Writing from Prison: Borislav Pekic

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Acclaimed Serbian author and political activist Borislav Pekic.[/caption]

“I used to dream about becoming an explorer of unexamined areas, the discoverer of undefined secrets, a scientist, a traveller towards the stars, an archaeologist, in short, someone who has found something, something particularly important for Mankind. I became a writer when I realized that I had neither the mental nor physical nor social conditions for all that.” These are the words of great Serbian writer and political activist Borislav Pekic. He was a man of great ambition and a rebellious nature, which drove the inspiration for his writing. His ambition was evidenced by his dedication to political change, and his rebelliousness was demonstrated by his willingness to stand up for what he believed in despite possible danger to himself.

Pekic was born in Podgorica, Kingdom of Yugoslavia to a middle class family. He spent his childhood moving to different cities of Serbia, Montenegro, and Croatia. When World War II broke out, Italian authorities banished Pekic and his mother to Serbia. His rebellious nature and dedication to political causes developed throughout his teenage years. He was arrested shortly after he graduated high school in Belgrade. As a teenager he was already politically active, forming a secret organization called the “Yugoslav Democratic Youth.” Belonging to this secret association prompted his arrest.

During his time in prison, Pekic began to conceive and develop many of the ideas that would one day become great novels. Writing didn’t actually being in prison for Pekic, but when he was just a child. His mother made him write in a journal as a child in order to improve his handwriting. Little did she know that her son’s writing habit would turn into many novels worth of content. In fact, the difficulties of Pekic’s time in prison drove him to write on of his greatest novels, a fictionalized biography in three volumes, “The Years Eaten by the Locusts.” The work was a study of the so-called prison of civilization; it has put Pekic among the ranks of authors like Solzhenitsyn, Dostoevsky, Shalamov, authors who’ve created masterpieces.

Pekic’s sentence was particularly rough; he was given fifteen years (though he was pardoned after five) and because he was sentenced as a serious criminal, he was given hard labor. It is hard to believe Pekic was able to write such a masterpiece during such a difficult time in prison. When he was pardoned after five years, he offered this wisdom about his experience: “You learn how fast you are only when you are faced with a tiger; how honorable when you find the money and no one sees you; how sensible when you are asked to do the impossible; whether you are brave only when it is not necessary to be brave; how good only when you are to cope with the evil; and how crazy when you are standing on the bank of the river where a child is drowning, and you can’t swim…” Through this quote we can see that one of the most important things Pekic learned about in prison was himself.

Pekic’s time in prison did not scare him away from being politically active, becoming one of the founders of the Democratic Party in Serbia. Eventually he immigrated to London when the Yugolsav authorities declared him “persona non grata,” and for several years they prevented his books from being published in Yugoslavia. By the end of his life, Pekic had written about thirty different wo

rks, which are mostly novels and scripts. Pekic passed away in London in 1992 at the age of sixty-two. He is fondly remembered for being an activist and is considered one of the most important Serbian literary figures of the twentieth century.

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