Rasa Todosijevic

Resignation XII

2008

Popular version,

Revised on 14^th of May, 2008

At the beginning of 2008 the poverty hit me. People would say: hunger is knocking at the door. Whatever is going to happen to me onwards I remain firm in my piety. Yesterday I was visited by the priest. He says he admires me. He thinks I’m a saint and that future of Serbia rests on my shoulders. While leaving, and without any reason, he passed the remark that baroness de Staël, namely, Anne Louise Germaine Necker baronne de Staël–Holstein, the wife of that naïve Swedish diplomat, was a rake, a heretic and the witch. In addition he told me that the hodge-podge made of holy Serbian paganism and Orthodoxy is pure nonsense and that he doesn’t understand at all why this French woman likes Germans. It would be better if the guy had brought something to snack together, than to bother me with that French woman who deceased long time ago. What’s wrong with Mme de Staël? I prefer much more hot porridge and a fresh loaf of bread than all of his tittle-tattle about God, immaculate conception and French history. One can sincerely love mankind, all the people in this world, both the good and the evil ones, one can love little children, women, even the ants, and simultaneously not believe at all in life after death, angels and that immense amount of demonic forces.

I have had great luck and finally managed to finish one story. Here it is what it’s all about. One incredibly pretty looking girl falls in love with a poet. This poet-laureate is a police informer, an ardent Russophile, a true quisling and a male prostitute. He is, therefore, a plain scumbag with heavy makeup, and she – upon finding out from her friends about these somewhat vague spots on the map of his impeccable character – wringing her hands all day, silently weeps and doesn’t know what to do with herself. She cannot understand that poetic souls can also be informers. In the forenoon he writes his verses, something between dark Nerval and blind Homer, in the afternoon he delivers his literary sermons, and in the early evening he drinks heavily and shamelessly, provokes ordinary, single-hearted people and denunciates his colleagues. In fact, I have imagined him as a modest and somewhat old-fashioned middle-aged provincial, who wants nothing else but privileges.

I still torture myself about the title. Maybe I’ll call this story “Headless Poet”. Wherever our poet may find himself he holds in his hand a Russian military cap, the real Russian officer’s cap, which his older sister (of course, a fictitious sister, actually my creation) had bought him in Moscow, but he doesn’t have his head with himself. Just trust me – this guy never carried his head on his shoulders. At least, not publicly. So he walks through Belgrade, wanders around, creates within himself new verses, new elegies, but everybody knows quite well that he left his head at home in the refrigerator.

Raša Todosijević

Belgrade, Sunday, 2^nd of March 2008

Translated by: Dusan Djordjevic Mileusnic