I am beauty’s faithful slave. When my mother gave me life From the clouds the fairy of song flew down to my cradle And with a kiss that burned hot like a tropical sun Touched my lips and little child’s forehead. My forehead burns forever with thoughts of eternal love And lips speak them in a song. I […]
To attain that beauty – you must be patient, like a stalactite. To drip and wait. And fulfill no one’s expectations. Sparingly drip to completion the words that have poured over from a world that no longer exists into a body that is no longer the one consigned to you once. If they discover you, or if you open […]
This year marks the 110th anniversary of the death of Musa Ćazim Ćatić, one of the founders of modern Bosnian-Hercegovinian poetry. He was born on 12 March 1878 in Odžak, five months before the Ottoman Empire’s occupation yielded to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his short life ended in 1915, three years before the fall of the latter monarchy. Ćatić spent […]
for Ida Here in this city where I was born thousands of kilometers away from Teheran just as much from Paris too I’ll always be able to have night in the daytime I’ll always be able to have December after January I’ll always have to think about the Papal heresy sleuth Casamaris and about Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror I will […]
Our warrior returned from the war in Greece bringing back a Greek baking pan and wounds on his body. The women told him the pan from Greece was no good because it was too shallow. We told him his wounds from Greece were no good either because they were too shallow. We said to him: We […]
They reap barley, and sing, sing. Their vests burst at the chest. Their shirts tear open. Buttons snap. They don’t care about the vests. They don’t care about the shirts. They sing, sing, our girls from Šipovice. Reaping barley. So it is by day… But at night, they step into the moonlight, fall onto the green, dewy grass, clawing […]
That man with the badge on his cap – so all would know who he is, sat calmly on a chair. And just as calmly, he stabbed a knife into the table – so all would know who he is. And for now, nothing: his knife stays there, he sits calmly there – and for now, nothing: except that […]
Ćamil Sijarić (1913–1989), a Montenegrin-born writer who spent most of his life in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, is best known for his novels and short stories. Sijarić’s poetry, however, remains an overlooked gem of his literary legacy. Although his poetic output is modest (Lirika, 1988, and the posthumously published Koliba na nebu, 1990), his poems resonate with remarkable depth and […]
Spirit of Bosnia would like to recommend to its readers the following travel blog where in a lively and engaging way John W. Bills records and recommends his visits to sixteen municipalities throughout the whole of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Quite unexpectedly, but silently and steadily, the town started to sink. Clearly, it did not sink equally everywhere, nor in all its parts. This was an endless subterranean and insidious destruction. It usually started with doors or windows not being able to close, some cracks would appear, and plaster and mortar would start falling off. ‘In the evening we closed […]
The outskirts of our town were not always easily accessible, especially if we did not have any friends or cousins there. They seemed infinitely far away and unfamiliar. Once you cross the Jala wooden bridge, below the Kulovićes’ house or above the Fire Station, following the street along the Jala, to the left you move up the hill where Goli […]
Once, before the war, we heard a great deal about how beautiful and wealthy our country was. We listened to stories about how nice it was to spend springtime at the sea, summer at Lake Bled, and winter on the ski slopes of the Slovene and Bosnian mountains. Working people listened coolly to stories of this natural beauty that was […]
“Poetry is always relevant, but people don’t realise it. I see poetry in everything I look at. Poetry is manifested in all people. People recognise themselves only when they see their reflection in different eyes. See yourselves in the eyes of a homeless person and you will be writing a poem about humankind,” said Amela Mustafić in an interview. […]
Born as wheat was sown, registered as it was reaped and Mehmed loaded his horses to sell a few sacks in town. They told her she needed just a few letters to sign her name and that schooling was: make bread, knit socks, marry off a chaste daughter and bring up good sons. She married Isak and lost her […]
They had a happy life and a daughter with his eyes and nose. They loved the scent of earth after the rain, the sound of the woods, in the autumn, when the wind takes the leaves on a deadly swirl, leaving blood-red traces on the ground so that the pain renders a new flower in the spring. They had […]
When word reached Serbia that a UN General Assembly Resolution would designate July 11 as the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Srebrenica Genocide, Nemanja Stevanović, Permanent Representative to the UN from the Republic of Serbia, wrote a letter to the UN Secretary General to warn against the “dangerous consequences” of such a Resolution. Serbia’s representative […]
In front of the decorated tree at Clinton Square a group of protestors. Not holding champagne but a banner: Ceasefire. A worthy motif for a greeting card. Beyond the tree on the back page of our imagined card, People skate and make merry, though Christmas in Bethlehem is called off. The lights of our colorful ornaments cannot […]
There are few contemporary novels that appear to embody in such a convincing way the distinctively syncretic cultural and historical peculiarities of Bosnian identity – or, to quote Muhamed Filipović’s 1967 seminal essay, the “spirit of Bosnia” – such as Spies (Uhode, 1972) by author Derviš Sušić (1925-1990); significantly, the writer’s son Muhamed Sušić aptly described it in a […]
Introduction Drawing upon my dissertation research on the subversive tactics of Yugoslav literature in the period of late socialism, I will analyze the poetics of Meša Selimović’s renowned novel “The Fortress,” published in 1970. Before delving into this research, my studies focused on Russian and English literature, and I did not have an insightful knowledge of the topic. My […]
“Dobra Knjiga” Publishers are pleased to announce the forthcoming publication of Rusmir Mahmutćehajić’s new book, Genocidal Anti-Bosnianism, the culmination of many years of research by the author into the ideology of genocidal anti-Bosnianism, an inadequately recognised aspect of the ongoing crime of genocide. For a crime of genocide to take place, four things are needed: a genocidal ideology, a […]