said nothing. He had, flatteringly, crossed a border, and I did not want to undo the closeness.
Not long after our stroll, I began working as an editor for Na š i dani . At around the same time, Professor Koljevi ć became one of the highest-positioned members of the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), a virulently nationalist organization, headed by Karad ž i ć , the talentless poet destined to become the world’s most-wanted war criminal. I attended SDS press conferences and listened to Karad ž i ć ’s roaring paranoia and racism, his imposing head looming on our horizon: large, cuboid, topped with an unruly gray mane. And Professor Koljevi ć would be there too, sitting next to Karad ž i ć : small, solemn, and academic, with large jar-bottom glasses, wearing a tweed jacket with suede elbow patches, his long fingers crossed loosely in front of his face, as if suspended between a prayer and applause. Afterward, I’d come up to greet him, dutifully, assuming that we still shared a love of books. “Stay out of this,” he’d advise me. “Stick to literature.”
In 1992, when the Serbian attack on Bosnia and the siege of Sarajevo began, I found myself in the United States. Safe in Chicago, I watched Serbian snipers shoot at the knees and ankles of a man trying to escape from a truck that had been hit by a rocket. On the front pages of magazines and newspapers, I saw emaciated prisoners in Serbian camps, and the terrified faces of people running down Sniper Alley. I watched as the Sarajevo library perished in patient, deliberate flames.
The infernal irony of a poet (bad though he may have been) and a literature professor causing the destruction of hundreds of thousands of books did not escape me. On the news, I sometimes caught a glimpse of Professor Koljevi ć standing beside Karad ž i ć , who was always denying something—what was happening was for him either “self-defense” or it was not happening at all. Occasionally, Professor Koljevi ć talked to reporters himself, mocking the questions about rape camps, or deflecting all accusations of Serbian crimes by framing them as the unfortunate things that take place in every “civil war.” In Marcel Ophüls’s The Troubles We’ve Seen , a documentary about foreign reporters covering the war in Bosnia, Professor Koljevi ć —labeled as “Serbian Shakespearean”—speaks to a BBC reporter, dispensing spin phrases in impeccable English and explaining away the sounds of Serbian shells falling on Sarajevo in the background as a part of the ritual celebration of Orthodox Christmas. “Obviously,” he said, “from the old times, Serbs like to do this.” He smiled as he said that, apparently relishing his own cleverness. “But it is not even Christmas,” the BBC reporter observed.
I became obsessed with Professor Koljevi ć . I kept trying to identify the first moment when I could have noticed his genocidal proclivities. Racked with guilt, I recalled his lectures and the conversations we’d had, as if picking through ashes—the ashes of my library. I unread books and poems I used to like—from Emily Dickinson to Danilo Ki š , from Frost to Tolstoy— unlearning the way in which he had taught me to read them, because I should’ve known, I should’ve paid attention. I’d been mired in close reading, impressionable and unaware that my favorite teacher was involved in plotting a vast crime. But what’s done cannot be undone.
Now it seems clear to me that his evil had far more influence on me than his literary vision. I excised and exterminated that precious, youthful part of me that had believed you could retreat from history and hide from evil in the comforts of art. Because of Professor Koljevi ć , perhaps, my writing is infused with testy impatience for bourgeois babbling, regrettably tainted with helpless rage I cannot be rid of.
Toward the end of the war, Professor Koljevi ć fell out of favor with Karad ž i ć and was demoted from the realms of
Not long after our stroll, I began working as an editor for Na š i dani . At around the same time, Professor Koljevi ć became one of the highest-positioned members of the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), a virulently nationalist organization, headed by Karad ž i ć , the talentless poet destined to become the world’s most-wanted war criminal. I attended SDS press conferences and listened to Karad ž i ć ’s roaring paranoia and racism, his imposing head looming on our horizon: large, cuboid, topped with an unruly gray mane. And Professor Koljevi ć would be there too, sitting next to Karad ž i ć : small, solemn, and academic, with large jar-bottom glasses, wearing a tweed jacket with suede elbow patches, his long fingers crossed loosely in front of his face, as if suspended between a prayer and applause. Afterward, I’d come up to greet him, dutifully, assuming that we still shared a love of books. “Stay out of this,” he’d advise me. “Stick to literature.”
In 1992, when the Serbian attack on Bosnia and the siege of Sarajevo began, I found myself in the United States. Safe in Chicago, I watched Serbian snipers shoot at the knees and ankles of a man trying to escape from a truck that had been hit by a rocket. On the front pages of magazines and newspapers, I saw emaciated prisoners in Serbian camps, and the terrified faces of people running down Sniper Alley. I watched as the Sarajevo library perished in patient, deliberate flames.
The infernal irony of a poet (bad though he may have been) and a literature professor causing the destruction of hundreds of thousands of books did not escape me. On the news, I sometimes caught a glimpse of Professor Koljevi ć standing beside Karad ž i ć , who was always denying something—what was happening was for him either “self-defense” or it was not happening at all. Occasionally, Professor Koljevi ć talked to reporters himself, mocking the questions about rape camps, or deflecting all accusations of Serbian crimes by framing them as the unfortunate things that take place in every “civil war.” In Marcel Ophüls’s The Troubles We’ve Seen , a documentary about foreign reporters covering the war in Bosnia, Professor Koljevi ć —labeled as “Serbian Shakespearean”—speaks to a BBC reporter, dispensing spin phrases in impeccable English and explaining away the sounds of Serbian shells falling on Sarajevo in the background as a part of the ritual celebration of Orthodox Christmas. “Obviously,” he said, “from the old times, Serbs like to do this.” He smiled as he said that, apparently relishing his own cleverness. “But it is not even Christmas,” the BBC reporter observed.
I became obsessed with Professor Koljevi ć . I kept trying to identify the first moment when I could have noticed his genocidal proclivities. Racked with guilt, I recalled his lectures and the conversations we’d had, as if picking through ashes—the ashes of my library. I unread books and poems I used to like—from Emily Dickinson to Danilo Ki š , from Frost to Tolstoy— unlearning the way in which he had taught me to read them, because I should’ve known, I should’ve paid attention. I’d been mired in close reading, impressionable and unaware that my favorite teacher was involved in plotting a vast crime. But what’s done cannot be undone.
Now it seems clear to me that his evil had far more influence on me than his literary vision. I excised and exterminated that precious, youthful part of me that had believed you could retreat from history and hide from evil in the comforts of art. Because of Professor Koljevi ć , perhaps, my writing is infused with testy impatience for bourgeois babbling, regrettably tainted with helpless rage I cannot be rid of.
Toward the end of the war, Professor Koljevi ć fell out of favor with Karad ž i ć and was demoted from the realms of
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