Drazan Gunjaca - The Balkan Roulette
IN LIEU OF A FOREWORD
The
Balkan Roulette
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book on-line
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introduction
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editor's note
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review
Rather than trying to introduce my play, I have decided to quote one of my favorite French writers, Denis de Rougemont, because his words illustrate all too well what I wanted to say.
«Somebody said: If Paris is destroyed, I’ll stop wishing to be a European. The City of Light was not destroyed: the city itself stopped radiating. Turned into a soulless desert of ancient stone, a graveyard…
On that June evening any bum could have been fascinated with
the sunset above Saint-Germain-des-Prés, with the elated crowds
moving from Arc du Triomphe to Chevaux de Marly, with the centuries of grandeur, misery, wisdom that this capital carriedimprinted on its face, a face kinder and prouder than any other. Any bum, but not the conqueror …
The peace of mind and the sense of living cannot be conquered
by tanks.»(from an article in Gazette de Lausanne, dated June 15,1940,
the day after the German troops marched into Paris)
«Indeed, doing evil is not as diabolic as is its transformation into good. It means depriving all deaths of their meanings, turning them upside down, reading them reversely… Reversing and undermining the criteria of truth. And, finally, stuffing lies into the mouth of truth!
(from the book «The Devil’s Share»)
