Stanislav Vinaver

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Stanislav Vinaver (Serbian Cyrillic: Станислав Винавер), (1891–1955) was a Serbian writer and translator

Erudite, literate and translator, Stanislav Vinaver was born on March 1st 1891, in Šabac, Serbia, in a respectable Jewish family. His father Josif was a physician and mother Ruža a pianist. Vinaver finished elementary school in Šabac, attended high school in both, Šabac and Belgrade, and studied mathematics and physics at University of Sorbonne, Paris. He soon became a follower of Henri Bergson's philosophical ideas, and in 1911. his thoughts and ideas were published in a collection of symbolic poems Mjeća.

Vinaver voluntarily took part in the Balkan wars and World War I , as one of the “1,300 corporals”. He was a lieutenant in famous Student’s battalion, went through horrors of Serbian army retrieving across Albania and found himself in island of Corfu, where he became an editor of “Serbian newspaper” and work as a state press bureau clerk. In the year of 1916 he was sent on an informative-diplomatic mission to France and Great Britain to work on a public support in a behalf of country of Serbia. During the Russian Revolution he was a member of Serbian diplomatic team in St. Petersburg.

After World War I he was briefly employed in a Ministry of Education in Belgrade, but soon had his restless and wondering spirit led him into journalism and writing. In a newly formed Kingdom of Yugoslavia he became quite an outstanding person among young and modern Serbian literates (Miloš Crnjanski, Dragiša Vasić, Rastko Petrović, Ljubomir Micić, Rade Drainac, Velibor Gligorić, Marko Ristić), and Croat writers that have been coming in Belgrade from former Austro-Hungarian monarchy (Tin Ujević, Gustav Krklec, Sibe Miličić).

As a poet and essay writer, Vinaver was a leader of expressionists movement as well as the author of “Manifest of expressionism”, strongly pleading for abandoning traditional artistic expression, disclaiming routine “patriotic canons” established by honourable literate critics Jovan Skerlić and Bogdan Popović.

Vinaver spent World War II in a captivity of German prisoners camp Osnabrück. In the last years of his life (1945-1955) he was working as a writer, satirist and a professional translator from French, English, German, Russian, Polish and Czech language in Belgrade. His unique translations, in which he would often step away from the original text in order to describe and keep the essence and spirit of it, were sometimes rejected from publishing houses, but to this day have not been exceeded and have become almost an individual works of literature. He wrote and added up to 200 new pages into his translation of François Rabelais' "Gargantua and Pantagruel". Another famous translation was Lewis Carroll's "Alice's adventures in wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" where he diverts and twists the original novel going farther away from the story but keeping and cherishing Carroll's brilliant humour, playing with words and most importantly Carroll's message and tale's essence. Vinaver himself never said "Alice" was a translation, and preferred to call it "retelling".

As for satire, Vinaver’s style was endlessly witty and humorous, with unexpected turnovers, fresh and innovative expressing and a subtle sense of grotesque, most apparent in his “Panthology of new Serbian pelengyrics” (pelen, sr. – wormwood), which represents a mockery to Bogdan Popović’s “Anthology of new Serbian lyrics”.

Among his work, the best known are “Stories that lost their balance” (1913), “Thoughts” (1913), “Lightning conductor of the Universe” (1921), “Worlds keeper” (1921), “Evil wizards' small town”, “Icarus’ flight”, “War friends”, “European night”, “Our needed language” and his famous work “Laza Kostić’s enchantments and spites”. In the latter book, for which he had a hard time to publish it and did not manage to do so during his lifetime, Vinaver showed his master skills for debate and reached heights in criticizing Serbian cultural mediocrity and mythomania.

Even though he was quite a contemporary author, particularly in a context of national culture, he remained miscomprehended for half of a century, suppressed and concealed, hence his book “Enchantments” was not re published until 2006.

In this magnificent book, Vinaver manages to represent complete Serbian artistic and spiritual heritage that includes both culture and mythology, and beside portraying famous poet Laza Kostić, the book is an autopoetic work itself, combining artistic-intellectual curiosity, encyclopedic knowledge as well as his own strong and distinct identity. It contains complete Kostić’s biography and writings, historical context which they originated from and notes of his contemporaries, but Vinaver also writes of music, verses structure, linguistic possibilities, melody of language and contemporary poetry in general.

He died in Niška Banja, Serbia, on August 1st, 1955.

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