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Content
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Literary Magazine
Editors Word
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Publisher
Editorial Board
[ Editor in chief ]
Mirko Kova
[ Assistant editor ]
Jadranka Pintari
Proofreading
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Mirko Kova
Tomislav Kuzmanovi
Mirko Kova
Address
Croatian Writers Society
Basariekova 24
Tel.: (+385 1) 48 76 463
Fax: (+385 1) 48 70 186
www.hdpisaca.org
hrvatsko.drustvo.pisaca@zg.t-com.hr
Mirko Kova
Hamsuns Star [From the book An Elite Worse Than The Mob ] ........................................................
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Mirko Kova
Memorial Service [Extracts from the unpublished novel Receding Time ] ..............................
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Price 15 3
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Crtaona, Zagreb
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Profil, Zagreb
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Kreo Turinovi
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Marina ur Puhlovski
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Sreko Horvat
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Sreko Horvat
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Maja Hrgovi
Whales Ass
Zoran Malko
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Content
Neven Vuli
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Dinko Telean
Desert
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Nenad Popovi
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Poems ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
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Mozart Year [189]; Back Home [188]; Final Song XIII [189]; * * * [189]; * * * [190]
Vesna Parun
Poems ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
191
You Are Hungry, Yet I Am Singing [191]; Knowledge of Dependency [192]; Call [192]; Goodness and I [193]; Proscription
of Music [193]; Mother of Man [194]; The Rock In Which a Ballad Should Be Written [194]; White Nocturne [195];
Maidenhood [195]; Were You Close [196]
Ivan Slamnig
Poems ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
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The More I Look, the More I See [198]; I Like Places Which Are Very Damp [199]; Earth I. [199]; White Sand [199];
It Always Used to Be One Way or tOther [200]
Boris Maruna
Poems ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
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Instructions for the Time Bomb [201]; When I Think About You, You Old Poets [203]; Croats Get on My Wick [204];
Message [205]; Ill Defend My Fathers House [206]; It Was Easier to Love You From a Distance [207]
Josip Sever
Poems ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
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Pornographers Panegyric [208]; People, Save the War [209]; Monday [209]; Funeral [210]; Music of Sight [210]; Battle [210];
Philosophers from China [211]
Poems ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
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How I Remember Mother [213]; In the Bay of Foam [214]; Tango [215]; Vanish, I Command Reality [215]; The Laurels
Smell [216]; Angels Must Have Been Designed on the Model of Plants [216]; Izabella [217]; Lili [218]
Gordana Beni
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Tahir Mujii
Poems ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
We Dream [227]; A Little Restaurant Out of a Little Tin Box [228]; Why Didnt I [232]; The Old Ones Have Sat [233]
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Delimir Reicki
Poems ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
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What Would You Ask the Passers-By. If You Were by Chance a Sphinx? [236]; Happy Streets [237]; Joint of Moonlight [238];
Scherzo [239]; Doctrine About You [240]; Mantra for Your Headboard [241]; Paranoia [242]
Dorta Jagi
Poems ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
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Hotel Rooms [243]; You Build Womens Rooms [244]; Scorpion Rooms [245]; Room of a Lady Traveler [245]; Rooms
from the Suburbs [246]; Childish Rooms [246]; Lukewarm Rooms [247]; Opus Emily, Poem 288 [247]; Antimartini [248]
Simo Mraovi
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Its Nice in Paradise [249]; You Have Vanished [250]; Dead Jaguars [250]; Where Are You, Bird [251]; I Am He That Keeps
You By Day [251]; Things That Are Good [252]
Ivica Prtenjaa
Poems ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
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Stroll [253]; Friday, Radio [254]; Take Everything That Calms You [255]; I Spend My Summer With a Girl [256]; Dangerous,
Beautiful Jewelry [257]
Marko Pogaar
Poems ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
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Domes [200]; My Tongue Is a Dark [200]; What Is a Brim? [200]; Technique of a Poem [200]; Its Nice [200]; Over an
Object [200]; Permanent Revolution of Love Poetrys Language. To the Tired Trockists [200]
Predrag Luci
Poems ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
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(It) Aint No Reason [264]; Man Is Not a Bird [265]; Hamletting [266]
Ana Brnardi
Poems ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Airport [267]; Paradise [268]; The House in Miamisburg [268]; The Plain [268]; Insomnia [269]; Writing on Keys [270];
My Castle in the Bark [270]; Ebony Box [271]; Old Peoples Love [271]; Room [271]
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Editors Word
Dear Reader,
Before you lies Relations in the new
robes and at least partly in the
new media.
Our disposition has, however, remained the same. This double issue opens with a segment dedicated
to the literary work of Mirko Kova, an author of a rich and inspirational opus, whose work and life
show most clearly that good literature knows no boundaries and that
a great writer can enrich more than
one national literature. Kovas novels, stories and essays not only by
these editors opinion make up one
of the most representative and most
prominent opuses of contemporary
Croatian literature; completely immersed into the present they lack no
timelessness.
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MIRKO KOVA was born on December 26, 1938 in Petrovii near Bilea.
Wanting to become a writer, he left home early, supported and educated
himself changing high schools, most often because of conicts with his
teachers, he attended the Department of Dramaturgy at Drama and Film
Academy in Belgrade, but never graduated because by then he had already
published his rst novel Gublilite, which immediately made its way to a list
of ideological head-choppers. The hunt against the young writer, accused
of a dark portrayal of the world lasted for almost a year. His escapes from
Belgrade became more and more frequent, in most cases taking him to
Zagreb where he wrote six screenplays for Jadran Film. Many lms made
after his screenplays won awards at home and abroad; Lisice was voted
one of the best Croatian lms of all times, and his Okupaca u 26 slika, Pad
Itale, and others also won many awards. Kova also wrote for theatre: his
play Osipate se polako vaa visosti was performed at Sarajevo Chamber
Theatre, but after its premiere the play was banned, while its author was
accused of making allusions to President Tito. Mostar National Theatre put
his play Iskuenje on stage, and his work was once again banned. He wrote a number of TV dramas out of which two
were ordered by Vlado Gotovac, the editor of drama section, and performed at Zagreb TV. His collection of novellas
Rane Luke Metrovia voted the best book of ction in 1971 and awarded the Milovan Glii Prize was published
in Belgrade. Two years later the book was withdrawn from libraries and banned as a dark image of reality, while
its author was called the leader of the black wave, a movement treated as a deviation in culture. At that time,
Kovas grows mroe and more attached to Zagreb where he works for lm and television and publishes novels Ruganje s duom and Vrata od utrobe, which won him many awards, among others, the NIN Prize for the best novel.
The novel came out in pocket edition and was published in thirty thousand copies. In the second half of the 1980s,
Kova becomes engaged against Miloevis regime and Serbian nationalism, with Filip David and other followers
he founds an independent association of writers called Nezavisni pisci and distances himself from Serbian Writers
Society, he takes part in founding Beogradski krug and from Belgrade collaborates with Danas, Zagreb based weekly,
one of the most popular magazines of the time. At a meeting in Belgrade eeljs supporters break his head, he
receives threats, and nally at the end of 1991 leaves Belgrade and moves to Croatia, Rovinj, where he still lives. He
works with the Split weekly Feral Tribune and continues to write against Croatian nationalism with unchanged energy.
In Rovinj he writes his best books: Kristalne reetke, Grad u zrcalu, a collection of stories Rue za Nives Koen, a new
version of his novel Ruganje s duom, and two plays, performed at Montenegrin National Theatre in Podgorica. With
Filip David he publishes a book o letters called Knjiga pisama 1992-1995.
Kova won many international and domestic awards, including the Herder Prize, the Tucholsky Award, the Vilenica
Prize in Slovenia, Bosanski steak and Mea Selimovi awards in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 13 Jul and Njego awards
in Montenegro, and Vladimir Nazor, August enoa, Kiklop, and Jutarnji list awards in Croatia. His books have been
translated into more than dozen languages. Fraktura Publishing House publishes his collected works since 2003.
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Mirko Kova
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KOVA: Knut Hamsun was a translated and well-known writer in former Yugoslavia between the two world
wars. He brought something new,
different, humorous and intelligent,
and above all, he proved that writers
coming from small countries and
writing in small languages could win
prestigious awards and achieve literary glory. He was read and loved; he
was published even in the postwar
communist Yugoslavia in spite of the
fact that he took Hitlers side and believed that Hitlers New European
Order was a good thing for Europe.
Although he was anathematized after World War Two, even sent into
an asylum, he was defended even by
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of those texts are still relevant today, for there is no practicing poli-
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cause he was not a good writer or philosopher, but because he was a mandatory read and because everything
around him was turned into an ideology. However, I must say that during one period the Marxists were the
best deal in former Yugoslavia, part
of the European spirit and European culture, as Kangrga once put it.
In my text Tko se boji Marxa jo,
I immediately distanced myself from
any kind of Marxism and any kind of
doctrine; I assumed a bit lighter tone
in writing about the subject, for it
would have been ridiculous of me if I
had gone into some discussion about
Marxism which I am almost totally
ignorant of. However, I knew some of
those philosophers, they meant a lot
Mirko Kova and his Polish translator Dorota Mentzel, Rovinj, 2003
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1.
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this book, but I introduced him into this book, just as I did with other
members of my family and many other unimportant persons whom I barely touched upon, in order to shine
more light onto my own position,
and not to show some special affection for them. I was already sick and
tired of riding the narrow tracks of
my family train, riding it for so long
and then finally realizing that I was
still at the same station I embarked
on, because theres no person among
us who has a permanent city, despite
the fact that we are constantly trying
to prove that this where we are is exactly where we belong, besides wasnt
it Pierre-Jean Jouve who sang so nicely, we are there where we are not.
Ill say it without beating around the
bush I grew tired of writing different versions of always the same
events, thats why on many occasions
I gave up on an already finished book;
I wouldve done it now too, hadnt I
realized that I am accepting all of the
contradictions with peace, without
regret and without nostalgia, and that
my story talks only about the events
that are vivid in my memory, sticking to the exact instruction of one of
the best story-tellers of our time he
is so famous that his name need not
be mentioned who said, what matters in life is not what happens to you
but what you remember and how you
remember it.
If this stone chiseling work is finished, I wish to add that while writing I allowed myself the luxury of
digressions because present forced
me to do so, more than anything
because going back to the old manuscript requires a new look at it, and
among all other things, present is so
painful that going back to past became a true pleasure.
10.
Father sneaked up to the still warm,
stone wall of the house and entered
through the servants door. He paused
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for a moment and watched the dining room whose interior was already
disappearing under the cover of the
first darkness; the only trace of all but
extinguished daylight came through
the window, while on the western
side the redness from only a moment ago now thickened into a dark,
packed layer; actually, all that was
left of the crimson shine and fire of
sunset was the horizon that now appeared as something petrified and
eternal. What was that, no sound off
bells from the church tower? They
went silent a long time ago, on the
second year into the war, when they
were removed and turned into cannonballs. An owl hooted somewhere,
and near the main door, from the
magnolia bush, a bird fluttered. A
horse neighed in the barn, my father had put it there and went looking for a handful of oats or anything
else he could feed him on. Everything smelled of home, and behind
the carob trees large top you could
see the moon, still pale; it could not
shine without its ally, complete darkness that thickened more and more,
silently conquering the landscape.
My father saw his mother leaning
over the petroleum lamp, she removed the cklo, as we called the
lamps glass shade, lifted the wick,
struck a match, lit the lamp, placed
down the glass shade and adjusted
the wick, reducing the flame so that
now it barely smoldered under the
cap. The lamp stood on a table, while
his mother sat on the floor, next to
a cradle, the same cradle in which
shed rocked my father. It was a nice
cradle, carved, bought somewhere
in Dalmatinska Zagora; all of the
children were breastfed in it, even
the ones who had died, and as they
were born one after another, one year
apart, in this big family they inherited not only the cradle but also the
rags, diapers, baby bottles, clothes,
rattlers, toys, what not. For those
living in the house this was always a
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Cover of Dani magazine featuring an interview with Mirko Kova upon the reception of
the Mea Selimovi Prize for his novel Grad u
zrcalu (The City in the Mirror), Sarajevo, September 12, 2008
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Award ceremony of the Mea Selimovi Prize for the best novel (Grad u zrcalu) published in
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia, and Montenegro in 2007. From left to right: Jasmin
Imamovi, writer and the mayor of Tuzla, Mirko Kova, and Mile Stoji, Tuzla, 2008
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the croaking of frogs. Stands of osiers leaned over the river; we rode
past weeping willows backs following the course of the river. We went
around monks peppers and tamaris
bushes and then rode through the
tall grass to the damp area where
poplars grew.
The teacher found a place near a
spring of fresh water; she had come
here before, so she suddenly stopped
and looked around to make sure this
was the place she had known from
one of her previous visits. Rich grasses and colorful flowers grew all over
the place. We put our bicycles in the
shade, placed our baskets with food
in one of the bushes and covered
them with leaves and branches. It was
obvious that we were both happy so
we took a deep breath of air around
us, glanced at each other and smiled.
Her breasts went up and danced under her dress; this was so exciting that
I stared at her bosom thus making it
unnecessary for her to wait and hope
to catch my lustful gaze; it was so obvious. Her breasts got tense under her
shirt as she went down and then up
again in a couple of nice gymnastic
moves, especially when she lifted her
leg, as if she were a ballet dancer, and
held onto her toes with her hand; she
didnt care that her dress went up all
the way and revealed her thigh.
Our people are so primitive, she
said. If they knew I was not wearing a bra today, they would hold it
against me, because they, poor things,
dont know that everything in nature
has to breathe freely.
Seeing large blue, white and yellow
flowers, Jozipa ran to them, while
I just stood there and watched her
jump around, fall and stand up, as
if catching and grabbing something
with her hands. These were some
odd jumps from this very swift, long
legged young woman. She shouted,
sometimes in panic it seemed, as if
something was running away from
her. I thought she was trying to take
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Mirko Kovas novel Grad u zrcalu (The City in the Mirror) won the annual Vladimir Nazor Award for the best work of fiction in 2007.
From left to right: Milan Mogu, president of the Croatian Academy of Science and Arts, Boo Bikupi. and Mirko Kova, Zagreb, June 19, 2008
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so now kindness seems more mystical to me. What I have definitely noticed, in all these years that Ive been
writing, is that kindness has no followers, while evil does. Perhaps thats
the answer to some of my doubts. I
should not loose my thread, so Ill
go back to the two young men who
put my mother in the compartment
and gave us the key to the toilet. At
that moment the conductor came
back with an old nun in her black
and white attire. She carried a doctors bag with her.
This is our frequent passenger, sister
Marija, a Franciscan from Cetinje,
said the conductor.
The young men kindly said goodbye and left. The nun entered the
compartment and patted my mother and then unbuttoned her blouse
and undid buckles on her vest to free
her breasts. She untied the belt on
my mothers wide skirt and pulled it
down. She lifted the blouse and revealed her smooth stomach, she began massaging and gently pressing
it, and then she went down and said
into my mothers navel, Hey, you!
Do you want to go out or are you
waiting to get to the hospital?
I laughed at the nuns magic; my
mother quietly giggled as well. Sister Marija gave me a stern look and
said, Its not funny. The child in
the womb hears and understands.
It answered to my question, but I
am deaf.
My mother broke out in sweat again,
her teeth started shivering. I told the
nun that towels and sheets were in
our bag. The nun dipped the small
towel in water from our bottle and
started wiping my mothers face.
Dont worry, dear, she said quietly almost into my mothers mouth.
Youre in good hands. Were not alone
and were not abandoned. Theres always someone with us, someone is
watching over everything we do.
She helped my mother lie down on
the bench and then took out a small
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Mirko Kova
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Mirko Kova
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the path little did it help that Father Veselko twisted his body and
watched his step, the walk made the
Ustashe restless and filled him with
fear. It seemed that those no longer
were his feet, but real hoofs covered
in sorrel and sharp hairs.
They snuck into the yard, there was
no dog on a chain, barking came
from other sides, many sides, from
everywhere, but at the house there
was none. When they came to the
door, the Ustashe retreated into the
darkness and let Father Veselko call
the owner, but quietly and carefully
not to give them up. Father Veselko
did what they said. He didnt knock
on the door as he used to, tapping
lightly and gently not to upset the
household, but he banged the door
with his fist clenched, as if with a paw.
The banging echoed in the night, the
house went alive, an oil lamp flickered, and Master Spajis sleepy voice
called out from inside. When Father
Veselko said it was him and that he
was alone, Spaji opened the door to
let him in, a man that could be trusted. The Ustashe jumped out from
the darkness, one of them grabbed
Father Veselko by the shoulder and
told him, Stay here and keep guard;
well do this in Gods peace!
Neither long nor loud was the fighting inside because Master Spaji,
fearing for his life, told them right
away where he was hiding those few
gold coins and offered them to the assailants. But that couldnt save his life;
no treasure wouldve satisfied them.
To them Master Spaji was a bloodsucker; he made good profit on their
tobacco and they saw none of it. They
liked nothing more but to slit his
throat, his and his wifes, Destinjas;
they knew her as greedy and hard on
money. Because of the two of them
they bore a grudge against all Serbs;
they swore they would hunt each and
every one of them no matter where
they were hiding as long as the last of
their damned kin were alive.
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Jaglika told her husband to hurry, and Janko, scared and troubled,
didnt ask too many questions, every
suggestion seemed better than his
present position, and every road, no
matter how long or treacherous, safer
and less dangerous than what waited
for him tomorrow. He bid his goodbye to his family and followed Father
Veselko who was anxious and hurried
as if running before his prosecutors.
Janko barely managed to keep up
with him.
We have to be careful! Do keep quiet! This way, follow me! You coming?
Hurry! said Father Veselko.
They went deeper and deeper into
the mud and reeds; the water sometimes reached their armpits. At one
moment Janko stopped like an animal when it senses the danger and
stops dead in its tracks, nervous and
stubborn. No step forward would
he make. Immobile, untrusting, he
shouted, How far do you think on
going like this? Where are we coming out?
Then Father Veselko went back wading through the water and breaking
reeds. He approached Janko Simat
and hissed angrily in his ear, Youre
making me come back to you and
waste my strength! And Im doing
all this for you!
Why are you doing this, Father Veselko? I cant tell. Weve never been
God knows what kind of friends.
I too wonder why? said Father Veselko, his voice broken, mean, vile
even to himself. I dont know why I
am doing this? And why am I saving
Serbian scum.
With ease and skill he took his kama
out and, as his arms were tough and
God gave him the strength, he soon
got the better of Janko Simat.
One heathen less, he squeezed
through his teeth, while Janko Simat
wheezed in agony trying to say something, but he soon, with the gurgle
of thick and muddy water, sank to
the bottom.
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What else are we but vultures, cawing and flying after our thoughts,
whispered Father Veselko, and then
winced from his own whisper that
seemed suspicious and mad. More
and more often he talked to himself
about things unbecoming a man, yet
he justified it all with great worries
that had fallen onto his shoulders,
with difficult times in which a person could not carry more than he had
been loaded.
While he walked down the stony
path toward the parish home, he
looked back and saw a dark, village
mutt that followed him keeping always the same distance; if Father Veselko stopped, the cur stopped too. Its
eyes were piercing and glowing. Father Veselko remembered that never
and nowhere, and he went far out of
the way and across the fields, a dog
had barked at him.
By God, Ill even think Im becoming a dogs favorite, he whispered and then laughed heartily at
the thought.
He laughed at everything he did that
evening, one second his laughter was
loud, the next quiet and secret, but always filled with pleasure. He grinned
like the devil himself and showed
his teeth at the cur, and every time
it seemed to him it answered by lifting its snout and showing its pointy
fangs. The bitch followed him to the
door and stopped there as if waiting
for its masters command. Father
Veselko told it: Lie down and wait
here! In the morning youll get a fistful of bones!
The dog obeyed and curled at the
doorway, while Father Veselko went
to his room where he kept his eyes
peeled at the cross above his bed and
prayed to the Virgin asking her to
give him true repentance, pure confession, and appropriate penance, to
help him when his tongue gets tangled and his thought come to a stop.
Amen! Sleep came to him easily and
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Mirko Kova
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They took him to a place called Topola where from 26 to 28 of June 1941
the Serbian folk were massacred. He
was allowed to say his rosary, all three
mysteries, the joyful, sorrowful and
glorious. A sacred book in his hand,
he was shot by a hundred years old
poplar tree, on Christmas Eve of
1941 at eleven oclock.
A young and sickly friar took over
the parish after Father Veselko Kulji;
he didnt stay here long; he died.
Since then the parish house remained
locked, and right after the liberation
it was decided to turn it into an elementary school. I accepted to make a
list of Father Veselko legacy, of everything that was found in the house at
that moment. I did it with care, listing one little thing after another, regardless of whether it was valuable or
not, whether I knew its name or just
guessed it. Father Veselkos chest had
a double bottom, according to his
belief that always and in everything
there lays a double. In the chests secret compartment I discovered three
notebooks, without them this story
would not have happened, and there
would be no fear I felt. There was a
cross and a kama with ten notches in
the shape of a little cross pressing the
notebooks. If there is another explanation of these events or some other
way to recount them, then to that
eternal doubt a sentence from the
friars notebook can be added: The
night of life cannot be proved.
Except that he, it seems, forgot about
that one and only and always most
trusted witness God Himself!
Translated by Tomislav Kuzmanovi
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(Ill)adapted
[From the book of essays Writing or Nostalgia]
Mirko Kova
we have come to know, as was the experience of the poet Tin Ujevi:
We went on a journey. The journey
was long.
Belatedly we saw that it led in
a circle.
Psychologists affirm that today the
individual defines himself above all
through identity. But what if I do
not know who I am or I have left that
behind me or forgotten (I have not
brought photos of the past with me,
I have nothing to show you, I dont
know who I am, sang W. C. Williams long ago), and have built some
sort of identity from what I know,
my vision of an identity which is at
times not real, but almost a fiction.
If I have developed my own myth
about my roots in order to escape
from the already stale story of roots,
I have not done so in order to run
away from the real world, but I have
simply expressed my antagonism towards those who know exactly what
and who they are, who know all there
is to know about their forebears,
who leaf through family trees and
proudly proclaim that they belong
to someone and that they are not
alone and abandoned, and that they
feel best among their own people. I
have avoided blood ties and claims
from my earliest years; I was a misfit, a savage even.
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A Stranger
Among His Own People
Immediately after my first literary
works and the misunderstandings
around them, I was most castigated
by those whom we call our own people, and every barely literate nonentity in my milieu met we with a
weighty moral hammer and maliciously spread before me his proof
that I had offended the honour of
my narrow and wider family, for
long ago, while I was still one of the
worst possible pupils, they realised
that I was the chaff in the wheat of
the family which had to be discarded.
But if I was anything at all, at least as
a youngster in some flock, in some
nest, then I was above all a mocker;
I knew how to ridicule each of the
heads of the family, and, as I wrote
well, I was always laughing at them
in my school essays. On one occasion
the tribal council met to discuss
the fact that I should be excluded
from the community, whose member I had never even felt I was. They
wanted to mould me, they intended
this and that for me, they wanted
me to be exactly as they were, but I
had not adopted virtually anything
of theirs, not one of my traits could
be assimilated, this was recognised
by my friend, now a retired teacher,
with whom as a boy I ran away into
the woods; he contacted me recently
from Montenegro and reminded me
that we had spent 40 days, fleeing
from our families, feeding ourselves
like Indians in the wild on everything
that was edible, and some things
that were not. The great nineteenthcentury American poet and essayist
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that
society was a conspiracy against the
human nature of each of its members,
because it demanded conformity as a
virtue, and shunned self-reliance and
individuality.
It seems to me now that even as an
elementary school pupil I demon-
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for ones own place that is understandable only if the native land has
not been polluted by all kinds of evil
deeds, persecution of others, hatred,
if the native land has not placed itself on the side of everything that is
bad and immoral.
Whitman wrote in a poem that the
homeland is the place where the heart
draws us and where a man is his own
master! Whenever I travel somewhere, I can hardly wait to return
to Istria my heart draws me there,
that is where I am my own master.
Surprisingly, despite all the setbacks
and misery of my life, I had many
good moments in Belgrade, friendships, women whom I loved, unhappy loves and sufferings, nevertheless
I never adapted, I ran away, I abandoned that city and return there only
by force of circumstance, reluctantly,
always tense and anxious. I spent a
certain amount of time in other cities (Sarajevo, Split, and mostly Zagreb). Of course, that does not mean
that I have any aversion to Belgrade,
or generally to the Serbs, far from it
(although I have been accused of all
sorts), but the fact that in my novel Kristalne reetke (Crystal Bars), I
strove for descriptions of Belgrade
expressing its dark side, is the most
eloquent testimony that the city left
its imprint on my psyche.
A man whom I particularly admire
and with whom I have always had
cordial relations, over many years,
the fine artist, writer and film director Duan Makavejev, a cosmopolitan a million miles removed from
all nationalism, above all a brilliant
mind and intellectual, with whom I
have met several times in recent years
on neutral territory, once told me:
For an artist, for a writer, Belgrade
is now the most interesting city in
the world, bloody, dark, sick, contradictory, full of contrasts; that is
to say, it possesses everything that art
draws on, above all charming, witty,
an inexhaustible source in a word,
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ally summoned by an official who informed me: The fax has arrived, an
extension to your passport has been
refused, unfortunately, without any
explanation.)
And whenever I stayed abroad for a
longish time, I was unable to write
a single line, I just roamed about
or took the underground to a kiosk
where I was able to buy our newspapers. My friends and acquaintances
who happened to find themselves in
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Hamsuns Star
[From the book An Elite Worse Than The Mob]
Mirko Kova
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The well-known writer Curzio Malaparte was viewed for a time as the
best theoretician of fascism in Italy. In France, the renowned writer
Louis-Ferdinand Cline was almost
a vulgar prophet of antisemitism,
who once wrote that Hitler, Franco
and Mussolini were pacifists and that
they were fantastically dbonnaire,
noble, enchanting, exalted and worthy of two hundred and fifty Nobel
Prizes. Even E. Jnger was appalled
at Clines antisemitism, and during
a visit to Paris he remembers a meeting with him, his alarmed expression and reproachful words that he
was astonished that we soldiers were
not shooting, hanging and eradicating the Jews.
Knut Hamsun has no such blot in
his biography, nor a single sentence
in his opus, even from the mouth of
one of his characters, that could be interpreted as antisemitic. He himself
was a kind of wandering Jew, and
it is likely that many Jewish writers
and intellectuals thought of him as
Ahasver, they admired him as a writer and were friends with him, while
the author of the cult book A Cultural History of The Modern Age, Egon
Friedell called Knut Hamsun the
Homer of our time. Hamsun was
seventy years-old when, according to
the excellent connoisseur of his work
and translator into Croatian Mirko
Rumac, replying to a questionnaire
in the Norwegian antisemitic paper Nasjonal Tidskrift, among other
things he said the following: The
Jews are a very able people. I am
not speaking here of my brave and
pleasant Jewish friends. Everywhere
and in general, the Jewish nation has
distinguished itself by its important
intellectualism and it is of very high
standing. Where else could we find
anything that could be compared
with the spirit of their prophets, their
poetry and songs? Remember how
exceptionally musical that people is;
it is without doubt the most musi-
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istence, which every true writer examines and treats to the end, as W.
Gombrowicz once said. So, after he
was fifty, Knut Hamsun created the
novels The Little Town of Segelfoss,
The Women At The Pump, The Last
Chapter, My Life Lives, Vagabonds,
The Ring is Closed and others, and
his masterpiece Growth of the Soil
(1917), for which he was awarded
the Nobel Prize in 1920.
After the great success of Growth of
the Soil, Knut Hamsun bought the
estate of Nrholm in Srlandet, some
ten kilometres from Grimstad, in the
very south of Norway. Here he settled
down, and according to the testimony of his wife and children became
increasingly eccentric and solitary, a
kind of modern hermit, inclined
to long spells of self-banishment, antagonistic towards honours and titles,
and spending the last years of his life
completely deaf. In this well cared-for
estate he erected a flagpole on which
each year, on the day of Norwegian
independence, the 17th of May, he
flew a flag. This flag would cover his
coffin at his funeral. He was buried,
in the circle of his family, quietly and
without funeral ceremonies, on 19th
March 1952.
And why should we not die? Knut
Hamsun wrote in his book On Overgrown Paths. Tacitus believes that we
Germanic peoples are very capable
of dying. And in this regard the Vikings did not disgrace us in the least.
Our somewhat more recent discoveries have given us an explanation for
the reason for death in general: we
do not die in order to be dead, for
something to be dead, we die in order that we can cross over into life,
we die in order to live, to be on some
level. The same Tacitus praises us for
not making a big thing of graves. We
just throw a little soil on ourselves.
Because of the smell.
And in one place, in the same book
he says: Alive or dead, its of no consequence.
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Mirko Kova
metaphor about unattainable perfection, about elusive beauty and gradually evolves into a novel in small format, which is according to Kundera,
the characteristic of every good story,
because he says that there is no ontological difference between a short
story and a novel. And, truly, The
Queen of Sheba in that small format is a powerful realisation of the
great novelistic theme of searching
for lost love.
In one chapter of his last book On
Overgrown Paths, Knut Hamsun brings
to life his memories of America, his
wandering in search of work, personalities and destinies, and he called
those recollections of a time of exile
and a distant strange landscape a
sudden scintillating wit, that appears, as he himself says, only in mo-
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8. Conclusion
Reading Knut Hamsun and working on a selection of his stories, I was
overwhelmed by joy, and literature
is a form of joy, said Borges. I experienced this joy as a kind of writers
coming together, because literature is
unimaginable without this aesthetic
phenomenon of connection. And I
tried to understand Knut Hamsuns
wrong turning, in the mist of history, by thinking that the creator of
many bizarre and eccentric characters, himself became at one moment
a novelistic character, a very complex
character, himself bizarre, because it
is astonishing that the same person
contained a great writer, a moral being, a creator of worlds and a little
destructive pen-pusher who adored
and praised a nonentity and a monster. He abandoned his biography
and unconsciously offered it as the
material for a novel. But that is no
kind of justification and it is impossible to understand the great writers
action. To do so much against oneself is not permissible even for a cruel sadomasochist. To distance ones
work from the world for which it is
intended is serious self-destruction,
if not a denial of ones own work. To
drive public opinion to spend years
far more concerned with Hamsuns
worthless little pamphlets in honour
of a nonentity, than with his magnificent work, is a shared horror, ours
and his. Knut Hamsun was great only in his novels and stories, a spirit
above the world, while all the rest is
just ours, human, uncertain, contradictory, subject to impressions.
Kundera was right to say that only a
novel is in a position to express fully
that secret one of the greatest that
man knows. Montaigne asked of a
book that it help him get to know
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Memorial Service
[Extracts from the unpublished novel Receding Time]
Mirko Kova
Mirko Kova
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a Russian grave, although I knew little about these customs, but I would
arm myself with knowledge before
I wrote my pilot-text after which I
would be taken on as a permanent
writer for the Mladost journal. I said
that I was going to mock the autumn and winter memorial services,
but ejka good-naturedly warned me
that in the mythology of all the Slavs
mockery was devils work; whoever
mocked another was possessed by
the devil, even when he was mocking someones faults and malice. The
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and agile leaps round small rain puddles and at least three or four graves.
And that is when it happened that I
came across the grave of the architect
Valery Stoshevsky, it had been within
easy reach of where we were, we had
passed it several times, you could see
the prints of our feet on the sodden
path. How had we missed it? What
kind of subterfuge was at work? I
caught up with the two of them on
the broad gravel path between an avenue of trees, but I did not tell ejka
that I had found Valerys grave; I dont
Mirko Kova
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journey, his mother had taken every superfluous item out of her sons
rucksack: You only take a few things
on a journey like this, she said, it
is enough to have boots on your
feet and a head on your shoulders.
She was stronger than her husband
who paced up and down, beating his
hands on his forehead: Stop snivelling, she exclaimed, playing the part
of the cheerful mother getting her son
ready for a lads outing.
Light luggage is the travellers friend,
she said. Just the clothes you have
on your back. No food.
She put into a little pocket with a fastening a few gold coins, a ring with
a precious stone and a gold bracelet,
a gift from her husband on their engagement. His father Vasily added
his expensive razor with its motherof-pearl case, with gold and platinum
appliqu, and its ends worked with a
filigree of golden lace. This razor had
several meanings: it was a precious
memento, of great value at a jewellers, it could be used as a weapon, and
also as a means of suicide you slit
your veins or your throat and there
was an end to your troubles.
There was some friction and hesitation over the division of the family photographs, but this did not
disrupt the emotion of the parting.
There was no quarrelling or snatching over this family heritage, they
were not valuable papers over which
the inheritors would squabble, but
the son was sorry that he had to take
at least some of the photographs out
of the albums and deprive his parents
of that solace in the life they would
continue to live without him, their
only child, because they would have
nothing left but leafing through the
albums. Equally, his parents could
not imagine that their son and exile
should go off into the world without
reminders and without being able to
refer to his roots and origin.
All things are best illuminated by
memory, said his mother, and then
they began the division of the mementos, for Trofim one of the saddest
moments in his life. He often told his
son Leonid that his hands had shaken
when he had received and accepted a
photograph; each one contained far
more than its surface meaning. He
did not take a single one of those that
hung in ornate frames on the walls,
nor those smaller ones, pushed into
the frame against the glass; let what
was constantly before their eyes remain as it had been. When photographs were taken down from the
walls, when a frame was left empty,
for a long time not even the cobwebs
were dusted away, because they symbolized a gaping emptiness.
When the division was complete,
one photograph was passed several
times from hand to hand, his father
grabbed it and gazed at it for a long
time, then his mother stood beside
her husband, so that they could both
look at that idyllic image, and when
Trofim took it and held it uncertainly in his hand, his mother crept
up and stole it back, and, as she
parted from that picture forever, she
pressed it against her breast, saying
that this was exactly what a happy
family looked like, that this photograph had captured a saintly glow, as
on an icon, that their light white hats
were like halos, the seagulls in the
background alighting on the yachts
in the marina like angels; there were
more poetic words, ejka would always hear them again, whenever he
would leaf, with his father, through
the small album, that family rarity
that attracted him, drawing him to
the distant land of his forefathers. It
was the only picture of a holiday in
Gaspra, in the south of Crimea, after Trofim had finished school, while
the earlier ones, from his childhood,
when they always spent their holidays in the south of the peninsula,
everywhere between Yalta and Sebastopol, even in villages in the hinterland of the coastal towns, had long
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since been snatched by their numerous relatives; his father Vasily had
four brothers and seven sisters, and
his mother three brothers and two
sisters. This picture had been taken
on the jetty in Gaspra, on one side of
the jetty were little sailing and rowing
boats, and on the other the open sea
shrouded in mist. His parents wore
light clothes, his mother was wearing
a white blouse, with over it, more as
decoration, a short waistcoat, with
fine patterns embroidered by the
skilful hard-working hands of Tartar women, a skirt with a floral pattern, long, reaching to her angles,
and shoes with a buckle; his father
wore a white shirt and wide trousers
too tightly belted; Trofim wore short
trousers, while his shirt was collarless,
with folk details, evidently bought in
some Tartar shop, and he had sandals
on his feet. The father and son had
similar hats, his mothers was larger,
with a drooping brim. This was the
historic photograph that ejka, as a
child, used to spend hours gazing at,
it was something like an object of
meditation, and whenever he talked
with his father, particularly at table,
this picture would lie between them,
because without it he did not know
how to ask questions. And when Belgrade was bombed on 6 April 1941,
ejkas parents house in Majka Jevrosima Street was demolished, a fire
destroyed many things, but by some
miracle, all the photographs were
found whole and undamaged, they
were in a tin that had held tea, on
the burned skeleton of the kitchen
dresser.
ejkas mother Katarina, who died in
1957, an enchanting person, an admirable woman, as Danilo Ki used
to say, sometimes praised little Leonid, who was named after her father
Leonid Zisiyadis, as different from
the other children, obsessed with often terrible questions; we older people recoil from discussions of death,
or we make jokes to hide the truth,
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Mirko Kova
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Jadranka Pintari
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Time of Lies
Sibila Petlevski
Pandoras Box
enough, managed to lose its purpose. The eyes of doctor Viktor Tausk
started to tear up: in spite of it all, he
admired people like Peter Meier.
A faint sound of artillery fire was
coming from the outside. Still conscious, Peter asked the doctor, should
he be the luckier of the two, to go
to Plah, a nice little place by Lake
Fuschl in the Province of Styria and
deliver to his fiance an object of great
value to her. Captain Peter Meier was
practically cut in two with a knifesized shrapnel between the second
and third vertebra. In fact, the piece
of metal stuck in his spine was longer, heavier and more massive than a
regular blade of a bread-knife.
During examination of the torso, pronounced twitches in the knees. When
pinched on the inside of his thigh, the
patients leg stretched fully, accompanied by reflux urinary and bowel discharge. We regret the end of doctor
Tausks medical report said that the
circumstances did not allow investigating plantar reflux and clonus.
Among Peters possessions, the doctor had no trouble finding what he
was supposed to take to Kristina Eg-
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***
***
***
You made that up. Admit it, Tvrtko
says.
***
The next piece of information is unquestionably true: that same year,
Freud published an article in Psychiatry and Neurology Monthly about
The Psychical Mechanism of Forgetfulness. A casual, superficial meeting with a young man, a complete
stranger on top of that, was documented only because the famous psychoanalyst decided to explore the reasons of frequent forgetfulness regarding names we know very well most
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Adios, Cowboy
Olja Savievi Ivanevi
Chapter Three
OLJA SAVIEVI IVANEVI was born on September 16, 1974 in Split. She
graduated from the University of Zadar where she majored in Croatian
language and literature. She published collections of poems: Bit e strano
kada ja porastem (1988), Vjena djeca (1993), ensko pismo (1999); Kuna
pravila (2007), the collection of short stories Nasmati psa (2006) and the
novel Adio, kauboju (2010). She was awarded the Prozak award for her
manuscript Nasmati psa as the best prose writer under thirty ve years
of age. The book was published in Germany under the title Augustschnee,
and in Macedonia, Serbia and Hungary. A short feature lm Sedam neodgovorenih poziva was made after her story Vilma Gjerek muena strastima...
Her story Heroj won the rst Ranko Marinkovi award for the best short
story in 2007. Her book Kuna pravila was awarded the Kiklop award for the
best collection of poems in 2008. The novel Adio, kauboju was published
in Croatia and Serbia simultaneously.
Her poems and prose excerpts have been translated into some twenty
languages and published in various literary selections and anthologies.
She lives and works in Split as a free-lance writer.
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jaded, green European lizard, a regular dandy; he also had fireflies and
scarabs and two tortoises; he could
tell which one was female by her
cracked shell, I remember. They survived, there they are, in the garden,
near the opaque glass of the greenhouse, the proof this house saw better times, said my sister once. Professors courtyard, fenced off by a stone
wall with sparkling nacreous pieces,
molluscs and this crawling, banging
and grunting animal kingdom, attracted all of us kids, I remember.
We went there almost secretly, because of the stories, I remember. Except Danijel who, obviously, had no
such problems. Later on I noticed
behaviour similar to ours in people
who privately admire that which they
would publicly gladly ridicule, with
equal honesty and eagerness. It must
have been be painful, I thought. Depends for whom, I think today.
It seemed Danijel had everything
easy; he came there every day, stayed
as long as he wanted. Perhaps this is
the reason why this courtyard had
more of my younger brother than
our house.
It is still awkward, it occurs to me, that
Danijel will not suddenly appear behind the colourful plastic stripes on
Professors door. This is all that is left
of his games, those two lewd tortoises, the posters from cowboy movies,
brittle with time, which I moved to
my room, and this Herr Professor.
Of other things my brother possessed
I am sorry that we have never found
the colt that our father gave him, and
his school bag.
***
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lutely. She was devoted to the desolate Ma; Mas unhappiness liberated
Marijana in this relationship. We
knew had it not been for Danijels
death, the cousin would not have
been permitted to enter this house
ever again.
Pride is such a bizarre feature, so selfdestructive, Im not at all sure why we
consider it a merit, I thought.
The first two weeks after Danijels
funeral there were up to thirty people in our house every day, drinking
brandy, smoking and talking, and
then, suddenly they disappeared and
nobody remembered when. Gradually, after a while, they stopped calling. They probably didnt know what
to talk about with us, the whole story
made them un-com-fort-able, said
my sister.
Ma was sitting and nodding with
a wax mask on her face, like those
people on neuroleptics when they
return from the mad house, so they
look like robots or dug-out totems.
My sister kept washing the glasses,
emptying the ashtrays and shooting
arrows at her soft husband, now her
ex. The tragedy rocked around the
room, hanging from the chandelier
between the guests and us.
Other peoples misery requires effort, clearly, said my sister.
Come soon, come whenever you like.
We are not far, we are neighbours, how
nice! Oh, yes. Of course. Knock harder,
my door bells still not working... Bye.
Bye, honey. Bye.
I put down the receiver.
Marijana was sitting in front of the
TV in her ready-steady position,
cracking nuts.
Its the feast of St. Fjoko, she said.
He saved us from leprosy, she added
scratching her stomach.
And died of syphilis, she rounded
out her point.
I had a hunch that one of Marijanas
vehement tirades was about to begin, and I was not about to miss it.
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spindly one, laughing as they slid beside him on their roller skates.
Soon a woman in a large car picked
him up, she was around thirty, dressed
smart and business casual: a vanilla
skirt, a lilac shirt, thin and lightcoloured, and vanilla sandals with a
small heel. She was holding a summer
jacket over her arm; there were visible
wet stains underneath her armpits, her
limbs were thin but firm, the tanned
skin smooth and shiny, the long hair
raised and pinned down in a bun.
Like on TV, Ma would say.
As he walked towards her small sports
car, the young man glanced up, to
where I stood leaning over. But, I
believe he did not see me, because of
the light. The sun in the west shone
from behind the house.
Beside Anelo, on the sunny side,
there crept his short shadow, suddenly narrowed forwards, touching the
womans feet, then covering them,
caressing.
***
Lukewarm, salty air, immovable images without a perspective, a world of
backdrops and vertical planes, encircled by a cat or in a few steps by a kid
with a bloody knee, pushing a scooter. That was part of day when birds
go insane over factory chimneys, the
ripe August afternoon when the Village was baking in a Dutch oven, and
the sea was evaporating.
Hot spell, hard and heavy, the Great
Gannet would say.
I never considered scorched landscape
ugly, rather boring. Or desperate, if
I myself felt desperate. Not in a few
hundred years would there ever be a
blossoming paradise garden here. No
way, I thought. The sky was similar to
an apocalyptic postcard all day.
Divine Providence! as the Great
Gannet would call such dramatic
scene designs. Because cumulus clouds
had began gathering in the west and
the heat, as the evening closed, would
soon be so great that wallpapers in
the rooms would sweat, and poisonous oleanders in the courtyard would
hang their moisture-scalded branches down to the ground.
People would walk around with greasy,
soaked faces, tapping on the barometers in disbelief, because they were
foreseeing a storm and low blood
pressure, sometimes even fainting.
A dog day, in any case, and that was
not sloth, but an acute disease of the
will, as my sister put it well.
***
The guy with the harmonica and his
escort (or, more probable, he was
the escort) had left the scene, so the
street was empty and forsaken for a
moment.
Ruzinavas back, yelled the girl on
the roller skates to her friend, entering the scene. I waved back at them.
I took my hat and waved harder.
Hey, Ruzinava! The girls were waving back.
Exiting the house, I had to jump over
the shoes which Ma had forgotten
and which were still frying on the
stairs, some fresh seagull dung on
some of them.
Along the Duga trada the suburbia
smelled of the air before rain and of
frankincense before the procession,
some people were carrying out the
tables for the evening feast. Like an
apparition, that old blacksmith was
riding along the street on his horse,
talking with somebody on his mobile
phone, hands free.
***
As the sun would start setting, I said
I would go look for work and then
I wandered. Actually I was wandering from dawn till dusk. Monday
and Friday mornings, Ma and me,
we took the standard route over the
graveyard and to the beach.
When Im there, Im with them,
said Ma, serious as an Amen, her
voice high-pitched.
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***
Marijana Mateljan said, but also the
newspapers di, as well as all of the web
portals, screaming how Ned Montgomery was coming to Croatia. It
was his, as they say, second time. The
first time Ned was in Yugoslavia he
was still young and unknown, and,
they said, he died in one of the first
scenes of Winnetou. The new generations knew him better as one of the
first 3D heroes of computer games,
they said.
It was a game with many dead cowboys in which the good guys, the
player & Ned, if they drew fast and
got lucky, won shiny sheriff stars. The
goal was always the same: not to let
the sons of bitches beat you.
Ned Montgomery is not the type to
lie about on his yacht in the harbour
of Hvar, he does not drink cappuccino on Dubrovniks Stradun with
bodyguards behind his ass, and he
does not wave from his transparent
capsule to us mortals, Balkanjeros,
as those other, quasi, stars, said my
sister thereby blessing the famous actor. Ned Montgomery was not very
talkative, he responded to interview
questions with: Yes. No. Of course.
Thank you.
Puts on no airs, as the people in Old
Village would say.
Once a TV-journalist told him:
Well, fine, Ned, I thought you were
a stud.
!?
But how can it be true if youve spent
the last twenty years with the same
woman?!
Well, Im a cowboy, explained Montgomery and lit himself a cigarette in the
studio like it was nobodys business.
Everybody somehow knew that stud
was small fry compared to a cowboy,
said Danijel.
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In my early childhood our greatgrandmother used to watch that corner. The Great Gannet, Oblapornica,
the oldest woman in the world. She
was ancient all our lives and old almost the half of hers. On the day
she capitulated, granny ate a full
plate of small bitter fish and sweet
white cabbage, I remember; fish was
bitter because of the intestines and
cabbage was sweet because of the
salt in the earth or the sun. Then
trying to control the shaking of her
chin with several curly, white hairs
she dragged her tripod to the end
of the street, where widows sat under the yellow neon of the new post
office, chewing their tongues with
dry mouths. Some of them spent
the last forty years there, some only
forty days, but, in the end, sooner
or later, everyone came there, those
with black scarves and those with red
beads. They sat on the benches the
whole afternoon, mostly being quiet
in their wonderful dialect.
Cul-de-sac, Herr Professor would
say. A dead end.
Old men did not stop at that corner
they just waved quickly and went
on they gathered at the other end
of the Village, behind Ilirija and the
slipway. The public social life of pensioners was strictly divided into male
and female, like in a boarding school.
Men played chess or treeta card game
on a long fir table or just sat there and
talked aloud. On the concrete slabs
of the table somebody wrote a long
time ago: TABLE OF LIES.
Scorned, ridiculed, then praised and
applauded the next day, those knights
of the Table of Lies, senile amateur
politicians with heart attacks waiting
in their chests, their arthritic chests,
they moved the pieces, knights and
bishops, they lost rooks, pawns and
changed the oral history of wars, fishery and tourist sex.
Showing, proving that history lingered on, everything that had once
already happened, happened simul-
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***
Ive learned something about simultaneity: memory is the present
of all remembered events. The tape
moves forward and back. Fw-stoprew-stop-rec-play-stop, stops at important places, some images flicker, opaquely frozen in a permanent
pause, unclear. But, memory is also
a saboteur editor in the backroom,
the one who cuts and pastes and edits until the very end or at least until
the Alzheimers.
The past is never a finite, finished
thing, says Herr Professor, taking
a VHS tape from his ancient video
player. The Old Village is the last
place on earth where people still use
videotapes, I ponder. The past is not
what it used to be, I say.
Is this all that is left of my brother,
his games, this wretched Herr Karlo?, I ponder. He has placed his large,
lumpish arms on the garden table
among the porcelain dishes. Like on
my brothers lean shoulders.
Gingerbread, that is how he calls
him on the tape.
We were taped on the Krka waterfalls,
during the excursion I have completely erased from my memory. There goes
my gingerbread. Says the vet in the
film we have just seen together.
Ginger-boy and a large hand on the
back of his head, fingers wrapped in
reddish flames.
Shit, perhaps he really did do it with
Danijel, I wonder.
I imagine him falling to the ground
(as in that song, I think) in front of
Danijel, onto the cold floor tiled with
Chinese mosaic, sprayed with cat and
dog blood, taking Danijels proud and
indifferent dong out of his jeans.
Lizards fretting in the terrarium,
newts floating in formalin, the crocodile beating with his tail in the cabbage barrel.
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Hotel Zagorje
Ivana Simi Bodroi
IVANA SIMI BODROI was born in 1982 in Vukovar, Croatia. She is about
to graduate from Zagreb Faculty of Philosophy with degrees in Philosophy
and Croatian Language and Literature. Her poetry collection Prvi korak u
tamu (The First Step into the Darkness) earned her Goran Prize for young
poets (2005) as well as Kvirin Prize for the best book of poetry by an author
under the age of 35. Her poetry has been published in various Croatian
and international literary magazines, collections and anthologies of contemporary Croatian poetry. Hotel Zagorje is her rst novel, published in
2010 to a wide acclaim of both critics and the literary public. So far the
rights are sold to Hanser (Germany); Mondran (Slovenia); Rende (Serbia);
Magor (Macedonia).
ways brings us presents and marzipan. This year I got a leather handball
ball that couldnt be inflated. Brother
got a soccer ball, but he never used to
play soccer. Soon brother sent me off
to my bed and for a long time I kept
daydreaming about all those things.
Vukovar bus station stinks, its early
in the morning, Im so sleepy and Id
much rather stay in bed. Dad carries
me; although Im big he carries me
all the way. Hes wearing white trousers and a blue t-shirt. As we part we
kiss on the lips, first we make a face
and then fake a kiss. Its our special
thing. There are lots of children at
the station and were divided into
four buses. Parents wave to us for a
long time, we wave to them, I cant
see my family anymore, but I wave
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Yellow cards were IDs given to the internally displaced persons during the war in Croatia.
Last tram stop on the tram line that goes down the longest street in Zagreb, the Ilica Street.
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***
Under the Christmas tree I found a
pair of jeans with knee patches, and
thats what I wanted the most. My
brother got Croatian flag notepads
and a canvas backpack for school. It
was very trendy and I think it made
him happy because up till then he
used to carry his books in an old
briefcase of our uncles. I wanted to
get mom something, but I had no
money. I decided to steal a pack of
cigarettes from a carton she had and
wrap it in colorful paper together
with a chocolate bar.
My cousins got a Barbie van and
generally we were all pleased with
our presents. That winter was very
snowy and we spent a lot of time
outside sledding. Pretty soon second
semester started and I was still at the
same school, although Id been sure
Id complete that school year in Vukovar. One evening when he came in
from work uncle told mom about a
vacant apartment in the New Zagreb
area. Wed just have to break in. He
had a cousin whod take care of that.
Then they would leave, and mom
would have to wait for the police.
No one would kick a woman with
two kids out of a vacant apartment,
and if they did, at least theyd find
us some kind of housing. And thats
all he could do for us for the moment. eljka and her mom had also
left their relatives and moved into
some army barracks in Pula. Once
we talked to them on the phone and
they both cried.
***
Id never been on the fifteenth floor
before. The night before we moved
into the apartment I spent at my
grandmas brothers house in Samobor. Grandma managed to save herself, she escaped through Novi Sad
and Hungary, and theyd only slaughtered grandpa. For a while she lived in
the basement with Marica, the neigh-
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***
My grandpa used to drink a lot. Long
ago, back when he was young, he fell
off a motorbike and banged his head.
Something in him went out of joint
then, and he started drinking. That
was the official version. He kept on
his feet, more or less steadily, and
would get home on his own. Those
who stayed in town told us stories of
how he rode his motorcycle drunk
and took shrapnel in the ass. Theyd
retell the story and laugh. Only once
I also heard that some Chetniks let
him drink brandy and that he made
friends with them. But even if he
had some intention behind his actions, it made no difference, because
in the end he also signed the house
over to them. Sometimes I pretended
not to know him. When I saw him
come towards me, Id swerve toward
the fire escape and run off. There
was always a flock of kids running
after him because his pockets were
full of bonbons that he would share.
He liked to mess with them, and
they could be quite cruel to him. It
went on until one day when Draens
dad said that hed kill him if he saw
him again near the kid- him, an old
drunken mule. From then on I avoided him even more in the hallways, but
some afternoons Id go to their room.
Most of the time Grandpa slept, and
when he saw me there hed melt and
hand me some toy made of wire and
screws. Hed give me a little money
to get him a beer from the bar and
then to keep the change. It seemed
as if it would be best for everyone if
hed just close his eyes.
Once as I was hanging around the
reception area, I met Ivan and Zoki.
They said they were going to follow
Grandpa when he went behind the
Political School, like every day at
the same time before dinner. They
wanted to know what he was doing;
maybe he was hiding some dough. I
didnt know what I should do. If he
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102
***
Room number seven was the most
popular spot in the whole Political School. The management let the
young people use it to celebrate New
Years, play Ludo, cards, and just to
spend time there. Everyone between
the ages of thirteen and seventeen
hung around there. I was a bit younger, but I knew what Seven was like
because Id sneak out on the nearby
fire escape and peep in every time the
door was left ajar. All of us who were
soon to be initiated into Seven did
it, and whenever one of the people
inside noticed, theyd slam the door
on us, leaving us in a cloud of smoke.
There were several armchairs in the
room, a couch with its insides spilling out because it had been stabbed
with a knife, and several low tables.
The middle of the room was taken
by a ping-pong table. And that was
all. The walls were decorated with
colorful post-its with quotations uttered by the less popular members of
the company. Most of them were by
Clank, but she visited so rarely that
she couldnt even get mad because of
it. My first visit to Seven was when
the good Doctor from Vukovar came
to see us in our temporary home for
the displaced and gave everyone at
the hotel a carton of Marlboro reds
and by this I dont mean only grown
ups, but literally every living and
walking creature. Two men unloaded
the cigarettes from a truck parked in
front of the hotel and then stood by
the truck holding a list of rooms and
numbers of the occupants. I waited in
line to get our cartons. Half an hour
later and with three cartons, I headed back to the hotel. I decided to tell
mom theyd given me only two, for
her and brother. I knocked on Sevens
door. There was no sound from inside, so I sat on the wooden bench,
hiding the cartons behind my legs in
case someone I knew passed by. Soon,
from the darkness of the room, Miro
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to have our revenge on her. We followed her and found out which room
she lived in. You just had to add up
the room numbers to a hundred and
youd get her telephone number. We
hoped she had a telephone. We went
to Marinas room since she was alone
there with her sister, and we dialed
the number. Hello? a voice croaked
on the other side. We were silent.
Hello? Whos there? asked the voice
again. I took the receiver from Marina and started blowing into it. Id
seen this in a movie. You motherfuckin fuckers, you bastards! Piss off,
you pests! the voice thundered from
the receiver so that those far from
it could hear. We grew solemn. No
one said anything and then Marina
hung up, picked up the receiver again
and redialed the number. We sat in
silence, looking at each other. Hello? the same voice answered. Jelena
blew into the receiver. O, you vermin, you cursed demons! May worms
feast on your innards, and crabs drag
you down the street, and your mothers poison you! You rotten vermin...,
this time I hung up. We were all silent. We were stunned by the curses
wed just heard and we didnt want to
hear any more of Grandma Punaras
horrendous swearing, yet at the same
time it was very exciting. That afternoon we didnt call her anymore,
but we gave her number to Zoki,
Ivan and the other boys. They liked
it even more and thought it was really funny, so they called her all the
time, sometimes even at night. From
then on, whenever we met Grandma
Punara, wed greet her loudly and
keep smiling. We didnt skip rubber
bands in front of her anymore. Only
sometimes, very rarely, when there
was no other way to kill boredom,
wed dial her up, put the receiver
face down next to the phone, wait
a minute or two, and then hang up.
A few years later Grandma Punara
got cancer and died. She didnt live
to return home for she was buried
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Love
Marina ur Puhlovski
***
On the night of one of the soirees she
organized in her apartment in Zagreb
for her and her husbands friends
several years before she would meet
Josip Sofija was waiting for her
guests, watching a French film on
TV, a love story that impressed her a
lot. It was about a young mans love
for an older woman who could accept his affections only after she had
been diagnosed with cancer: before
that she had been confined by prejudice. She spent a wonderful year
with this young man and then left
him to die: the pain drove the young
man crazy...
When the film ended, Sofija sank in
her thoughts: she realized that she
had never experienced love, not real
love, occasionally only semi-love. She
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pressed at a certain place, with a certain rhythm, there came the melody.
It was true, however, that pain came
from the same source; pleasure and
pain flocked together. That experience would grow into a basic idea
that she, Sofija, was not her body: the
body was not her, the body was not
me. The body took pleasure, bled,
took the beating. The body was warm
or cold. Sofija was outside that body.
When her tooth was pulled out, she
watched it in amazement: the tooth
had been hers, but she was not the
tooth. She was astonished even when
she took pleasure from the body, but
less so: she liked it.
Ever since that time she lived by observing her body, never quite one
with it.
When her body surrendered, Sofija
was removed from this. When the
body was satisfied, she remained unhappy. She had managed, however,
to share pleasure with the body, but
failed to be the body; and the body
failed to be her.
All this changed during that first
night with Josip, who knows why...
***
It was nice to chat with him on the
terrace, Sofija remembers, just to
converse about nothing in particular,
he was simply nice. She was in love,
but he was also comfortable, with
him she felt calm. While they were
taking their clothes off, they were
laughing, as old acquaintances do,
everything was easy. Nothing revolted her, neither his body mass, nor his
odor, the expression on his face, but
when he lay on top of her, suddenly
she became limp, she surrendered to
him almost with apathy. She drew
no pleasure, but still he satiated her,
she enjoyed her acquiescence, only
that, joy without pleasure, the same
as he did, as he admitted to her afterwards. When they separated, she
was not empty, but happy, rightfully
joyous.
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***
The next day Sofija woke up happy,
although I also had certain objections, she admitted later to Josip.
She objected that he got up immediately after making love, excusing
himself with his worry for his son.
Without me, he said, he would
not fall asleep. He is used to us sleeping together.
He should have fallen asleep by now,
thought Sofija. It was a young man,
not a baby. Her daughter slept in the
next room, and this man in front of
her was talking about his son. How
come he had never worried about
him before, she wondered. She also
objected that he was leaving and they
did not arrange for a meeting the next
day. She did not expect this, she panicked... She was aware he was leaving the island in two days, that there
was little time. Besides, her husband,
Maks, was coming to the seaside
the next day. Sofija wanted her husband to delay his arrival, but he had
a hunch, there was no way he would
postpone his trip. And Josip did not
suggest anything, he was cunningly
silent. Well, if he was not going to
ask me, I would ask him, she decided and asked.
When shall we meet? she asked, sure
of herself and him, strong enough for
the both of them.
Isnt your husband coming? Josip
hesitated.
We shall still meet, said Sofija, I
will find a way.
They arranged to meet on a hill in
front of a little church at five in the
afternoon.
***
Sofija was late for that meeting, because she had trouble ditching the
husband. He arrived late, she prepared lunch for him. As soon as lunch
was over, she said she had to go.
Where to? he asked. After all, he
had just arrived... What kind of obligation could Sofija have at the seaside
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***
***
***
Sofija didnt know what happiness
was, except occasionally. Waiting to
go to the cinema naturally, when she
was young would make her happy.
And a sunny day, fresh, full of spring
fragrances. And when she fell in love,
she would feel happy, at least in the
beginning... Then happiness would
wear out... She could even suddenly
get happy and without reason: a wave
of happiness would flood her inside,
force her to jump, twirl around...
This ability to feel happy subsided
with years, although not quite to zero. It would return occasionally.
But, for her mother, that was no happiness. Thats elation, she claimed.
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Sitting on the loggia in warm weather, Sofija would observe her neighbors kitchen a family with two children whose life reminded her of a
small community of hamsters.
***
I had a happy childhood, bragged
Josip to Sofija, and then he went on,
telling the worst things about his
childhood...
He was constantly falling, breaking
his bones, a donkey kicked him... He
still had a scar on his forehead, a millimeter deep. The broken collarbone
healed bumpily. He was beaten at
school, he was beaten by his mother.
For any little thing, he said.
His father did not beat him, because, as he said, nobody ever saw
him. And he was timid, afraid of
himself.
Time spent in the house on the island, with his grandfather and his
aunt Ida, was best, but he also spent a
part of his childhood with his mothers family, on their farm by the coast.
His other grandparents, two brothers
and an aunt lived there.
His mothers father was a salesman,
just like his fathers.
So fathers arranged the marriage between their children, who were not
young anymore.
Mother was over thirty, already considered to be an old maid: Ustashe
killed her fianc in prison during
the war.
Father was refused by all the girls on
the island, he was closing forty and
expected to remain a bachelor.
Josips mother, Lea, fled the island for
the first time when his father brought
her to meet her fianc.
Sofija saw a photograph of Josips
father from those times and she had
to laugh: he was lean, big-nosed and
had glasses instead of eyes. The hair
on his head stood upright, like the
plumage of some jungle bird.
He put some sugar paste on it, explained Josip.
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112
on the bench, right in the middle, between the kitchen and the rooms, because the apartment was split; rooms
on one side, kitchen on the other.
This arrangement was logical at the
time when the whole house belonged
to one family, but quite implausible
later on. Sitting in the portik, the old
woman saw everybody, that was why
she sat there.
When Sofija met her, the woman was
eighty-seven and completely sane
and lucid. She was lucid when she
died at hundred, that May.
She was all skin and bones, pale,
toothless, her eyes set deep, and with
a black scab which made her nose
ugly, but despite the ruined features,
she was not at all repulsive, almost
beautiful, Josip agreed with Sofija.
The woman was bright, she understood everything, Sofija loved her.
Still, she avoided talking with her,
because conversations were always
the same, the eternal complaining;
old age drove Sofija crazy.
A week before she had found the old
woman holding the doorway, tiny, in
her black attire, with a black scarf on
her head slightly tilted; she was unable to move. She only swayed, as if
she would fall... Life was abandoning her in front of Sofijas eyes, as if
life wanted to step out of that body,
out of its prison. So she stood by the
doorway, being slowly abandoned by
her life, not knowing what to do.
Take me to my chair, she managed to ask Sofija, and Sofija did it;
the woman was limp like a rag-doll,
unusually heavy, though she did not
weigh much, lacking the life support
except for the last breath that she exhaled when she sat down.
I can still see her sitting in the portik, Sofija told Josip, who saw her
there, too.
Karmela is eternal.
***
In front of the kitchen window, where
there used to be a sink outside, but
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114
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115
rich and perverse clientele. The criticism of The Bridge on this basis is
a long shot, not only because of the
confirmation of the director that they
did report and tried to prevent each
and every suicide attempt in spite of
the all-year-round shooting, but also
because of the fact that those suicides
do happen regardless of whether they
get recorded or not. At this level, it
really was documenting and is a documentary film. The snuff argument
misses the point when we remember
some of the recent events from the
history of the world. Namely, via the
Internet server Youtube various radical and extremist groups increasingly
present their threats and their execution of hostages, while the videos of
the killings of Saddam Husein, Paul
Johnson and Daniel Pearl had unprecedented visits and viewers ratings. In the era of the Internet, voyeurism is no longer a privilege of the
chosen elite. Moreover, such a mode
of spreading of until quite recently
almost unthinkable contents is not
characteristic only of the relatively
unknown extremist groups, but also
of the official authorities. For example, the Vietnamese government itself distributes the recordings of executions for educational purposes: this is its way of preventing new
crimes of the same type for which
those people were executed.
* A chapter from the book Protiv politike korektnosti (Against Political Correctness), Belgrade: Biblioteka XX. vek, 2007. The author won the
prize for the best debutante film critic in Croatia in 2007 for this text.
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whereas God has dominum (dominion). The medieval practice of mutilating the body of a person who
committed suicide, confiscating his
property and prohibiting his burial
in a Christian graveyard was not only
the implementation of this philosophy, but also the direct transference
of Gods powers to the Church. The
described incidents speak of a new
political constellation in which power over the body is no longer the privilege of the Church, but of the State.
Furthermore, in the same way the
persons who committed suicide were
demonized in the past, the todays so-
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117
118
and irresponsibility. Until the Mitchells question, what do pictures actually want from us, comes into play,
there is no interference.1 This example clearly shows it: after a few shots
of the young photographer and the
girl standing at the edge, suddenly
a few of his photos appear on the
screen showing the girls steps toward the edge and her preparations
for the jump. The young mans interference, therefore, is not the answer
to the question of what she wants,
but his reaction to the question of
what the picture wants: he was
looking through the lens and taking photos until he realized the picture wanted to jump off. As viewers,
we are in the same position. Dont
we ask ourselves, whenever we see
the whole bridge from some distant
angle of shooting, what the picture
actually wants? By means of some
strange cause-effect connection and
some sort of Pavlovian reflexology we
become aware that his picture exists
for the purpose of showing us some
tiny little drop falling into the water.
The whole scene is strongly reminiscent of the old black and white romantic movies depicting angels falling down from heavens, and we are
instantly charmed, entangled into
the logic of the picture and caught
inescapably in it due to our perverse
fascination with it. Just as the young
photographer was unable to get out
of his lenses to the very last moment,
so we too cannot stop being voyeurs.
We simply watch the picture and until everything is over, and sometimes
even when this particular picture
vanishes completely or turns into
another one, do we slowly assume
a meta-linguistic distance and allow
ourselves reflection (What, somebody committed suicide?).
This perverse logic is additionally illustrated with one due to its stu1
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See J. T. Mitchell, What do pictures want?: The Lives and Loves of Images, University of Chicago Press, 2004.
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119
120
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3
4
121
M. Foucault, The Simplest of Pleasures. In: Sylvre Lotringer (ed.) (1996) Foucault Live: Collected Interviews, 1961-1984 SEMIOTEXT(E).
New York, pp. 295-297, cit. from: http://thefoucauldian.co.uk
Ibid.
Ibid.
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Tad Friend, Jumpers, The New Yorker, October 13th, 2003, at: http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/031013fa_fact?031013fa_fact
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123
Bill Viola, Images in Me. Video Art Manifests the World of the Unknown, Europski glasnik, ann. X, no. 10, Zagreb 2005, p. 515, translated from German into Croatian by Sreko Horvat.
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* An excerpt from the book Totalitarizam danas (Totalitarianism Today), Zagreb: Antibarbarus, 2008.
1
Erich Fromm, Anatomija ljudske destruktivnosti (The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness), vol. I, Zagreb: Naprijed, 1986, p. 82.
2
Mihovil Horvat, Goli otok stratie duha (Goli Otok The Scaffold of Spirit), Zagreb: Orion Stella, 1996, pp. 101-102.
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125
A book by Josip Zoreti also testifies to the fact that it is indeed plausible to talk about a few different periods in the existence of Goli otok.
The author was imprisoned at Goli otok from 1962 to 1969, and there is clear difference between his sufferings and the sufferings of the
previous convicts. Zoreti, for example, never mentions either the bloody path or the practice of the boycott. Also, there is no mention of the mutual control and punishment among the convicts, and the best proof of this is Zoretis description of the common sabotages in the production sector of Goli otok. Anything like that would simply be unthinkable in the period between 1949 and 1954, for
anybody who would even think of sabotage would immediately be denounced by other prisoners, and then punished and boycotted. See
Josip Zoreti, Goli otok A Hell in the Adriatic, Virtualbookworm, 2007.
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but must do everything. For starters, before dinner, together with the
others who were boycotted, he has
to go through the machine, as the
bloody path was called by the insiders. So, the convicts line up in front
of the prison shack in two rows facing each other, and each victim goes
through this corridor formed by the
human bodies one by one. I am
standing in a group of the boycotted at the entrance of the corridor
and am waiting for my turn. A wild
howling is heard all over Goli otok,
for the evening ritual, as everything
else for that matter, is the same for
each prison shack. The quiet of the
evening sunset is here turned into
a hell in which everything is mixed
with everything else: the distorted
faces of the convicts, the lowered
heads of the boycotted our heads
must always be lowered as a visual
sign of our damnation the screams,
the curses, the paroles that are being shouted at us by the convicts in
the rows, the spitting and the blows
and the kicks Through all that and
through four hundred of hands and
legs I must go.8 As we can see, the
bloody path which all new convicts
had to pass through definitely is not
just a fiery baptism but also the
paradigm of Goli otok. It is the best
expression of the terror that the convicts themselves, without the involvement of the guards, inflicted on each
other on a daily basis. The function of
the bloody path or the machine,
however, was not only to live out or
to take out the pent-up frustrations
of the convicts (for they could not express their fury at the guards, so they
at least had to do it among themselves). No, the role of this violent
and excruciating procedure was primarily in that it was a role exchange,
where everybody can at any moment
8
9
10
Ibid, p. 163.
Ibid, p. 217.
Ibid.
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Ibid, p. 219.
Ibid, p. 222.
Ibid, p. 226.
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129
Ibid, p. 320.
Ugo Vlaisavljevi, Goli otok i nerazvijena tehnologija moi/znanja (Goli otok and the Underdeveloped Technology of Power/Knowledge),
Odjek revija za umjetnost, nauku i drutvena pitanja, spring 2003, at: http://www.odjek.ba/index.php?broj=02&id=03
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to get to the phone and call ure asking him to go to the airport and stop
all the flights. Then, in the grotesque
last scene, Ilija runs after Petar on all
fours, crawling down the street followed by his dog. The irony is that
Ilija, in this life-threatening situation, is fully aware that the system
he is defending is, after all, not good,
as he cant even buy the medication
he needs, yet he still keeps fighting
against the enemy.
Here again the same pattern we noticed in the supporters of Hitler repeats itself. Namely, they believed
that Germany, even after the fall of
the Third Reich, would somehow
triumph (because Fhrer promised
so). The basic argument is Too bad
for the facts: the fact that the medication cannot be found within the
system does not mean that the system we believe in is not good, even
if the lack of the medication means
death. The key element in The Balkan Spy is that the brothers are Stalinists. When in a dirty cellar, while
looking for some hidden weapons,
they come across an old portrait of
Stalin, the one they had to hide away
decades ago, it becomes clear that Ilija and ure think Yugoslavia can be
saved only by Stalin.
Translated by Domagoj Orli
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132
* Two excerpts from the book Budunost je ovdje. Svijet distopijskog filma (The Future Is Here. The World of the Dystopian Film), Zagreb:
Hrvatski filmski savez, 2008. The book consists of 25 chapters, and among the movies reviewed in it are: The Thing from Another World,
The Thing, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, La jete, Twelve Monkeys, Dr. Strangelove, I Am Legend, Fahrenheit 451, El angel exterminador, Planet of the Apes, THX 1138, Silent Running, Soylent Green, Logans Run, Brazil, They Live, Gattaca,
Fight Club, Matrix, Minority Report, Children of Men, The Happening, WALL-E...
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from the other. If we can only communicate with it, we can learn secrets
that have been hidden from mankind
since the beginning.
So, we see that to a scientist, Carrington, the alien is ideal with regards to the system of techno-scientific rationalism. Just as Georg
Lukcs in his renowned chapter on
The Reification and Consciousness
of the Proletariat in his book History
and Class Consciousness claimed that
in the production process within the
capitalistic system the personal qualities of the individual worker were
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still unprecedented event in the history of the 20th century took place
exactly to stamp out capitalism, the
result of 1968, apart from the factual
improvements in the areas of (labor,
student, sexual) liberation, is the appearance of life-styles: revolution
is today just another product on the
assembly line.
So, we see that The Thing from Another World does not have to be the
object of boring and predicable interpretations according to which the
Thing is actually communism (the
inhuman), and we (capitalism) are
what still is human as opposed to
that. In this context, it is important
to emphasize that, generally speaking, most of the SF movies about alien invasion did not originate from
the Cold War period, but from the
SF literature written in the 1930s
and 1940s, and so in this sense these
movies represent a new/additional
meaning of the invasion, that is
nowadays mostly associated with the
Communists and Soviets as the biggest threat to a normal life, although,
originally, in the novels that served
as the basis for the movies, this was
not the case. The same is true of The
Thing from Another World, a movie
that was made on the basis of the literary work by John W. Campbell entitled Who Goes There? Namely, the
original story appeared in 1938, in
other words, much earlier than the
beginning of the Cold War. When
we compare the first motion picture
adaptation, the one done by Nyby,
and the second one done by Carpenter, then we see that the second
one is much closer to the original
idea and the primary meaning of the
Thing. Unlike the monster from the
first black and white movie, Campbells Thing is much more similar to
Carpenters, a well as to the London
parasite that perfectly imitates the
tongue of a fish.
Apart from this possible socio-critical
nuance of the Thing, John Carpenter
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because it survives every fragmentation. Just imagine what would happen if that covered your face while
you are asleep... You would have to
fight with such an entity. But this
would not be a comfortable battle.
This lamella, this organ, whose characteristic is that it is non-existent, but
which is no less an organ because of
it I could expound more about its
zoological position it is libido. It is
libido as a pure urge to be alive, that
is to be immortal, to be indestruct-
137
asleep. The climax of the movie happens when Becky, while hiding from
the aliens, at one point falls asleep.
Bennell notices that and being beside
himself starts running toward a motorway screaming at the passing cars
that the town was taken over by the
aliens, and then in one scene which
can also be regarded as one of the first
climbing of the fourth wall, a practice
that in the modern film-making was
perfected by, say, Woody Allen he
is yelling into the camera: They are
already here! You are next!
What distinguishes The Invasion of
the Body Snatchers from most other
SF movies filmed until the 1950s
is one small, but important detail.
While in all other movies aliens were
mostly depicted as mutants, giants or
monsters, in this movie they look just
like us. The first, and today prevailing interpretation of the movie says
that The Invasion actually represents
the paranoia that developed during
the notorious McCarthy era. Just as
our fellow men and neighbors got
possessed by an alien in the movie,
so did thousands of Americans turn
communists during the 1940s and
1950s. As we know, a whole bunch
of ordinary as well as prominent people (including half of the Hollywood
people) were under suspicion of having thoughts and attitudes that are
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the double, comes into play. Unlike the previous belief according to
which the double is a guarantee that
Ego will not disappear (since this
Other One will survive), Freud is
contending that Doppelgnger is in
fact the suppressed part of the Ego.
Therefore, to meet ones double is
frightening: on the one hand, because we might end up disappointed, and on the other hand, because
he, that is, we ourselves, might get
in our way. Doppelgnger is therefore
a figure of the loss. In other words,
the figure of death. Even Otto Rank
himself emphasized that: Originally
understood as a guardian angel, securing the eternal existence of selfhood,
the double actually figures as the very
opposite, as the reminder of the mortality of the individual, that is as the
harbinger of death itself.1 The very
concept of the double was the topic of numerous literary works, from
Dostoevsky and Poe to Kafka and
Calvin, whereas in the filmmaking art
it is present in the works such as The
Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (Robert
Wiene, 1920), The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949) or in the recent Fight
Club (David Fincher, 1999). One of
the best literary examples is definitely
Oscar Wilds The Picture of Dorian
Gray, in which the main character is
the same man, actually the same man
all the time, since he is not getting
any older, but he has no soul, just as
the citizens from the movie The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
And this, of course, brings us to
Jung. In distinction to Freud and the
dominant discourse that perceives
the double as something eerie, Jung
recognizes the dark side of the excessively rational Western civilization
in the double. Although, of course,
this implies his controversial theory
of archetypes, in which the so-called
dark double (dunkle Doppelgnger)
is introduced as a term for the shad-
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think it through, the ultimate message of the movie The Invasion of the
Body Snatchers. If an alien could have
entered a person whom we love (and
so she/he suddenly stops loving us),
why couldnt we say then that this
person started to love us exactly at
the moment when an alien entered
her/him? And that is actually the real
excess of Love, that a person hit by
the so-called Cupids arrow suddenly stops being what she has been
up to that point. Our friends phone
calls become completely irrelevant
(to turn off the cell phone becomes
conditio sine qua non), family obligations and habits (attending dinners,
having conversations, etc.) become a
waste of time, and business or professional plans disappear in every embrace. In this sense, the right answer
to the question at which moment
love ended would be before it even
began. This doesnt mean it never really existed, only that the very act of
ending love (or at least love infatuation) might actually be some sort
of a defense mechanism of the very
organism. The defense against this
totally meaningless, devoted and
unconditional wastage.
On the other hand, the person who
keeps up loving someone in spite of
everything seems to bring this very
wastage to absurdity. Lets remember that the only way in The Invasion
of the Body Snatchers not to be possessed by an alien is not to fall asleep,
to be continuously awake. And isnt
this the best possible description of
a person loving another person who
doesnt love him back? Refusing to
admit that love has disappeared
even the gesture then there was no
love in the first place is still caught in
the loop of love and proves the subject is still in love means nothing
but refusing to go to sleep. If the
other has become Another, an alien,
it doesnt mean I have to do it too: I
can still keep within myself a dosage
of our Love (or in the movie: humanity) that will eventually and
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* The Foreword from the book Ljubav za poetnike (Love for Beginners), Zagreb: Ljevak, 2009. Commenting on the book, Slavoj iek wrote:
This is the proof that, while having sex, the partners are never alone, even if they lock themselves up in some tiny room, for there is no
sex without talking about sex! Horvat is doing for psychoanalysis what the old introductions to Marxism did for dialectical and historical materialism: he brings Lacan to the wide masses of workers, peasants and honest intelligentsia. This book is needed as much as fresh
bread!
1
Roland Bartes, A Lovers Discourse, Hill and Wang, New York, 1979., p. 63.
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3
4
143
J. W. Gethe, Patnje mladoga Werthera (The Sorrows of the Youthful Werther), Zagreb: Zora, 1971, translated into Croatian by Ivan Lali,
p. 45.
Roland Barthes, ibid, p. 67.
Ibid, p. 182.
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Franz Kafka, Pisma Mileni (Letters to Milena), Zagreb: Moderna vremena, 1998, translated into Croatian by Zlatko Crnkovi, p. 67.
Roland Barthes, ibid, p. 38.
Jesus Diaz, A Cellphones Missing Dot Kills Two People, Puts Three More In Jail, Gizmodo, April 21st, 2008: http://gizmodo.com/382026/
a-cellphones-missing-dot-kills-two-people-puts-three-more-in-jail
Alexandra Alter, Is This Man Cheating His Wife?, The Wall Street Journal, August 1st, 2007: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/
SB118670164592393622.html?mod=blog
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145
Geoffrey Miller, Mating Mind. How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature, Anchor, 2001., p. 3.
Ibid, p. 83.
Ibid, p. 105.
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Ibid, p. 188.
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She has published reviews, art criticism, essays and other writings since
1987, rst of all on radio and television, and then in Vjesnik, Venac, Zarez,
Republika, Knjievna republika, Rei, Svjetlo, and Dubrovnik as well as
other newspapers and periodicals.
She has published a book of selected literary criticism, In The Direction The Meridian: Literary Criticism (2003), and
a collection of prose texts, Interest On Amatory Sighs; Essays On Oversensitivity (2008).
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149
pushing through the throng of walkers, all at once he said: It is not right
for young hips to brush against my
old ones. A moment before my hip
had for less than the blinking of an
eye involuntarily brushed against his
getting out of the way of some clumsy passer-by. My excitement with this
image, this idea at once created in the
deeper layers of the imagination, had
a more powerful erotic charge than
the scene from the hayloft from The
Witness when Harrison Ford and Kelly McGillis, worthwhile mentioning
because some string is always strumming, dance to the Sam Cooke song
Wonderful World:
Dont know much about history
Dont know much biology
Dont know much about a science book
Dont know much about the French
I took
But I do know that I love you
And I know that if you love me too
What a wonderful world this would be
Dont know much about geography
Dont know much trigonometry
Dont know much about algebra
Dont know what a slide rule is for.
But I do know that one and one is two,
And if this one could be with you,
What a wonderful world this would be.
Now I dont claim to be an A student,
But Im trying to be.
So maybe by being an A student baby
I can win your love for me... and so on.
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152
it will happen. And that is not unimportant. If things get a little extra
involved, if the dramaturgy takes on
elements of fatal dimensions, if accidents come together that call into
question the principle of causality
and the usual psychological givens
of everyday life then you get the
beginning of your own private oneof-a-kind novelistic fabula that sends
shivers down your spin, makes your
palms sweat, cheeks burn, brings out
the juices of arousal and... The realisation is then just a mater of time,
of the skill and courage of the participants, perhaps patience or wisdom, sometimes also bluffness or
adventurousness. Whatever ultimately it will be fed with the yolk of
the mythology of first encounter. I
read somewhere, and remembered:
a perfect love is truly rare... the loving couple must always have the refinement of sages, the adaptability
of children, sensitivity of artists, understanding of philosophers, calm of
saints, toleration of scholars and the
strength of the self-confident. Oh,
most of that we do have at the beginning: we are playful like children,
sensitive, generous, secure. Then, to
survive, perfect love only much later
needs understanding, wisdom and
calm not merely bookish or theoretical but experiential and from living in its origins.
Truly what is life but an encounter?
Encounter with beings that we fall in
love with at first sight and with beings we hate to the last; with beings
who are akin but not by blood and
beings who are our mortal enemies;
beings who are always hiding behind
some masks and beings who painfully expose themselves to scorching
gazes; beings that bring us the light
of some new spheres and beings that
shove us into the darkness of impenetrable depths of hell. A medium register seems not to count it doesnt
get into the personal historical balance sheet or at least stays in the
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colourless and evaporable. Notwithstanding my knowing that philosopher Voltaire had written somewhere
that tears are the inchoate speech of
regret.
For when the magic and myth of
first encounter have gone, there is
no real or symbolic speech of regret
that can bring it to live. The sensitive
plant called Encounter withers and
slowly (but there are cases in which
it suddenly) fades. Then the prince
turns into a croaky toad; Mr Big becomes a Molireish churl or a jealous
Venetian killer; the Real Thing is just
a concealed Casanova that collects
victims for his tally stick; the Eternal Only One becomes a mere tissue for a runny nose. (Genderwise,
it all works the other way round too,
its worth mentioning for the unenlightened and the stubborn.) And so
instead of the sweet poison of Cupids dart, we are struck by perilous
drowning in the dangerous turbid
waters of non-love or get stranded
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know, you have left me already, although you didnt say a word, (not)
my dear sir. I dont hold it against you,
you didnt want to, you had to. For
some time, depending on how much
you can admit it to yourself and how
much the Peter Pan in you has used
up the golden dust, youll be sorry,
very, very sorry. Youll be out, and Ill
be at zero again. First of all you will,
in some awkward inchoate way, be
afraid of me and avoid me, then will
come the phase of shame and embarrassment about me, then anger
at yourself for what you missed out
on, then awkward attempts at a re-sit
and finally resigned regret.
I shall look upon this from a decent
distance mental and emotional,
but you will see in my eyes that I
understand even when we are talking of last weeks newspaper stories.
I am not disappointed, I am used to
it, and I dont expect anything different. But just, in a simply human
way, Im sorry. Now youll probably
ask me what on earth I could have
expected from a man in his maturity
with an obligation. Who into the
bargain neither offered nor promised anything. It is all right, but, dear
sir, I could have expected at least a
fair attitude and sincerity from your
about those vibrations of the air between our looks. Some things simply
dont need saying out loud, we dont
even have to understand them, but
we have to allow them, in ourselves,
their existence.
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think of every time I face some insoluble problem. He met the lama of
the Crystal Monastery. The Lama of
the Crystal Monastery appears to be
a very happy man, and yet I wonder
how he feels about his isolation in the
silences of Tsakang, which he has not
left in eight years now and, because of
his legs, may never leave again. Since
Jang-bu seems uncomfortable with
the Lama or with himself or perhaps
with us, I tell him not to inquire on
this point if it seems to him impertinent, but after a moment Jang-bu
does so. And this holy man of great
directness and simplicity, big white
teeth shining, laughs out loud in an
infectious way at Jang-bus question.
Indicating his twisted legs without a
trace of self-pity or bitterness, as if
they belonged to all of us, he casts his
arms wide to the sky and the snow
mountains, the high sun and dancing sheep, and cries, Of course I am
happy here! Its wonderful! Especially
when I have no choice!
In its whole-hearted acceptance of
what is, these words are just like those
that Soen Roshi (he authors Zen
master) would probably speak. I have
a feeling that it gave me a blow in the
chest. I thank him, bow and gradually go down the mountain. Under
my windcheater gleams my folded
prayer flag. Tea with butter and pictures in the wind, Crystal Mountain
and playful blue sheep in the snow
I need nothing else.
Did you see a snow leopard?
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160
ZORAN TOMI was born in 1967. He has a degree in English and Italian
Dont even make me think about Zadar. Were still here, going back soon.
Where are you?
What do you mean where am I? In
Rijeka, for fucks sake!
A tie, right?
Yeah. Listen, I just wanted to thank
you for Kazahstan last Wednesday. I
had a blast. Youre a true host, without doubt!
Its alright, man, its the least I could
do. Did you say youre in Rijeka?
Yea.
How many of you?
I dont know. A shitload! Why?
Great! Listen, said Dean like he had
something real important to say.
I realized how important it was, and
I didnt want to improvise. So I interrupted him, strategically. Hey,
Deany, why dont you call me! Im
outta credit.
Okay. Ill give you a buzz right
back.
What a stupid fuck!
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Whales Ass
Maja Hrgovi
MAJA HRGOVI was born in Split in 1980. She studied theatrology and
women studies. Since 2003 she has worked as a journalist in the culture
section of the Novi List Daily, and from 2005 to 2008 she was a member
of the editorial board at Zarez, a Journal of Cultural and Social Aairs,
where she publishes literary reviews. In 2009 she was awarded rst prize
for journalistic excellence organized by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN). Her work has also been published in magazines and
news portals such as Nulaetvorka, Cunterview, Kulturpunkt, Op.a, Grazia,
and Libela. She regularly writes for the portal ZaMirZINE, concentrating on
women rights and their treatment in the media. Her rst collection of short
stories Pobjeuje onaj kojem je manje stalo was published in 2010.
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wanted to pay the full price immediately, but he told me that the money
was in Pilas apron, and neither he nor
I wanted to wake Pila up.
My job was done and, as far as that
was concerned, I could leave. But
I didnt feel like it. Both the old
man and I were pretty drunk by
that point; for the last hour he was
mostly nodding off and on, occasionally mumbling something important that wasnt meant for me.
Obviously he thought he was talking
to Pila. I left him sleep in peace and
went to the next room. It was a bedroom dominated by a huge wooden
wardrobe with a large mirror and two
old-fashioned beds, loaded like river
barges ready to set sail. On the first
bed there were large down pillows,
quilts and blankets, piled up almost
to the ceiling. I wasnt particularly
interested in that one. I approached
the bed with the clothes on it. I took
my time, choose slowly, first a dark
blue skirt sprinkled with barely visible stars, then a black blouse with
red flowers, a dark red vest and a
green headscarf woven with threads
of gold and silver. Nana was tall and
the clothes fitted me perfectly, and
the colors were arranged in such a
way that I literally glowed. Then I
realized I needed to take a piss. I ran
out of the house, picked up the front
part of the skirt and with manly mercilessness watered the dusty dirt below me. I barely managed to shake it
off, when some woman greeted me
from the road: God bless you, nana!
You feel any better?
God bless you, my child! You can
see it yourself, never better! I replied
in a voice that wasnt mine and that
had to be Pilas. Then I went back
to the house, covered the deceased,
and then found the right music on
the radio. A moment later I moved
magically through the small kitchen and teased the sleeping old man
every time I passed by him. It didnt
take long and the old man woke up,
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elentanos Bestiary
Zoran Malko
tang was mounted, everything running, powerful, its wheels in the air.
elentano waved his bottle of whiskey at me from above.
Wanna go for a ride? he yelled.
Id rather not. This thing with orka was just enough.
Nothing beats driving and chatting
with orka, huh? Money cant buy
that. Ill tell you once why the grim
face keeps silent, but now we have
better things to do. Lets go see our
teddy. Got your swimming shorts?
No? Take mine, he said and threw
them directly at my head. A moment
later he was standing next to me, naked, then he ran into the house and
came back in a blink of an eye, in a
different pair of shorts, then went
back in again, came out again with
a thirty-two pack in his hands and a
third pair of swimming shorts, boxers, gave me the pack, climbed up
to his flying car, took his flip-flops,
which he, however, didnt put on
his feet, but once he came down,
threw back up in the car. That was
elentano. A little man fifty or so
years of age and livelier than the liveliest kid.
There! Lets go! We have a couple
of floats waiting for us in the pond,
so well swim a little, have ourselves
a drink or two, and watch our teddy. He has full six more hours to go
before the end of his shift. Hes been
working since noon, which means
hes here until eight. Did you know
hes a philosopher? Has a degree in
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172
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174
EXCLUSIVE:
Photo by: Martina Kenji
Croatian Emigrant
Lynched by an Angry Mob
of U.S. Nationalis
Marin Dukich (64), a successful businessman of Croatian descent, became an
unfortunate victim of U.S. nationalists rampage provoked by 9/11 terrorist attacks
Mario Kova
revolted people, shocked by the terrorist attacks on WTC and the Pentagon, attacked many Muslim objects
including mosques, restaurants, shelters and humanitarian organization.
It is assumed that it was the name of
Dukichs boat that led the attackers to
think the boats owner was a Muslim.
Dukichs boat, which he often took
to the Atlantic when he went fishing,
was named Osama, which means soli-
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protested with the American government. American authorities apologized to our government and committed to finding the perpetrators of this
heinous crime. Also, they expressed
hope that this unfortunate death will
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re you aware that you are breathing? This really insignificant action, our life depends on, we all perform completely automatically and
most often we are not aware of it.
Sometimes it crosses our mind and
we start thinking about it and then
we cannot stop thinking about it.
Then we hold our breaths as long as
we can, or we try to take deep breaths,
inhale our lungs completely, and not
choppily and nervously as we usually breathe. Only when we become
aware of the permanence of this action we dedicate it attention it deserves but even then something important crosses our mind and diverts
our thoughts from breathing.
And now try not to think about
breathing. You cant do it, right? Just
as it often happens in life, when we
try not to think about something,
then we think about it the most. And
now even if you give it your best,
you will not be able to stop thinking
about that sweet, sweet air we keep
inhaling and exhaling every moment
of our lives trying to satisfy our atavistic hunger.
And are you aware that you are blinking? Are you aware of that action you
repeat several dozen thousands times
a day? Thats also not something people often think about, yet it is always
there. Only when someone draws
your attention to blinking (or you
remember it by accident, while passing), you begin to feel your eyelids
and you try to analyze this automat-
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Desert
Dinko Telean
1.
I did not spend forty days in the
desert but only fourteen and only
on the verge of it. I did not fast and
neither did the devil, as it seems,
tempt me.
I traveled through Rajasthan and
stopped in a small town in the middle of a large plain with only one hill,
surrounded by, one might say, nothingness. In the desert, at that time of
year the emptiness is speckled only by
sparse, dry bushes. During the monsoon this area grows thick, low greenery for a short time. But I got there
in March, when the sand dominates
the landscape. My inn happened to
be on the border between the town
and the desert, the name and the
namelessness, the present and infinity. If at all, it is possible to speak of
the desert only in the present tense. It
awakens the deeply buried memories
of the times when all things were not
reminiscent of each other.
In the morning, as early as possible,
I step onto the soft sand, still not
scorching, but comfortably warm between my toes. Countless snake trails
everywhere; they move about before
dawn, as if somebody had thrown
down a huge bundle of rope during
the night and then lifted it from the
ground. An occasional snowy white
bone, a camel blended into the landscape in its slow, placid, steady gait,
perhaps a piece of garbage halfway
drowned in the sand where people
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since the war in the former Yugoslavia began and people leaned over
the ethnical and political map of the
Balkans, there was a cry all over Europe: This looks like a leopards fur!
What languages are spoken there,
what religions all of those are, what
alliances, whos friends with whom
and whos whose enemy? The brain
quickly gives up. The same brain,
nota bene, that has no problem working through the chaos of last minute
offers on travel agencies counters at
Frankfurt airport. Djerba, Chihuahua, the Maldives, South Yemen, Albuquerque, Aswan, for it the chaos
of colorful brochures with all those
names, terms, and prices is understandable and logical. To the Balkan Peninsula stimulus, the brain
switches to idle: the intellect is tilted,
it automatically shuts down most of
its functions, tongue gets twisted and
offers resistance.
The Balkans is too close. Formally,
it is geographically too near, the tidiness and clarity of major world
world, mind you languages here
stops all too suddenly. Right behind
the Alps people mumble some unintelligible prayers, just outside Graz
ends the world of confectionery jam
brioches and rightful tariff contracts.
After three centuries of permanent
warfare (1618-1945) a Western European yearns for precision, order
and certainty: methodical, horticultural cemeteries of First and Second
World War victims, Allianz Insurance Company; he yearns for NATO
and Euro. Not without reason. With
the Balkans reminder, Western Europe still suffers from the posttraumatic stress disorder. The modern
shadowing out of the Balkans from
ones consciousness is the other side
of the need for uniformity of hospital life, monotonous rhythm of three
meals a day and no honking in residential areas. The Balkans disturbs
the effort of inhibition. And the ones
inhibiting are the children who went
185
dark-haired Gastarbaiters they see future husbands of their blonde daughters and gentle granddaughters, and
in a repressed, mute Albanian neighbor, whom husband forces to cover
her face with rags and who speaks to
no one, a Western European sees a
horrible birth-giving machine: she
has a new baby every year!
Finally, Western Europe cannot emotionally deal with its own rational
project about a continent it dominates. The former self the one from
the 1950s was brave and it deposited one of its ideal projects in decorative paragraphs of various chapters
on the need of European unification: from the Monnet Plan, treaties
about common market, to different
Schengen agreements. The former
self formulated utopia on limitlessness. But this utopia non-country, non-state, non-homeland is
now here. Its ends cannot be seen.
It ends, undefined, somewhere in
the fertile fields of eastern Poland,
and there, without warning, it spills
into the expanses of Ukraine. A European lives in a country that gets
lost in infinity. On a psychological
level one loses the feeling of balance,
identity is no longer clear: Who am
I? Where do I belong? Do I belong?
To what? A citizen of Europe, European ego, when he travels, he can no
longer see a sign telling him that here
stops Luxemburg and Belgium begins, he cannot reconstruct the place
where identity controls between eastern and southern Tirol used to stand,
he doesnt know whether Trient was
Austrian and until when, that is, he
doesnt know whether Trento was always Italian or did this happen only
a day before yesterday, all European
waiters talk to their tourists about
ice cream and cakes in their own
languages, and where did these waiters come from, this question can no
longer be asked. Until yesterday the
European ego knew who and what
it was, and now it saunters aimlessly
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utopia and the Balkans sways towards it. Unavoidable. Its eyes glow,
because it still has borders, churches,
identities, knows whom it hates and
whom it loves, calls a Black Man a
Black Man, curses the foreigners and
sings with them when it feels like it
yes, the Balkans has it as nice as it
gets, as if in a dream, as if in subconsciousness.
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Poems
Arsen Dedi
ARSEN DEDI was born in ibenik in 1938. In his hometown he graduated high school
and music school. For a while he studied at the Faculty of Law, but his love of music
was stronger so he dropped law studies and turned to the Zagreb Music Academy,
graduating in February 1964. As a autist he played in various ensembles and orchestras and founded the Flute Quartet. He was a member of several music groups such
as Zagrebaki vokalni kvartet, Prima, Melos et al. His primary orientation has always
been music, but by uniting musical and poetic inclinations he naturally achieved
a distinctive singer-songwriter expression, his most remarkable characteristic. His
verses have been published in Polet, Prisutnosti, Knjievne novine, Knjievnik, and
awarded many prestigious prizes. His rst book Brod u boci was published in
1971 and sold in more than 60,000 copies. Zabranjena knjiga is his seventeenth
book of poetry while some of his other books include Zamiljeno pristanite (with
Mara Skureni), Narodne pjesme, Poesia e canto, La snge (Naples), Zagreb i ja
se volimo tajno, Hotel Balkan, Pjesnikov brati, 101 pjesma (Sarajevo), Pjesnik ope
prakse, Kia Rain (bilingual, Croatian-English edition), Slatka smrt, Stihovi, agalj,
Hladni rat, Zabranjena knjiga, Padova, Brzim preko Bosne (Sarajevo). He published
two illustrated collections of poetry: Treboti i Vejzovi.
Mozart Year
The last hour strikes from dead towers and spires,
Soldier on soldier, brother on brother fires?
Around the house, to ward the latch,
The Rembrandt Night Watch
Oh, na, na, na, everlasting music,
Above the baldaquin here,
The Mozart year,
The Mozart year.
All the force the fire and gas, whither?
Civilian strike civilian, the son the father?
On my damp bed, I run the course
With Drers Rider and Pale Horse.
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Back Home
Back home is only open in July and August.
Back home is as big as I want.
Back home cannot sentence me to several years of affection
suspended.
The sun of foreign skies has given some excellent results.
Back home is naive.
Almost anybody can sneak his way in.
Back home has poor musical taste.
Back home is ruled by the worst of lyricists.
Back home has the floor space of a second house.
Love for back home is unrequited.
Back home on the road.
Use back home against back home.
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***
All the things I have learned while being ill.
First of all:
the illness itself.
What else have I learned while being ill?
It is easier being ill
in ones own language and on ones own turf.
Illness makes you lonesome.
Relatives lie.
Friends run out of new sentences.
Illness beats skiing.
Illness deserves credit
for many a glorious death.
Ive learned to read and write things
I would have never learned in good health.
It is easier to hearten someone
than to lie ill.
Those who have been seriously ill
possess deeper knowledge.
Illness should be left to the young.
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190
***
Sealess landscapes
with no one really to call their own.
They steer their fate
according to the wind alone.
Sealess landscapes
cannot see
because they are blindfolded
with a black strap.
Their inhabitants
are prisoners.
They eat prison bread.
Their inhabitants
are convicts
but somewhere there is a crack
and the heavenly light
that children are so afraid of
is already seeping in
and everything is unfolding
like a long lost book.
While the sea is beating
against the doors and the windows
so hard it seems
everything is going to
break open
at once.
Translated by Damir odan
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Poems
Vesna Parun
VESNA PARUN (Zlarin, April 10, 1922 Stubike Toplice, October 25, 2010) is the author
of over eighty books of poetry, prose, drama, essays, and epigrams. After schooling
in Zlarin, ibenik and Split, she studied Romance languages and philosophy at the
University of Zagreb. A freelance artist since 1947, she wrote poetry, essays, critics
and literature for children. She translated works from Slovene, German, French and
Bulgarian. Her rst book of poetry Zore i vihori (1947) received negative reviews from
social-realist critics, but it nevertheless demonstrated the fundamental properties of her
poetry vividness and harmony of poetic expression. Starting with the collection Crna
maslina (1955) she focuses on love as the primary motif of her written opus. Incessantly
working on romantic lyrical poetry, ever since the 1960s she published satiric verses
directed at the politics and eroticism. She wrote more than twenty works for children
alone, the most prominent and widely performed being Maak Dingiskan i Miki Trasi.
She also wrote a number of works for theatre, the most signicant of which is the ballad
Mara i mornar. Her work was published in many collected editions, and her poetry and
books for children appeared in a number of editions and re-editions.
Works published (selection): Zore i vihori (1947); Crna maslina (1955); Vidrama vjerna
(1957); Ropstvo (1957); Koralj vraen moru (1959); Vjetar Trake (1964); Sto soneta
(1972); Stid me je umreti (1974); Apokaliptine basne (1976); Pod mukim kiobranom
(1987); Ukleti dad (1989); Zaarana arobnica (1993); Smeh od smrti jai (1997);
Depni kurcomlati (2000); No za pakost (2001); Taj divni divlji kapitalizam (2009),
her last self-published book written in a health facility where she, due to her advancing
illness, spent many years writing from her bed.
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Call
Knowledge of Dependency
Night and day
of your body.
Day and night
from your lips.
But you
Are never here
For you are
A silent gleam.
Night and falls
of your voice.
Breath and dream
from your palm
are only
a gentle guide
to melancholies.
Native ground.
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Goodness and I
Why are you so bashful, goodness?
This world is yours.
Its crystal eye affrights you,
angelic choirs.
Goodness, why so muddled thus
as if before a judge?
Wipe your tears, I know, it is not easy
with a winding cloth.
A hundred times I wished to part from you.
But made you my slave.
And only onto you
can I bend my will
when bread and salt
offers me my enemy.
Proscription of Music
That was in the days of youth
when wonders music made with spirit.
Now a hut for me, a shelter from reproof,
of these wonders still I build in secret.
So one night in tempests rage,
mountains grated, horns gave acclamation.
Lightning sang, fingers in their coffin cage
gave out the bars from their desiccation.
Everything was music, in water and in air,
And then fell silent they for aye
the voice, the sound, the wind.
In this stillness in me in a line
with nightly quiet prayer of mine
called the wandering mind.
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194
Mother of Man
You had better have borne black winter, mother of mine, than me.
Have borne a bear in its den, a snake in the pit.
Have kissed the stone than this face of mine,
a beast had nursed me with its dug than woman.
If you had delivered a bird, mother of mine, you had been a mother.
Would have been happy, with a wing have warmed the bird.
Had you delivered a tree, the tree would have come to life in spring,
the linden have flowered, the rush greened from your song.
The lamb have rested at your feet were you mother to a lamb.
If you lisped and wept, the darling calf have understood you.
As it is you merely stand and share alone your pain with graves;
its bitter to be man, when the knife makes brother to the man.
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White Nocturne
Tonight, while across my breasts
white thoughts trod, through the evergreen,
into the room heavy with quince and smoke
the north piled up, the wild stag
with its horns tearing apart the last
thread of redness, the fence of golden sticks.
White leaves left upon the platter
of emptiness, ancient, like holy fish.
And the winged mill turns in the wind
of an earth once blessed, in early
loneliness of this sudden hunger.
Come, winter. Well catch the sturgeon
spectral on the sleepless river
you and I, when snow falls on the soul.
Maidenhood
That clatter, that smoke that comes the closer,
will enter your garden, open wide the snoozing door.
Alone in the house you are. What shall you tell him girl
that unknown man who wishes to die
upon your naked arms, what shall you tell him?
Alone you are in the empty abandoned house
that the ferns embrace. The sky from your window
is equally as always mild and distant.
The weary riders go along the roads.
And someone wants to die in your quiet arms
that has never sent anyone to sleep at midnights.
Someone wants tonight to clip, dying,
your slender waist and untouched hair.
Look at the road, look down water, down the broad evening:
someone called you stealthy from the shore.
Drop your braids adown your shoulders. Run
with heart unveiled; dont fear, what for do you tremble.
Run, run. Do not ask who is groaning
or who in the dark follows your steps.
195
196
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197
198
Poems
Ivan Slamnig
Works published: Aleja posle sveanosti, 1956; Odron, 1956; Nepratelj, 1959;
Naronska siesta, 1963; Povratnik s mjeseca, 1964; Monograja, selected poems,
1965; Disciplina mate, 1965; Limb, 1968; Analecta, 1971; Bolja polovica hrabrosti,
1972; Pjesme, 1973; Svjetska knjievnost zapadnog kruga, 1973, second, extended
edition, 1999; Hrvatska versikaca, a study, 1981; Dronta, 1981; Izabrana djela,
PSHK, knj. 167, 1983; Sedam pristupa pjesmi, essays, 1986; Firentinski capriccio,
1987; Sed Scholae, 1987; Relativno naopako, 1987, 1998; Tajna, 1988; Sabrane
pjesme, 1990; Sabrana kratka proza, 1992; Stih i prevod, 1997; Barbara i tutti
quanti, selected works, 1999; Ranjeni tenk, 2000.
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Earth I.
Seattle
I cannot sell something I do not possess
I cannot sell the land, to which I, too, belong.
said Seattle, Suqamisha the wise chief, to the pale face.
I cannot sell the land, on which the bison roam.
The earth is my mother, I know this all too well.
How could he have known the earth is his mother.
She told him so, for the earth knows how to speak,
the earth does speak, that I know, for I have heard her clearly.
White Sand
White sand, who wants my
white, white sand
What is that?
There was plenty of sand all over the place
When old Kuku trucked it around town.
He had barely settled in his grave
when white sand became an import craze
There is no more white sand now available,
if it isnt brought in from the Seychelles
By Leyla.
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200
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Poems
Boris Maruna
BORIS MARUNA was born in Podprag (Jasenice) on the southern side of Mt. Velebit
in 1940. He went to school in Obrovac, Zaprei and Zagreb, where he graduated
from high school. At the age of 20 with two brothers he headed westwards, and he
spent the next 30 years in Italy, Argentina, England, the U.S. and Spain, returning to
Croatia in 1990. He earned a BA and an MA from Loyola University in Los Angeles, he
completed Spanish studies at the University of Barcelona and earned a degree from
an American computer school and so, apart from his literary, journalist and political work, he spent most of his working days around computers. Having returned to
Croatia in 1990 he became the Head of the Croatian Heritage Foundation and editor
at Matica hrvatska (Venac, Hrvatska reva). For four years he served as Croatian
ambassador to Chile, and died in June 2007. Works published: I posle nas ostaje
ljubav, 1964; Govorim na sav glas, 1972; Ogranienja, 1986; Prvi ovjek/Le premier
homme (with Z. Keser), 1991; Ovako, 1992; Otmiari ispunjena sna, 1995; Bilo je
lake voljeti te iz daljine: povratnike elege, 1996; Upute za pakleni stroj, selected
poems, 1998; Era pi facile amarti da lontano, 2005.
202
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203
204
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Message
For my brother Pero
205
206
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207
208
Poems
Josip Sever
JOSIP SEVER was born on July 8, 1938 in Blinjski Kut near Sisak and he died on January 28, 1989 in Zagreb. He studied Sinology in Being and Slavic studies in Zagreb.
Sever translated from Russian (Mayakovsky, Babel, Nabokov) and Chinese, and he
published two collections of poetry: Diktator (1969) and Anarhokor (1977), which
won him the City of Zagreb Award. The second edition of Anarhokor was published
in Quorum Literary Magazine (1986, 4/5), (Lunapark, 2004). He wrote poetry in Russian as well. Josip Sever is considered the cult author of Croatian after-war poetry
and one of the most important Croatian poetic personalities of the second half of
the 20th century. Sever introduced into Croatian literature poetry guided, rst and
foremost, by sound and magical characteristics of words behind whose meaning
should be found on its own. Josip Sever is the last authentic Croatian bohemian, a
par excellence dreamer of the everyday life, and a poet integralist who introduced
some new winds into Croatian literature.
Severs poetic and spiritual heritage is not inhabited only by books of poetry
published during his lifetime, but also verses collected in Borealni konj (1989)
published after his death. The legend of his unconventional, bohemian lifestyle, of
his charisma and unforgettable recitations at the Croatian Writers Society as well
as cafes of Zagreb is still very much alive.
Pornographers Panegyric
saw and was left blind from the flash of light
oh lord a flimsy lath
a structure of plasma, overflight
sky the peacock comets path
ice-free spot in the sight, like trail
of roses, of torches, lovely,
it spills more ripely over
to be a healing grail.
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Monday
The sky has its views upon the world
Pity that the April weather
Has doubled dangerous grass
To cover it with bones
Yet the view in flies
Still extremely green
Will not release the rain
On mild Arcadian breasts
And a hundred years in a tree
Grown to the tip of noon
Takes out the treasure of the fathers
Onto the surface of the sons
And since a day with suchlike sky
Seeks only a masterly description
Outright appears
A great library of stars
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210
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Funeral
deposit my standpoint depart damned
my voice from nerves will be unstable
the weeping when they banged the nails in
was like the black jackdaw
the black was greater than the clubs
and shattered the handful of thunder
cold dark rainfalls rattle
on the naked eyes of chrome.
Music of Sight
Battle
Its not weed smoked here
rather blood is smoked
youre already other
when you wave the sword
when in frame of drama
with no head we watch the sabre
where it climbs
upon our shoulder
our weary eye
at entracte will tire
we kick our paces off
and head out then retire
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I am seized by longing
island rain wash
The wind and he too
the better will see
this whole crushed space.
Oh bravo wind
Oh first awake
winter
speed
souls of people
diluvium
the spark that leaps.
A Scythian mask
steppe hallway.
The horse that fell
Fell badly and
oh raging sorrow
I described heart and lungs
Nails, shores of ages
that rumble
through history.
Trees, the blessing of stalwart
arms.
211
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212
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IVAN ROGI NEHAJEV was born in Senj in 1943. He is a poet and an essayist and has
thus far published eight books of poems: Predgovor, 1969; Odlazak s Patmosa,
1971; Marina kruna, 1971; Luke pjesme za pjevanje i recitiranje i druge nerazumljive
pjesme, 1980; Pjesme o imena enama i drugom, 1985; Osnove uranometre, 1994;
Pabirci i po koja pjesma, 2004; Iz zapisa slobodnog suhozidara, 2009; and three
books of essays: Ogledi i pabirci, 1988; Peti stupanj prenosa, 1992; Smaragdni
brid, 1998. Selection of his work was published in the book Sredozemlje, sedmi
put, 1999. For his poetry, Rogi Nehajev won the Goranov Venac Prize in 2005
and Sv. Kvirin Plaque in 2007. He lives in Zagreb, a when he is not Nehajev, he is
an urban sociologist, explorer and a scholar who has published many books and
studies.
Poems
214
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Tango
leg between legs leg opposite
leg, in the mouth creep the shady roses and tsk
high in the blue high in the black the knees
rotate the heart, the distant dear undresses
thigh between thighs, thigh opposite
thigh, in an arch fall crumpled daffodils
and poppy, hidden in the step shines unconcealed
on the return glows, vital is vital breath
navel over navel navel in the depth
of navel, skin runs with shudders in the run and blaze,
dark is between the legs dark is in midst of the mouth
that seismic lull, no ones dear brightens
breasts against breasts breasts are the trigger
to breasts, bend over sweat a damp evening and nothing,
distant is rounded here close is diffraction of the eye
that black oval, festive is the festive glow
cheek is one against another cheek is one
by another, along the palate burns the tight tectonic breath,
on the slow rhythm of the flank on the salt flicker of sweat
the body flickers, in the whirl the couple is collected....
215
216
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took your hand away from the tool and crumpled it into a scoop
of asian sympathy; how come you are not a pool
of the free but smuggle the extras from
utopian waste; how come you resist being
heritage of the victor in the war for conscience and shame?
vanish at once, scat,
I need a different continuation
that with more of the living,
if there are survivors
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Izabella
she opened up like a vault in a swiss bank; to the unknown
bearer of the code, but the dial was hidden
somewhere distant in the lymph, and every number of the code in another
place below the skin, you have to seek thoroughly, in laughter she said,
in all the provinces of body, and there are lots of false signs
on the way; and I let the hungry fingers in carnal thievery go:
first they foisted on me, right below the titties, Moorish gold and flying
Aztec gods made of electronic tubes, they tended
upwards and spoke unclearly and from time to time slurped
with empty mouth, probably thirsty for tar and vinegar; then, when I came
close to the navel, centaurs and cowboys pursued me, apparently in mistake, because of
disturbance during an attack on a smugglers train from Bohemia (three
bullet holes on my cap tell I do not lie;) finally,
from deep underground, when I was close to the hips, called up vampires of pure
light that began to pump out my body, like an oil well
in the
Pacific, and pour me into tanks of camouflaged time
ships (for Utopia and Siberia), but, gentle spectres, that is
a misunderstanding, I said, and through the diluvial greenery and ferns
I sprinted to the southern horizon where there already shone, uncautiously
uncovered, the waterslide of the world between her legs and the shaggy black
dandelion below the navel twisted space storms and crystal knots,
I am close, Izabella, I am already touching your secret cache of arms
at the bottom of the galactic bay, and now with lustful truncheon I strike the code from
the hinges of the hips, and now other words control us, turn round
Izabella, the unknown bearer is on the threshold, turn round gently.
217
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Lili
contrarily she said: I hate you meant I am crazy
about you, I am yours I am just coming from an unknown third,
Im liking it get off my back, but the true logical
feast flourished only in negative statements: I did not know that
I do not know that your dont know, or, I dont say the two of us
will never ever, and with this from the corner of her eye she spited fatally and cheerily
like a servant; she wore black silk gloves to the elbows, summer
and winter, and a necklace of walrus teeth, and a man could not
just anyhow treat himself to the world and a man cannot
but you are anyway unreliable, waving wanderer, just anyhow;
and crossed one leg over the other, down her thigh and knee sailed
the light, and with raised figure (like Mussolini) dont you see
man, here I am, she asked; paths of hands along her tender skin
condottieri like were paths through hot misty must and raw petroleum,
the rubies flamed out in turquoise, the veins poured ethyl and sliver, and so
let us at least outplay all the perversities of midnight in the perversities of love
petty break-ins to the bodys vaults took away but small change, snow
slowly, slowly, still she sought; and would thaw, then, in the
scents of hips snakes and dog suet below from the Atlantic
ships, lady general of love, hey, somewhere in the hotel I lost
my robe and hairpins, here I am again, she waved, man.
chip
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Ballade
of the Unutterabley
Gordana Beni
GORDANA BENI was born in Split in 1950. She graduated from Zadars Faculty of
Philosophy with a degree in Croatian literature and philosophy, completing her
postgraduate studies in literature in Zagreb. She lives and works in Split. In 2000 she
received the Vicko Andri Conservation Award for her articles on national historical
monuments published in Forum, the weekly cultural supplement of the Slobodna
Dalmaca daily. In 2004 her articles on the subject of Diocletians Palace in Split
were published in the book Godina Snge. She is a member of the Croatian Writers
Association and the Croatian PEN. Published works: Soba, 1982; Kovai sjene, 1987;
Trag Morie, 1992; Dubina, 1994; Laterna Magica, Croatian Writers Association Tin
Ujevi Award, 1998; Balada o neizrecivom, 2003; selected poems Unutarnje more,
2006; Svet bez predmeta 2007; Banalis Gloria, 2010.
I
The ghosts have come to visit us.
We heard them saying: Alice is flying.
She lived long in the looking glass, stars in her hair.
It was cold, the sun could be heard crackling at its edges.
In three minutes, how long it took the world to end, the righteous souls ascended into heaven.
Time turned into a vast mirror.
Some vanished into it without trace.
Andrea and Nika fell asleep into themselves.
Andrea in October, Nika in December.
They have the souls of angels.
They were not fated to exist.
In the afternoon God would leave Ana, then it was time for
Me; I was in a museum of cyber space, I saw the best dream about
flying.
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II
When I visited the house of my forebears, Jonah watched
the grass growing upside down, below the earth.
White clouds dispersed within the courtyard.
Women spread out wet frocks,
as if some sense were hidden there.
The melancholic sea of moonlight swamped the streets.
Some time Ill tell you of it.
Everything I find I keep. Especially what the sea has washed up.
The sea cast up a shoe.
Part of something that no longer is, has gone.
In the sky, high in the blue,
sponges absorb our cosmic dreams
as if they were common water from the lake.
In summer they announced a new time. Jonah saw a sun apocalyptic. A vast black object
in the sky recalled an atomic explosion.
He wandered round the city.
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221
222
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III
Its a strange story.
From the compartment of the slow motion train, between violet curtains still warm from
sun, Asta saw trucks win no drivers plying the streets of the city.
By the misted pools of cold, the sparrows congregated.
Behind a fruit kiosk, the shadows turned into racing dogs,
accelerated cyclists.
She noticed a woman with a Perspex doll dancing like a bat in the glaring light.
And a steel tower of the crane on the freight ramp.
In a weird transformation of reality the antelope guiding its own universe.
The ground could hardly stop from exploding
beneath her heels.
Together with her breath
the lightning changed positions.
Her soul a cage filled with dust and stars.
Now wearied with keeping quiet
she arranged cherries in a green glass pot.
She pulled the pink tablecloth down across the table edge.
When the sun set behind the large grey wall, she turned into a
transparent green cloud.
The last moisture evaporated from the floor and wood door. On the terrace, other end,
a starry haze settled over the benches.
A new technique of mapping the universe
has shown how burned out stars became white dwarfs.
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IV
While they announced the coming of the Leonids, hundreds of lumens scattered
beneath the cosmic tree.
Magnetic splinters struck the edges of the garden fences.
The fireworks of stars went out on the green squares.
Meteors melted in drops,
beneath leaves of lettuce and kale.
The shower of the Perseids pelted.
Gulls flew into rooms,
and fought with people for the good.
In the sky they say, trickles the soundless rain.
They didnt even notice, and the end of the world was already here.
The universe baked them.
At the suns zenith copper started to combust. Blue flax flowers became shining sparks
in the comets tail.
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Knew that on the shores of the dark seas little wizards stayed: Ana, Andrea and Sonia.
Hear that the bards upon the clouds
sang their phantom lullabies.
Nostalgic serpentine epiphanies
and celestial marches,
while taking ocean off into the depth of the universe.
Aaron Computer henceforth creates new circles of the world:
Gardens in gold foil,
greenhouses stocked full of harmless pictures,
rural lanes coloured in garish tones.
On the sea coast imitate the sound of birds.
Gulls emerge from out the shadows of ships.
Alight on walls of houses,
Flutter in the hollowness of yards.
When the sea retreated to the cosmic depth no one knew what happened with unknown
species of insects.
In such a place the sky can even evaporate.
Vanish in the astral atmosphere.
Larry at last became a fish.
June rains glinted like electric fields over the lagoons.
While they circle, lover over the water,
crows peck at the clouds.
V
Although no one yet has seen it,
a new Pompeii grew around the corner.
Magic towers, darkened road with dogs the lava froze, petrified slaves on stairs of houses.
Ghost musicians, halted in the circle of light
below the arches of the house of Elf.
In the middle of a marble pool
a bronze statue of a fawn
spattered with particles of neon.
Aulo and Conviva were merchants fond of rhymes, small cupids and Pompeian red.
When the lava and the sulphur peeled off the frescoes of Daedalus, wiped the altar of the
lares, the shadow of cooled ash covered them.
By the ancient villa, where still stand the aquarium and luxury garden, the mice appeared.
Tiny monsters graze before the house of the Painter.
Gnaw the bushes in the lap of Ivy
Appear beneath the legs of Harmony,
between the plants buried in the lava.
Rumours speak of swarms of snails and sparrows.
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Poems
Tahir Mujii
TAHIR MUJII (Zagreb, 1947) is a playwright, poet, screenwriter, director, stage and
costume designer, puppeteer, theatre and lm worker. He graduated in comparative literature and Slavic studies from the University of Zagreb. Mujii worked as a
manager, journalist, editor and editor in chief at Vjesnik Publishing. He served as
the director of Egmont-Croatia. As Zagreb Films arts editor he revived the production
of Professor Baltazar cartoon series. Since the early 1970s he works in theatre as a
dramatist, playwright, stage and costume designer and a director. From 1971 to 1984
as a member of the Mujii&Senker&krabe Trio he takes part in the production
and staging of sixteen theatre plays. The most successful of these was the musical
OKaj, which saw more that three hundred performances in Croatia and Europe. His
plays were published in several volumes.
Mujii publishes poetry since 1994. In eight printed volumes, following the poetics
of Ivan Slamnig and European ludic tradition, he created an opus of rich expression
and topics. This is a kind of poetic cabaret in which, with his playful, innovative
expression, not shying away from aggressive language plays, willing to try dierent
forms (sonnet, ballad, limerick, free forms), Mujii covers a wide range of motifs
from love-confessional to historical-national always from an ironic position and
with great amount of humor.
Works published: Kokot u vinu, 1994; Irski Iranec i iranski Irec: svehrvatska pjesmarica, 2000; Koko in the rye iliti jednom tjedno: stoedna dalmatinka cca pedestpostotna i pjesmozbir ovjeka koji ne znao drati re, 2000; Zvonjelice fuer Cvite:
sonetna kapunjera, 2004; Primopredaja ili Divljim tahiristanom, pjesme, 2004;
Vlaka 99, 2009; Luna Lusitana, 2010.
We Dream
end october early evenings in porto are as if to the scale of us future old men
are agreeably soft as if lined with flock or how else do we put it with cotton wool
they are pleasant and accommodatingly warm and on every good eve of yours in early evening
reply with good evening man to you and shyly smile at that
for to them the evening is never good or eve good they actually die with them
they sigh like the saucy dandelion with which the children run down the windy wasteland slopes
early evenings in porto are syrupy aromatically exciting like port wine
a little it is true weary of the kindliness that they have bestowed on us so copiously
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they do not hide their lust to charm and then entice us in november
they carry out that task like a soldier or a waiter, professionally and honourably
are there for your pleasure and mine and faith in the ardour of hope and of kitschy tourism too
but still these early evenings love you and hold you privately and officially and even sincerely
o man, you too love these autumn early evenings in Porto but still disloyally exchange them
sometimes with spring mornings full of passionate embraces in coimbra
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I am Joao Braga
and rule in Lisbon
then he sings
and only
the end of the song end of that collective trance
is the end
of the act of love
conducted between us lusting
listeners
and his libido-raising song
I rule in Lisbon
says Joao Braga
which is to say the Portuguese Pavarotti
at that some jerk from Sweden
Guinea or from Arkansas
across the plate with ungnawed
salted cod spits out aloud
you are Poveretti
and Joao Braga
who rules in Lisbon
full of self-confidence and strength
authority acquired in drunken diners
contemns
with a single glance the vapid interjection
of some idiot from Arkansas
or Guinea or from Sweden
and the jerk goes out mortified
alone in the night nowhere
or there into the dark whence he came
and thence come on the whole all like him
all who have their hearts on leasing
all who have rented a soul
all whose feelings are in stocks and bonds
and then
Joao Braga
who rules in Lisbon
loudly gutturally lets out his
rua de
and the fado pours out mightily
over all the corners and crannies
of the little restaurant
that I love
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and
so I have wiped all the sadness
under each table and
from every corner with the spider
and added to it my own tearful sadness
closed them up in a little tin box
firmly squeezed it in undaunted fist and
fallen asleep
Why Didnt I
why didnt I buy the fish from the old woman Maria Alves Ribeiro de Sousa...
because she has no more than two in her upper and three teeth in her lower jaw...
because the withered skin on her face is ripple-wrinkled...
because her jaw cheekbones temples bags under her eyes are graced
with the odd grey or dark hair lonely like a cactus in the desert...
because her hands are like a branch of a knotted dwarf apple tree and her legs
pillar shaped like the columns to which the quinta de cavadinha is tied in calem
because her dress and smock and headscarf and apron are wet and faded
pallid like the sails of the black haunted ship that never shall return...
because her yell is drawn out and painful like a cat caught in the door
stinking vezze peixeeeee and I hear pejaooooo...
for she stinks of fish for shes salt with the sea rough with the sand bank
prickly with the spider crab
for she believes San Pedro himself will help her
that she no longer stands where she stands
that she does not shout what she shouts
that she does not live what she lives
because shes into her eighties and these are not years in which to trust even fresh
fish...
well, in fact
because this fucking fish of hers cannot be fried in the miniwave of room 999 of hotel
praigolf because theyd chuck out the fish and me and my shabby cheap sentiment
from the ninth floor
but most of all
because on the death notice posted on the pillar it says
the honourable
old woman
maria alves ribeiro de sousa
has been buried
and so I do not wish to buy her fish.
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10 or epilogue
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Delimir Reicki
DELIMIR REICKI was born in Osek in 1960. He earned a degree in Croatian language
and literature from the University of Osek. In the early 1980s he started publishing
poetry, ction, literary criticism, non-ction and essays in all the relevant Croatian
magazines and publications. In the second half of 1980s with the Osek rock band
Roderick he gave several notable performances, he wrote lyrics and was a member
of the rock band Galebovi. His work has been translated into many languages. He
took part in international multimedia CD-projects Matria Europa by Dutch artists
Sluika & Kurpershoeka (Kunst Ruimte, Amsterdam, 1996) and soundtrack.psi by
Ivan Faktor (Osek, 2001). His poetry, ction and essays have been included in some
thirty anthologies, reviews and collections of Croatian contemporary poetry, ction
and essays. His literary work earned him the following awards: the Sedam Sekretara
SKOJ-a Award (1987), the Duhovno Hrae Prize for the best book of the year published by a Slavonian author (in 1997 and 2005), the literary critics Jule Benei
Prize (1998), the Kiklop Award for the best book of poetry (2005) and the Vladimir
Nazor Award (2006). He was the editor of several newspapers and magazines: Ten,
Osjeki tjednik, Heroina Nova and Knjievna reva. He works as the arts editor in the
daily Glas Slavone. He is a member of the editorial board of the yearly Godinjak
published by the Matica hrvatska Beli Manastir branch. He lives in Osek.
Works published: Gnomi, 1985; Tiina, a textual search, 1985; Sretne ulice, 1987; Die
die my darling, 1990; Sagrada familia, 1993; Ogledi o tuzi, essays, 1993; Knjiga o
anelima, 1997; Blinji, 1998; Ezekelova kola, 1999; Sretne ulice/Sagrada familia,
reprinted, 2000; Aritma, 2005; Ubonica za utvare, 2007.
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Happy Streets
To Roderick
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Joint of Moonlight
the one that falls first asleep
will sleep in frozen milk
your whole remaining life.
to voyage
blowing from the lips in sleep
long, alone, breath after breath
into a sail stretched in endless mud
while we are eating flowering oleanders.
I fell asleep in the bus
head leaning on the window
much before your birthing, child
what was written came to pass
close your eyes too, open up the window
the sleepwalker will timidly set foot
on your lashes, wakefully, you
listen to him going round the whole night
his caved-in grave and telling you
I am your lonesome fragment
you my lonesome god
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Scherzo
it falls, falls the first, falls
the last snow. cicciolina
has undressed and left us
her only, her white dress
falling, dying with us
quietly, inaudibly.
that you very clearly see and precisely determine
the distance from that which
does not feel your look and your closeness
is the essence of every refined murder
it taught us taught us, the silvery flashing in
the evening sky.
yet sky is a jihad
angel lets go into the world
in streamers, chains and bells
your lips have fallen asleep
the toppled minaret
our arms are haunted sledges
that fly in iron algae and sopiles
whose mouths are deep like
highland springs, hidden.
every place on which you step
was once or once will be
a bus stop, and you a city
that lights in the buried silk.
angel, kiss the ash
before you take the matches and boldly set out
into my ampoules, angel,
be my white
be my pure, cost-free phenylethylamine
angel find me and
make me fall asleep
sit by the phone
at least a single night
and when from the red hot crystals
the snow calls me again
lift up the reciever and say
say at least one dont.
say instead of me.
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Paranoia
Paranoia is the mother of fancy.
Paranoia is the motherland of all good art.
Shells are paranoia of the sea
multiplied in many places
for every idiot to recognise it
in his own display case
My head is full of shells
Those that I open in the day
close up again in sleep
and in vain Penelope
mother of all sponges and nymph of all constellations
washes her blood
from the robes of dead suitors
just as night in vain washes the lantern ray
from sooty windows in distant villages
I like paranoia
that in the morning I recognise in my eyes
while the razor in the corner of the mirror
slowly approaches the eye
of accidental angel
playing with but a single grain of sand
and a single grain of salt
in a second I walk clean across just every
just the whole desert
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Poems
Dorta Jagi
DORTA JAGI was born in Sinj, Croatia in 1974. She graduated from the Jesuit Faculty
of Philosophy in Zagreb with a degree in philosophy and religious culture. Awarded
with a number of literary prizes, she writes short stories, theatre criticism, short
lm scripts, and is the author of four books of poetry: Plahta preko glave, 1999;
Tamagochi mi je umro na rukama, 2001; avo i usidjelica, 2003; Kvadratura duge,
2007. She also wrote a play entitled Kalodont, 2003 and a book of stories Kima,
2009. Her work has been widely translated.
Hotel Rooms
sometimes
in some untidied rooms
of the old Babylon Hotel
there are no more plastic mules or cheap pictures,
theyve just evaporated from lack of touch,
and the night lights sunk without a sound through
the carpet into dark
and so nowhere any crusted
human trace on anything at all, curtains
only the dead flies
and stagnant light upon the ceiling
together buzz a low semitone.
two thick ropes lie on the floor
like somnolent, gravid snakes
and answer no one
on the telephone.
in the middle of the room, sitting alone
the so-called strong man with vast biceps.
playing patience, smoking ground
bird plague with a scent of dark cherry.
he claims he has all the bounty of the world
but nowhere does it say that he is god
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neither in his ID
or driving license or in the files.
days at a time he does nothing
only nibbles letters from a bag
instant soup, instead of the television
el nio on his window casts
always new kamikazes
breathes on his gullet, curses in the liver
coughs out in fear
small nails and clips
wipes the dust, the old dust
sings a little dirge
when shall the valet come in
when shall the Good beat
and plunder me and
bind me to the chair
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245
Scorpion Rooms
apart from the smell of mothball
and the atmosphere of polar night
the room of a hardened agoraphobic
has a characteristic
face of a leech and a hard black carapace.
this is the chitin uniform of the scorpion,
in which in the morning it kisses
its victim and closes the door
as if stinging with its tail.
whispers to her dont go anywhere,
do stay home
and makes thick coffee of bile
without tongue and guts
soothing with a purr.
scholarly atheists
would bet in all churches
in a hundred knightly suits of armour
and thunderbolts
that such a venomous room
alone would survive an H bomb
and tramp the empty world
happy, inhabited
with only roaches
from our mental institutions
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Lukewarm Rooms
in lukewarm rooms
a slow danger lurks
one eats soup lukewarm and
drinks lukewarm wine, serves the body
on silver salvers
the skin is so tepid that from it fall
miniature family pictures
lukewarm too the soft cube of day
and doughy the ball of night
tepid the bible on the shelf
and lukewarm the television
days at a time on the bed
sprawl limbs and dead pillows
fray like sorrowful expectants
caught in the bloated belly with the child
locked in the womb for years now
the mad child goes not out to the playground
stays seated on rocking chair not set swaying
in the midst of hungry mamma,
lukewarm soup
in the unopened bowl
all wet and mingled
only its eyes are dry from the universal
dome of skin, the tepid sky
whose grip does not assuage
nor the song of birds outside
nor the eternally green
traffic light
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Antimartini
shall I ever go by train through that Martinez
in California and by chance
tip into my lap a dear antimartini
two parts water and one of ice
certainly with no green olive.
I imagine
when I leave a ticket on the seat, a threatening letter to Ms Death
I shall go to the corridor and live at the window
the other passengers will bet $500 that I have
for years drunk something cheap and poor
at the tables in my transition land
from which a long mans beard has grown.
through the windows of the rapid train
the sun will long pour in my face with a thin twist
of lemon, I shall nibble it
I shall pass by train through this Martinez
fast, sharp, relaxed
like a knife in a gateau
until my tongue splits from happiness
and from my words fried tacks
drop out on this wealthy foreign land.
I would like such a train for years
to rush through warm Martinez
until my impoverished hairnets tear,
terrified dates and deadlines
like pillars of belatedness,
conductor, another antimartini please
may it be hot and long lasting
before getting down to the cold
domestic
station stone.
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Poems
Simo Mraovi
SIMO MRAOVI (Kutina, 1966 Zagreb, 2008) is a poet, ction writer and a columnist.
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Dead Jaguars
In us hatred thrives.
And so we drink each day. And so
we deal in memory
bloody wine
in frosty photographs
enumerations
and quite often feel powerless
in a summer night
in tranquillities of blossom
in the snow cover.
There were still more of us
until the autumn ate us up.
But fancy will kill us and the ever
more often reflection on nice things.
We are distant from the streets we go through
from the voices that we hear
from the all-seeing satellites.
In fact we are mysterious.
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Poems
Ivica Prtenjaa
IVICA PRTENJAA was born in Reka in 1969. He studied Croatian language and literature at the Faculty of Education in Reka. He worked as a water meter reader, gas
bill collector, ice cream deliveryman, storekeeper, construction worker, gallerist, re
extinguisher repairman, clerk, book salesman, marketing manager, spokesperson.
His poems and poetry cycles have been translated into French, Swedish, Lithuanian, Slovenian, Hungarian, Macedonian, English, German, Italian and Bulgarian,
included in several anthologies, collections and reviews of Croatian poetry, and
awarded with many literary prizes.
Works published: Pisanje oslobaa, 1999; Yves, 2001; Nitko ne govori hrvatski/
Personne ne parle croate (with B. egec and M. Mianovi, bilingual Croatian/
French edition), 2002; Dobro je, lepo je, 2006; Uzimaj sve to te smiruje, 2008,
Okrutnost, 2009.
Stroll
The whole afternoon
I run a race with my stroll.
What would my heart want,
what wouldnt it?
The snow collapses in the sun,
the ice floats on the brown river,
around me are many people
who are running, walking,
the winds all in
a dogs fur
a girl throws him a snowball.
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Friday, Radio
With a clear plan in mind I enter
the flat, its afternoon, Friday,
Ill do nothing,
Ill eat something frozen,
I wont watch the television,
Ill switch off phone and cell,
Ill listen to the radio,
and perhaps I will so calm down,
perhaps then my eyes,
will stop turning.
I can tell the brown from blue,
on the grass there are some furrows
in which the leaves fall so hard.
What a vanishing river
is in my chest
I think and that pleases me
no, I wouldnt be able to get into a submarine,
I go on,
I would have a dreadful nightmare, and
my friend would take me to the
All of this while I was taking off my shirt,
crematorium
while I was standing in the hall and
in Podgorica...
trying to run away from
the mirror as if from a meeting,
as if from a bad supper,
while I still believed that I fitted
into almost everything that was normal
and had connections with people.
the radio,
the students played music,
nobody disturbed us
we can only guess at each other,
them there in the studio and
I here in the flat.
Our lives are passing by
beyond all expectations
at a fine distance,
and mist falls into the dark
and no one ever
mentions me.
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Poems
Marko Pogaar
MARKO POGAAR was born in 1984 in Split, studied history and comparative literature
at the Unviersity of Zagreb, and now serves the editor in chief at Ka/Os, a journal of
literature. In 2005, he received the award for the best poetic manuscript by an author
under the age of 35 sponsored by AGM publishing company and Venac, a journal for
culture published by Matica hrvatska. Upon receiving this award he published the
poetry anthology Pavice nad Santa Cruzom. His book of poetry Poslanice obinim
ljudima was published in 2007 and Predmeti in 2009. His poems were translated
into English, German, and Slovene.
Domes
Domes are budding above the city. the halves of dark
perfect, of that quick empty
lodged into the horizon from underneath. yet, at healing
winter nights, it seems that they descend from above, that theyve been,
a consequence of long forgotten circular offences,
hung heavily from somewhere.
they can be sorted in many different ways. those that open up
with the evening in order to embrace the nameless and icy stars,
those that rains paint green, turning them into a floating lawn,
those that are treetops from which a hand had picked the apples,
then empty shells, parachutes, a cover for someones hushed bones.
rains patter makes them rattly. in that membrane a complex
milky music develops, it grows, and expands over the known
space like the roots over the murky underground, the one
that cant be glimpsed. theyre eggs in the citys warm womb. an
unverbalized thought that waits for the moment to lean over, to glide into that
soupy puddle, into existence
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the domes, generally, are waiting. dormant under changeability they dont breathe,
they dont shout, wave at the population. and thats dead expectation,
their ultimate halfness, rejection of anything taking place
the reason for emptiness in the flower-beds of the sky. though prepared every year,
we welcome april with wide arms, those odd bolls are relentless:
above our cities nothing blossoms.
My Tongue Is a Dark
meaty fist,
a wicker basket full of fingernails, a bridge,
I enter it as if it were a new
spring, peoples defense,
in it I bring sheep and crevices,
from it nothing flows,
it does not whirl. my tongue is Mecca,
a meaty fist, macchia
a bush that catches fire on its own.
something, someones penis, rises and burns,
it is spoken, someone stands up,
opens the windows, opens the newspapers, says
hello, such a nice day; my tongue
pollen fever, young Garbos clothes.
the tongue, the homage to the eighties,
fish grill, the wild present and past tense.
in it a boxing match lives & sings me,
the black Cathari retreat in my footsteps,
the tongue, a truck Im transporting. oh,
my Croatian word! you goulash Im just cooking
by chance, you toad, you sting of a bee in
the mouth that makes me do things;
Mexico drips from you, I drop by into you like into
a favorite coffee place, a donation, light & dust,
to you my brother and Moses I say you are mine, a machine
from which a dark espresso flows, a dream
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What Is a Brim?
A brim is a category. an expression of tradition, an edge
that is not to be crossed. its word is never
rebutted: under the brim there is often a head,
a house, a rare and arrogant nothing. the head, if
that of a cow, is pierced with a steel bolt. the cow
is first chained to the damp walls of a barn, and then
struck fiercely. the blood gushing is the blood of
the homeland. the cow had long claimed it its own, with its teeth.
if the head is that of a chicken, it is picked off with an axe.
the chicken is simply taken, transferred somewhere else,
placed on a chopping block and the neck is quickly & coldly
met with a blade. the chicken keeps shouting for a while, but
no one can hear it. a rabbit is slaughtered with literate, bare hands.
the blood stays within the body and flows, with its suspicious
past. the ears, on which it hung from your hand until now are
calm, as if nothing can be heard in the woods, nothing
is happening. fields are quiet. countries are quiet. the homeland
from somewhere drips, and people harvest grapes. the heat
is unbearable. what is a brim and what is there under the brim?
Technique of a Poem
The first Croatian president is slaughtered by oblivion
his junta by a soup that is too hot and the dead waiters
who persist to avoid it; as I walk the city in the opposite
direction of death, as I buy newspapers, buy coffee at
a kiosk, I listen to my belligerent charm, to my soft character
and Haustor, the band; an average Croat is slaughtered by co-existence,
tolerance, with his mouth full of snow wide and light smog eases
down on him and takes him, together with all that fall, its
morning dark, with water that rises up along your neck,
water, material and soft; the church is slaughtered by constant quoting
of Christ, by love, unconditional and long; a pig disappears on its
own, cowers, into a puddle of its own breath, into a fistful of blood flowing
before experience; a poem is slaughtered by Drago tambuk, a mother
as some detailed records describe; nothing remains nothing
that shiny scorched sun.
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Its Nice
Its nice to breathe the spring air on the Soa
and not to be hangover at that.
to soak in the drops from the spring and then flow in them.
its nice to feel well. to have strength
for any form of faith that does not hurt someone else,
so, not to have.
also its nice to live in Bosutska Street
and believe that it exists.
every morning to enter the store and buy bread, to eat it
over the newspapers you found in the mail.
its nice when the mail finds you and when you can find the mail.
finding, in general, is nice.
to find a familiar face when youre passing by a football stadium
or a lousy university. a sneer is nice.
its nice to find a full stop.
a butter knife you lost a long time ago and now it is silky.
a battalion of parade angels lowers their iron ears
and thats borderline terrifying. everything is borderline terrifying,
and thats also nice.
to remove a chewing gum from a light shoes sole, the evil that
disturbs your balance and explains gravity to you.
Newton is nice. Brodsky is nice.
barricades are the heart of art and thats incorruptible.
when a perfect punk is playing when Anna Karina is seen when
the moon eclipses when the flags are raised when
the dead sea is split. to go for a walk is nice. to drown.
whats nice to me is dangerous to others.
to breathe with difficulty because the air is saturated with pines. to speak Croatian.
to skate. the opposite is also true.
the windows that you can open and through them
touch the clouds are nice. Mt. Mosor is nice.
its nice to walk, to climb and believe in the peak, to know
what year the war ended when the liberation day is to honor
womens day mothers day to love lilies,
to take your clothes off. to fall. to be sure youre falling and then snap awake.
to wake up. to cut. to fire unnecessarily long salvos of your name,
to be systematically tragic.
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Over an Object
Are you enlightened? something unreal
is squatting in your form. from there the plants take out
their mediation: its worth to dig in there,
lie down as if in a dark puddle and say strawberries,
strawberries are, that deep pit-like,
that smooth in which Im squatting.
and what all can you do with a strawberry? is it
possible to step over it? I say comrades,
strawberry can make you a name. objects,
nameless in themselves, endure them quite nicely:
scented objects in a summer afternoon, in a park,
on the Flower Square the whole vegetable garden came out
for a walk and now it whispers my love is horrible,
all that devilish stiffness. besides, have you ever
seen the devil? I saw a strawberry. I saw its
titties. in a telephone conversation once she told me:
fuck you, a warm southern scent grows in me, the dinner
is on the table; someones taking the light out of the room and its getting dark,
you havent seen anything, you know nothing yet: the one who swims
has a name; a fish, says she, a fish, and starts bleeding from her eyes,
as if its eating chestnuts.
Translated by
Tomislav Kuzmanovi
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Poems
Predrag Luci
PREDRAG LUCI was born in 1964 in Split, where he still resides. He was one of
the founders and creators of Feral Tribune, the newspaper of Croatian anarchists,
protestants and heretics. He was also the founder and editor of the Feral Tribune
publishing house. Since 2009 he has been writing a daily column entitled Traka
for the Reka-based daily Novi List.
Publications: Greatest Shits Antologa suvremene hrvatske gluposti (co-authored
with Boris Deulovi, 1998), songbook Haiku haiku jebem ti maiku (2003.), a volume of poetry Ljubavnici iz Verone (2007.) and most recently handbooks Sun Tzu
na prozoriu (2009.) and Bezgaa povesne zbiljnosti (2010.), compiled from his
own writings and those of other authors, designed to stupefy the public. Since
2007, he has featured along with Boris Deulovi in the poetic cabaret Melode
Bljeska i Oluje.
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As nestless as I am
Im trying to figure out what Frans Lanting
Tim Laman
Quinton and Nigge
And all those folks
Who take pictures of birds in flight
For National Geographic
Might do in a moment like this?
And how much salt they carry with them
To sprinkle on the birds tails?
Hamletting
This summer Hamlets are ripe and many
All across our states
Who both
Do and do not exist
As their to-bes
And not-to-bes resound
All over the place
But wherever you place the mousetrap
Either at the Ottoman court
Or at his summer Brozidence
This state of us being
Between being and not being
Can never be
Brought to an end
Because
Fortinbras never sets foot in here
Only a merchant once in a while selling pepper,
Vinegar, bandoliers and powdered fear
Or a rain-catching bottles manufacturer
The maker of iinje kiinje
But Fortinbras never
Perhaps a forensic expert here and there
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Poems
Ana Brnardi
ANA BRNARDI was born in Zagreb in 1980. She has graduated in Comparative
Literature and Croatian Language and Literature at the University of Zagreb. She is
currently studying violin at Music Academy in Zagreb. She has published three books of poetry that received several prestigious Croatian awards for poetry: Pisaljka
nekog mudraca (The Pen of a Sage, 1998), Valcer zma (The Snake Waltz, 2005) and
Postanak ptica (The Creation of Birds, 2009). A collection of poems from all three
books was translated into Romanian language and published in Romania under
a title Hotel cu muzicieni (2009). She is a member of Croatian Writers Society and
president-in-charge deputy in NOMAD association for the promotion of culture &
arts. She is working as an editor in a publishing house in Zagreb.
Airport
Up in the air the skys printed pages are being thumbed through
Down on the ground the customs officer is asking for a fingerprint
A seal of the family tree
On the paper for a tourist visa
A yellow Balkan moon is glowing on my face
I forgot to turn it off above the ocean
The family next to me has more experience
Theyre keeping the sorrowful pentatonic scale up their sleeve
Showering the official with large quantities
Of Californian smile
Behind the barricade smiling old people
With cotton-candy haircuts
Are holding out their hands toward me and taking me to heaven
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Paradise
I sit in a hall C17 waiting for my plane.
I watch a young Sissy Spacek
in mens shoes and white socks.
In the distance a bunch of skyscrapers
grow from a tuber.
Gray locks of clouds behind the glass wall.
There are no people outside this building.
Only hinds that rush under a local
plane for Dayton.
Translated by Nada Brnardi
The Plain
The passengers are taking their seats carefully
Putting their coats the color of blackberry and dried grass on vinyl benches
The train is stumbling into the night like a blind shepherd
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Inside the compartments darkness feeding on apathy is belching out of the corners
Soon, in a half an hour, we will all press our faces against the windows in unison
Governed by an odd belief
That next to the train, through the anonymous forest
Pursuing our feelings and yearnings, deers are running with wild birds
And beings awakening from inside the trees
On the conductors cue, weary of the spectral race
Heads drop and drift off to sleep
A soft and black plain
Is getting protrusions where
Nocturnal electric cities are blossoming.
Translated by Daniel Brcko
Insomnia
suddenly, the roofs are becoming blue
the night has slipped underneath the snow cover
answers to questions are spilling in dark ink
Im resting my head on a stone of a different land
my love is sleeping in the next room
where black trees and black birds are growing
unclear and unreliable words on evergreen leaves
he will soon wake up
his taken-out eyes will shine in the kitchen
in the cold language of silt he will declare his love
for distance
for the flame going on and going out
now hes sleeping, healing his wounds with water from
the bellows of the nocturnal organ
the night has overdone all the blackness
sleepless household members are overturning their darkened palms
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Writing on Keys
As I am writing on this thing
hitting letters is not very different from
climbing some snowy mountain
with a stick and the necessary equipment
the cubic letters are like cliffs that cannot be conquered
I am writing in gloves made of rough wool
my nose is as red as if I were a Tibetan farm girl
and the ground where these trodden letters are lying
is so hard that it is black
even though my chances of reaching the summit are slim
I will stop at the first hut
belching out clouds of smoke
and rest with a cup of the black drink from the urn
and set forth once again along the icy gutturals
which normally take the form of white death
there, at the summit
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Ebony Box
Would it not be nice to turn back the hands of time,
to enter the world of the ebony box...
Ebony Box, B. Belan
So, a few words about the rooms I enter in order to lean my face against their
wet walls and white scrapings and lime ghost prints: a room is not a room but
damp it may be like the temper of fern. A forest is not a forest but cold legs
hopping in place. One can barely see the white feet between the walls which
serve to separate the forests tongue from the humans. After all, a city is not
a city but a dead owl contemplating the neighbours from the roof.
Room
The room has a chair
Surrounded by invisible protagonists with stretched-out hands.
Thousands of steps have crossed this room, in shoes
That leave prints of various animals
The room has an old violin in a box
A big fly lost in the extensive ceiling
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