FIRST Wrought within the body sewn into the hide You’re dreaming of the sky once more spreading wide Within the brain enclosed in the heart detained Ever dreaming sunlight but by darkness stained Prisoner of flesh imprinted into bone Can you bridge the distance To the heavens’ throne? SECOND Caged by the ribs in silver’s grip you rest No better […]
Bosnia and Herzegovina is a meeting place of cultures, civilisations, and peoples whose existence is derived from their religions and largely shaped by them. For this reason, Bosnia and Herzegovina is a meeting place of religions. Relations between religions are reflected in all aspects of social life in Bosnia and Herzegovina. If Hans Kung’s maxim that there is no peace […]
Foreword Bosnia is the name for a thousand year-long tradition of striving for a plural social order within a shared political framework. Its grounds have always been sought in the sacred traditions Bosnia’s peoples have adhered to over the past several hundred years. Bosnia’s name is also linked to the negation of this, through violence and hatred of the other, […]
Belgrade, July 11, 2012. This year marks the 17th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide. As years go by, new evidence of this horrible crime accumulate. Many sentences either for or closely related to the Srebrenica have been passed in ICTY. On the grounds of these sentences the International Court of Justice decided that genocide had been committed in Srebrenica. An […]
A decree arrived from Istanbul, An order from Travnik, Right to the city of Sarajevo, Delivered into the hands of Dizdar-aga: To capture the two Morić brothers, The two Morić brothers, the two young men, Ibro Morić and Pašo Morić; To capture them, to bind them, To bind them, and to condemn them to death. And furthermore the sultan was […]
Petar Petrović Njegoš once told a group of English officers about a visit paid him by two English travelers in 1843. One of these was a woman. They had come to Cetinje after a hard climb through enemy ranks to see the Montenegrin ruler and poet. Asked by Njegoš what made her undertake such an arduous and perilous journey, the […]
Consider Karl of Ernstthal A. k.a. Kara Ben Nemsi Who’d never been To Ottoman Turkey And only posthumously Bore the Wild West Clear to South Dakota Where a Shatterhand Would as soon kick aside As make a sidekick Of a Lakota (Sioux) Or of a Winnetou And the day is not saved To be savoured By a Hitler Who eats […]
It is not easy to speak about Srebrenica and the war in Bosnia here in front of you, because it brought you all here to this friendly country where you have found a new home. You have left your homes behind you as well as your memories of a past life, of your nearest and dearest. You have brought your […]
Kym Vercoe, an actress with the version 1.0 theatre company in Sydney, visited Višegrad in the summer of 2008. Upon a recommendation provided in a tourist guidebook, she stayed at Vilina Vlas Spa, not knowing that it used to be a notorious rape camp during the Bosnian conflict of the 1990s. When she learnt this fact upon her return to […]
What did Angelina Jolie do? She spoke up about the horrific drama of women who were raped, of what is the most painful wound for a human being: that another can desecrate and destroy you. The damaged sanctity of the human being, a Bosniak woman who was raped, disturbs the horizon of modern society, no matter that the United Nations, […]
Contradictory commentaries on Angelina Jolie’s movie In the Land of Blood and Honey stimulated me to watch the movie. It was already clear that Bosnian Muslims liked the movie and that the Great-Serbian nationalists loathed it, but I was particularly intrigued by the affectations of the small-Herzegovinians, who detested the movie in imitation of the Great-Serbs. I was impressed by […]
These are the reasons why it is not possible to define Ivo Andrić’s group identity exclusively by ethno-national standards. For the same reasons, it is, strictly speaking, impossible to define the ethno-national cultures in Bosnia in exclusive terms. The manner in which the ethno-national cultures are recognized as separate and the manner in which they at the same time overlap, […]
Also known as the Bonanski Ovcar Tornjak, this ancient breed has been protecting the flocks of sheep and cattle in Bosnia and Croatia for at least 1,000 years. The word ‘tor’ means a sheep-pen. The earliest written description of this large dog is to be found in the archives of a bishop in the year 1062. It is mentioned again, […]
SANICA … Mujaga Selman, breeder of Bosnian shepherd dogs from Sanica, Bosnia Herzegovina, crowned his long-time breeder’s work with first place in the World Dog Show, held recently in the Polish city of Poznan. Selman’s Bosnian Tornjak named Bilov was declared the most beautiful dog in its competition. This passionate dog breeder said that the award is extremely significant considering […]
Let our neighbors be very angry about our pride in our old name, language, and customs and our outright refusal to embrace their name as a mark of our nationality and language. In their attacks on us our neighbors–to be quite clear, let us call them Jovo and Ivo–are in agreement. But they both are asking from us something else […]
Twilight had come a long time ago. On a stubble field below the village in the mountains, Lujo huddled under his coat. Only his freckled face, with large speckled eyes and locks of blond hair spilling from his forehead, stuck out. A few steps before him grazed Jablan. Every evening in the heat of summer Lujo grazed Jablan late into […]
Above is Polaris And below Venus Over there the Northern wind and yonder the Southern Who’ll tell me where the Path to Love is And where the Path to Death Translated by Keith Doubt © 2011 Keith Doubt
To Milorad Pejić You who are said to have tracked the reindeer’s scent, I couldn’t follow you. Not because, where you live, images are sharp as razors, nor because entering a warm place would dim my sight through fogged up glasses. Not for lack of strength: no one knows where it comes from nor what it is that makes him […]
I read papers when they’re just brought in from outside, from minus 27 degrees, fresh and cold off the presses. From all the morning papers I remember only one self-sustaining article: like the recipe for a simple cake, the list of scientific advances in 2003 was inserted between the ads and Christmas wishes. Glass has been invented that refracts at […]
a child in rubber boots wonders in the underground at the dripping grates holds up his hand to catch an emulsion of machine oil and water tells the rush hour crowd how he captured the sky there’s endless worrying about the simple fact about a stormy season the weather reports indicate showers at more than half probability and the shoulders […]