Danilo Kiš
Encyclopedia
Danilo Kiš (February 22, 1935 – October 15, 1989) was a Yugoslavia
n novelist, short story writer and poet who wrote in Serbo-Croatian
. Kiš was influenced by Bruno Schulz
, Vladimir Nabokov
, Jorge Luis Borges
and Ivo Andrić
, among other authors. His most famous works include A Tomb for Boris Davidovich
and The Encyclopedia of the Dead.
, Danube Banovina
, Kingdom of Yugoslavia
(now Serbia
) the son of Eduard Kiš (Kis Ede), a Hungarian Jewish railway inspector, and Milica Kiš, a Montenegrin (born Dragićević) from Cetinje
. His Jewish father was born in Austria-Hungary
with a surname Kon, but changed it to Kis as part of Magyarization
, a widely implemented practice at the time. During the Second World War, Danilo's father along with several other family members, were killed in various Nazi camps. His mother took him and his older sister Danica to Hungary
for the duration of the war. After the end of the war, the family moved to Cetinje
, Montenegro
, Yugoslavia, where Kiš graduated from high school in 1954.
Kiš studied literature at the University of Belgrade
, and graduated in 1958 as the first student to be awarded a degree in comparative literature. He was a prominent member of the Vidici magazine, where he worked until 1960. In 1962 he published his first two novels, Mansarda and Psalam 44. For his 1973 novel Peščanik ("Hourglass"), Kiš received the prestigious NIN Award, but returned it a few years later due to a political dispute.
During the following years, Kiš received a great number of national and international awards for his prose and poetry.
He spent most of his life in Belgrade until and last decade between Paris, France and Belgrade. Number of years he was working as a lecturer elsewhere in France
.
Kiš was married to Mirjana Miočinović from 1962 to 1981. After their separation, he lived with Pascale Delpech until his early death from lung cancer in Paris.
A film based on Peščanik (Fövenyóra) directed by the Hungarian Szabolcs Tolnai is finished in 2008. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756237/
In May 1989 with his friend, director Aleksandar Mandić, Kiš made the four-episode TV series Goli Život about lives of two Jewish women. The shooting took place in Israel and program was shown after his death, in the spring 1990. This is the last work of Danilo Kiš.
Kiš was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature and was due to win it, were it not for his death in 1989.
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
n novelist, short story writer and poet who wrote in Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
. Kiš was influenced by Bruno Schulz
Bruno Schulz
Bruno Schulz was a Polish writer, fine artist, literary critic and art teacher born to Jewish parents, and regarded as one of the great Polish-language prose stylists of the 20th century. Schulz was born in Drohobycz, in the province of Galicia then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and spent...
, Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
, Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
and Ivo Andrić
Ivo Andric
Ivan "Ivo" Andrić was a Yugoslav novelist, short story writer, and the 1961 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. His writings dealt mainly with life in his native Bosnia under the Ottoman Empire...
, among other authors. His most famous works include A Tomb for Boris Davidovich
A Tomb for Boris Davidovich
A Tomb for Boris Davidovich is a collection of seven short stories by Danilo Kiš written in 1976...
and The Encyclopedia of the Dead.
Life and work
Danilo Kiš was born in SuboticaSubotica
Subotica is a city and municipality in northern Serbia, in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina...
, Danube Banovina
Danube Banovina
The Danube Banovina or Danube Banate was a province of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia between 1929 and 1941. This province consisted of the geographical regions of Syrmia, Bačka, Banat, Baranja, Šumadija, and Braničevo. The capital city of the Danube Banovina was Novi Sad...
, Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Kingdom of Yugoslavia
The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a state stretching from the Western Balkans to Central Europe which existed during the often-tumultuous interwar era of 1918–1941...
(now Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
) the son of Eduard Kiš (Kis Ede), a Hungarian Jewish railway inspector, and Milica Kiš, a Montenegrin (born Dragićević) from Cetinje
Cetinje
Cetinje , Цетиње / Cetinje , Italian: Cettigne, Greek: Κετίγνη, Ketígni) is a town and Old Royal Capital of Montenegro. It is also a historical and the secondary capital of Montenegro , with the official residence of the President of Montenegro...
. His Jewish father was born in Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
with a surname Kon, but changed it to Kis as part of Magyarization
Magyarization
Magyarization is a kind of assimilation or acculturation, a process by which non-Magyar elements came to adopt Magyar culture and language due to social pressure .Defiance or appeals to the Nationalities Law, met...
, a widely implemented practice at the time. During the Second World War, Danilo's father along with several other family members, were killed in various Nazi camps. His mother took him and his older sister Danica to Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
for the duration of the war. After the end of the war, the family moved to Cetinje
Cetinje
Cetinje , Цетиње / Cetinje , Italian: Cettigne, Greek: Κετίγνη, Ketígni) is a town and Old Royal Capital of Montenegro. It is also a historical and the secondary capital of Montenegro , with the official residence of the President of Montenegro...
, Montenegro
Montenegro
Montenegro Montenegrin: Crna Gora Црна Гора , meaning "Black Mountain") is a country located in Southeastern Europe. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea to the south-west and is bordered by Croatia to the west, Bosnia and Herzegovina to the northwest, Serbia to the northeast and Albania to the...
, Yugoslavia, where Kiš graduated from high school in 1954.
Kiš studied literature at the University of Belgrade
University of Belgrade
The University of Belgrade is the oldest and largest university of Serbia.Founded in 1808 as the Belgrade Higher School in revolutionary Serbia, by 1838 it merged with the Kragujevac-based departments into a single university...
, and graduated in 1958 as the first student to be awarded a degree in comparative literature. He was a prominent member of the Vidici magazine, where he worked until 1960. In 1962 he published his first two novels, Mansarda and Psalam 44. For his 1973 novel Peščanik ("Hourglass"), Kiš received the prestigious NIN Award, but returned it a few years later due to a political dispute.
During the following years, Kiš received a great number of national and international awards for his prose and poetry.
He spent most of his life in Belgrade until and last decade between Paris, France and Belgrade. Number of years he was working as a lecturer elsewhere in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
.
Kiš was married to Mirjana Miočinović from 1962 to 1981. After their separation, he lived with Pascale Delpech until his early death from lung cancer in Paris.
A film based on Peščanik (Fövenyóra) directed by the Hungarian Szabolcs Tolnai is finished in 2008. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756237/
In May 1989 with his friend, director Aleksandar Mandić, Kiš made the four-episode TV series Goli Život about lives of two Jewish women. The shooting took place in Israel and program was shown after his death, in the spring 1990. This is the last work of Danilo Kiš.
Kiš was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature and was due to win it, were it not for his death in 1989.
English translations
- Garden, Ashes (1975, William J. Hannaher)
- Early Sorrows: For Children and Sensitive Readers (1998, Michael Henry Heim)
- Hourglass (1990, Ralph ManheimRalph ManheimRalph Frederick Manheim was an American translator of German and French literature, as well as occasional works from Dutch, Polish and Hungarian...
) - A Tomb for Boris DavidovichA Tomb for Boris DavidovichA Tomb for Boris Davidovich is a collection of seven short stories by Danilo Kiš written in 1976...
(1978, Duška Mikić-Mitchell) - The Encyclopedia of the Dead (1989, Michael Henry Heim)
- Homo Poeticus: Essays and Interviews (1995, Ralph Manheim, Michael Henry Heim, Francis Jones)
- Mansarda (2008, John K. Cox)
External links
- A dedicated website (in SerbianSerbian languageSerbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
) http://www.kis.org.rs/ - An essay by Aleksandar HemonAleksandar HemonAleksandar Hemon is a Bosnian-American fiction writer. He is the winner of a MacArthur Foundation grant. He has written four acclaimed books: Love and Obstacles: Stories , The Lazarus Project: A Novel , which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle...
http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/book/?GCOI=15647100391890&fa=customcontent&extrasfile=A1261A84-B0D0-B086-B673269C334013EE.html - An interview http://www.thefreelibrary.com/An+interview+with+Danilo+Kis.-a015074116
- An article on Kiš and Borges http://www.themodernword.com/borges/borges_infl_kis.html
- Danilo Kiš' personal library on LibraryThingLibraryThingLibraryThing is a social cataloging web application for storing and sharing book catalogs and various types of book metadata. It is used by individuals, authors, libraries and publishers....
http://www.librarything.com/profile.php?view=Danilo_Kis - "A Conversation with Danilo Kis" by Brendan Lemon, a 1984 interview http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/book/?fa=customcontent&GCOI=15647100621780&extrasfile=A09F7BC0-B0D0-B086-B64B2B325426033D.html
- www.danilokis.org