LITERARY CRITICISM – Peroration That Makes You Silent and Where Solitude Can Be Smelt by Danijela Kovacevic Mikic, MFA, linguist and researcher, educational program editor of the Urban Book Circle.
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Urban Book Circle® (UBC)
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(Landscapes in the Mirrors by Slovenka Maric;
Pesic and Sons publishing company; Belgrade, 2018)
Pesic and Sons publishing company; Belgrade, 2018)
Once you have read “Landscapes in the Mirrors”, you cannot help feeling that you have met a true poet. An innate lyric poet. The one that creates poetry from his own blood, neither pandering to trends nor tastes of criticism and someone’s taste, nor anything else, but creates poetry out of his basic need – to understand, experience and/or survive. If you appreciate poets for their rhyme (which has unfortunately become today a specific poetic feature they cling to frantically due to hyperproduction of pseudopoetry), then you will not find Slovenka Maric among such. She is the innate lyric poet in its true sense, her verses – along with other lyrical immanent features – are pure poetry.
Being an innate lyric poet is not easy. What us, so to say common (prosaic) mortals hurts, it kills innate lyric poets. They experience the world with a lot more inner effervescency and a lot more bleeding of the soul. It is much more than the beauty of the experience of the world, it is the imprecation – the damnation. Therefore, it is not surprising that this collection of poems contains a number of poems which express resistance towards her own poetry and opinion. Slovenka Maric has a name which has determined her. She is a Slavic soul who loves going to Perun’s temple and the soul whose language is the one which “makes you silent and where solitude can be smelt.” She addresses the ones who “hear the quake of a leaf and solitude.” Her poems are filled with craving and sky and earth, her poems are the songs of flowing and solitude, her poetry is vanquishing the pain and a cry through the downfall of time.
And to conclude right at the beginning, as such, Slovenka Maric has never been, and I am afraid she will not be, a part of the loud and visible literary scene. However, that should not confuse the readers. There is plenty of exquisite poetry in this book which should be read without looking back at silence of criticism and those circles which present literary awards!
The note by the author tells that it is the collection of her unpublished poems written in the 70s and 80s of the 20th century. Yet another piece of information contributing to the thesis that it is about a quiet, modest man who creates poetry because his nature tells him to, that poetic creation is a gift from God, as well as great life temptation because of which he suffers.
The motto of collection can be found at the beginning and end of the book, as well as on its covers. It is a specific autopoietic commentary since Slovenka Maric uses it to explain the quintessence of her book. The motto is as follows:
Being an innate lyric poet is not easy. What us, so to say common (prosaic) mortals hurts, it kills innate lyric poets. They experience the world with a lot more inner effervescency and a lot more bleeding of the soul. It is much more than the beauty of the experience of the world, it is the imprecation – the damnation. Therefore, it is not surprising that this collection of poems contains a number of poems which express resistance towards her own poetry and opinion. Slovenka Maric has a name which has determined her. She is a Slavic soul who loves going to Perun’s temple and the soul whose language is the one which “makes you silent and where solitude can be smelt.” She addresses the ones who “hear the quake of a leaf and solitude.” Her poems are filled with craving and sky and earth, her poems are the songs of flowing and solitude, her poetry is vanquishing the pain and a cry through the downfall of time.
And to conclude right at the beginning, as such, Slovenka Maric has never been, and I am afraid she will not be, a part of the loud and visible literary scene. However, that should not confuse the readers. There is plenty of exquisite poetry in this book which should be read without looking back at silence of criticism and those circles which present literary awards!
The note by the author tells that it is the collection of her unpublished poems written in the 70s and 80s of the 20th century. Yet another piece of information contributing to the thesis that it is about a quiet, modest man who creates poetry because his nature tells him to, that poetic creation is a gift from God, as well as great life temptation because of which he suffers.
The motto of collection can be found at the beginning and end of the book, as well as on its covers. It is a specific autopoietic commentary since Slovenka Maric uses it to explain the quintessence of her book. The motto is as follows:
Landscapes
Earthly and heavenly
reflected in soul
written in history
of joy and pain.
Earthly and heavenly
reflected in soul
written in history
of joy and pain.
The motto is really a poetic concept of the book whose spectre of themes ranges from a motif of roots, that is childhood memories and mother, longing for space in which one is born and grown, time in which one lived differently, lived and felt to poetic poems in which a poetess tackles her poetic souls denying the power of words. That is the power of transforming soul into words.
The collection consists of 48 poems categorized in three poetic cycles. These cycles are: Under the Zlatibor pine tree, Lights, and Quandaries. All three cycles were named after the eponymous poems.
At the beginning of the Under the Zlatibor pine tree cycle there is a poem called For the Shepherd’s Soul which is rather significant in a poetic sense since it refers first of all to the poetess’s inclination to nature and everything natural in a human. The lyrical subject experiences leaving into hills as a sort of pilgrimage to Perun’s temple and himself, towards intimate freedom, light, melody of mother tongue perpetuated in the syntagma “the words representing the raskovnik” which is confronting “empty talk of jays.” He is inviting us to create love, by far wider and more complex than the physical one which first comes across our minds when we hear the word love, worn out by media and our mundane life. He is inviting us to create love with plants, flying bird, cloud and rain, the earth, the sun and the sky… Through that authentic love for nature from which the strength is obtained and where a live heart is, the one which has to hide itself from “heart ignorants” in everyday life, as Slovenka calls them rather pathetically, Slovenka finds herself closer to Stevan Raičković, for example, but in formal sense is quite different from him. Her poem is liberated from established metric pattern and rhyme, but the poeticism is accomplished by much deeper means, poetic means of euphony, that is agreeableness of sound in the sense of language expression and stylistics. Lyrical subject has a soul of a shepherd, free and joyful only when in nature. There is a painful testimony in this cycle, of leaving her birth house after which her lyrical voice has flown into the unknown losing grass, blade by blade and poems, bird by bird.
The time has become torn after that leaving, resembling rags of scattered days. Everything has become a river of memories and a poem of flowing. That hills have become the key metaphor and metonymy is confirmed by the poem On the Way to Hills, where the word hill is repeated at least thirteen times. The call of nature is Slovenka’s cure for pain. Pure joy. A child’s joy for merging with beauty and earthly happiness. Slovenka is not a poet of description, but the picturesqueness is vital for her metaphors since all of them, at least in this cycle, arise from natural surrounding. Using euphony, a language construction, Slovenka replicates Desanka Maksimović or reminds of her, such as in the poem “Wild Cherry” by a verse, that is syntax construction “It seems to me”, but this is not imitation but deliberate evocation.
There are three poems in the first cycle with great autopoietic significance, and they are A Poem that Does not Give Up, A Poem About a Poet, and A Poem’s Frailness. Slovenka very often sees a poem as space which does not give up. She comes, flows and invites into a poem out of despair. The poetess starts everything with it but cannot voice it.
Along with poetical frailness to turn experience into a poem, Slovenka shows disbelief into the power of poetry. What is a poem in comparison with a moment when the sun bursts or when the grass spouts and dew and water effulge? In comparison to the splendor of nature, Slovenka finds a poem to be NOTHING, and a poet creates his poem only when dead – turned into foliage. Using that negation, a poetess seems to desire to hush herself and, absurdly, kills a poet in herself.
The first cycle Under the Zlatibor Pine Tree consists of fifteen poems, the third (Quandaries) consists of fourteen, and the second (Lights) consists of nineteen poems. If we judge by the number of poems and the central part in the collection then the second cycle is vital for elucidation of Slovenka’s poetics. The poem of the same name (Lights) has a rounded form since the same verse “Lights come suddenly” repeats. Lyrical parallelisms, to mention it, are very important for euphony which makes significant difference between a thought written only in a form of verse and a real poetic verse. The lyrical subject of this poem is characterized as a wretch whose blood is wounded by light and who experienced night stars and sky falling into the abyss. Bedarkened meaning of the poem should be looked for in the darkness of human thoughts and lights should be seen as salvation signs. Slovenka invites her own heart and a heart of every reader to cry for the sky light. If the first cycle was coloured in paganism of Slavic mythology, the second one returns us to our Christian roots. And life is a spark of life, in which two creatures recognize each other as two sparks of light in a flash of life. Sometimes eros sparks in Slovenka’s lines, particularly in the poems Through Stormy Night, A Word about Love, Silver Night and Amongst Your Face and Heavenly Sand Clock but love in it is erotic only in the ancient understanding of the term as a connection between platonic ecstasy and beauty – that is passion and creation.
Slovenka reminds us that eternal lights glow through almighty night just like a human’s earthly pain. She summons us to climb down our abyss, since how we can reach God unless we can reach ourselves. Thus, in basis of a lot of poems which reveals religious tone we can find philosophical guidelines, such as Socratic thought on the necessity of knowing yourself. Using that philosophical reflexive spark, Slovenka comes to Christian cognition:
The collection consists of 48 poems categorized in three poetic cycles. These cycles are: Under the Zlatibor pine tree, Lights, and Quandaries. All three cycles were named after the eponymous poems.
At the beginning of the Under the Zlatibor pine tree cycle there is a poem called For the Shepherd’s Soul which is rather significant in a poetic sense since it refers first of all to the poetess’s inclination to nature and everything natural in a human. The lyrical subject experiences leaving into hills as a sort of pilgrimage to Perun’s temple and himself, towards intimate freedom, light, melody of mother tongue perpetuated in the syntagma “the words representing the raskovnik” which is confronting “empty talk of jays.” He is inviting us to create love, by far wider and more complex than the physical one which first comes across our minds when we hear the word love, worn out by media and our mundane life. He is inviting us to create love with plants, flying bird, cloud and rain, the earth, the sun and the sky… Through that authentic love for nature from which the strength is obtained and where a live heart is, the one which has to hide itself from “heart ignorants” in everyday life, as Slovenka calls them rather pathetically, Slovenka finds herself closer to Stevan Raičković, for example, but in formal sense is quite different from him. Her poem is liberated from established metric pattern and rhyme, but the poeticism is accomplished by much deeper means, poetic means of euphony, that is agreeableness of sound in the sense of language expression and stylistics. Lyrical subject has a soul of a shepherd, free and joyful only when in nature. There is a painful testimony in this cycle, of leaving her birth house after which her lyrical voice has flown into the unknown losing grass, blade by blade and poems, bird by bird.
The time has become torn after that leaving, resembling rags of scattered days. Everything has become a river of memories and a poem of flowing. That hills have become the key metaphor and metonymy is confirmed by the poem On the Way to Hills, where the word hill is repeated at least thirteen times. The call of nature is Slovenka’s cure for pain. Pure joy. A child’s joy for merging with beauty and earthly happiness. Slovenka is not a poet of description, but the picturesqueness is vital for her metaphors since all of them, at least in this cycle, arise from natural surrounding. Using euphony, a language construction, Slovenka replicates Desanka Maksimović or reminds of her, such as in the poem “Wild Cherry” by a verse, that is syntax construction “It seems to me”, but this is not imitation but deliberate evocation.
There are three poems in the first cycle with great autopoietic significance, and they are A Poem that Does not Give Up, A Poem About a Poet, and A Poem’s Frailness. Slovenka very often sees a poem as space which does not give up. She comes, flows and invites into a poem out of despair. The poetess starts everything with it but cannot voice it.
Along with poetical frailness to turn experience into a poem, Slovenka shows disbelief into the power of poetry. What is a poem in comparison with a moment when the sun bursts or when the grass spouts and dew and water effulge? In comparison to the splendor of nature, Slovenka finds a poem to be NOTHING, and a poet creates his poem only when dead – turned into foliage. Using that negation, a poetess seems to desire to hush herself and, absurdly, kills a poet in herself.
The first cycle Under the Zlatibor Pine Tree consists of fifteen poems, the third (Quandaries) consists of fourteen, and the second (Lights) consists of nineteen poems. If we judge by the number of poems and the central part in the collection then the second cycle is vital for elucidation of Slovenka’s poetics. The poem of the same name (Lights) has a rounded form since the same verse “Lights come suddenly” repeats. Lyrical parallelisms, to mention it, are very important for euphony which makes significant difference between a thought written only in a form of verse and a real poetic verse. The lyrical subject of this poem is characterized as a wretch whose blood is wounded by light and who experienced night stars and sky falling into the abyss. Bedarkened meaning of the poem should be looked for in the darkness of human thoughts and lights should be seen as salvation signs. Slovenka invites her own heart and a heart of every reader to cry for the sky light. If the first cycle was coloured in paganism of Slavic mythology, the second one returns us to our Christian roots. And life is a spark of life, in which two creatures recognize each other as two sparks of light in a flash of life. Sometimes eros sparks in Slovenka’s lines, particularly in the poems Through Stormy Night, A Word about Love, Silver Night and Amongst Your Face and Heavenly Sand Clock but love in it is erotic only in the ancient understanding of the term as a connection between platonic ecstasy and beauty – that is passion and creation.
Slovenka reminds us that eternal lights glow through almighty night just like a human’s earthly pain. She summons us to climb down our abyss, since how we can reach God unless we can reach ourselves. Thus, in basis of a lot of poems which reveals religious tone we can find philosophical guidelines, such as Socratic thought on the necessity of knowing yourself. Using that philosophical reflexive spark, Slovenka comes to Christian cognition:
Climb down your abyss,
And reach its bottom,
Confess your sins
to become a human.
And reach its bottom,
Confess your sins
to become a human.
Slovenka’s poetic cosmogony includes a very important unpoetical term which gets symbolic meaning, and that is a physical term: quasar. That is cosmological source of every electromagnetic as well as light radiation. Observed with optical telescope, quasars seem to be lonely light spots or stars of feeble glimmer. And what does term as a poetic symbol signify? Does it mean that each of us is a lonely star searching for light, or are these some other people luring us into temptation or is it something completely different? That open place, where each of us writes in a meaning, is exactly the place where Slovenka leaves autobiography, her life, and moves into universal poetic language.
The second cycle brings poetic poems, such as About a Poem I Cannot Sing of where the following is said: “I am moonwalking in my talk / sorting out healing herbs in my language.” In this poem we will notice slight similarity with Desanka in the verse: “From you to me / I created silent language” or “I suffer from words unspoken” but that similarity is not imitation but rather poetic allusion which widens meanings. While the first cycle mainly denies the power of poetry, this one reveals that agony of creation and the curse of poetic temper is actually both healing and beatific. All steps in life are the same and the poem: “The sound of the trumpet at night” ends with the blessing:
The second cycle brings poetic poems, such as About a Poem I Cannot Sing of where the following is said: “I am moonwalking in my talk / sorting out healing herbs in my language.” In this poem we will notice slight similarity with Desanka in the verse: “From you to me / I created silent language” or “I suffer from words unspoken” but that similarity is not imitation but rather poetic allusion which widens meanings. While the first cycle mainly denies the power of poetry, this one reveals that agony of creation and the curse of poetic temper is actually both healing and beatific. All steps in life are the same and the poem: “The sound of the trumpet at night” ends with the blessing:
Let the throat which preserved
and got a poem heard be blessed
and got a poem heard be blessed
The cycle which can be defined as conjunction of religious, love and poetic-reflexive poems ends with the poem “Bread and Wine” which is, in formal sense, different from most of Slovenka’s poems because of stricter organization since it is divided into three quatrains which end in apostrophic syntagmas where the main member adjective “good” is always in appropriate gender: good hand, good tear, and good angel where it is clear that all three nouns have symbolic-metaphoric meaning.
The third cycle “Quandaries” consists of most difficult and most profound topics: accepting God’s ordinary day, agony of surviving bitter moonlights filled with solitude and sinful soul temptation which seeks for the light in its own darkness. Synthesis “frozen darkness” is a lyrical way used to describe existential shudder of lyrical subject. But mindful soul does not accept easily comfort in religious thought. Some blasphemous quandaries and spiteful resistance which occasionally sounds acridly attest to that:
The third cycle “Quandaries” consists of most difficult and most profound topics: accepting God’s ordinary day, agony of surviving bitter moonlights filled with solitude and sinful soul temptation which seeks for the light in its own darkness. Synthesis “frozen darkness” is a lyrical way used to describe existential shudder of lyrical subject. But mindful soul does not accept easily comfort in religious thought. Some blasphemous quandaries and spiteful resistance which occasionally sounds acridly attest to that:
The one who hears only gets an echo back,
And all that rang
In the name of God and imaginary sense.
And all that rang
In the name of God and imaginary sense.
Maybe there is hope for a man, if we learn to hear that others do not only call God but us common people as well – crucified on a cross of everyday life. Slovenka believes that she cannot give her poem to anyone. But even today, after so many decades of creation of these poems, her voice resounds after reading. Feeling bitter with life, with deception of human face, lonely, the poetess encourages freedom to kill a poem in herself and to talk witlessly if she feels like in order to adjust to the society she lives in. That social suicide is not easy to commit not even when the poet does not care whether there will be a poem or not.
Fortunately however, even modest and through the voice of her lyrical subject, Slovenka does not kill a poem in herself, but “hiccups, stammers something into her ear / great smiling universe.” But the expressions hiccups, stammers are just the reflection of modesty of a patriarchal upbringing. These are not stammering but deep and sincere thoughts of gates of our silences which others rarely kiss. This is not a book for those who write orgies on God’s words, but for those who feel unhurt and impudent words deep inside themselves as God’s gift. But first, one has to climb down his own abyss and hear muteness and silences that hurt. Slovenka has come down and survived… healed with hills and poems. Therefore this book, even when the sounds of sorrow, despair, cry and solitude are heard, is not the book of darkness but the book of light. Maybe just the rays of light are coming through the dark, but as long as there are rays of light, a soul will turn despair into a poem and someone’s cry will be heard through collapsing time. Do readers have the courage to accompany Slovenka and take their chalice, through pain, following the Sun – time will give answer to that question.
Fortunately however, even modest and through the voice of her lyrical subject, Slovenka does not kill a poem in herself, but “hiccups, stammers something into her ear / great smiling universe.” But the expressions hiccups, stammers are just the reflection of modesty of a patriarchal upbringing. These are not stammering but deep and sincere thoughts of gates of our silences which others rarely kiss. This is not a book for those who write orgies on God’s words, but for those who feel unhurt and impudent words deep inside themselves as God’s gift. But first, one has to climb down his own abyss and hear muteness and silences that hurt. Slovenka has come down and survived… healed with hills and poems. Therefore this book, even when the sounds of sorrow, despair, cry and solitude are heard, is not the book of darkness but the book of light. Maybe just the rays of light are coming through the dark, but as long as there are rays of light, a soul will turn despair into a poem and someone’s cry will be heard through collapsing time. Do readers have the courage to accompany Slovenka and take their chalice, through pain, following the Sun – time will give answer to that question.
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· Literary Criticism & Photographs: Danijela Kovacevic Mikic / All rights reserved.
Copyright © Danijela Kovacevic Mikic ·
Copyright © Danijela Kovacevic Mikic ·
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Last updated on August 8, 2020.
Published by Urban Book Circle on August 8, 2020 Urban Book Circle® (UBC) |
· Translated from the Serbian by Jelena Milivojevic / All rights reserved.
Copyright © Jelena Milivojevic ·
Copyright © Jelena Milivojevic ·
· Photo of Danijela Kovacevic Mikic courtesy of Aleksandar Alempijevic / All rights reserved.
Copyright © Aleksandar Alempijevic ·
Copyright © Aleksandar Alempijevic ·
· Photo of Samuel Beckett’s bookshelf in the study of his apartment at the Boulevard St Jacques in Paris
courtesy of John Minihan / All rights reserved 1985. Copyright © John Minihan ·
courtesy of John Minihan / All rights reserved 1985. Copyright © John Minihan ·
· Edited by Djuradj “George” Vujcic, Jefimija “Mia” Vujcic, Danijela Kovacevic Mikic,
Deidre McAuliffe and Prvoslav “Pearse” Vujcic ·
· Design & Artwork by Prvoslav “Pearse” Vujcic and Djuradj “George” Vujcic ·
· Illustrated by Sarah Riordan and Deidre McAuliffe ·
All rights reserved. Copyright © Urban Book Circle®
Deidre McAuliffe and Prvoslav “Pearse” Vujcic ·
· Design & Artwork by Prvoslav “Pearse” Vujcic and Djuradj “George” Vujcic ·
· Illustrated by Sarah Riordan and Deidre McAuliffe ·
All rights reserved. Copyright © Urban Book Circle®
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