What gleams white in the green forest? Is it snow, or is it a swans? If it were snow it would have melted by now; And swans would have already taken to flight. No, it is neither snow nor is it swans, But the tent of Aga Hasan Aga. He is suffering from terrible wounds. His mother visits him, and […]
Here lieth Gorčin the soldier In his own land On an alien Patrimony I lived But I summoned death Night and day I never hurt a fly I went off To be a soldier I’ve been In five and five campaigns Without shield or armor So that at last These throes Might cease I perished of a strange pain Not […]
Sometimes … I catch my inquiring look in the mirror: I see, not just another, but a completely unknown and utterly unsympathetic man who stares at me. In those lineaments I try to find something that is mine, I try to recognize some personal seal, something that can tell me that this is me and not somebody else … but […]
At a roundtable on the topic of “Yugoslavia in World War II in 1941,” held in Belgrade on July 2nd and 3rd this year [1991], I asked for the floor after your presentation. I searched for an answer to one of your arguments. The dialogue had just started, and you and I agreed publicly to continue the dialogue via letters […]
FIRST Enclosed within a body encased in skin You dream of heaven’s fecund return Housed in a brain imprisoned in a heart The sun you revere from this dark cave Imprisoned in flesh locked up by these bones How can this space To heaven be bridged? SECOND Confined in a ribcage captured by silver In your grandeur no finer than […]
The introductory cycle in The Stone Sleeper consists of five poems under the common title of “A Word About Man,” but since each of these poems treats the same motifs in the same way, we can also read them as a single poem in five sections. The key to these lines [in “First”] is to be found in the play […]
None can say where it is found We know little but ’tis known Beyond mountain, beyond valley Beyond seven, beyond eight And still sadder and still madder Over weary, over bitter Over hawthorn, over thornbush Over drought and over hindrance Over dread and over doubt Beyond nine and beyond ten There below beneath the earth Over yonder beneath the sky […]
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 […]
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 […]