Muharem Bazdulj, born in 1977, is one of the leading writers of the younger generation to appear in the countries of the former Yugoslavia. He writes in a wide variety of genres, including novels, short stories, poetry, and essays; he is also active as a journalist and a translator. One of his short story collections has appeared in English (The […]
The times are terrible, dark, and heavy, Like a damned soul in disgrace; On Golgotha is hanging the victim From Nazareth, that wretched place! In His nest is expiring now That wounded white dove. Eli! Eli! Lama sabachthani? – His last breath is heard from above. O, Lord, to You I am bringing now, In front of Your tree of […]
Outside of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the poet Mak Dizdar is relatively unknown. Modern anthologies from Croatia and Serbia seldom include the poet. While Dizdar is included in the anthology, Contemporary Yugoslav Poetry, he is refered to as “a Croatian poet.” Dizdar was born in 1917 in Stolac, Bosnia-Herzegovina and died in 1971. His pen-name, Mak, meaning “poppy,” is a pseudonym, which he […]
For a long time it was thought That it is was circular, As it was thought That the Earth was flat It is not a straight line, It comes out of the forefinger. It is everywhere And everything has it. If the cosmos were To have a meridian There, it would be similar. You do not take it In order […]
––Why are you not like parrots or horses at least, so that you mechanically memorize the road, or some isolated word by those chosen by God— more intelligent than us?— said the professor in passing. Translated by Omer Hadžiselimović and Keith Doubt – © 2009 Omer Hadžiselimović
Hasan remembered how in Constantinople he had spoken about the dignity of his countrymen, and laughed. Fortunately for himself, he did not hold anything against anyone or complain. He took everything that happened to him like a cruel joke. Others are even worse, he would say, and it seemed to me that he was defending his earlier enthusiasm more than […]
She sings still boisterously for a long time And we do not really know who she is or what she is And when we eat these well-baked tasty cakes That she herself prepares and serves We will be transformed into lions, wolves, boars Wild animals without their wildness We will retain all that otherwise adorns us Human propriety instantaneous Courage […]
(This text is a slightly modified version of an article written toward the end of the war in Bosnia and first published in the Boston daily The Christian Science Monitor, July 19, 1995) Radovan Karadžić is a Montenegrin who claims he is a Serb, a psychiatrist who tries to be a poet, and a war criminal who insists that he […]
Something has changed between me and people since I became a parent to one of them. – Paul Claudel I’m running home with my little daughter – again, shells have surprised us on the street. Shells have, for centuries, been falling every day, and every time they surprise us. I’m hurrying her on with angry words: transferring my rage from […]
Like everything else our language is particular to us Outsiders cannot learn it it’s gibberish to them Yesterday I heard a woman say “This war has destroyed my life” Why do we always say “this war”? To acknowledge the wars that came before? To remember future wars? To say this war is to acknowledge that one the last one and […]
Darling, your face is turning white becoming featureless an untracked field of snow Your eyes which once burned like blue sky are flattening out memory fails us both I curse my failing memory try to catch it it disappears around a bend another another The exact timbre of your voice the gesture that moved me so the way your laughter […]
In Sarajevo I was happy there cafés theater nightlife twenty minutes to the mountains three hours to the sea a good job a cosmopolitan life but when the war started I felt unsafe so I came to Belgrade to live among my own I thought a better life no shelling here there is water electricity that works neighbors are not […]
This summer I took a class on the city of Sarajevo in light of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Built into this course was the opportunity to go to Sarajevo for a week. I knew immediately that I had to take this class. I am ashamed to admit that I knew very little about the war. I was six […]
The kingdom of Bosnia, called Moesia, is large…. Its climate is very temperate and very healthy. The ground is rich with many mines of iron, lead, tin, copper, silver, and gold. Men are tall, handsome, clever, robust, and courageous. The soil is rich in all things for nourishment and human sustenance. It is irrigated by many navigable streams and adorned […]
Hassan adapted badly. He was oversensitive about everything concerning himself and his homeland and convinced of human values that he thought would be recognized everywhere. Finding himself in the rich imperial city, with its intricate connections and relationships between people—necessarily merciless, like among sharks in the deep sea, falsely polite, hypocritically polished, interwoven like the threads of a spider’s web—the […]
The Bosnian paradigm is positioned in this essay in a manner diametrically opposite to current prevailing perceptions of Bosnia and Herzegovina. We seek to provide a proper response to the current situation and the central issue: Are we to focus on our differences, or on what we have in common in Bosnia? It is my intention to demonstrate that this […]
Mehmed Alija Dizdar, the most famous Bosnian poet of this age, was born in 1917 in Stolac, a town in the heart of Hum, the southern province of Bosnia. Few of Dizdar’s readers know him by the name bestowed on him by his father Muharem and his mother Nezira, née Babović. Rather, they known him by his pseudonym of Mak […]
at the checkpoint made of tree trunks and barrels filled with sand, a group of pale bus riders standing in a meandering line depends on one man whose belly will soon have his blouse buttons burst. am I a Jew: a Muslim: a Catholic: which one does he want to hate more: will my name on the soiled piece of […]
1.0 I have always thought that rivers are cursed for they have no place to go but into the sea No home once you start to run and Stumble blindly over the stones Wind around things you cannot go through The swelling force is not life giving but Your desperate desire that speeding up the way down will make you […]
you will not remember much about me a thought here and there struggling to become an image occasional snapshots will make even more confusing whenever you set your electric train in motion, it was the train of my exile I had to forget all over again my numb fingers holding onto the air you threw your stuffed sad-eyed dog off […]