Vesna Krmpotić: On Unity

No one has taught us or learned enough that the world is made up of one piece; on the contrary, they have taught us too much, sometimes even learned, that the world is made up of two, three, and ten thousand pieces. No one has guided us enough about the unity of the world, but they have tirelessly enlightened us about the differences…

Hypocritical phrases about the brotherhood of all nations and races cannot be counted as a lesson in unity. Thankfully, no one has invented, commanded, or destroyed human unity – because the thoughts and experiences of the world’s nations truly are brotherly, even if these nations are not counted as brothers, even if they are scattered.

…The sisterhood and brotherhood of spirit, understanding, and behavior throughout world time and space… “non-European” spirit and “Eastern philosophy” have originated – according to legends – both in Asia and ancient Egypt; and the migration of souls, the laws of karma, the rituals and enchantments of the Mayans, and the process of sadhana are not only alive in Persia, India, and China, but also in Celtic West; they live in Europe with its alchemical underground; there they are in the language and symbols of its history. hidden societies. And it can be found in the Slavic mist and the exiled raptures of great teachers and poets worldwide…

The uniqueness of antiquity, the foreignness of distance, thus the exoticism of all nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine parts, how can it be made of anything other than the substance of that ten-thousandth part? Every village in Slavonia, every village in Besarabia has its own unique jewelry; and no one even notices that all that jewelry is made of gold – they only notice its different shape. No one invented that gold, no one gilded it, no one took away its goldness: gold is golden in itself, it exists even without jewelry, simply as a wire of preciousness in nature.

So, there is no one who, following the example of gold, could invent, put into circulation, or excessively change that God-given sameness of the human world, the sameness expressed in ten thousand unique ways.

This is an excerpt from the introduction that Vesna Krmpotic wrote in 1981 for her book “The Shirt of Happiness.” of books, mostly under the subtitle “Philosophical and Related Stories”. Vesna Krmpotić is an exceptional person in our literature. She has written numerous books, and the number of her poems is probably immeasurable. She has retold many stories from different traditions, translated many poets and writers, including Tagore, Gibran, and Rumi, among others…

A stroke of luck happened to her in 1962 when she received a scholarship from the Indian government for a one-year study of the Bengali language. She learned the language, traveled almost throughout the entire subcontinent, and fell in love with India, its culture, and its people. As her husband was a diplomat, she had the opportunity to become well acquainted with Egypt, Ghana, the USA…

She has published over a hundred books, book, novel, short stories, translations, essays, and most importantly, poems. She probably wrote the biggest book of poetry consisting of 108 x 108 poems, totaling 11,664 poems dedicated to the highest, the Absolute, the One God, that which transcends and connects us.