NINA ZIVANCEVIC
BALKAN DAKINI: INTERVIEW BY MICHAEL LIMNIOS
Nina Zivancevic,
a prominent Serbian poet, novelist, essayist, art critic, literary scholar and
translator, lived in lower Manhattan prior to the outbreak of the war in
Sarajevo in 1992.
Zivancevic introduced the work of Allen Ginsberg,
Kathy Acker, and Charles Bernstein to East European readers, and her polyglot
sensibility is highly informed by her immersion in the downtown New York art
and literary world of the 1980s.
Her numerous books
include Death of New York City and Inside & Out of Byzantium. She was a close associate of the poet Allen Ginsberg, collaborating
on the first translation of his works into Serbian, and serving as Ginsberg's
teaching assistant at Naropa Institute. Zivancevic was a noted figure in the East Village poetry
and performance art scenes of the 1980s. Today she lives in France and teaches
the history of the American avant-garde at the University of Paris.
Michael Limnios: When was your first desire to become
involved in Beat literature? What does "BEAT" means to you?
Nina Zivancevic: When
I first encountered the “Beat” literature I was lying in my bed in Belgrade and
my husband at that time, Zoki-Poki (Max) was telling
me that there were marvelous American writers such as Corso,
Ginsberg and Hubert Selby Jr. who had to be translated into Serbian, our
mother-tongue. So “beat” meant to me something very
outlandish but important, to be dealt with.
ML: What
do you learn about yourself from the Beat literature? What has offered you?
NZ: An absolute freedom of expression, as I had
learned from my great mentors, Allen and Ira Cohen that to be “beat” was really
to be free (also Dylan and Joplin)
ML: What
experiences in your life make a good poet? What experience in life is the
trigger for the creation?
NZ: Any experience in life can make you write a
good poem or a good piece of literature, joyful or a sad one. But it has to be
unusual and absurd in a way, to deal with the extremes, otherwise why would one
write about a fresh glass of milk you easily stole from a supermarket, or the
one that your father nicely bought for you…
ML: What
characterize Nina Zivancevic’ progress?
NZ: Certain knowledge that I am still alive and
in spite of myself and all other circumstances still writing, breathing,
playing music…
ML: How
important was the music in your life? How does affect your inspiration?
NZ: Oh, enormously important- I see poetry as a
section of an enormous musical heritage, I guess Bob Dylan would say the same
thing and Allen always used to say that he was the best poet of them all…
ML: What
is the relation between music and literature?
NZ: Well, simply putting it- you cannot be a
good writer and have no ear for music, cadence, pace etc...
they come to me in one big package, I guess even the
early Modernists would say the same thing…
ML: What
is the line that connects the legacy of Ginsberg, Cohen, Kathy
Acker with your generation and beyond?
NZ: Oh, I don’t know, to me these three were my
dear friends and I just miss them so much…
ML: What
are the differences between “Europe and USA” from the point of view on art and
literature?
NZ: Well, there are some differences that I
usually deal with in my course of the avant-garde at Paris 8, but I never fail
to mention that the beginning of that wild American avant-garde experience came
from the European artists and writers, composers etc; who escaped Europe in the
20th century because of the World wars, then their experience sort
of “counter-fired” and became purely American, went back to rejuvenated Europe
as such and so on...
ML: Do you
know why the Beats are connected to underground culture and what characterize
it?
NZ: Yes I know, but it is tiring to trace all
these connections - just to say that the Beats were never far away from the
street-culture and street-experience, the way the French troubadours were
plunged in it, they were never at the service of the ‘court’ or whatever
government in question…
ML: It
must be hard to pick, but which meetings have been the biggest experiences for
you?
NZ: Well, I treasure my meeting with a great
Tibetan lama, Allen’s guru, Chogyam Trungpa when everybody bowed that is kneeled down in front
of him and he, in order to teach all his disciples (many artists of the Beat
generation), kneeled down in front of me, as if I were a special diety, and I was just a young girl, I did not even know who
he was…
ML: What
is the line that connects the legacy of Beats with Buddhism and special with
"crazy wisdom" of Trungpa Rinpoche?
NZ: Well, Allen and Anne Waldman were Trungpa's disciples and they invited him to start the
school/meditation center "Naropa" also the Shambala publication etc... I
cannot tell you exactly the links anyways; many years later I studied with
other Lamas of the so called Dzogchen Vajrayana tradition and also Lama Tenzin
who was of Kagyu/Dzochen traditions
ML: Are
there any memories from Ira Cohen which you’d like to
share with us?
NZ: He always used to make me laugh: he
surprised me once - before I was to deliver my baby in Paris, he showed up all
of a sudden, took a real plane from NY, and said: I hear your baby will not
come out quickly, in fact, it overdid it, passed all the delivery terms - so I
came over to make you laugh, so that I would push you into labor by making you laugh...a
superb photographer that he was, he placed a plate on top of my belly and was
making me laugh until the pocket of water had burst and I came into labor…
ML: Tell
me a few things about your meet with Allen Ginsberg, which memory makes you
smile?
NZ: Oh, I met Allen in Belgrade in 1980, as a
part of an official Writers’ Union organization and
he visited my small studio with Peter Orlovsky, but
just as they rang the bell, my aunt Dana opened the door and told them: If you
guys voted for Reagan I won’t let you into our house.. That was the pivotal
moment which decided on our friendship (Allen had later told me), as they
recognized some Eastern European Anarchists’ background in there, so close to
their roots that they decided to befriend us right away!
ML: Tell
me about your first meet with Gregory Corso?
NZ: I met Corso for
the first time in Colorado in 1981 and he was very impressed to learn that I
was his translator; he almost immediately wanted to try my ring on which I
naively handed to him, but then he said "now you see it, now you don't see
it- it's a very nice ring, now it's mine!". It
took Allen 3 weeks to get it back to me. However, he showed to be one of the
nicest, most generous people I had met when the police arrested me for smoking
a joint in the street (also in Colorado) and I had an audience 6 months later.
As I moved to NY and could not fly to Colorado to show up in court, I had not
any money, I ran into Corso at Allen's and when he
had heard my story he pulled out 400 dollars out of his sock and said
"Take it, kiddo, for the plane ticket, you need to show up before a judge,
you don't need a bad record in the US."
ML: Are
there any memories from Corso which you’d like to share with us?
NZ: There is a very dear one: I met Corso (perhaps for the last time in my life) in 1986 in New
York with my father at Astor place where people were peddling goods and selling
second-hand objects. Corso said "see, it's a
shame you, the worthwhile guys from the East, are just trying to buy some
technical gadgets, while we, the Americans, are trying to get rid of
them"...He sounded so real, so profound, so true...
ML: How
important was the music in Corso's life and why
Gregory Corso is connected to underground culture?
NZ: I think that the questions are superfluous,
as Corso, like all "the Beat cats" had
profound and close ties to jazz and all the music of his era, and why he was
connected to underground culture, or any culture at all, is like trying to find
out why any people like culture and some are not inclined to it altogether! why do some people become artists and some do not? who knows, this world is so beautiful because we are all so
different!!
ML: What
were the reasons that made Paris “the Mecca of the intelligentsia” of 50s?
NZ: Oh, there were certainly some historical
reasons, mainly the sojourn of many international artists and writers in it,
and the counter-action of the French intellectuals of that time…
ML: When
did you begin reading your works? What was that first experience like?
NZ: I had begun reading my work in Colorado with
Allen and Anne (Waldman) in 1981, that is, after hearing them perform their own
work, and I thought, why not, if they can do it- I can do it too. However, I
felt terribly young and insecure and I did not master English language so well,
I became much more comfortable later, in New York of the 1980s when I kept
performing in small clubs, giving the legendary “one woman shows”, along with
Karen Finley and Ethyl Eichelberger etc - then I felt
“I was in command” of that thing called “the show”.
ML: What
are your hopes and fears on the future of Literature?
NZ: Ach, the show must go on and there will
always be someone somewhere writing good stuff called ‘la literature”.
ML: What
is the best advice ever given you and what advice would you give to new
generation?
NZ: The best advice was given to me by a great
Beat writer Herbert Huncke who told me once “no
matter how you feel, push yourself to write one line a day”…and that’s
something I would always say to any new kid on the block
ML: What
from your memories and things (books, records, photos etc.) would you put in a
"capsule on time?"
NZ: The creation of Ira Cohen’s “Akashik records” books and artistic experiences in the
mid-1980s which became like a spontaneous movement of putting the interesting
work of artistic work into the “capsule of time”.
ML: Which
incident of your life you‘d like to be captured and illustrated in a painting?
NZ: It was already done by Ira Cohen—he
immortalized Herbert (Huncke), Pedro Pietri and myself on a photo taken at midnight in the
darkest quarter of New York- we all had the same silly and sad expressions on
our respective faces…
[“Nina Zivancevic:
Balkan Dikini,“ an interview by Michael Limnios, was originally published at Blues GR: Keep The Blues Alive, 2013,
http://blues.gr/profiles/blogs/serbian-poet-nina-zivancevic-talks-about-the-beat-culture-cohen.
Reprinted by permission.]