do supernatural elements exist in borislav pekić's how to kill a

Serbian Studies: Journal of the North American Society for Serbian Studies 15(1): 35–49, 2001.

Do Supernatural Elements Exist in Borislav Pekić’sHow to Kill a Vampire: The Poetics of a Magical Umbrella

Olga NedeljkovićUniversity of Illinois at Chicago

On the basis of my reading and interpretation of the novel How to Kill a

Vampire by Borislav Pekiç, I have concluded that Pekiç’s novel represents a

further transformation of the genre in the period of Postmodernism. The chief

characteristic of this transformational process is the further reduction of the

narration of external events and full concentration on the protagonist’s con-

sciousness. How to Kill a Vampire is written in a language that resembles

philosophical dialogue with its strict method of theoretical precision. Each

chapter is written in the form of a letter dedicated to a well-known West

European philosopher. Pekiç’s novel seems to be an attempt to criticize dog-

matic, totalitarian aspects of modern philosophy by using the form of the

special literary genre sotie. Sotie has been used by various authors in various

times. In Modernism and Postmodernism sotie is a satirical work whose fool-

ish or mad characters are treated farcically within an unconventional narrative

structure. Pekiç defines How to Kill a Vampire as a sotie, introducing this

designation into the title of the novel. Thus, Pekiç asks the reader to read the

novel from the point of view of the sotie genre as it allows him to criticize the

“absoluteness” and dogmatism of modern philosophy, and to show that an ab-

solute truth, based on reason, is no longer acceptable. My analysis of How to

Kill a Vampire will point out that 1) Pekiç’s novel is grounded on the loss of

confidence in the power of authoritative reason and its variant of free will

subjected to reason; and 2) that in the novel, supernatural elements do not

represent “the fantastic,” in spite of the presence of the miraculous umbrella.

At first glance, one believes that in reading this book one is dealing with

an historical, realistic novel. The novel describes two chronologically differ-

ent events in the destiny and consciousness of the major protagonist, Konrad

Rutkowski, a former SS Obersturmfuhrer in the German Army in the Balkans

in September of 1943, and later a professor of medieval history at the

University of Heidelberg (the action takes place in September of 1965). On

the one hand, through the descriptions of the protagonist’s consciousness and

reminiscences Pekiç follows the historical and political circumstances in

which Professor Konrad Rutkowski finds himself, as a former SS lieutenant

36 OLGA NEDELJKOVIĆ

in the German army in the Balkans during the Second World War; and on the

other hand, Pekiç investigates the moral attitude and state of his protagonist’s

mind in retrospect, recalling his actions as an officer during the war.

A brief account of the story goes as follows. After twenty-two years of

being a diligent researcher of medieval German-Polish relationships, Profes-

sor Rutkowski returns to the small town of D., on the Adriatic coast, where in

1943 he served as an officer. However, in 1965, as a tourist, Rutkowski wants

to spend his vacation there with his wife. By chance, Professor Rutkowski

finds himself in the apartment, remodeled as part of the hotel “Miramare,”

where as an SS lieutenant he investigated war prisoners in 1943. This ironic

circumstance stirs in his memory his unforgettable but clandestine experi-

ences that had taken place twenty-two years before. Thus, Rutkowski’ s deci-

sion to go to the town of D. on the Adriatic coast for his vacation recalls “the

well-known psychological trap according to which the criminal must return

back to the place of his crime.”1 His return to the town of D. activates his

subconscious to recall the crime he had committed there in 1943, stirring

feelings of guilt. Rutkowski tries to find therapeutic healing in writing letters

to Hilmar Wagner, his wife’s brother. The latter never reads them and never

responds to Rutkowski’s communications. Writing these letters represents a

therapy for Rutkowski. By putting his thoughts about his war activities on pa-

per, Rutkowski expects to get rid of his guilt. He believes that by releasing his

past, he will be able to find explanations for his past crime. At the same time,

the letters become the means of his own self-torture, which reaches the level

of serious trauma. The reader is reinserted into a subtle philosophical dialogue

between Lieutenant Rutkowski and his military superior officer, Steinbrecher.

At the same time, the reader is introduced into a fictional textual universe,

which introduces a magical umbrella; this device, together with the author’s

interventions, is intended to confuse the reader, creating the contradictions

and tensions inherent to the novel written in the genre of sotie.

Following the basic characteristics of the genre, the protagonist

Rutkowski is presented by Pekiç as an oppressed, neurotic man, even al-

legedly insane. Pekiç treats him with sarcasm, sometimes satirically, often

ironically, within an unconventional narrative structure. In his footnotes,

Pekiç analyzes the exact state of Rutkowski’s consciousness. It is obsessed by

the idea that the unfortunate application of Aristotle’s logic has led humanity

to its own complete degradation and annihilation. The characteristics of the

sotie genre allow Pekiç to achieve a perfectly organized structure in the form

of a discovered manuscript, consisting of twenty-six letters and two

postscripts. Each of these twenty six letters is devoted to the works of well-

1 Petar Pijanoviç, Poetika romana Borislava Pekiça (Belgrade: Prosveta, 1991), 74.

BORISLAV PEKIĆ’S HOW TO KILL A VAMPIRE 37

known thinkers and philosophers such as Aurelius, Bergson, Nietzsche,

Leibnitz, Descartes, Freud, Schopenhauer, Berdjajev, Hegel, Locke, Spengler,

Plato, Husserl, Erasmus, Hume, Abelard, Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre,

Augustine, Camus, Marx, Kant, and Wittgenstein.

In offering this extremely condensed account of philosophical concerns,

interwoven with literary-philosophical evocations, associations, introspection,

and reminiscences of the protagonist, Pekiç invites the reader to a literary-in-

tellectual game. The first person narration has eliminated interventions by the

author and favors the protagonist-narrator. The state of Rutkowski’s lucid

madness allows him to tell truths usually not told by the first person narrator.

Rutkowski is represented as the first “I,” a communicator and witness to the

reality to which he refers. But the situation becomes more complex, because

we are dealing not only with the protagonist Rutkowski as the first “I,” but

also with his alter ego, Rutkowski’s superior, SS Standartenfuhrer Heinrich

Steibrecher, who appears in the novel as the second “I.” Likewise, space and

time are doubled in the novel. As already explained, Pekiç simultaneously de-

picts the events of 1943 and 1965.2

Although the novel is written in the first person, it is not autobiographical

in character. Pekiç is not writing about himself. The genre of the sotie allows

the author to passionately criticize aspects of modern philosophy.3 Pekiç art-

fully achieves his goal by introducing a first person narrator with a hallucina-

tory state of mind. As a fictive and insane narrator, Rutkowski freely attacks

dogmatic principles applied in a totalitarian regime like the German Reich in

1930s and 1940s. As a German lieutenant together with his alter ego,

Steinbrecher, Rutkowski displays an admirable knowledge in the field of phi-

losophy. Another question is that of the protagonist figure’s identity in those

portions of the novel when Pekiç uses the third person narration instead of the

expected first person. The latter is replaced by the author’s narration in the

third person, which allows the protagonist Rutkowski to distance himself and

judge his own actions and behavior in the Second World War. Pekiç indicates

2 In his monograph Romani Borislava Pekiça (Nik‰iç: Univerzitetska rijeã, 1989), Radomir

Baturan explains it more precisely: “U Pekiçevom romanu Kako upokojiti vampira antinomna

su i vremena zbivanja, kako ono iz 1943. onome iz 1965, tako i pojedinaãna zbivanja unutar

ratnog i poratnog vremena. Nemoguçnosti da ih kompromisno pomiri ili razre‰i Rutkovski je

platio pomraãenjem svesti i sopstvenim Ïivotom. Samo je prostor bukvalno jedan: germansko-

slovenski. Susret Istoka i Zapada u svojoj jugoistoãnoj varijanti, neminovno ratni. Znaãi,

su‰tinska dihotomnost vlada i zbivanjima, i vremenom, i prostorom u kojima se kreçe lik

naratora, ujedno i autor te dihotomije,” 61–62.3 An analysis of Pekiç’s criticism of modern philosophy requires a comparison of the basic

ideas expressed in the individual letters of the novel with the ideas of the philosophers to whom

the letters are dedicated. This task is beyond the intention of this article.


Rutkowski’s inner state of mind, the mental derangement compelling

Rutkowski to resort to writing the twenty-six letter-fragments, becoming the

chapters in the novel. In spite of the unconventional form of the letters, Pekiç

is playing with the reader’s need to recuperate the text into the familiar world

of novelistic representation. It is true that the novelist of How to Kill a

Vampire at first appears to draw the reader out of the world of fiction into the

“real,” extra-textual world of the flesh-and-blood author. Skillfully using his-

torical facts and locations, the narrator playfully suggests that his characters

and story are real.

The fact that German philosophers are dominant among the thinkers

quoted above, and that they represent the heart of the modern European intel-

lectual tradition, prompted Pekiç to choose German Nazism instead of any

other twentieth-century totalitarian regime as his major topic. In addition,

Pekiç himself was best acquainted with Hitler’s Nazism during the Second

Word War, the period that he survived not as a participant but as a witness

when the Germans occupied the Balkans.4 Following the gradual transforma-

tion of his protagonist, Rutkowski, from a humanist scholar into a Nazi po-

liceman, Pekiç describes the creation of the totalitarian consciousness through

Rutkowski’s intellectual resistance to the clear manifestations of his dogmatic

mind. It seems crucial to understand that Rutkowski does not simply narrate

his war story; he institutes legal action against history as the accomplice of his

moral and spiritual disintegration. This explains why Rutkowski, as an intel-

lectual, is depicted and defined in terms of “logic,” “law,” “philosophy,” and

“speculation.” As an heir to the entire history of modern European philoso-

phy, especially the German heritage, the Lieutenant symbolizes totalitarian

ideology.5 He is a man who commits an unmotivated crime, killing an inno-

4 On several occasions, Pekiç gives a detailed explanation why he has chosen the example of

German Nazism as the basis for his representation of totalitarian consciousness. See, for

example, his explanation in Vreme reãi, ed. BoÏo Koprivica (Belgrade: BIGZ/SKZ, 1993): ”Da

Rutkovski nije sluãajno—a koliko sluãajno i to je pod sumnjom—oti‰ao da letuje na grob svog

vampira, ovaj bi jednom do‰ao kod njega u Heidelberg (‰to bi, naravno, za mene predstavljalo

dodatan napor prouãavanja i opisivanja Univerziteta u kome nikad nisam bio), kao ‰to stari i

iskusni vampiri, u potrazi za krvlju, umeju prevaljivati neizmerne daljine…,” 51. Also, see his

Skinuto sa trake, ed. Predrag Palavestra (Belgrade: Narodna knjiga/Alfa, 1996), 130–34.5 Speaking about his book How to Kill a Vampire, Pekiç explains the major goal of writing it:

“Pi‰uçi o fenomenu totalitarne svesti koja ideologije ra∂a i o procesu njihove uzajamne

reprodukcije, ja nisam u vidu imao nacionalsocijalizam. Kada je roman pisan, 1970-tih,

nacionalsocijalizam kao ideologija i praksa be‰e istorijski mrtav, a Ïiv, osim u pamçenju

preÏivelih, jo‰ samo u propagandi reÏima ãija je ideologija nosila u sebi totalan pogled na

totalno re‰enje ljudskog pitanja. Ja sam, me∂utim, pisao o nacionalsocijalizmu…. Kritika

ideologije u naãelu je nauãna disciplina. Obave‰tenost, racionalnost, logiãnost, njene su

pretpostavke. U knjiÏevnom delu, ako je pravo, ako je prvo knjiÏevnost, pa onda kritika, mogu


cent man, and at the same time cannot raise his conduct to the level of his

own theoretical and philosophical ideas. Although he argues ideas of “reason”

and “free will,” and man’s total superiority over his own destiny, Rutkowski

is incapable of recognizing his own crime. As a member of the political police

in an aggressive, occupying army in the Balkans, Rutkowski expresses his

resistance to the actions of the German police institution, but does not know

how to apply his intellectual knowledge to an actual situation. However, his

chief, Steinbrecher, fully understands both Rutkowski’s mind and the modern

European cult of Reason.

Given the central role that the first person narration plays in the novel, it

is worthwhile to analyze at some length the problems imposed by Rutkowski-

Steinbrecher’s dialogue. Pekiç skillfully constructs their dialogue, highlight-

ing the theory and methodology of police craft.6 Thus, when Steinbrecher in-

sists that Rutkowski has a soul and Rutkowski replies that in that situation he

should have become a priest, Steinbrecher reprimands him, by saying:

“Absurd! Only policemen can correctly treat a man’s soul. In the

Church, the soul is merely Communion decoration. What is the soul

to a priest? A priest does not need a soul. He has his saintly dogma. A

policeman does not have his saintly dogma. He has nothing. The soul

is indispensable to him. A policeman without a soul is a machine

without a purpose. Perpetuum mobile! A producer of wind. A blower

of clouds! And you, I bet, believe that the basic quality of a success-

ful policeman is heartlessness, don’t you?”

“Heartlessness, to put it correctly, is written about in some highly

respected handbooks,” said Rutkowski.

“So? What is, in your opinion, the police task?” asked

Steinbrecher.

“To discover the truth,” answered Rutkowski.

sve ove vrline delovati, ali samo u simbiozi s neãim ‰to je u nauci mana a u umetnosti vrlina—

subjektivno‰çu, iracionalno‰çu [my emphasis], ma‰tom koja i te kako ume biti kritiãna….” See

his “Zamka ideologije” in Novija srpska knjiÏevnost i kritika ideologije, Nauãni skupovi, knj.

XLVI, Odeljenje jezika i knjiÏevnosti, knj. 10, ed. Predrag Palavestra (Belgrade/Ni‰: SANU,

1989), 61–63.6 The masterful presentation of the Nazis’ police apparatus in the novel is corroborated by

Pekiç’s own words: “Policija je podruãje, u kome se, s promenljivim uspehom, dodu‰e, priliãno

dobro snalazim. Poznavanjem njene istorije i metodologije, kao i onoga ‰to bi mogli uslovno

nazvati ‘policijskom filozofijom,’ uvi∂a se da tu vaÏe izvesne konstante, koje nije moguçe

uoãiti, a zatim izdvojiti, kao ‰to se iz ugljeniãkih jedinjenja separira ugljenik,” Skinuto sa trake,

132–33.


“The truth? You do not mean it! Are we, perhaps, damned

philosophers, what do you think? We, ourselves, make the truth,

Lieutenant Rutkowski! We do not find truths out, but we make them!

It is a creative and not an investigative job. We are artists, sir! And, if

I were lucky enough to see in your dead eyes at least the smallest

sparkle of comprehension, I would say: poets. Yes, they who walk

per aspera ad astra.”7

Here Steinbrecher bluntly defines the nature of the police profession. He

openly speaks about the clandestine character of police work, of their real

policing, and the organizing of various people’s insurrections, the deceiving

and misleading of the people in order to control, arrest, and imprison them.

Thus, for example, Steinbrecher explains to Rutkowski what the basic duty is

of an excellent police force:

“Only weak police organizations are bound to crush revolts. On the

contrary, good police organizations are their catalysts, fermenters, in-

stigators. The police, my dear Rutkowski, must be the yeast, and not

the means of breaking down people’s rebellions. And those are the

best ones? They organize riots and conduct them.”

“Don’t we already have enough insurrections, sir?” asked

Rutkowski.

“As long as there are potential rebellions, there are not enough

revolts. For us they are indispensable! To keep a revolt under control

and then turn it into an open insurrection by using a powerful fer-

ment, and by spreading a gross injustice: Our entire art is grounded

7 — Glupost! Sa du‰om se jedino u policiji mogu ãiniti prave stvari. U Crkvi, ona je—priãesni

dekor. ·ta çe sve‰teniku du‰a? Sve‰teniku ne treba du‰a. On ima svoju svetu dogmu. Policajac

nema svoju svetu dogmu. On nema ni‰ta. Njemu je du‰a neophodna. Policajac bez du‰e je

ma‰ina bez svrhe. Perpetuum mobile! Proizvodjaã vetra! Duvaã oblaka! A vi ste, kladim se,

verovali da je osnovno svojstvo uspe‰nog policajca bezdu‰nost, niste li?

— Bezoseçajnost, ako çemo pravo, kako pi‰e u nekim cenjenim udÏbenicima.

— Tako? ·ta je po vama zadatak policije?

— Da sazna istinu.

— Istinu? Nije nego! Jesmo li mi moÏda prokleti filozofi, ‰ta? Mi pravimo istine,

poruãniãe Rutkowski! Ne saznajemo ih, nego pravimo! To je stvaralaãki, a ne istraÏivaãki

posao. Mi smo umetnici gospodine moj. I kad bih imao sreçu da u va‰im mrtvim oãima vidim

ma i najmanju iskru shvatanja, ja bih rekao: pesnici. Da, oni koji hode per aspera ad astra.

(Borislav Pekiç, Kako upokojiti vampira, Sotija (Belgrade: Rad/Narodna knjiga/BIGZ, 1977),

41–42.


on this. Its highest form is, of course, a revolt whose leaders are our

people.”8

According to Steinbrecher, the police is the only institution invested in

training man’s soul. Since most of the time the police deal with arrested peo-

ple in prisons, they train prisoners’ souls. Thus, in the thirteenth letter, dedi-

cated to Plato, Steinbrecher declares:

For a good investigation … man’s soul is indispensable. Like a

physician, a policeman should treat a prisoner. Although he cannot

rescue him from death, he can irreproachably justify his death—like a

priest who cannot pardon your sins, but who likes you like himself,

and who by the power of his attachment to you is able to make you

feel reconciled to your death.9

Clearly, Pekiç is maintaining that the difference between a fascist and a

humanist consists only in the type of their training. All Steinbrecher’s argu-

ments, as well as his dispute with Rutkowski, reveal that the notion of the

soul or spirit is overwhelmed by the concept of reason or logic in modern

European philosophy. Therefore, in the wasteland of empirical reality, per-

meated with utilitarian manifestations of reason, it turns out that only the po-

lice are involved with the soul’s phenomenology (the prisoner’s soul, that is).

Reason and free will are two interrelated concepts in Pekiç’s novel. In fact,

Pekiç treats them almost as interchangeable. For example, this aspect be-

comes obvious in the fragment, which appears in the fourth letter, dedicated

to Leibnitz, in which Steinbrecher says the following:

8 … Samo se slabe policije ograniãavaju na gu‰enje pobuna. Dobre su njihov katalizator,

ferment, podstrekivaã.

— A one najbolje?

— One ih organizuju i vode.

— Zar nama nije dosta pobuna, gospodine?

— Sve dok ima potencijalnih pobunjenika, pobuna nikad nije dosta. One su nam ãak i

neophodne. DrÏati revolt pod kontrolom, pa ga onda snaÏnim fermentom, nekom masovnom

nepravdom, pretvoriti u otvorenu pobunu, u tome je, poruãniãe, sva na‰a umetnost. Njen najvi‰i

oblik je, naravno, pobuna ãiji su lideri na‰i ljudi. (Pekiç, Kako upokojiti vampira, 39)9 “… za dobru istragu … du‰a je nuÏna. Sa zatvorenikom se treba ophoditi kao lekar, koji,

istina, nije kadar od smrti da spase, ali ume da je besprekorno obrazloÏi. Kao sve‰tenik koji ne

moÏe da vam podeli opro‰tenje od grehova, ali moÏe da vas ljubi kao samog sebe i da vas

snagom te privrÏenosti pomiri sa smrçu.” (Pekiç, Kako upokojiti vampira, 166)


“The problem is that such a prisoner has most often his own view on

things, his own version of the truth. A poor policeman would limit

himself to finding out only the truth and keeping a record of it.

Unfortunately, in most cases, that truth is useless. It contradicts our

own. Why in the hell would we need such a truth that persuades us

that we are wrong? One can easily assume that we cannot change the

entire system upon which the German Reich is grounded because of

that one truth which contradicts it. The only way out of this situation

is to alter the prisoner’s truth so that it suits our needs. Our mission

consists just of that.”

“And what if in that way the truth stops being the truth? What

then?” asked Rutkowski.

“It has never been the truth. The truth which conforms to change

is an out-and-out lie.”10

Our constant compromises in all spheres of our current culture have gone

too far and undermined political and social life. In our culture, every truth

agrees with something, depends upon certain conditions, introducing in that

way ambiguities of illusion liable to quick changes. The double face of the

paradox would consternate us if we wanted to believe that we possessed the

truth: for if only the police are involved with man’s soul, then the reverse is

also true and the soul is equally involved with the police. The mind and the

soul of a helpless victim are mutually and interchangeably brainwashed by

both reason and free will, two vampires of our modern epoch, which are often

disguised as one another.To illustrate this point, I will quote one more example, from the scene in

which Steinbrecher teaches Rutkowski that in its extreme and authentic form

a good police system, which operates with its powerful reasoning and specu-

lation and organizes a revolt, can be interpreted and understood like the free

will of people. Steinbrecher relies constantly upon reason to rationalize the

10 — Problem je u tome ‰to takav uhap‰enik najãe‰çe ima svoj pogled na stvari, svoju istinu.

R∂av policajac bi se ograniãio na to da je sazna i protokoli‰e. Na Ïalost, u najveçem broju

sluãajeva, ta istina je neupotrebljiva. Ona je u opreci sa na‰om. A kojeg çe nam ∂avola istina

koja nas ube∂uje da nismo u pravu? Vi, valjda, uvidjate da ne moÏemo menjati ãitav sistem na

kome poãiva Nemaãki Reich, zbog jedne istine koja mu protivreãi. Ostaje nam, dakle, jedino da

uhap‰enikovu istinu preudesimo tako da se podudari sa na‰im potrebama. U tome je sva na‰a

misija.

— A ako ona time prestane da bude istina?

— Ona to, Rutkowski, nikad nije ni bila. Istina koja pristaje da se menja, puka je laÏ.

(Pekiç, Kako upokojiti vampira, 50)


Borislav Pekiç in London in 1983 (photo I. Simoviç)


absurdity of general killings, wars, taking prisoners, and various types of re-

volts. Thus, in Rutkowski’s words, “theoretically speaking, a strictly isolated

prisoner, subject to a special regime, immersed into Steinbrecher’s solution of

logic and system of torture, can contract X times the consciousness within a

week of investigation which results in Y times the confessions under the only

condition that the refuse of his soul’s metabolism, a quantity of Z, is removed

in time.”11

Armed with the entire treasury of Western European philosophy, based

on the vampirism of reason and free will, Lieutenant Rutkowski becomes one

of Steinbrecher’s perpetrators in 1943. Developing the story on two simulta-

neously different temporal levels, as already pointed out, Pekiç convincingly

and skillfully describes Rutkowski’s gradual process of ‘Steinbrechersation.’

His behavior is more and more influenced by his alter ego’s demonic logic,

which Rutkowski contrives to resist by coming up with constant compro-

mises. The best illustration of this is Rutkowski’s treatment of Adam

Trpkoviç, a local clerk who has fallen behind after the evacuation of the

Italian army and, through an obvious mistake, becomes a German prisoner of

war in 1943. Rutkowski finds Adam in the basement of the building that the

SS had transformed into its headquarters. The strangest and most conspicuous

thing that characterizes Adam is his “innocent” umbrella from which he never

separates. In spite of being aware of Adam’s innocence, Rutkowski comes to

the conclusion that the rescue of Adam Trpkoviç would be a potential tactical

mistake. Such an outcome could allegedly impair him to act properly when

“the basements are filled with real criminals.”12

In Rutkowski’s inner struggle to save his own soul and fulfill his duty as

an SS officer, his alter ego Steinbrecher finally prevails over him and domi-

nates all his thoughts and actions during his invisible struggle “to save

Adam’s neck.”13

Pekiç expresses this struggle by saying that, at some point,

Rutkowski becomes unconscious when he hits his protégé in the face with his

hand.14

Then Pekiç continues by depicting how Rutkowski feels hatred and an

icy intolerance toward the representative of mediocrity, Adam Trpkoviç, who

11 “Dakle, teorijski uzev, strogo izolovani zatvorenik, podvrgnut specijalnom reÏimu,

potopljen u Steinbrecherov rastvor logike i torture, moÏe u toku jednonedeljnog terma istrage

da kontrahira savest X puta, ‰to iznosi Y priznanja, pod jednim uslovom da se otpaci du‰evnog

metabolizma, koliãina Z, iz zatvorenika pravovremeno odstranjuje” (Pekiç, Kako upokojiti

vampira, 159)12

Pekiç, Kako upokojiti vampira, 163.13


Pekiç, Kako upokojiti vampira, 194.


survives all historical and biological catastrophes.15

To clarify his last idea

Rutkowski says: “Adam is the tangible proof of Darwin’s and Nietzsche’s

inaccurate statement that skillful and strong individuals survive.”16

On the

other hand, in order to support Adam Trpkoviç as a prisoner, Rutkowski

keeps a list of suspicious individuals. All these details reveal how Rutkowski

strives to find excuses for his own actions and to reach a compromise

“between his consciousness and his fear, between his ideals and reason,

between his will and intellect, between the sky and underground, between the

paradise and hell.”17

Finally, in order to give vent to his own disappointment

caused by his failure in his metaphoric chess game with Steinbrecher about

Adam’s destiny, Rutkowski commits a crime, condemning Adam Trpkoviç to

death. In this light, his will should be viewed only as a new, disguised trap of

reason. The process of “Steinbrechersation,” with its tyrannizing logic,

rationalizing speculations, and futile practices, has grown inside Rutkowski to

such dimensions that it has led him to a state of insanity and mental distortion

on one side, and on the other, it has compelled him to abandon his humanistic

principles. Pekiç convincingly shows how Rutkowski’s process of personal

development has transformed into an accusation against himself by himself;

consequently, it has led him to a suicidal state of mind.

This farcical play reaches its culmination with the scene of the tragic-su-

pernatural “ascension” of Adam Trpkoviç. Rutkowski had brutally murdered

him long ago by means of public hanging in the main square of the little town

of D. in 1943. Adam’s ghost persecutes Rutkowski during his visit to the

town of D. in 1965. However, the members of the advisory council translate

Rutkowski’s hallucinatory vision of Adam’s ascension into a symbolic lan-

guage, deciphering it as the signs of a psychoanalytic alphabet. They consider

Adam’s ascension, with the help of his umbrella, as “a paranoid hallucination

of the visual type.”18

Thus, twenty-two years after his death, Adam Trpkoviç

is degraded to the level of a traditional, almost folkloric vampire, whose ghost

has destroyed not only the purpose of Professor Rutkowski’s repentance, but

also Rutkowski’s belief that victims can be in any way redeemed. The event

15 Pekiç, Kako upokojiti vampira, 195.

16 Pijanoviç correctly stresses that Rutkowski’s feelings and his treatment of Adam reveal a

crack in Rutkowski’s humanistic appeals: “Ma koliko Rutkowski poku‰avao naçi izgovor za

ove postupke, izvesno je da su oni zapravo simptomatske radnje ‰to otkrivaju pukotinu u

njegovim humanistiãkim apelacijama. Ovde jo‰ nije na delu psihiãka snaga mrÏnje, ali jesu

njeni simptomi, koji çe, s vremenom, pojaãani znacima abnormalnosti, konaãno odvesti

Rutkovskog s onu stranu humanizma” (Pijanoviç , 83).17


Pekiç, Kako upokojiti vampira, 385.


of Adam’s ascension could have been the end of Lieutenant Rutkowski story.

In the twenty-second letter Rutkowski expresses his conviction that this

episode about Adam’s ‘ascension’ represents the end of his story. Likewise,

in his eighteenth footnote Pekiç emphasizes that “undergoing the catharsis of

his confession” has allowed “Professor Rutkowski to level all the uneven

spots of his past and to destroy the monstrous imprint which his crime left on

it.”19

However, exactly the opposite has happened. Rutkowski has revived a

critical point of his past through his story and this resurgence of his past has

brought about his mental sufferings and emotional pains. The action of the

novel is again slowed down, due to the appearance of the devilish umbrella,

which represents the allegorical key to the novel.

In order to break the vicious circle in which reason and free will battle

each other, Pekiç must introduce something in opposition to Steinbrecher’s

demonic logic and Rutkowski’s over-rational reasoning. Thus, Pekiç intro-

duces an element which supersedes our reality, outside the reach of our ratio-

nal minds. Thus, in the novel, Pekiç uses Adam’s umbrella as an allegorical

key in order to redefine the goal of modern philosophy founded exclusively

on rationality. At this point it seems proper to underline some key moments

which have led me to this kind of interpretation. Namely, in order to satisfy

the demands of free will, Rutkowski has to define his own resistance toward

power and terror which could only be done by releasing an obviously inno-

cent man, Adam Trpkoviç. However, at the same time it means that

Rutkowski would violate the propositions of reason, incarnated in the irre-

proachable demonstrations of his alter ego’s police logic. Rutkowski’s inabil-

ity to offer resistance, and to adjust his resistance to the point of view located

outside the rational, creates the above-mentioned vicious circle in the novel

based on reason and free will subject to reason, which are two sides of the

same coin. To illustrate the problem of this vicious circle in the ninth letter

dedicated to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, Pekiç describes how

Rutkowski, in his hallucinatory state, encounters Adam Trpkoviç’s ghost and

has a long conversation with him. When Rutkowski declares that he does not

believe in the supernatural phenomena, Adam’s ghost says:

“And who believes? The supernatural does not exist. The supernatu-

ral is only a notion for that, which you do not understand. Even here

where I live there are things which seem to us supernatural in a given

circumstance. However, we differ from you insofar that we are aware

that they are only illusions. This point of view, Lieutenant, moves

19 Pekiç, Kako upokojiti vampira, 386.


even mountains. The difficulty consists only in changing our stand-

point.”

“I am satisfied with my viewpoint,” responds Rutkowski.

“I know this viewpoint very well. Every standpoint is acceptable

as long as it feeds us and keeps us warm. On the other hand, you are

an intellectual. You rely on healthy reasoning. How can you deny the

existence of someone with whom you agree to speak? I am afraid,

Lieutenant, that this time you won’t get by with one of your famous

compromises,” says Adam’s ghost.

“I won’t count on compromise. I will close my eyes and when I

open them again, you will be no longer here.”20

This change of view is not the one that is expected from Rutkowski. His

elaborate dialogues with his alter ego, Steinbrecher, reveal that his standpoint

remains unchangeable. Adam’s umbrella is a silent witness of this mutual at-

tack between Rutkowski and his vampiric shadow, revealing a new degree of

allegory in the police domain, the sphere of absolute reason, reminding us of

well-known totalitarian ideologies in the twentieth century. Pekiç strives to

find a spiritual equivalent to these ideologies, based on West European philo-

sophical thought, and represents them in fictional form. Since I have already

given examples for Pekiç’s fictional representation of reason and free will, in

conclusion I would like to say a few words about Adam’s supernatural and

diabolical umbrella.

To illustrate the diabolical power of Adam’s umbrella, Pekiç skillfully

depicts its vampiric character, devoting three chapters to its evil actions and

describing Lieutenant Rutkowski’s attempts to destroy as many umbrellas as

possible. In spite of all his efforts to get rid of the vampiric umbrella,

Rutkowski could not escape it. In a footnote, Pekiç informs the reader that

Rutkowski was killed in an automobile accident on his way back to Germany.

Near Vienna, his Mercedes hit an oak tree on 6 October 1965. His belly was

20 —A ko veruje? Natprirodno ne postoji. Natprirodno je samo pojam za ono ‰to ne razumete.

âak i tamo gde ja Ïivim postoje stvari, koje se, za aktuelne uslove, ãoveku ãine natprirodnim.

Ali mi smo, za razliku od vas, svesni da je to iluzija. Ugao gledanja, poruãniãe, i brda pomera.

Te‰koça je jedino u tome da se pomeri ugao gledanja.

— Ja sam svojim uglom gledanja zadovoljan.

— Poznato mi je to stanovi‰te. Svaki ugao gledanja je dobar sve dok nas hrani i drÏi u

toplom. S druge strane, vi ste intelektualac. PolaÏete na zdravo rasu∂ivanje. Kako moÏete

poricati ne‰to sa ãime pristajete da razgovarate? Bojim se, poruãniãe, da se ovog puta neçete

provuçi sa nekim od va‰ih ãuvenih kompromisa.

— Ja i ne raãunam na kompromis. Zatvoriçu oãi i kad ih ponovo otvorim, vas neçe biti.

(Pekiç, Kako upokojiti vampira, 108–09).


pierced by Adam’s umbrella, which he was holding in his hands instead of the

steering wheel. Clearly, Pekiç is emphasizing that death is something irra-

tional.21

Adam’s umbrella stands out from the numerous combinations of

thought processes that shackle Rutkowski, whose thinking is grounded

equally on both reason and free will. Adam’s umbrella is symbolic of the in-

carnation of an unattainable space of the irrational, an illusory possibility of

redemption from which Rutkowski has been deprived in his struggle with his

past. During the last twenty-two years, Professor Rutkowski has not tried to

be pardoned for his sins and has not expressed feelings of repentance. His

way of thinking and reasoning has resulted in his exchange of unattainable ir-

rationality with total will. Some literary critics explain the scenes with

Adam’s umbrella and its demonic actions as fantastic sequences in the

novel.22

In order to clarify whether Adam’s umbrella represents a supernatural

element or an irrational one the best solution is to quote Pekiç’s own opinion:

In spite of the unusual and supernatural quality of certain scenes in

the novel there is no real ‘fantastic’ element. The fantastic is absent

here, not because these scenes could not enter the sphere of the fan-

tastic. On the contrary, they are profoundly part of it. Nor for the rea-

21 Pekiç chooses this kind of death in the novel itself. However, in an interview he gives a

rather rational explanation for Rutkowski’s death: “Rekonstrui‰uçi te odnose iz jedne

vi‰egodi‰nje perspektive, [Konrad Rutkowski] do‰ao je do uverenja da je ta njegova pro‰lost

neupokojiva, jer je vreme za to isteklo, jer se on sa njom nije obraãunao dok je trajala, dok se sa

njom ne‰to jo‰ i moglo uãiniti, nego se toga poduhvatio kad je ona veç sasvim bila izvan

dohvata svake izmene. Spasenje je do‰lo iznenada, ali ne iz nekog nepoznatog pravca. Ono je

veç bilo prisutno u njegovoj svesti, primenjeno na drugu temu i na izgled daleko od njegovog

sluãaja. Pro‰lost koja nas muãi moÏe se uni‰titi jedino ili samoubistvom ili totalnim

prihvatanjem,” see Vreme reãi, 52.22

Du‰an Marinkoviç, “Fantastiãki elementi u Pekiçevu romanu Kako upokojiti vampira,” in

Srpska fantastika: Natprirodno i nestvarno u srpskoj knjiÏevnosti, Nauãni skupovi, knj. XLIV,

Odeljenje jezika i knjiÏevnosti, knj. 9, ed. Predrag Palavestra (Belgrade: SANU, 1989), 603–

09. Mihajlo Pantiç takes into consideration Pekiç’s opinion that there is no real fantastic

elements in the novel and concludes: “Pripovedanje romana grana se u dva toka—jedan stremi

literarnom ‘otklonu’ od realnosti i zapuçuje se u iskustveno nedokuãive/neobj‰njive prostore,

‰to je, ako ne diferencijalna, a ono bar deskriptivna osobina fantastike. Tim tokom dominira

fantastiãka ravan ‘obrnute perspektive’—vaskrsavanje mrtvih, halucinacija, snohvatost, tok

raspoluçene, haotiãne svesti, poboãna, ali za znaãenje dela izuzetno vaÏna priãa o crnom

ki‰obranu, demonskom znaku. Druga ravan ãitanju pripada podrãju knjiÏevne mimeze i saÏima

bitne karakteristike pripovedaãkog (delom i autorskog) odnosa prema stvarnosti. Taj tok u biti

je osobita rekonstrukcija istorije, u ãijem se kontekstu razmatraju priroda i nesklad odnosa

izmedju pojedinca i sveta.” See his “Pekiçeva sotija: Roman Kako upokojiti vampira u svetlu

autorske oznake i upotrebe Ïanra,” in Srpska fantastika: Natprirodno i nestvarno u srpskoj

knjiÏevnosti, 611–16, esp. 615.


son that these scenes can be rationally explained as the hallucinations

of a twisted consciousness (the editor’s comments intrude on this in-

terpretation, and without his comments this interpretation does exist

as an exclusively potential possibility). Above all else, these scenes of

the supernatural in the novel are used to support a rational thesis,

which means that the illogical is harnessed in the game of the logical,

serving to prove a higher, historical logic, with the help of irony and

sarcasm, the two deadly enemies of the fantastic, which is based on

absolute confidence in the full reality of supernatural phenomena.23

In conclusion, one can say that Pekiç’s How to Kill a Vampire is at once

historical and metafictional, contextual and self-reflexive. Pekiç is always

aware of the status of his writing, of his major tool—his language and its pos-

sibilities of creating fictional worlds. Above all, Pekiç’s novel represents the

postmodern contempt for a dogmatic mind that produces a totalitarian regime.

This novel should be viewed as a vehement postmodern criticism not only of

Hitler’s and Stalin’s type of totalitarianism, but of any other type of totalitar-

ian regime that includes, for example, such stark, unqualified images of de-

struction as Hiroshima in the age of nuclear deterrence, the ultimate totalitar-

ian experience, based on “a balance of terror and power.” We are highly

aware that the dogmatic mind did not end with Hitler’s defeat. It was carried

over into the postwar world. Today, in the twenty-first century, we witness

the ideologies of extremist political movements with an articulate totalitarian

mentality, accompanied by discourses of nuclear deterrence, and other politi-

cal and economical threats. Besides that, Pekiç’s dialogue with the well-

known representatives of philosophical tradition hits the target on a deeper

stylistic level. Pekiç powerfully parodies the modern West European philoso-

phy that is grounded on the two basic concepts of reason and free will and

their dogmatic striving for perfection, which he skillfully discredits. The

novel is not written within the framework of fantastic or supernatural poetics,

although it does contain fantastic elements. Thus, the miraculous umbrella,

with its unusual supernatural powers is only used to prove Pekiç’s rational

thesis against reason and free will. The miraculous umbrella, in its essence,

represents the irrational. Thus, at the heart of Pekiç’s postmodern conscious-

ness we find an acceptance of the irrational, a large element of uncertainty

and ambiguity in life.

23 Vreme reãi, 68.

do supernatural elements exist in borislav pekić's how to kill a

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