450
MILOVAN DJILAS
D JILAS: I have not resolved the question. I am glad you liked
this
story, because not many people liked it.
INT: Well, in Yugoslavia they don't even know it.
DJlLAs: No, they don't. None of my books has been published in Yugo–
slavia. And now in America, Harcourt Brace is publishing my big
novel- six hundred pages -
The Lost Battles.
INT: When did you write it?
DJlLAs: While I was in prison.
INT: Does it have the same background as the other works?
D JlLAS: No, the period is different, but the themes are more or less
the same. It is about the second part of the struggle between Mon–
tenegrins and Turks. But the problems are human, not historical.
INT: So the characters are imaginary.
DJILAS: More or less. They are not historical. But I took some of
them from real life, and of course I changed them. Sometimes several
men are represented in one.
INT: Is there anything epic?
DJILAS: There are some epic elements, some very strong epic elements,
but they are not the only ones. There are also lyrical elements, and
some other forms of approach. There is psychology, but not directly.
At least that's what I think. As you have seen in my stories, there
is very little psychology, and indirectly. I think that psychology used
in the classical way, as in Dostoevski and in our time in Joyce,
is
already past. At the same time I don't think that they are not great
authors; they are excellent: Proust, Joyce. They are excellent authors.
INT: Do you know Pavese?
D JILAs: A little, not much.
INT: There are parts of your writing that remind me of Pavese. Only
that Pavese didn't have much of a sense of humor, while in your
story,
The Waters and the Woods,
there is some. Although this is the
only story of yours where I find some sense of humor.
DJlLAs: Yes, I haven't much humor. I
think
in my life there wasn't
much humor, and I think that as a person I am not inclined
to
it.
INT: What about writers like Gogol?
D JlLAs: Oh, he is excellent. I like only writers like that, that have
black humor.
INT: I would like to ask you: which, in your life, came first: the
writer or the politician? There are writers, like Silone, who started
out as politicians, as organizers. . . .
D JlLAs: For me the writer came first, but I was always inclined to–
ward social and political problems. But in this sense, though: not
in
everyday politics, but to those great problems involving the changing
