Mehmedalija Mak Dizdar was born on October 17, 1917 in Stolac, a picturesque town in Herzegovina on the Bregava River, where he completed regular elementary school and religious elementary school (mekteb). He was born in the midst of the chaos of World War I, and he didn’t talk much about his childhood. There is one note he wrote about his hometown Stolac, which says: “…we always fly towards the new, even while trembling. Rarely, and only exceptionally, do we return there. But there is one road, only one road, where we often, very often, recognize our own footsteps. Our own footsteps. It is the road that leads to the place where we first opened our eyes and saw the light. The place, whatever it may be called, whether it’s a village or a small town or a city. And every time we approach the first houses of that settlement, our hearts tighten, tremble, play, a little with joy, but more with sadness and some secret primal anxiety. Recognizing the alleys and streets, which always seem somehow smaller and more miniature each time, we always recognize ourselves, somewhere hidden.” A lone, somehow distant, far and recognizable at the same time…
First steps in poetry
At the age of only thirteen, Dizdar goes to study in Sarajevo and enrolls in the State Sharia Gymnasium. Already during his school days, he starts writing and publishing poetry, and from those days, three notebooks titled Golden Youth have been preserved. He published his first poem titled Sobriety in the magazine Savez trezvene omladine and received the first prize. He also starts publishing in magazines such as Gajret, Domovina, Pregled, Novi behar, and Jugoslavenski list. He publishes his first poetry collection titled Vidovopoljska noć at the age of only nineteen. This collection by the young poet was filled with rebellious social energy and because of that, it did not see the light of day intact – it was censored and cut in half. During that time, he also wrote stories and sketches with social themes such as Lament to an Unknown Soldier, Quiet Street, Fear, Plague. Alongside his literary work, he also starts working as a journalist and becomes a professional journalist at the age of eighteen.
Journalist
When the Second World War began, he withdrew from public life and got a job as a postal worker. He then became involved in an illegal anti-fascist group and embraced communist ideas. The nickname “Mak” was his secret name that he used as a member of the anti-fascist movement during World War II.
Friends described Maka as a calm and dignified man, well-intentioned, moderate, and infinitely proud. His children say that he rarely raised his voice at them, and never criticized them. One could describe Mak Dizdar as a person who endured his frustrations and troubles with great dignity. Adil-beg Zulfikarpašić, founder of the Bosniak Institute in Sarajevo and Dizdar’s best man at his wedding, describes him as a gentle and calm man. He was popular in society and loved by many. He associated with writers, painters, sculptors, and actors. His house was always open for gatherings.
After World War II, Dizdar worked as a reporter, editor, and eventually became the chief editor of TANJUG for Bosnia and Herzegovina. He also became a target of the UDBA (State Security Administration) at the time, who threatened him to “watch his actions”. His brother Hamid was even taken to Goli Otok (Naked Island) by the authorities. During this period, Dizdar neglected his poetry.
Promote the most important works of world literature.
Return to Poetry
In 1954, Mak published a small poem “Swimmer,” four years later the poem “Return,” and after that the collections “Cruelties of the Circle” and “Knees for Madonna”. He wrote poems “Muteness,” “Lullaby,” the poem “Mother,” “Record of Five,” “Record of Time,” “Explorer,” “Record of Nespina,” “Record of the Source,” and in 1961, he published the book “Old Bosnian Epitaphs” where he collected and published inscriptions from medieval Bosnia.
With its flourishing, “Narodna prosvjeta” faced the attack of certain interests and was soon shut down, and Mak lost his job. He then worked as a librarian and studied old manuscripts, wrote reviews, gave lectures, corrections, and wrote radio comedies. He and his family lived very modestly, almost on the verge of poverty.
Poetry collection “The Stone Sleeper”
“The Stone Sleeper” is a poetry collection first published in 1966, and in the revised edition in 1973, after Mak’s death.
Mak’s inspiration for this work came from protected inscriptions from stećci, that is, stone sleepers, which he enriched with his own poetic experience. After centuries of silence, petrified letters spoke through him about the spirit of Bosnian Christians.
Ever since his early childhood, Mak was in contact with stećci – some of the most beautiful examples are found precisely in Stolac, his hometown. However, it took him a long time to succeed in deciphering the messages engraved in stone that he incorporated into his verses. The stone sleeper is the work of a mature poet who has found his own poetic expression. With its universality, it transcends all passing ideals and values of the space and time in which he lived. Mak enters the doors of true poetry, which speaks about the universal, which Aristotle said is above history, which speaks about the individual. The stone sleeper is a miracle because it was published in a time deaf to the sacred and spiritual, a time when it was thought that such “delusions” had long been discarded and replaced by social and political ideals. Mak makes a breakthrough, rises above it all a collection of the old language not only to give color and scent to the submerged world but also to restore value to the words lost in the darkness of time. Such words were preserved by my mother for me, and they are the most precious heritage I have inherited. They are mental clouds of their time and raise eternal questions about human life on earth – the fate of a fallen angel trapped in a human body.
Here’s what he said after receiving the Twenty-Seventh July Award for The Stone Sleeper: The stećak is for me what it is not for others, what is on it and in it others could neither see nor know. It is rock, but it is also a word, it is earth, but it is also heaven, it is matter, but it is also spirit, it is a scream, but it is also a song, it is death, but it is also life, it is the past, but it is also the future. It is a sleeper that does not sleep. I saw the stećak in Radimlja and Zgošća, but I could only decipher its truth within myself…
In relation to that deciphering, he once said on another occasion: I turned to the treasury of the old language not only to give color and scent to the submerged world but also to restore value to the words lost in the darkness of time. Such words were preserved by my mother for me, and they are the most precious heritage I have inherited. He helped me understand the messages engraved in stone.
In one interview, he said that the book “Stone Sleeper” was within him, but it needed to undergo its own fermentation, to experience itself: the spirit was there. It was just waiting for its embodiment…
He waited for it and wrote, as he says, for ten years with interruptions and pauses that are an integral part of the creative crisis and uncertainty. The path to it was not “smooth or short”. However, Mak understood poetry as a way of living and thinking, not something he “engaged in”, and everything he experienced influenced his creativity, which became more mature and deeper over time.
When I write – I write for myself. But when the creative act is finished, the writer always expects the voice of the reader and the criticism. …He realizes that this tender and fragile seed called a verse has fallen on fertile ground, in a deep furrow from which a fruit has sprouted for all those who reach out for it. …It is known that good, even very good literature, does not always find a receptive audience. Understanding contemporaries, nor on the proper courts and judgments about it, and I would not be disappointed if it happened with my literature. The writer always has one consolation, that there is a secret, hidden, unknown reader who loves a line, a thought, a poem or a book from the writer’s creative opus, and that is more important to me than many other things. … Of course, there are public acknowledgments, such as awards, second editions of the book, translations, etc. All of this becomes a mechanism that works on its own and for itself, with which we have no connection …
When asked where his poetry has been translated, after specifically answering, he added: This time, poetry itself decided its fate. I was just a mediator between it and those who accepted it.
During this period, the essay Marginalia on Language and the book Old Bosnian Texts are also created. Although he was criticized in the country, foreign awards soon arrived, he was translated into European languages, and invited to festivals. Success and guest appearances followed. Local recognition and awards also came. He was chosen as the president of the Association of Writers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and until his death, he edited the magazine Život.
Death
Mehmedalija Mak Dizdar died on July 14, 1971, as a result of a heart attack. He was buried at the Bare cemetery in Sarajevo with the highest state honors as a person of special significance. Today, there is a monument shaped like a stećak on his grave.
Since his death, the event “Slovo Gorčina” has been held every year in Stolac and at the necropolis of stećak Radimlja, with the aim of affirming the cultural heritage of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Mak is one of the few who immediately secured a place in the cultural heritage of his people, as well as beyond.
Every bridge we walk on rests on two shores, the past and the future. Mak found a solid foundation in the universal values of the spiritual tradition of Bosnian Christians and helped us glimpse what awaits us on the other shore of the bridge of life. Of course, this bridge is not horizontal.
DOORS
Here we are still just temporary guests
And it should be time to step into the circle of light.
Through some narrow doors we should return
From this bare body to the body of eternity
When I wandered into this late evening
He told me without me asking
I am that gate, and through it enter me strongly into you
He said, but where are the mouth of the lock, where is the finger of the right key
for the burning staircase door?
So I search for the key in my mind, through the trail on the grass
that blue key
Through the flowers of spring, through the hair of death, I seek the entrance
to those green doors
I go into ants, into plants, into illusions, into realities. I search
and I find
But who betrayed that strict investigation from my hand to the keyhole?
From this dark side of the door, a fierce wind rushes in
A mad wind tearing apart
I leave behind sister and brother, father and mother
between beasts and humans
So that I may find myself in my own being, on my path
a column of light
How will I, when in that thread, I intertwine in the letter
that would be in discovery?
He told me so when I asked him about it and I did not ask
Enter me because I am that shining door
So now
I watch now, rot now, die now on this
Return
And the wind wind wind
If the door is only a dream in words if it is just a fairytale
I still won’t return from the door
I want to go back there again
That sweet
Fairytale
WRITTEN RECORD OF DEPARTURE
In this world, I lived for a long time
Eighty-eight years in this world
I stored and hid many treasures in my home
I did not look nor invite any visitors
to honor them, I did not entertain guests
In this world, I lived enough
And I diligently stored many treasures like an ant in my home
I did not let them spoil
Now, in the end
I am leaving
I am not taking anything with me
Everything behind me remains empty
LSPELLED
They were sorry that they couldn’t decipher the language
with which they could talk to the trees in the forest
(To them
Humans)
So they brought torches and set the forest on fire to its roots
and from it, graceful fawns dashed out in a race
(And scattered in all four directions)
They heartlessly chased them in a growing hunt
but they They skillfully hid in the emerged stones
(Which not even fire could burn)
There they settled and now the young ones patiently wait
for a new forest to grow and for them to resettle
(In that shelter
from the remembered story of disappeared fathers and grandfathers)
I dissolved
And flowed
Through streams
Through rivers
Through seas
Now I am here
Now I am here
Without myself
Bitter
How do I return
To my source?
SUN
A young sun escaped from its father
settled on a meadow between icy mountains
We didn’t recognize it immediately and looked sideways
It rolled up its sleeves and plowed the earth deep
until it reached its depths and its heart
When it rested from its efforts, it cheerfully waved its hand
and ascended like a bird on wings above the darkness itself
And illuminated all paths, all intersections and wrong turns
and in its radiance showed its plowing and our faces
We embraced then as if we had been waiting only for that
We became close, as one
and ate and drank like it was innate for us to be there or
The sun hasn’t visited the valley from summer to summer
and flower after flower blossoms in the barren valley
The young sun suddenly disappears from us
Where did it go, how and why
only the good god can know
And maybe we would have forgotten it as a beautiful coincidence
(just as it came, it would have passed)
if we didn’t still warm ourselves with our whole being
from those ancient golden and warm hands.
GORČIN
Ase lies
Soldier Gorčin
In his land
On his heritage
He mourns
Žih
And I called for death
Night and day
I didn’t crush an ant
In the soldiers
I left
I was
In five and five wars
Without a shield or armor
Oh, if only
Gorčins would stop
I succumbed to a strange pain
No spear pierced me
No arrow shot me
No sword cut me down
I succumbed to the pain
Unhealed
My will
And the devil took it from me
Into slavery
If you meet Kosara
On the paths
Of the Lord
Please
Tell her
About my loyalty
THE FOURTH HORSEMAN
It’s time to think about time
Because decay reeks to unconsciousness from rotten death
It’s time It is necessary to consider the time
Because great waters are our boats
Look how their wild forces tear and devour
Time has hit to reflect on time
Because the wind is fast, the wind is fierce
Today it will fly evilly upon us
Time is a fire that will burn and destroy us
Time has hit to enter this time
Because time is so scarce
And there will be no more time
DEATH
The Earth is sown with mortal seed
But death is not the end Because there is actually no death.
And there is no end, death is only illuminated
Path of ascent from the nest to the stars.
BLUE RIVER
No one knows where it is
We know little but it is known
Beyond the mountains, beyond the valleys
Beyond seven, beyond eight
And even worse and even crazier
Over seas, over bitter ones
Over hawthorns, over brambles
Over heat, over constraints
Beyond instinct, beyond doubt
Beyond nine, beyond ten
And even deeper and even stronger
Beyond silence, beyond darkness
Where roosters do not sing
Where the sound of the horn is unknown
And even worse and even crazier
Beyond reason, beyond God
There is a blue river
It is wide, it is deep
A hundred go Dina is wide
A thousand years deep it is
Do not dream of its length
Unbearable darkness and obscurity
There is a blue river
There is a blue river –
It flows over us.
A LETTER ABOUT THE HUMAN BEING
First
Created in a closed body
You dream of the sky returning and multiplying
Trapped in the brain, captured in the heart
In that dark pit, you forever dream of the sun
Trapped in flesh, crushed into bones
How to bridge that space to heaven?
RAIN
We should learn again
To listen to the rain as it falls
We should become unyielding
And walk through the city gate without looking back
We should find again
The lost paths of that blue grass
In abundance of plants
We should embrace panic-stricken poppies and ants
We should wash ourselves anew
And dream in clear drops of diligent dew
We should faint
In the dark strands of some grassy hair
We should pause for a moment
Admire our sun and our shadow
We should finally meet
With the long-lost strand I am beating with all my heart
We should become unpetrified
and pass through the stone gate of this stone city without looking back
We should desire
and stay awake all night, listening to the righteous rain falling, falling, falling
DANCE
Hand to hand
port to port
Hand in hand
hardship in suffering
The earth squeezes
the sky high
Oh, if only I were a bird
if only I were a falcon
SUNNY CHRIST
Neither life nor death belongs to me
I am just the one in the shadow
of the one who, in time,
becomes timeless
Here is the one present
Whom the black laws envied
They hanged him in the sixth hour of that day
Before his wonder, priests
and soldiers fell silent
When he tied them to the ground with the sun of his cross,
spreading his arms from finger to finger
He defeated
Death
Death sought him, but found nothing
Found no bones, no flesh, no blood
All she was left with was the outline of the sign and the first
Path to something death had no teeth for
Look how now she jumps headlessly,
desperately crying and wailing
And small
Neither life nor death belongs to me
I am just the one in the shadow
of the one whom death could not touch
of the one who transformed And I in a pillar
Sunny
I am merely the one who from his autumn
From the bay of matter, from that material anguish
Stretches
Hands
To those distant sunny resting places