Hemon: Anyone who has survived genocide will tell you that disbelief or rejection of their experience is a perpetuation of genocide The Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to the controversial Austrian writer Peter Handke has infected the whole world like a malignant virus. The global polemic is getting louder, and Aleksandar Hemon, a writer born in Sarajevo with an address in Chicago, joined it, who called Handke "Bob Dylan in justifying genocide" in an article published in The New York Times. In the introduction, Hemon writes that he admired Handke in his youth: "In my past life in Sarajevo, I read Peter Handke. I was pleasantly confused by his works and watched the films he wrote. I loved the glittering blankness of his novel 'Goalman's Fear of Penalties'. I loved the beauty of Wim Wenders' masterpiece 'Wings of Desire', on which Mr. Handke worked," writes Hemon, noting that in his youth he aspired to be smart and cool, and Handke seemed not only such a writer but also someone who expanded the boundaries of literature and the writer he wanted to become. Things changed for Hemon and Handke in 1991 when Slovenia and Croatia separated from Yugoslavia. "The Yugoslav People's Army, responding to Slobodan Milošević, the president of Serbia, got involved in a short war in Slovenia and then in longer and much bloodier campaigns in Croatia, leveling cities and committing atrocities," Hemon said. Hemon also writes about how the majority of people in Bosnia and Herzegovina, not wanting to stay in Yugoslavia, decided in the 1992 referendum to declare independence. "Mr. Milosevic was kidding. His nationalist ambition to create a 'Greater Serbia' required a genocidal operation against Bosnian Muslims. Radovan Karadžić, one of Mr. Milošević's mediators in Bosnia, carried out a campaign of 'ethnic cleansing', which meant rape and murder, mass expulsions, concentration camps, and sieges. Mr. Milosevic's country provided full financial and military support," writes Hemon in the Times. The entry of the VRS into Srebrenica is also described in the text, and the author recalls that Peter Handke "insisted that the number of Bosnians killed was excessive and that the Serbs were suffering like Jews under the Nazis," writes Hemon for TNYT. Handke entered the media in early 1996 after the publication of the controversial work "One Winter Journey to the Rivers Danube, Sava, Morava, and Drina, or Justice for Serbia": "Anyone who survived the genocide will tell you that disbelief or rejection of his experience is a continuation of genocide. Denying the genocide is an apology for the next genocide. As for Mr. Handke, the Irish Times reported, 'When critics pointed out that the corpses of the victims provided evidence of Serbian crimes,' the writer replied, 'You can shove corpses up your ass!'" writes Hemon, noting that Handke's immoral delusions could be related to his literary aesthetics, suspicion of language, and its ability to portray the truth, which ultimately leads to the attitude that everything is equally true or false. "But even if one can explain Handke's moral collapse," writes Hemon, "his intellectual skepticism or his uncritical sentimentalization of the Balkans, rooted in his family history, it is difficult to understand what could lead him to worship a monster like Mr. Milošević." After that, Hemon was unable to read any of Handke's works, stating that his politics irreversibly destroyed his aesthetics, and the text concludes with the words, "Handke is Bob Dylan in justifying genocide. The Nobel Committee has shown that it does not know much about literature and its real position in this world.” (https://www.oslobodjenje.ba/)
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