Readings from the works of Radovan Ivšić.

Concept: Clément Peretjatko.

Featuring: Thomas Fitterer and Clément Peretjatko.

Acknowledgements: Annie Le Brun

In partnership with the CHRD de la Ville de Lyon as part of the Museums Télérama weekend.

TAKE EVERYTHING FROM ME, BUT I WON'T GIVE YOU YOUR DREAMS

Radovan Ivšić (1921-2009) was not, strictly speaking, involved in the Yugoslav resistance, although the theatre group, La Compagnie des Jeunes, which he founded with Vlado Habunek in 1939 in Zagreb, later served as a cover for a number of clandestine actions during the German Occupation.

However, as early as 1942, his poem Narcissus, published out of print, was seized as a symbol of decadent art by the Ustasha regime then ruling Croatia. A few years later, after the « liberation » of Yugoslavia and this time under Tito's Communist regime, but ultimately for the same reasons, both his theatre and his poetry, judged not to conform to the injunctions of socialist realism, were censored or systematically obscured. Although he left Yugoslavia in 1956, it was not until the 1970s that younger generations began to rediscover his work.

"Take everything from me, but I won't give you my dreams". This line from the late 1940s sheds light on the attitude of Radovan Ivšić, "free and solitary but connected to others by the strength and fullness of his language", as Jean-Paul Goujon points out in the preface to his theatre. Deeply convinced that the treatment of language is linked to the treatment of people by power, he never ceased, in his life and in his work, to rely on the libertarian essence of poetry, illustrating Saint-John Perse's words: "The poet is the bad conscience of the world".

Annie LeBrun

Participation in the literary programme Drugi Format about Radovan Ivšić (in Croatian) alongside Saedeta Midzic, Croatian Commissioner General for the Year of Croatia in France.