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In this part, Rusmir Mahmutcehajic introduces readers to the traditional substance of Stone Sleeper, in the context of what he calls "perennial philosophy." From that perspective, prophecy, being the source of perennial wisdom, is set above poetry. In some poetry, however, prophetic wisdom and poetic pronouncement exist inseparably. Stone Sleeper is an example of that mutual coexistence. --
The Poet Mak Dizdar (d.1971) has become a cultural icon in contemporary Bosnia-Herzegovina. Inspired by the lapidary imagery and epitaphs of medieval Bosnian tombstones, his best-acclaimed collection of poetry, Stone Sleeper , reawakens the medieval voices and assigns them a new role in the historical imagination of contemporary Bosnians. In this study, Amila Buturovic looks at Stone Sleeper's recovery of the ancestral world as an effort to refashion the sentiments of collective belonging. In treating the medieval tombstones as sites of collective memory, Dizdar's poetry evokes new possibilities for Bosnians to cast aside national differences based primarily on religion and embrace a pluralistic identity rooted in the sacred landscape of medieval Bosnia.
Interweaving the interpretative methods of religious studies, literary criticism and cultural geography, the essays in this volume focus on issues associated with the representation of place and space in the writing and reading of the postcolonial. The collection charts the ways in which contemporary writers extend and deepen our awareness of the ambiguities of economic, social and political relations implicated in “sacred space” - the sense of spiritual significance associated with those concrete locations in which adherents of different religious traditions, past and present, maintain a ritual sense of the sanctity of life and its cycles. Part I, “Land, Religion and Literature after ...
Translation is a very important tool in our multilingual world. Excellent translation is a sine qua non in the work of the Swedish Academy, responsible for the Nobel Prize in Literature. In order to establish a forum for discussing fundamental aspects of the translation of poetry and poetic prose, a Nobel Symposium on this subject was organized.The list of contributors includes Sture Alln, Jean Boase-Beier, Philippe Bouquet, Anders Cullhed, Gunnel Engwall, Eugene Eoyang, Efim Etkind, Inga-Stina Ewbank, Knut Faldbakken, Seamus Heaney, Lyn Hejinian, Bengt Jangfeldt, Francis R Jones, Elke Liebs, Gunilla Lindberg-Wada, Gran Malmqvist, Shimon Markish, Margaret Mitsutani, Judith Moffett, Mariya Novykova, Tim Parks, Ulla Roseen, Emmanuela Tandello, Eliot Weinberger, Daniel Weissbort, and Fran(oise Wuilmart.
A major work by Bosnia's greatest postwar poet in versions by a leading Serbo-Croat translator.
One of Bosnia's leading intellectuals explains the Bosnian experience by critiquing the politics and ideology that brought about the great destruction—both material and spiritual—of Bosnia and Herzegovina. These incisive and theologically profound essays address the confrontation between the West and Islam as the author explores the realm of humanity's long-standing search for the roots of evil in the dual nature of mankind to gain insight into ways of achieving peace. By drawing on the Bosnian situation, the author explores questions of identity and otherness, knowledge and transcendence, authority and authoritarianism, and tradition and fundamentalism, and he argues for a reconciliation between modernity and tradition for the benefit of modern coexistence, not just in his native land but throughout the world.
In Understanding Evil, Keith Doubt uses the horrors of the recent war in Bosnia to develop meaningfully adequate accounts of evil within the context of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Since the foundationsof the social are found in human action, evil's assault on these foundations results in the demise of the social. In Bosnia, not only were individuals, families, homes, and buildings destroyed, but entire towns and cities wereobliterated. Not only were individual human beings murdered, but so was the history and memory of vibrant communities. Crimes against humanity in Bosnia, Doubt argues, were sociocidal; they were systematic attacks on social life itself. The book develops the significance of sociocideas what evil is in order to understand the suffering and tragedy of the people and communities in Bosnia.
An exploration of the causes of the Bosnian war by academics and diplomats that offers the broadest perspective on the conflict to date.
Britain does not have a written constitution. It has rather, over centuries, developed a set of miscellaneous conventions, rules, and norms that govern political behavior. By contrast, Bosnia’s constitution was written, quite literally, overnight in a military hanger in Dayton, USA, to conclude a devastating war. By most standards it does not work and is seen to have merely frozen a conflict and all development with it. What might these seemingly unrelated countries be able to teach each other? Britain, racked by recent crises from Brexit to national separatism, may be able to avert long-term political conflict by understanding the pitfalls of writing rigid constitutional rules without popular participation or the cultivation of good political culture. Bosnia, in turn, may be able to thaw its frozen conflict by subjecting parts of its written constitution to amendment, with civic involvement, on a fixed and regular basis; a ’revolving constitution’ to replicate some of that flexibility inherent in the British system. A book not just about Bosnia and Britain; a standard may be set for other plural, multi-ethnic polities to follow.
The study compares three Bosnian authors with three European titans: The poet Mak Dizdar to Homer, the novelist Meša Selimović to Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the novelist Ivo Andrić to Leo Tolstoy. The purpose is to move the appreciation of the writing of the most important Bosnian writers of the 20th century closer to the European literary community and to the wholeness of the literary phenomenon. Secondary literature on the Bosnian authors is too narrow, focusing on their ethnic heritages and the Balkan milieu in which they write and missing something essential to a critical appreciation of their works. The study creates not only affinities but, more importantly, amitiés between the authors. The discipline of comparative literature reveals what is missing in the secondary literature, namely, a vision of the literary universe, inclusive and comprehensive.