PARTISAN REVIEW
453
DJILAS: The greatest achievement was probably made by Lucretius.
Lucretius
is
great.
INT: Well, Catullus is also great.
DJILAS: In literature they are not bad, the Romans; in philosophy, they
did not produce much.
INT: Seneca....
DJILAS: No, no. The Romans don't have great philosophers. They
have thinkers but not philosophers.
INT: Well, the same could be said about the Italians in general. With
the exception of Vico, Aquinas, or Croce. . . .
DJILAs: By the way, to go back to engaged literature. The
Divina
Commedia
is also engaged.
INT: Dh, definitely. Even in
Paradiso
Dante deals with political prob–
lems.
DJILAS: And that's what literature should be like, I think. To be en–
gaged in great national problems, not in everyday politics. Dante was
a partisan, but he went beyond those everyday passions.
Divina Ccnn–
media
is
probably the greatest engaged literary work ever written.
INT: Could you tell something about the novel you are working at
right now? The title
is
Bridges and Worlds,
isn't it?
D
J
ILAS : Yes. It
is
a very big novel. Two thousand pages. It is about a
massacre performed by the Serbians on a small group of Moslems.
INT: Something like Musa Dagh.
•
DJILAS: Yes, but my theme is different from Franz Werfel's novel,
completely. Mine is not a realistic novel. You see, my short stories-–
they are only superficially realistic. In essence they are not.
I
am
concerned with some problems more than with some realistic descrip–
tion.
INT: Is it a choral novel?
DJlLAS: Not only. It has many characters, but it is many novels in one
novel.
It
is like the great river and many rivers flowing. Not strongly
connected among them. I think such is life. In life connections are
not strong; the lives of the commumtles and of the individuals go
on relatively independently; but at some points, in certain periods,
they connect.
INT: When did you write
Conversations with Stalin?
DJILAs: I wrote it in 1961, after my first release from the prison.
INT: Did you have in mind to write it before?
DJILAS: Yes, I had the idea.
INT: But you couldn't.
DJILAS: No, I did not have the possibility. I was arrested.
