The Bosnian war had its share of unforgettable monsters—Slobodan Milosevic, Franjo Tudjman, Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic come to mind—but the most intriguing (and least notorious) was Nikola Koljevic, a Shakespearean scholar who was an architect of the attempted genocide against Bosnia’s Muslims. In a new book, Gojko Beric recalls that Koljevic said, in a moment of despair near the end of his life, that Shakespeare summed up things best in the final act of “Richard III.”
I met Koljevic many times and always wondered what he thought about the murder he bore responsibility for; an expert on Shakespeare should know something about human nature, after all. Koljevic shot himself in the head in 1997, so that was an answer of sorts, but the fullest answer, and the best insight into the mind of a war criminal who begins to realize the evil he has done, comes from the work of Shakespeare that Koljevic cited before his suicide. Here is Richard III’s monologue:
“Give me another horse: bind up my wounds.
Have mercy, Jesu!–Soft! I did but dream.
O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!
The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight.
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.
What do I fear? myself? there’s none else by:
Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.
Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am:
Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why:
Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself?
Alack. I love myself. Wherefore? for any good
That I myself have done unto myself?
O, no! alas, I rather hate myself
For hateful deeds committed by myself!
I am a villain: yet I lie. I am not.
Fool, of thyself speak well: fool, do not flatter.
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.
Perjury, perjury, in the high’st degree
Murder, stem murder, in the direst degree;
All several sins, all used in each degree,
Throng to the bar, crying all, Guilty! guilty!
I shall despair. There is no creature loves me;
And if I die, no soul shall pity me:
Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself
Find in myself no pity to myself?
Methought the souls of all that I had murder’d
Came to my tent; and every one did threat
To-morrow’s vengeance on the head of Richard.”
