Izvještaj s događaja: Faruk Šehić, „Cimetna pjesma, dijamantna stvorenja”
WRITTEN BY: Barbara Surjan
At a literary event I witnessed a woman in front of me lacking paper and tearing off a piece of cardboard medicine packaging because she clearly felt that she had to write down at least a fraction of what was being said on stage. Moments in which you regret not being able to remember every word are rare, and the presentation of Faruk Šehić's book ‘Cimetna pisma, dijamantna stvorenja’ moderated by the writer Lana Bastašić as part of the third day of the literary festival Bookstan in Sarajevo was just like that. Bastašić, as she hinted, successfully transferred Šehić's resistance to the genre to the conversation about the book.
Bastašić introduced the listeners to the topic by looking first at the form of the novel itself, i.e. fragmentation, which, she stated, writers began to reach for after their first encounters with wars. By penetrating into the very core of the novel, the construction of a new world out of ruins, Šehić brought the process of the creation of the novel closer to the audience, more precisely, he described how walking around an abandoned city during the war prompted him to deal with this topic in his works. Bastašić made a parallel with the soldier who separates from the collective and the writer who does the same while observing the ruins, which introduced the question of the power of writing and reflects on the theme of love in the novel. Namely, Šehić's novel could, as he himself did earlier, be described as a 'novel about love in the post-apocalypse era' (which is a reference to Marquez, he adds this time). This conversation, however, reveals that it is a far more complex and diverse text in which love is the driving force and source of strength for survival.
With each new question, the conversation was filled with literary and musical references, which certainly left viewers with a substantial list for future reading and listening, but also with an idea of what awaits them when they pick up Šehić's new novel. Bastašić found similarities with Šehić's novel in Mosab Abu Toha's poem ‘A Rose Shoulders Up’, Mercè Rodoreda’s novel ‘Death in Spring’, Bulgakov's ‘The Master and Margarita’, while Šehić cites the song 'Cinnamon Girl' by Neil Young, ‘The Future of Nostalgia’ by Svetlana Boym, as important works in the writing process. Rovelli's ‘The Order of Time’, ‘Beyond Guilt and Atonement’ by Jean Améry and an interview with Olga Tokarczuk, which he said freed him in his writing. As for Tokarczuk, a Polish writer, groundbreaking events such as wars, which are also well known in this region, require a step forward into experimental forms, concluded Šehić. Although war is personified in the novel, this is not a book about war, Bastašić claimed, because there is also light, tenderness, and love in it, and instead of a big ending as an answer to big questions, Šehić offers eleven endings. The same is true in reality, the authors agreed, and Šehić explained how the novel he had been writing for a long time changed with the state of the world and with himself. 'There is always an ending after an ending,' said Bastašić, and after this ending, a full garden of audience rushed to buy Šehić's book.
Photo (c) Milomir Kovačević Strašni
