Initiation and initiative : an exploration of the life and ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović

62 LIFE AND IDEAS OF MITRINOVIC

Age, including members of the “Bloomsbury Set” who used to meet at a studio in 8 Fitzroy Street. The studio was shared between Frank Slade, a painter, and Valerie Cooper, a musician who taught dance and eurhythmics.

Valerie Cooper and Mitrinovié were to become life-long friends, associates, and intimate companions. She died at the age of 81 in 1965. Some time in the 1950s, however, she jotted down some notes of her life at Fitzroy Street and of her early encounters with Mitrinovic, who she referred to as D. M.

I first met D. M. about June 1919. Janko Lavrin, who had spoken frequently to me of him as a strong and gifted man—‘but somewhat erratic —(all this by implication rather than direct statement) brought him to lunch at the Studio one Sunday.

I cannot remember what we spoke of during lunch except that once he remarked “One can always know a woman by her cooking” and I thought “I am glad the lunch is good“—which I knew it was.

After lunch I gave coffee and cigarettes to the two men, and Janko said, “Now, Valerie, play Beethoven to us.” D. M. interrupted quickly, “Coffee and a cigarette first.” and I had a grateful feeling, “Here is someone who thinks for other people.” After coffee he said, “Now play Beethoven for me.” I said “I play badly.” He asked me, nevertheless to play and I did—not well. I soon stopped and said “Is it too bad?” and he replied, “I find it nourishing.” However—I didn’t continue.

Exactly at 3 o'clock Janko went out. D. M. and I sat quietly for a moment, then he turned to me and said, in slow English, with a marked Serbian accent (I learnt to know it later)—“If, as is indeed the case, I am God and the ground of all Being, what ought to be my relationship with other humans, who are also God and the ground of all Being?” I could make no worthy response, so I just sat and looked at him, speechless. But he only waited a moment, and then plunged, with a sort of massive but fluid deliberation, into what seemed to me like a river of speech, which flowed on without ceasing and without hurrying. A man named Milnes came in for tea. D. M. included him immediately in the talk with unperturbed, kingly and modest graciousness and when he had left, continued as though there had been no interruption.

_.. 1 struggled with all my being to understand what he said, but could only dimly follow. As though he knew that I had discarded all religion long before, he spoke mostly about Christ. Once I said “But does it really matter whether he really lived on earth or not?” and he replied, “It matters more than anything else in the whole universe.”

At 9 o'clock he stopped and said “I must go.” I said to myself “I really should offer this nice man some dinner, but I can’t bear one more word” so I let him

go.