Andrija Matić (Serbia / U.S.A.)

 A Few Words About Richard Berengarten

I met Richard in the fall of 2007 in Belgrade, where he presented his book of poems at the Serbian Literary Society. We chatted after the book launch, and I remember being impressed with his wit and erudition. We reconnected the following year in Florence, where both of us participated in a conference on T. S. Eliot and Dante. We spent hours talking about various topics ranging from Italian cuisine and modern poetry to my hometown of Kragujevac, which had inspired him to write The Blue Butterfly, perhaps the greatest work on the 1941 massacre in Šumarice.

In subsequent years I visited him in Cambridge and we met a couple of times in Belgrade. I read his books and fell in love with his poetry, especially with his archetypal associations and the unique music of his verse. His understanding of Balkan cultures was equally astonishing. In both his poems and essays, he resisted one-sided interpretations of the conflicts in the Former Yugoslavia promoted in the western media at the time. But he also rejected nationalist narratives embraced by so many authors in the region. Instead, Richard harnessed Balkan mythology and cultural diversity to create transnational literature that could speak to people from other parts of the world.

But Richard is much more to me than a poet and well-informed intellectual. He was the first person to show me that I did not have to be tied to one national culture, that I could see the whole world as a source of creative imagination. His renaissance perception of life, shaped in many countries and languages, perception that combined his Jewish heritage with other cultures he had come across, was the biggest inspiration for my own journey abroad.

For all these reasons I am honored to be part of this tribute. Happy Birthday, Richard, and thank you for everything!

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