SIBILA PETLEVSKI RISPONDE AL QUESTIONARIO DI MARCEL PROUST (AUTORITRATTI) ~ SIBILA PETLEVSKI - TECLAXXI

 

AUTORITRATTI

 

Sibila Petlevski

risponde al

Questionario di Marcel Proust

 

1.   My favorite virtue

My greatest virtue is perseverance: the art of making a needle out of a piece of rock.

 

2.    My main character trait

My main character trait is flying paper kites. I like to follow colorful illusions, and I like to believe in them.

 

3.    The quality I prefer in a man

In a male person, I value most the subconscious femininity - the Animus in the Anima, the ability to overcome the prejudices of patriarchal upbringing, and at the same time remain a man who is capable of loving without destructive jealousy and violence.

 

4.    The quality I prefer in a woman

In a female person, in addition to the already explained presence of the subconscious Animus in the Anima, I value most solidarity with other women - that practical, common-sense loyalty that opposes collective humiliation and femicide.

 

5.    What I appreciate most in my friends

What I value most in my friends is loyalty.

 

6.    My main fault

My biggest mistake is gullibility: I don't accept evil even when I see it.

 

7.    My favorite occupation

My favorite hobby is observing everything around me, discovering hidden patterns and symmetries, distinguishing shades of green, listening to silence, recording random bits of dialogue.

 

8.    My dream of happiness

My dream of happiness is to be able to write poems in a harmonious family atmosphere where my loved ones and my friends are healthy and cheerful, and social circumstances allow us to live comfortably and without financial stress.

 

9.    What would be my greatest misfortune?

The greatest misfortune for me is the suffering of those I love.

 

10.                   What I would like to be

I wouldn't like to be any other person.

 

11.                   The country where I would like to live

I love Mediterranean landscapes.

 

12.                   My favorite color

My favorite color is actually colors in the plural - different shades of the sky at sunset.

 

13.                   The flower I like

My favorite are meadow flowers.

 

14.                   The bird I like

My favorite bird is the blackbird when it sings in the early dawn.

 

15.                   My favorite authors in prose

My favorite novelists are Thomas Mann, Leo Tolstoy and Gabriel García Márquez.

 

16.                   My favorite poets

My favorite poets are Luis de Góngora y Argote and William Butler Yeats. 

 

17.                   My heroes in fiction

The Brothers Karamazov: Dmitri, Ivan and Alexei.  

 

18.                   My favorite heroines in fiction

Scheherazade.  

 

19.                   My favorite composers

Gustav Mahler and Alban Berg.  

 

20.                   My favorite painters

Rembrandt van Rijn, Vincent van Gogh, Ordan Petlevski, Biserka Baretić.  

 

21.                   My heroes in real life

My father and my mother because they taught me the value of freedom.

 

22.                   My heroines in history

Joan of Arc, Marie Curie. 

 

23.                   My favorite names

I like to discover the connection between the etymology of names and the life stories of those who bear names laden with historical meaning. In this sense, I divide names into those that are burdened by a legacy of legend, myth and history, and those names that allow escape from fate. But if I love someone, then I also love the sound of his or her name.

 

24.                   What I hate most of all

What I hate most is double standards and hypocrisy in all its forms.

 

25.                   The historical figures I despise the most

I hate traitors, and there have been many of them in history.

 

26.                   The military fact I admire the most

I don't like military facts: peace is a civilizational achievement.

 

27.                   The reform I value the most

Abolition of slavery and of the serf system. Unfortunately, even today we are slaves to the economic system and habits that have been artificially imposed on us.

 

28.                   The gift of nature I would like to have

I wish I could fly.

 

29.                   How I would like to die

I would like to die without pain, calm and without remorse.

 

30.                   My current state of mind

I am always in a joyful spirit, except when I ask the rational mind for its opinion: then I am disappointed.

 

31.                   The faults that inspire me with the most indulgence

Sometimes I write the second part of a word before the first: dysgraphia has been with me since childhood, but I take comfort in the fact that people like Albert Einstein, Louis Pasteur and Agatha Christie had the same disorder.

 

32.                   My favorite motto

Don't look back at what you stumbled over but get up and move on.

SIBILA PETLEVSKI

 BIONOTA

Sibila Petlevski, born on May 11, 1964 in Zagreb, is an award-winning novelist, poet and playwright, librettist, literary translator and editor of literary and scientific publications, researcher in the field of theater and interdisciplinary science, full professor at the University of Zagreb. She has written twenty-five books of different literary and scientific genres, edited eight scientific books, and compiled and translated an anthology of American poetry.

 photo by ©David Gazarov