Background

Slobodan Selenić was born on June 7, 1933, in Pakrac, Slavonia, to Sava Selenić, a professor, and Vera Selenić, a professor.

Education

In 1956, Selenić received a Bachelor of Arts from Belgrade University. He also attended drama school at the University of Bristol in 1961.

Career

Following his graduation, Selenić began to write theater criticism for Borba (title means “Struggle”), a local newspaper; within 4 years, his reviews were so well-known that he was granted a scholarship for graduate study at the University of Bristol. There, in 1961, he studied theater, while continuing to write for Borba.

Though Selenić continued to write for the paper until 1968, he gradually developed a career as a public intellectual and artist outside the bounds of journalism; in 1963 he became the art director of Avala film, and in 1965 he became a professor at the Belgrade Drama Academy, a position he held until 1995.

During this early period in Selenić’s career, however, he also began to publish fiction, beginning with a short story entitled “Ко je stranac?” (Who Is the Stranger?) published in 1958. In 1968, Selenić published his first novel, Memoari Pere Bogalja, in which he first began to criticize the rising “new class” of Belgrade.

Achievements

• Slobodan Selenić was one of the greatest literary talents of Serbia in recent times. His novels such as Prijatelji ("The Friends") and Ocevi i oci ("Fathers and Forefathers") and plays such as Ruzenje naroda ("Spiting the Nation") and Knez Pavle ("Prince Paul") have dominated for more than a decade in Belgrade.

Works

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  • Memoari Pere Bogalja 1973
  • Antologija Savremene Srpske Drame 1977
  • Prijatelji 1982
  • Pismo, glava 1982
  • Ocevi i oci 1985
  • Timor mortis 1989
  • Ubistvo s predumisljajem 1993
  • Premeditated Murder 1996

Politics

Slobodan Selenić was politically active in the Depos organisation supporting the candidature of Milan Panic against the incumbent Slobodan Milosevic towards the end of 1992.

Views

Selenić's chief preoccupation concerned the coming to power of the Communists in 1945 and their destruction of the economic, political and cultural life of his country. Describing the fabric of Serbian society before the Second World War he painted a picture of a fledgling democracy struggling to emerge in Europe and leave behind the legacy of Balkan primitivism. His Belgrade of the 1920s and 1930s is a city in development. Paved streets are taking the place of mud and cobblestones, while men educated in Western universities are striving to replace the notional myths of the largely peasant population by more rational ways of thinking.

Always a realist, both by intellectual constitution and in his narrative designs, he never lost sight in his fictional world of the fact that these changes are difficult; and his characters frequently bear the imprint of two worlds. They are caught between the European future and the weight of the Balkan past, trying to balance them. His works present the need to confront the truth of history and to build an honest patriotism which respects the patriotism of others. He sees this vision destroyed by the arrival of the Communists in whose collectivist ideology there is no room for the kind of individual integrity on which his characters construct their goals.

In the last few years he witnessed the re-emergence of similar powers in his native country. As he blamed the Communists for blocking the development of civil society, so he blamed the present Serbian nationalist forces for a return to a false ideal of a "folksy" culture. More than this, in his last novel, Ubistvo s predumisljajem ("Premeditated Murder", 1993), he presents the irrationality of the present wars. The narrative is set at the end of 1992 in Belgrade under sanctions, with student demonstrations against the government and its policies. He juxtaposes these scenes with scenes from 1944 with which he sees unmistakable parallels. The work closes on a battlefield in Croatia at the beginning of 1993 and the recovery of the corpse of a Serbian soldier from the Krajina region. His meaningless death says it all.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• “Selenic’s severe criticism of his country’s social order surprised his readers, who were unaccustomed to such open, rigorous, sincere, and merciless critique.” - Obradovic

Connections

Father:

Sava Selenić

Mother:

Vera Selenić

References

• DLB 181: South Slavic Writers since World War II Dictionary of Literary Biography systematically presents career biographies and criticism of writers from all eras and all genres through volumes dedicated to specific types of literature and time periods.
  1997