Raša Todosijević

Resignation XII
2008
Popular version,
Revised on 14th of May, 2008

At the beginning of 2008 the poverty hit me. People would say: hunger is
knocking at the door. Whatever is going to happen to me onwards I remain firm in my piety.
Yesterday I was visited by the priest. He says he admires me. He thinks I’m a saint and that
future of Serbia rests on my shoulders. While leaving, and without any reason, he passed the
remark that baroness de Staël, namely, Anne Louise Germaine Necker baronne de Staël–
Holstein, the wife of that naïve Swedish diplomat, was a rake, a heretic and the witch. In
addition he told me that the hodge-podge made of holy Serbian paganism and Orthodoxy is
pure nonsense and that he doesn’t understand at all why this French woman likes Germans. It
would be better if the guy had brought something to snack together, than to bother me with
that French woman who deceased long time ago. What’s wrong with Mme de Staël? I prefer
much more hot porridge and a fresh loaf of bread than all of his tittle-tattle about God,
immaculate conception and French history. One can sincerely love mankind, all the people in
this world, both the good and the evil ones, one can love little children, women, even the ants,
and simultaneously not believe at all in life after death, angels and that immense amount of
demonic forces.

I have had great luck and finally managed to finish one story. Here it is what it’s
all about. One incredibly pretty looking girl falls in love with a poet. This poet-laureate is a
police informer, an ardent Russophile, a true quisling and a male prostitute. He is, therefore, a
plain scumbag with heavy makeup, and she – upon finding out from her friends about these
somewhat vague spots on the map of his impeccable character – wringing her hands all day,
silently weeps and doesn’t know what to do with herself. She cannot understand that poetic
souls can also be informers. In the forenoon he writes his verses, something between dark
Nerval and blind Homer, in the afternoon he delivers his literary sermons, and in the early
evening he drinks heavily and shamelessly, provokes ordinary, single-hearted people and
denunciates his colleagues. In fact, I have imagined him as a modest and somewhat old-
fashioned middle-aged provincial, who wants nothing else but privileges.

I still torture myself about the title. Maybe I’ll call this story “Headless Poet”.
Wherever our poet may find himself he holds in his hand a Russian military cap, the real
Russian officer’s cap, which his older sister (of course, a fictitious sister, actually my
creation) had bought him in Moscow, but he doesn’t have his head with himself. Just trust me
– this guy never carried his head on his shoulders. At least, not publicly. So he walks through
Belgrade, wanders around, creates within himself new verses, new elegies, but everybody
knows quite well that he left his head at home in the refrigerator.

Raša Todosijević
Belgrade, Sunday, 2nd of March 2008