THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 16, 1995 TAG: 9511160254
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: CHARLISE LYLES
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
A craving for independence can do strange things to a man. He can go to sleep at night a pacifist and wake up at dawn ready to bear arms.
That is the peculiar sleep that Andrej Blatnik slept during the 10 days of war that set his native Slovenia free from the former Yugoslavia four years ago.
Blatnik messes with his curly hair and straightens the spectacles on his baby face. He tells me this moments after describing himself as a new breed of Eastern European writer.
Blatnik will be different from those like Vaclav Havel, the playwright-turned-president of the Czech Republic. He aspires to art rather than political statement.
``I try not to include politics in my writing too much,'' says Blatnik. ``In the past, those who opposed the regime, their novels were more of a political vehicle than a full aesthetic work.''
I'm skeptical about whether the two are separable, especially in a place like the Eastern Europe of today. I'm sure that shows on my face as the afternoon sunlight dapples the sparse but cozy living room in the International Writers Center at Old Dominion University.
The center is sponsoring Blatnik's five-week residency in the United States. Through Nov. 27, the award-winning short-story writer will share his works in Hampton Roads classrooms, book stores and community meetings.
Friday at 7:30 p.m., you can hear Blatnik's stories at Pfeiffer's Books & Brutti's Cafe, at 434 High St. in Portsmouth.
He will read from his three short-story collections, which include ``Biographies of the Nameless'' and ``Skintrade.'' Blatnik has also translated from English to Slovenian Stephen King's ``Pet Sematary'' and Sylvia Plath's ``The Bell Jar.''
His stories are short and philosophical, rather than political, says Blatnik. ``Isaac'' is the story of a Jew on a Nazi death train who digs his way out, only to have fellow passengers refuse to escape with him.
Simply but powerfully told, the tale is only three paragraphs.
``My generation that grew up with MTV writes very short, even novels,'' says Blatnik, 32. ``We don't write `War and Peace.' ''
He is the son of a peasant father and a mother reared in Slovenia's intellectual class. Her library books and MTV nurtured him. Strumming base guitar in a punk rock band brought him of age.
Turning punk rock lyrics into short stories made him a writer. And political upheaval, like it or not, had its influences.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall, once-peaceful relations between ethnic groups exploded into conflict.
That caught Blatnik by surprise.
``When the war in Slovenia started, I thought, `This can't last. We are all friends,' '' Blatnik says. ``But after a few days, I, who was in the pacifist movement, was ready to grab a gun and shoot.
``When the war was finished, slowly we started admitting to each other that we had this urge to drop pacifism and start actively fighting. We were ashamed that all of a sudden we were willing to become warriors.
``A different logic took over, a bizarre logic,'' Blatnik concludes. ``So, often in my short stories, you will see at the end a bizarre twist.''
Doesn't that make your work political, I ask, still skeptical about politics vs. true art.
``We declare that we aren't political,'' Blatnik concedes. ``But basically we come to politics in the end, like it or not.'' by CNB