If I were to be born again and could choose, I would choose neither this language, nor this vocation Neither this sign of faith, nor this faith without hope. I would not accept murderers teaching me justice. I would not pick this time nor this country where there is no solace. Nor these brothers who have sold me. Nor this […]
Question: How many countries are in Europe? Answer: Three Question: Which three? Answer: The European Union, EU candidate countries, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Milošević is convicted by the court, but the judge does not know what would be his worst punishment. He decides to sentence Milošević to live on a Bosnian pension. Journalists ask Mujo what he thinks about the […]
Make me die This moment, God. Only leave My eyes Behind. So they can watch –on Piazza Duomo– the women going by. Translated by Omer Hadžiselimović and Ann C. Bigelow – © 2007 Omer Hadžiselimović and Ann C. Bigelow
(We interviewed Susan Sontag in Sarajevo on April 10, 1993, during her first visit to the Bosnian capital under siege. We sat on plastic chairs in front of the main entrance of a building whose overarching mass gave us some sense of security from the Serb gunners on the mountain beyond. But it was an unusually quiet spell in the […]
BOSNIA AND HERCEGOVINA IN THE LIGHT OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION Debates held at gatherings to discuss the political situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina all too often involve abstract theoretical reflection, without taking into consideration the reasons the country is stuck in an impasse from which it can neither move ahead nor go back. Real understanding and an objective and informed view […]
Pictures Of Stecaks With Quotations From Literary and Other Works
When spring arrives Moja krv se ugrije My blood warms up Neke misli idu Some thoughts go A neke ostaju And some stay Moje riječi My words Nisu dobre Are not good Ni na jednom jeziku In either language I moj identitet And my identity Čeka da poleti Waits to fly away Jer ustvari to nepostoji Because, actually, it doesn’t […]
as we walk through a forest tunnel above us hangs the unmoving December sky the stars squint through the braided treetops at seven o’clock in the evening cold needles on the ends of a hornbeam’s branches they fall off and break on the aqueous foliage the southern wind blows I remember The Damned Yard the dementia of ghosts in the […]
in Sarajevo April is truly the cruelest month where fantasy and horror mix in the test tubes of the bodies ghosts hang in the air, ghosts of literary schizophrenia you only have to pick them, those sad bunches of universes for which you will pay with your own blood at Bistrik and Kovači the houses are fenced by high walls […]
I live on the other side of all things I am not of isms, nor did I come out of anybody’s uniform I hate most the literary evenings and festivals There I feel all the sorrow as it builds up within people useless sediment, except in art I live on the other side of all things beside Saturn’s ring on […]
that is my river in her I have recognized myself there where the reeds are the braids of travertine nymphs who in August, when the water level lowers, show their thighs on which walk incandescent swimmers while the summer sun sprays the air that is my river swift as a thought of one’s beloved capable like opal of changing shades […]
During the past five years, the International Forum Bosna has held, alone or in cooperation with others, a number of international gatherings to discuss key issues for the modern world and the ways in which they are present and reflected in Bosnia. In each case, the discussion involved the premise that it is impossible to understand the world if any […]
In their conciseness and formal characteristics, marginal records are comparable to inscriptions, which appear on stecaks but also church buildings, judicial chairs, mausoleums, and chastisement inscriptions. Just as authors of marginal records, whether with their own or others’ works, had to follow, to some extent, certain rules regarding composition, proportion, and content, authors of epigraphs had to consider a set […]
The British writer Lawrence Durrell (1912-1990) was a press attaché at the British Legation in Belgrade from 1949 to 1952. To Anne Ridler British Legation, Belgrade [1949] Dear Anne, A brief note from a troubled spot to wonder how you are and what you are writing—despite the patient motherhood 5 year plan. We have been traveling rather hard all this […]
Bosnia. November. And the mountain roads Earthbound but matching perfectly these long And passionate self-communings counter-march, Balanced on scarps of trap, ramble or blunder Over traverses of cloud: and here they move, Mule-teams like insects harnessed by a bell Upon the leaf-edge of a winter sky, And down at last into this lap of stone Between four cataracts of rock: […]
Already I had planned to tramp out into unknown eastern Bosnia in the short New Year holiday. I copied from my school-map the features of the mountains, sparse townlets and villages, a devious thread of road, between Sarajevo and Višegrad on the upper Drina. All else was temporarily displaced by excitement at starting at last an inland exploration. On the […]