Izvještaj s događaja: "Odjek jedne generacije: Ivan Kordić, Abdulah Sidran i Marko Vešović"

On the second day of Bookstan, a special part of this year's festival In Memoriam program was presented at the Sarajevo Academy of Fine Arts, dedicated to recently deceased Bosnian poets Ivan Kordić, Abdulah Sidran and Marko Vešović. Their friends and associates Adisa Bašić, Slobodan Blagojević and Senadin Musabegović took part in the conversation.

By using the word trefoil, Bašić united the poetics of all three authors, defining it as an echo of a historical moment, a social arrangement, but also somewhat of a coincidence. As this group of authors comes from the social margins, as an important incentive for intellectual progress and work, Bašić emphasized the socialist environment in which they grew up, and therefore had the opportunity to become professors, poets, i.e. true representatives of their generation.

Individually describing the poetics of all three authors, Slobodan Blagojević began with the analysis of Sidran's poetry as one that is guided by an inner voice, a truly modern rhetoric, full of metaphysical sensibility. Musabegović followed this up with the thesis that Sidran, unlike his contemporaries, moves away from the vision of a good future, and that in his poems (especially in the collection ‘Kost i meso’) he writes about the body that suffers and in which the entire suffering of the world is written. He writes about Sarajevo and the loneliness it contains.

On a similar track, Kordić's poetry depicts life in Herzegovina, with a large dose of love and humor, even in the worst moments such as war. His native landscape, like Sidran's, is imbued with solitude and 'bright skepticism'. Musabegović pointed out that through poetry Kordić unites the four elements (earth, air, fire and water) with the help of which he defines his landscape, more precisely his Herzegovina.

Bašić, as Vešović's former student and teaching assistant, spoke of Vešović's poetics as firmly rooted in the story of a lost home, in this case Sandžak and the premature loss of his father, which became Vešović's obsessive literary theme. Writing about his birthplace, he deals with unmasking evil and fighting against it, at the same time analyzing the patriarchal environment in which he grew up and from which he managed to escape. But that escape also brought him alienation and sadness.

Finally, as one of the most important things, Bašić highlighted Vešović's call to read, not to admire authors. Our task is to discover them ourselves, without faith in the value judgment of professors or critics, but to read them for ourselves and interpret them again and again.

This festival event was unique, precisely because it was concentrated on the theoretical analysis of the poetry of these authors, without excessive influence on their intimacy and what they did outside of their art. The panelists did not debate on common topics, but expressed their views on the authors and their poetry, not paying much attention to the audience and their potential comments and questions. It seems that we had three speakers, and therefore three separate parts of the conversation, but actually they can be easily agreed as a whole when you look at their common idea, which is the depiction of a stable state that provided the opportunity for young people to ‘release’ their inner voice and create unique art, and later, through the disintegration of that same country, get additional inspiration for writing.

As several very important poets from Bosnia and Herzegovina have passed away in the past year, this panel was an important reminder of their life and work, but even more of the importance of reading and what poetry can give us. Along with emotional excitement, literature represents the historical legacy of a time, culture and customs, and through these authors Bosnia and Herzegovina certainly received a lot.

Photo (c) Raisa Šehu