Matija Bećković’s Sermon

He comes from Montenegro, from the Rovac tribe, from the Bećković-Drašković brotherhood. Paternal great-grandfather Vujo Drašković, the first of the Draškovićs, named himself after his grandfather Bećko Drašković – Vujo Bećković.

Matija’s grandfather Nišo Vujin Bećković was the president of the Rovačka municipality and a member of parliament in the Podgorica Assembly in 1918.

Matija was born on November 29, 1939 (St. Matthias the Apostle day) in Senta, where his father Vuk served as a royal officer. Zorka Taušan his mother was the daughter of Miladin, a volunteer from Thessaloniki front, who lived in Kanjiža. The family moved several times, and when the Second World War began, they took refuge from Novi Sad, with their relatives in Velje Duboko. He completed elementary school in the village of Velje Duboko, lower grades of high school in Kolašin and Slavonski Brod (at his aunt’s place), and high school with graduation in Valjevo. Matijin’s father, Vuk Bećković, was an officer in the army of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, so he remained faithful to the officer’s oath and joined the Chetniks in Rovci. During the civil war in Montenegro, he was the commander of the Rovački Chetnik detachment. At the end of the war in 1944, he joined the main body of the Yugoslav army in the homeland and moved with it to the West, where the allied army was. But during the retreat, he was killed in a skirmish, along the road somewhere in Slovenia.

In the school year 1958/59, he enrolled at the Faculty of Philology in the Belgrade group for Yugoslav and general literature.

In the sixth grade of the Valjevo grammar school, he won first place at the Literary Competition. For the first literary fee, he received a monetary award of 12,000 dinars, from which he bought a checkered jacket; he is still recognizable today by that jacket. He published his first poem “Preludium” as a high school student in 1957 in “Mlada Kultura”. He published the first book, dedicated to the love of his life, bearing the title with her name, in 1962. The poem was an exceptional success, and the following year, in 1963, he was accepted as a well-known creator in the Association of Writers of Serbia in Belgrade. Later he will be elected as its president.

Bećković’s prose and poetic texts were prepared for the theater and performed on domestic and foreign stages. In 1978, “Međa Vuka Manitoga” was performed at the National Theater in Belgrade, followed by the monodramas “Reče mi jedan čoek” and “Ne znaš ti nih”.

In the Zagreb Theater “ITD”, “Youth Theatre”, “Jazavec”, “MM Theatre”, Serbian National Theatre, “M Club”, theatrical plays based on Bećković’s texts were performed.

It was performed in the Contemporary Theater in Belgrade in 1970/71. the comedy “Belgrade once and now”, with the comedies of the same name by Sterija and Nušić.

He wrote two television dramas and two one-act plays for children, which were broadcast by Belgrade Television in 1966 and 1967.

He adapted (with Borislav Mihajlović Mihiza) “Mountain Wreath”, the play was performed on the stage of the National Theater in Belgrade.

The dramatic poem “Che – the ongoing tragedy” (with Dušan Radović) was translated into German (Che: Tragödie, die andauert, Frankfurt am Main 1969) and English (Che: Permanent tragedy, New York 1970).

The records from the book “On the Meantime” were translated into English under the title “Random Targets” in 1970.

For his poetry, Bećković received awards: Milan Rakić, Oktobarska, Sedmojulska, Zmajeva, Disovo spring, Belovodska rosette, Golden cross of Prince Lazar, Ravnogorska, Stefan Mitrov Ljubiša, Great Bazjaška Charter, Responses to Filip Višnjić, Biblios, Award Vuk’s Endowments, Njegoš’s Award, Žička Hrisovulja, etc.

Jovan Dučić and Laza Kostić received the Tipar, Golden Bestseller awards for the poem “We’ll talk again.”

He was elected a corresponding member of SANU in 1983, and a full member in 1991. He is a member of the Serbian PEN Center, as well as the Association for Culture, Art and International Cooperation “Adligat”, in which he has been active since its foundation in 2012.

In 1989, Matija Bećković received the Seven of July Award for literary creativity. Veterans’ organizations publicly opposed his election. As a laureate at the awarding of that high social recognition, he replied: I agree that I did not deserve the award, but I do not agree that it is my fault that I received it. As he was told that he was the son of a Chetnik (from a Chetnik family) in an interview with the magazine “Dugi”, he “put an end” to such ideological failed questions: A Chetnik is whoever was a Chetnik. A partisan is one who was a partisan. The divisions between Chetniks and Partisans were war divisions, and should be ended with the war. And such a division is imposed by people who would not exist without that division.

His wife, a Russian woman from Valjevo, was called Vera Pavladoljska (he dedicated one of his most famous songs to her, which was later performed by Arsen Dedić), and with her he has daughters Ljudmila and Olja. Vera was the daughter of a Russian refugee from the Caucasus. Matija and Vera met in Valjevo in 1956, and got married in 1964. Vera worked in the University Library in Belgrade. After a serious illness, Matija’s wife died in 1998 and was buried at the New Cemetery in Belgrade.

Academician Bećković is one of the few academicians who criticized Slobodan Milošević as early as 1991 (e.g. “Serbian army captured! Skadar! and! Jedreni, but this one cannot! Borovo Selo and Tenje (Vreme, 2 December 1991). During his regime participated in numerous protest rallies.

Bećković is a close friend of Vojislav Koštunica and was the first to sign a petition against the connection between Vojislav Koštunica and the murder of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić.

Bećković actively supports the Democratic Party of Serbia, at whose rallies he has spoken several times. Since 2009, he has been the President of the Slobodan Jovanović Foundation in Belgrade. He became an honorary citizen of Subotica in 2016.