Short and embellish version of my miserable life in Belgrade

Todosijević Dragoljub Raša:
Short and embellish version of my miserable life in Belgrade
Belgrade 2009


I was born on the second day of September in the year 1945 in Belgrade, in the People’s Front Street; before Second World War the name of the street was Queen Natalia’s Street. At first, we – my honest and righteous parents and me – we have lived in Romanian Street, up there, on posh Dedinje Hill. Afterwards we have, and nobody knows why, moved to Šajkaška Street no. 17. You know, it’s down there, next to “Danube” railway station. When city authorities, for no apparent reasons, have crashed that beautiful edifice in Šajkaška Street, we have moved to Cvijićeva Street no. 115, close to New Cemetery. After, let’s say, ten years, and perhaps a few more, we’ve gone to the outskirts of the town, beyond nowhere, in Jablanička Street no. 21. Much later Marinela and me finally got our own flat, our own little room of freedom, on noble Senjak Hill, in Prahovska Street no. 4a – actually in former American Lane. When her parents had left this world we have settled downtown in General Zdahnov Street no. 9, which regained, few years ago, its old, prewar name: Resavska Street.
Erstwhile, I tried to be an air force pilot - the wings of our army. It was in Mostar. Since I was no good at this, nor did I like the boring company of the cadets, I have returned to Belgrade. For two years I’ve took courses in drawing and sculpture in Šumatovačka Street no. 122a. Finally, in the year of 1964 I’ve enrolled the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade. My professors at the Academy were people of unpleasantly low talent and even lower education. There was nothing left for me but to travel throughout the world and to educate myself, the ways only I did knew, in order to be able somehow to break, with my tiny powers, the invisible bondages of omnipresent provincialism. I’ve got my studio exactly after thirty years, at the so-called Old Fairgrounds, which during Second World War was a pitiless German concentration camp. Sometimes, when in my atelier I listen to the silent music on the radio, it seems to me as if souls of murdered camp inmates are visiting me.