The Sarajevo Information Centre on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was recently opened at the City Hall by the Mayor of Sarajevo Abdulah Skaka and Gabrielle McIntyre and the former judge at the ICTY Fausto Pocar. The establishment of the Information Centre on the International Criminal Tribunal and promotion of their legacy is a project of […]
And now let us finally go now let us clearly depart In this unwitnessed walk finally now there In the sack there is the bread and the stone there is the knife and the heart let us go let us depart from there where we do not remember whether we ever were or at any time were anything we arrived there […]
In the Catholic Church, there is a godfather at baptism, the sponsor at the confirmation ceremony, and the witness at a wedding ceremony. They are selected separately each time. They are also very respected everywhere and considered in some ways as relatives. In the Orthodox Church, there is an even greater role. The same people or people from the same family are chosen […]
In the stories of Janko M. Veselinović, that are full of good ethnographic details, there is a story titled “Kumova kletva – Godfather’s Curse” (Slike iz seoskog života – Pictures from the Village Life, II, Belgrade, 1899, SKZ 54, 2, 1 idd.) An old man Srećko Sokočić is a godfather to Stanojlo Puretić. Stanojlo is a village serf and a […]
This text intends to offer a rather brief review of the sources of modern Bosnian statehood that is celebrated, at least in one third of this country as Statehood Day – November 25. This Day refers actually to the First session of ZAVNOBiH (Session of Anti-Fascist People’s Liberation Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina) that was held in Mrkonjic Grad on […]
I The term „sevdalinka“ originates from „sevdah“, the Arabian expression for love, desire for love, and ecstasy of passion. The Turks took this word from the Arabs, the Bosnian Muslims then added an „H“ to the Arab expression „säwda“ – black bile: one of the four bodily humors believed to determine a melancholic state. The heart of sevdalinka is the […]
In addition to what I have read about mausoleums and their respective traditions in the works of F. W. Hasluck and Tih. R. Đorđević, I have also seen many mausoleums and recorded numerous traditions in person, and the tradition as concerns a modest mausoleum in Upper Srebrenik is unlike any of the ones I have heard before, hence deeming it […]
The truth is that the percentage of Serbs in the entire population of Bosnia-Herzegovina almost crumbled at the time of socialist Yugoslavia (from 44% of the population in 1948 it fell to 31% in 1991). Despite that fact, the majority of Serbian Communists were devoted to Bosnia-Herzegovina’s affirmation as an equal federal unit of Yugoslavia throughout the socialist era. What […]
I remember it as clear as day – my pre-war buddies and I running barefoot to and fro over the dusty macadam in front of the building. Together, time and again, we raised sand castles, made mud-cakes, played hide-and-seek, hopscotch, marbles, four square, jumpsies, and, together, we sang some beloved and merry nursery rhymes. I remember old man Simbad too. […]
The emancipation process in the field of story-writing literature has been much slower and more difficult, which is understandable, taking into account the fact that the basic idea of the national interpretation of Bosnian literature and its history had been the idea of the so-called “Bosnian story” that was proclaimed a model and flower for Serbian literature and that then […]
Insurrection and resistance are bonfires constantly rekindled within the heroes of Sušić’s narratives, the heroes who view their profound and ingrained sense of Bosnian ethnicity as both a blessing and a curse. Bosnia has always been a country for whose territory clashed many a foreign army, at times even the banners set at dusk would not last long enough to […]
Reading Spies, one quickly comes to the conclusion that prostitution is not the oldest trade in the world, that there are trades older and more complex, that there are games with greater and bloodier stakes, and losses more frightening and hopeless. Spies can be read as a thrilling text about the ever captivating concept of espionage, as a historical novel, […]
Derviš Sušić’s Spies was translated into English by Amira Sadiković and recently published by the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The novel, part of the canon of Bosnian literature, is a series of notes written by spies or about spies stretching across the long and complex history of Bosnia-Herzegovina. A spy tries to know the country […]
To appreciate what is at issue here consider what I take to be the increasingly common notion that the truly intriguing question to investigate is not “how was it to be made to suffer?” but instead “how was it to be the one causing the suffering?” There is presently no end to the number of books on the market that […]
Eye Between wave and wave between evils without ground without roots in this blue in this grey in this black of bitter burnings I will blossom in foam white rosy malicious eye no more will it know me From Modra Rijeka Translated by Keith Doubt
Now, at last, I thrust our stake in a bed of embers to get it red-hot and rallied all my comrades: ‘Courage—no panic, no one hang back now!’ And green as it was, just as the olive stake was about to catch fire—the glow terrific, yes— I dragged it from the flames, my men clustering round as some god breathed […]
I am a simple foreman. I had worked with metal my entire life in all kinds of factories throughout the country. I would be honored if you could publish this work of mine, now forged out of words instead of metal, in your magazine The Spirit of Bosnia. I was born in Bosnia, on the 3rd of November, 1951. As […]
The people of Bosnia and Herzegovina today through their sole political representative body, the State Anti-fascist Council for the National Liberation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, desire for their country, which is neither Serbian, nor Croatian, nor Muslim, but Serbian, and Muslim, and Croatian, to be a free and fraternal Bosnia and Herzegovina, one in which full equality of all Serbs, […]
Omer Hadžiselimović lost his battle with a difficult disease. He was born in Sarajevo on January 1, 1946. He completed his PhD at the University of Sarajevo in 1978. He had numerous research visits to many universities and institutes across the world including Oxford University in England, Zagreb University in Croatia, Belgrade University in Serbia, JFK Institute in Berlin, Germany, […]
For Mak Dizdar Just as Tibetan nomads choose their headman by a throw of dice in which the one who loses the gamble wins, it’s fallen to me to continue to wait for the Bogumils after you. So that there is always someone who will go out to meet them in the language they understand. Every day I open the […]
