Danilo Kis' 'Encyclopedia of the Dead' [Volume: 7(1988), pp. 337-349]

348
PREDRAG MATVEJEVIC
were on the examination committee. The bust of Voltaire which
we drew-a plaster of paris casting from Hudon's portrait statue-reminded me of an old German whom I had known in Novi Sad; that
is how I drew him. Still, I was accepted, probably on the basis of
my other works. I had to wait a year or two until I had the necessary
high school preparation. In the meantime I decided that I would
finish high school after all.
For two years I studied violin at the music school, where I took
classes with the older Simonuti, whom we called "Paganini," not
only on account of his appearance, but also because he adored tremolos. Just when I had reached the second chair, the music school moved
to Kotor. From then on I played without notes-Gypsy music and
Hungarian romances, and tangos and English waltzes at school dances.
In high school I continued writing poetry and translating Hungarian, Russian and French poets, primarily as a stylistic exercise:
I was training to be a poet and so I studied the literary craft. We were
taught Russian by officers of the White Army, emigres from the 1920s
who substituted for instructors on leave and with equal qualifications
taught such subjects as mathematics, physics, chemistry, French and
Latin.
After graduation I enrolled at Belgrade University, where I was
the first student to graduate from the newly established Department
of Comparative literature.
As a lecturer for Serbo-Croatian language and literature, I have
lived in Strasbourg, Bordeaux, and Lille. In recent years I have been
living in Paris in the tenth district, and I don't suffer from nostalgia;
when I wake up, I sometimes don't know where I am: I hear our
countrymen calling to one another, and from cassette players in cars
parked under my window I hear accordion music blasting. (1983)
I finished the 18 (typewritten) pages of this text on September 18
(9/18) of the Orwellian year 1984 at four o'clock. The text was in fact
somewhat longer, but I shortened it in order to agree with the date and
hour (or out of superstition?): I was long convinced that it is possible
to discover some deeper connection between the symmetry of numbers
(fragments) in Kis and his conception of form. In any case, the relationship
to numbers can explain why, with the meticulousness of a Central European
professor, which I otherwise often ridicule, I have cited in parentheses
all references, pages, volumes, years, editions, etc.