Lto good conduct (Crocetti) is a poetic, “metaphoric” novel its author Elvira Mujčić. Born in 1980 in Yugoslavia, in Italy since 1994, writer and translator. But she is just as rooted in history, that of small Serbian enclave in Kosovar territory, in which the story takes place. The elections are approaching and an ethnic Serb doctor, Miroslav, decides to run for mayor, with a reconciliation program that solicits the support of the Albanian community. He wins, but is faced with the arrival of an antagonist, Nebojsha, sent from Belgrade. THEThe conflict, first feared then present, runs through Good Conduct from first to last page.
The story behind the novel
The context on which the conflict staged in the Good Conduct feeds is the self-proclamation of the Republic of Kosovo in February 2008. A state inhabited by Albanians and Serbs recognized by many states, but not by Serbia, from which the new political entity detached itself with a unilateral decision and with which it borders. A story still restlessbut which in Elvira Mujčić’s novel leaves the door open to hope.
Why Elvira Mujcic writes in Italian
You wrote Good Conduct and the other novels in Italian, and the books always take place elsewhere which often coincides with the states that were part of Yugoslavia. Can you explain this choice?
«I started writing, in Italian. By adopting this language or better getting me adopted and pushing the mother tongue which was Serbo-Croatian a little to the margins. To take back a part of me that had been lost, out of my desire to fit into this new country I had arrived in, I began to translating the narrative of the former Yugoslavia. And today I deal with translation, novels and I try to keep these two worlds together and also these two imaginaries. Now I would never think of writing in Croatian Serbo, I let myself be completely absorbed by Italian».
Because he writes about the former Yugoslavia
Elvira Mujčić, 43 years old. Italian writer and translator.
«But at the same time the place, the time I lived the particularity of the former Yugoslavia which is a metaphorical elsewhere, It attracts me. And how a magnifying glass to observe other dynamics European and not. It attracts me because he is a world that I know viscerally, because it is a knowledge that does not come through study, or adult life, but as happens in childhood, a force that attracts us so much, that accompanies us throughout life. I found a balance between using an adopted language and telling another world. It is no longer my everyday world but that elsewhere where I like to imagine all my stories. Because it seems to me that it contains the cipher of my writing».
The name, a destiny?
Let’s dive into the novel. Good Conduct opens with the list of main characters. Miroslav, Nebojša, Nada, Zdravko, Ludmila, Vlado. And with a warning for the reader: nomen omen. What does it mean? Is their role already given in the names of the characters?
«The characters are all Serbian, and in Serbia we give auspicious names to children. Someone someone is called Nebojsha one wishes him to be a daredevil not to be afraid of anything. Zdravko, to be healthy, Miroslav the one who honors peace. There is therefore a very connected aspect in Serbian culture, which however helped me to quickly frame the characteristics of each character. Then in the course of the novel these qualities do not remain something static, they also show their negative side. The owners also become somewhat victims of it. Miroslav E Nebojsha the two antagonists are one who honors peace and the other who fears nothing, which is not the same as “making war”. So the idea creeps into the reader that there will be antagonism, but there will be no good and bad. There will be a confrontation but without falling back into the polarization in which we all end up.”
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What feeds the conflict?
At the outset of Good Conduct the outlines seem sharp. On the one hand Miroslav the doctor, who treats all the villagers, who enters their homes, who also wants to treat the community. On the other Nebojša, who fought with the Serbian nationalists, ended up in prison for fraud and was released to scuttle the peace project. Then the differences are reduced. So what feeds the conflict?
“When someone talk to me about the war that ended Yugoslavia, always ends up asking me: “but how, you lived together for so many years, and then you came out with a bloody war? As if everyone were there with a knife between their teeth and were just waiting for Tito’s death to kill themselves”. I rather believe that the matter is much more complicated. AND That many people have found each other how often people are found, in a situation where nobody knows what to do. And he had to grope. This is not an uplifting story and does not want to be. In Good Conduct I wanted to tell about very normal people who would not have chosen conflict. Miroslav is a good guy by forceis someone who out of fear of conflict does not want to step on anyone’s toes. Nebojsha in a very long monologue recounts his life under communism and seems to have loved it this life. However, then, by circumstances he is pushed to fight with the nationalists and he doesn’t even know how he ended up there, perhaps out of opportunism. “They’ve been shrouded in a mist for years,” he says. Maybe he went to fight because it was the easiest thing to do at a time when they were all nationalists. We become something even in spite of ourselves,
Social media in Good Conduct
Everyone can know what happened in minutes thanks to social media. Yet the conflict feeds on ancestral fears.
«There is someone who takes care of blowing up these differences. And the characters principals are found to be somewhat the collateral victims of these dynamics together with the community that surrounds them. The victims of those who planned a war for them involved them. We know how much propaganda can affect choices of the individual. So twenty years later they found themselves living on these claims, on these fears. The novel it also takes a bit of a grotesque turn. These fears are fueled by these fake Facebook profiles. Own to show how much we are exposed to ghosts which are not there. That things to want to see well are much simpler. And much less divisive than it seems.
There are real and virtual enclaves
“I’ll add a comment. The story takes place in a small village which is in fact an enclave, a piece of Serbia in Kosovo. And it is terrible to live in the enclave, “locked up”. In that situation there is no longer any trace of individual responsibility if you live immersed in a single thought. So I was interested in what is very topical in the world. We close ourselves in these bubbles which are often virtual enclaves and we no longer feel the need to get out of it. And we only reason with those who think like us”
The crisis of the thirteenth month
In Good Conduct the conflict is not only between opposing parties, but also within family relationships, it divides the characters in half
«Among the many chapters into which I have divided the book, one is titled the thirteenth month. iHere each of the characters falls into his deepest crisis before moving on to the final. Because the conflicts we live around are reflected in our interiority and vice versa. Tell this tension between the individual and the community seemed beautiful to me to investigate. Because it is also difficult to tell ».
And now that we’re at war?
There is therefore no escape from conflict, it is a fact. What is the problem then?
“The conflict is created every time we try to enter into a relationship with someone che is not us. Even in the most visceral relationship between a mother and a daughter, a mother who, among other things, in Good Behavior feels that she has dedicated her whole life to these children, would have wished for nothing else. You are born among the most carnally connected people. It is one of our ways of knowing the world. But when a political, geopolitical structure is grafted onto this, the situation becomes disruptive. the problem is not the conflict, but believing that it is something that cannot evolve. And therefore crystallize a place, the people who live there in a perennial conflict. At one point someone in the novel says “Nothing will ever change we will keep the point, they will keep the point and it will go on like this”. On the other hand, the characters are always looking for a way out. Because it’s really human to look for a way out where there isn’t one. And therefore the conflicts that run through the stories of these people are dynamic. Absurdly, they are the vital element in relation to the place where they take place».
And then there is Ludmila
«Ludmila was born precisely from my search for a way out of the conflict. We need to find a different language, I thought. We need to get out of the claim, give space to a different feeling So a character like Ludmila, a poetic and mad character but perhaps more poetic than mad, was the key. In Good Conduct she is a woman on the margins, marked by psychotic crises, who went through it in their teens and then later in life. A psychosis that is diagnosed as erotomania. But that is also a longing for love that I believe we all had in adolescence- It’s branded as the weird one like that community freak. And instead of succumbing to this label, he finds an escape route in his being poetically in things».
How Ludmila sets change in motion
“Ludmila seemed to me also a metaphor for those who decide to tell others to hide and not be seen. In fact, he keeps in mind the whole life of his fellow citizens. But through his poetic elaborations, manages toTrigger your own change and that of others. Even the small compositions with which he addresses others are the impetus for their change. For example Miroslav Miroslav/ with this name of yours/ will you be able to become a lion? His art is halfway between the ability of the writer and that of a great connoisseur of the human soul. And in all of this he finds his own ways of healing. Moving everything from the head and belly to the heart, to poetry can be the engine of change for a place and also for people»
Good conduct and the conflict in Ukraine
You cannot read this book without thinking about the conflict in Ukraine. Did you think about it while writing it? Was this book also nourished by current events?
«Actually this book had a very long and very slow genesis. I had seen a documentary in 2012 Kosovo versus Kosovo. And I had seen some sparks of this novel in that documentary. Then it took me ten years to write it, but by January of last year it was finished So before the war broke out in Ukraine».
What is said about Italy
“So many things about this novel they feed not only on the war as it is now going on in Europe. Or it has flared up since the 1990s in the Balkans. For example, the ploy of telling Facebook groups like “you’re the name of a country if.…” in reality I took it seriously from the reality of the fb groups of many Italian countries and communities. And that type of rivalry that is told there I took paro paro from there. Then sure I experienced the war as a child and this is an imprint that never ends in its manifestation in life. I see the deep wounds that this experience leaves in even less serious conflicts. In short, the Balkan wars were not enough to write this novel. For so many things I got inspired and fed on what I see around me here”
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