prose forms. (Stories? Novels? Or maybe, a novelistic
"bloodstream" of the book as a whole?) It is obvious, however, that
Adamovic's book is a real gallery of different genre characteristics (the
phenomenon of the hybrid genre in the modern literature), linked into a
unity, under the influence of the strong attracting force of the writer's
obsessions: the Creation and the role of the Creator in this Divine
endeavor. The autonomous parts of Caravanserai - which transmit the
experience of the fragments of life which have their autonomous meaning
- are deeply dependent upon the other, thus emphasizing even more the
idea of a novelistic unity. They are the anchors of the Literary Theater:
four "novels" are the setting of the fictitious life, and the three Basilicas
the monastery cell of the creator, in which he nourishes the soul with
spiritual content, thus reaching the reverent state of "religious tranquility"
and "temple consecration".
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An excerpt from the novel
"Immortal Kaleb" by Ratko Adamovic
Published in Belgrade, first edition 1997,
second edition 1998
Publisher: "Narodna Knjiga", Belgrade
Awards: "Isidora Sekulic" - the book of the year
Again, everything was shrouded in silence. But one
night wind was raging. And when the wind howls
around the village, nobody goes out because there |
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they believe, that this wind brings about the most powerful spirits, so
dangerous that no witchcraft can protect them.
The old woman waved inviting me to step out of the hut. I was able
then, with the help of a stick, to skip around quite successfully. While
the wind was pushing us back against the huts' wall, the old woman
spoke:
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An excerpt from the novel
"Immortal Kaleb" by Ratko Adamovic
Published in Belgrade, first edition 1997,
second edition 1998
Publisher: "Narodna Knjiga", Belgrade
Awards: "Isidora Sekulic" - the book of the year
"Come on, Pavel Alexandrovich. What are you talking
about? Imagine yourself, just for a moment, in one of
the world renown institutes or one of the famous |
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schools, there, far away from the pathetic Slavic people.
Imagine, what you would be able to do there! How they would listen to
you! What you could do with your followers! With those who know how
to buy that silent train ticket and come to be free disciples far away
from any thought of a prison and padlocked mouth. What would happen
if they even contemplated saying something which did not agree with
"In the name of the people". What would you... But, it's sold.
Pathetically cheep. This is only the other side of the one who cowardly
agrees to squander his life in slavery. And what now? We are here - and
that's it. Everybody offers himself with his own.... But....the Madrid Night!
Tell me, in the name, in the name, in the name of what? What shall I say?
In the name of what should I beg you? Let's say in the name of your
masochistic loyalty to your people. You are of the same kin as Fodor
Mihailovich.
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An excerpt from the novel
"Kantarion" by Ratko Adamovic
Published in Belgrade 1998
Publisher: "Narodna Knjiga", Belgrade
Awards: "Branko Copic" - the book of the year by the
Serbian Academy of Arts and Science
And then, God help us, a young man ran out of the big
house with three roofs, bursting the door open, his
loud shouting echoing and tearing the silence of the |
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village and the glistening calm of the giant rocks.
The young man who was racing out of the big house with three roofs,
was slim, with long blond hair and as beatuiful as oreads taking flight.
The three of us looked at each other, noticing that he was not dressed
like other villagers. Only his long, red dress was devided by a large ornate
leather belt like those worn by other village men.
Miraculously, his face did not have that black-gray mask of stone. His
face was glowing and radiant, flooded with an almost girlish beauty.
He was running towards the small square shouting loudly: I have seen!
I have seen! I have seen! I can see! I have seen everything! I S E E !
I have seen everything! They showed me everything! I have seen everything!
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First chapter of the novel
"CLAY READERS" by Ratko Adamovic
Published in Belgrade, 2000
Publisher : Narodna knjiga, Belgrade
The traditional man (in further text referred to as T.M.)
was standing in the middle of something, supposedly his
host's reception room.
The host, trying to imitate T.M.'s mild smile, with a
nervous, upset gesture waved to T.M. to take a seat. |
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"With pleasure T.M. said, "if you could only help me find something on
which to sit. I don't see anything here on what a human being
could sit. Who knows, maybe I should wait for a special signal that would
activate a thing resembling a normal armchair to pop out of all this glass
and steel."
"I assure you that it took us days telephoning to all our furniture
corporations. What we were looking for to satisfy the need of your visit
simply does not exist. There are some traditional chairs in a museum, but
to hire them one should obtain a special license. You would understand
that for an operation like this we simply did not have time."
The host's neighbour tried to put together two unidentified shapes,
offering T.M., his gestures even more upset, to sit on THAT.
T.M. set down on THAT. As he was slowly sitting down, he put his hat
into the stretched arms of his host. His host's arms were stretched not to
take the hat, he was still, his arms frozen in motion, offering T.M. to sit
down.
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GARDENS OF SPIRIT
/U VRTOVIMA DUHA/
Essays with selected excerpts,
2002.
In this book you will get acquaitned with
?Monks?Civlization
?Marguerite Jourcenar
?Jacques Le Goff ?Jean Calvin ?Colleen McDannell
?Bernhard Lang ?Ronald Wright ?Fernand Braudel |
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?Meister Eckhart ?John Cowper Powys ?Bela Hamvas ?Isaac Bashevis
Singer
?Christoph Ransmayr ?Paulo Coelho
?Aleksandar Genis ?Paul
Virilio ?Martin Buber
?Daniel J. Boorstin ?Gaston Bachelard
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An excerpt from the novel
"SCHOOL OF NIGHT" by Ratko Adamovic
/AKADEMIJA NOĆI/
Publisher: Narodna Knjiga, October 2003
When Noon approaches, the same scene takes place
in thousands of towers across the planet. Someone
enters a gloomy little room and, rudely and without
a shadow of sentiment, kicks the gunner forcing him
to his feet. |
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Ever since this ritual and this method of heralding
noon have existed, the gunner has never been the first to get up.
A kick in the gunner's ass first wakes the fleas who jump
up in their sturdily built colonies happily assembled all over the
gunner's uniform, annoyed because foolish people (regarded by the
fleas only as good pastures) keep trying to get them involved in
their stupid time calculations. They would angrily bite everything
around them, exasperated that they had been interrupted during
such a delicious meal served right there under the seams of the
gunner's uniform, the fashion and style of which have not changed
for centuries maintaining the civic tradition of uniforms worn by
people employed in municipal services. This tradition turns into
reality the myths and legends of the flea-nation about the best
locations for the building of their colonies, thus creating a
parallel though a not less important tradition in the flea-world.
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GLASS-FORGERS, novel
Author: RATKO ADAMOVIC
Publisher: Narodna Knjiga, 2005
In his latest novel, to a well known formula
- in which nothing is what it is and everything
is what it is not - Ratko Adamovic adds certain
innovations to the narrative practice.
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The ‘ancestors? in fact former
incarnations of the main character George - a pig, a mangos and a
breeding bull - are active agents in the text of the novel, acting
in accordance with the dictum - being a person’s own ancestor.
As a complete and independent character (to whom the author has
dedicated a role of one of the narrators, what, on the other hand,
contributes to the resourcefulness inventiveness and further complexity of
the narrative perspective) appears - glass! With this atypical choice for a
protagonist of his novel, Adamovic once again proves to be a lucid and
innovative storyteller.
The title of the novel itself, i.e. Glass-forgers, is a symbolic metaphor
of artist and of art in general, which the author raises to the level of
universal meaning ?‘The Glass-forgers. The forgers of the nonexistent.
The forgers of illusions.
Unveiling illusions and deceptions of ‘bourgeois?life, through irony and
self-parody, the author minimizes the tragedy of choice and the fate of
beauty, inevitably contained in art itself.
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| ?Copyright concept
Technology, Belgrade 1993, 2000 |
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