Mak Dizdar

The bust in Sarajevo

Mehmedalija "Mak" Dizdar (born October 17, 1917 , Stolac , Austria-Hungary ; † July 14, 1971 , Sarajevo , Yugoslavia ) was a Yugoslav poet . His poetry combined influences from Bosnian Christian culture, Islamic mysticism and cultural remnants of medieval Bosnian culture, especially the Stećci . His works Stein Schläfer and Der Blaue Fluss are probably the most influential Bosnian-Herzegovinian works of the 20th century.

Life

youth

Mehmedalija Dizdar was born to a Bosniak family in Stolac during the First World War . His parents were Muharem (d. 1923) and Nezira (née Babović; 1881–1945). Mehmedalija was the second of three children. His older brother Hamid was also a writer. Mehmedalija's sister Refika (1921–1945) and mother were killed in the Jasenovac concentration camp .

In 1936 Dizdar moved to Sarajevo , where he attended high school and graduated.

Career

Then he started working for the magazine Gajret , in which his brother Hamid was already an editor. The magazine was founded by Safvet beg Bašagić . Dizdar spent the years of World War II as a supporter of the communist partisans . He often changed his place of residence in order not to arouse suspicion among the authorities of the Independent State of Croatia .

After the war Dizdar became a prominent figure in cultural life in Bosnia and Herzegovina and worked as editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper Oslobođenje (German: "Liberation"). He was then head of several state publishers and most recently lived as an independent writer and president of the Writers' Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Mak Dizdar died in 1971 at the age of 53.

family

Dizdar's son Enver (June 8, 1944– December 21, 2012) was a journalist and publicist.

Works

A poem by Dizdar at the monument to the Tuzla massacre :
"Here one does not
live to live.
Here one does not live
to die.
Here one dies
to live."

Dizdar published two collections of poetry and a number of longer poems. Kameni spavač ( Stone Sleeper ) (1966–71) and Modra rijeka ( Blue River , 1971) combined seemingly unconnected elements. He drew his inspiration from the pre-Ottoman Bosnian-Christian culture, from the collections of sayings of the heterodox Islamic mystics and the Bosnian literary language of the 15th century. His poetry refers to the medieval Bosnian tombstones, the so-called stećci or "mramorovi" (marble stones) and their gnomic inscriptions about the transience of life. It discusses unmistakable visions of life and death based on Christian and Muslim Gnostic experiences of life as a passage between “grave and stars” and expressing both the Gnostic horror of physicality and the feeling of being blessed by the universe.

The influence of the Stećci

There are around 60,000 Stećci in Bosnia and Herzegovina and 70,000 in the wider region. These are decorated with various symbols and illustrations. Many of the symbols on the Stećci contributed to the religious symbolism in Dizdar's works. The most common religious motifs on de Stećci were the waxing moon, stars and circles (as symbols of the sun). The cross never appears alone. It usually appears together with the waxing moon and a star and sometimes with other symbols such as shield, sword, spear or flag. Other symbols on the Stećci were men with large right hands, spirals and images of wheels (kolo) and deer. In addition to the symbols, many of these stones bear short inscriptions or epigrams in which the life of the deceased was summarized or certain character traits and events were depicted.

Dizdar used these symbols and inscriptions on the Stećci as a framework for his first major work, Kameni Spavač. His Bosnia was “defined by the Stećci and Bosnia's stigma in relation to the question of whether it was itself the poetic answer: his defiance of dreams.” Through the Stećci Kameni Spavač, Dizdar put Kameni Spavač in a historical setting by seeing the world through the eyes of looking at deceased medieval people. This enabled him to address topics that represent the "intimate journey through life from the origin, from home and landscape, from sources of knowledge, from world experience, from new and coordinated deciphering of symbols that go beyond their uniqueness".

Dizdar claimed that the subjects in the inscriptions were the "secrets of Bosnia". Dizdar himself described the secret as follows: “Stećak is not the same for me as it is for others, things that would be on or in them, others did not describe them or could not see them. It's stone, but also a word. It is earth, but also heaven, it is substance, but also spirit, it is a scream, but also a song, it is death, but also life, it is the past, but also the future. "

Mak Dizdar also fought against the forced influence of the Serbian language on the Bosnian language , among other things in his article "Marginalije o jeziku i oko njega" from 1970.

After the collapse of communism and the Bosnian War , Dizdar's poetic magnum opus became the cornerstone of modern Bosnian-Herzegovinian literature.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Maya Shatzmiller: Islam and Bosnia: Conflict Resolution and Foreign Policy in Multi-Ethnic States. McGill-Queen's University Press 2002: 35. ISBN 0-7735-2413-4
2. ↑ Zašto se šuti o činjenici da su Srbi ubili 15,000 Jevreja. In: Diwan magazine May 26, 2013.
3. ↑ Mak Dizdar: The Poet. SpiritofBosnia August 12, 2013.
4. ↑ Godišnjica smrti velikog pjesnika: Šta per Maku značio Stećak ?. RadioSarajevo July 14, 2013.
5. ↑ Novinar i publicista Enver Dizdar bit će ukopan u 13 sati na groblju Bare. In: Oslobođenje December 24, 2012.
6. ^ English translation by Francis R. Jones .
7. ↑ Chronicle. In: NYTimes December 3, 1993.
8. ↑ Fahira Alić: Religijski Motivi U Kamenu Spavaču Maka Dizdara. In: The New Teacher (Novi Muallim), iss. 54/2013: 94-97 [www.ceeol.com].
9. ↑ "defined by the stećci and Bosnia's stigma regarding the question of it being the poetic subject response: its defiance from dreams." Radiosarajevo Mehmedalija mak dizdar pjesnik koji je bosnu definirao steccima. ( Memento of the original from March 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
10. ^ "The intimate life journey of origin, of homeland or landscapes, of sources of knowledge, of experiences of the world, of a new and coordinated deciphering of signs, which reach pass their singularity." Fahira Alić: Religijski Motivi U Kamenu Spavaču Maka Dizdara. In: The New Teacher (Novi Muallim), iss. 54/2013: 94-97 [www.ceeol.com].
11. ↑ "stećak is for me what it is not for others, things that are on them or in them, others did not inscribe or knew to see. It is stone, but also a word, it is earth, but also heaven, it is matter, but also a spirit, it is a cry, but also a song, it is death, but also life, it is the past, but also the future. ”radiosarajevo.ba/novost/128638/mehmedalija-mak-dizdar-pjesnik-koji-je-bosnu-definirao-steccima.

Web links

Commons : Mak Dizdar  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Mak Dizdar Foundation
• Rusmir Mahmutćehajić, On the Poetry of Mak Dizdar: The Poet, the Road, and the Word. In: Telos 156, 2011: 131-52.