The Slavic Chest
The Slavic Chest

Summary/Abstract: Around the end of the 60s and the beginning of the 70s in Skopje, when I was 5-6 years old, children from the suburbs (where I also grew up) often amused themselves by casting shadows in dark rooms with their hands and other objects, by candlelight. Some of them became real artists: the hand, with a little magic, became a goose, a devil with horns, a dog, a bird’s beak, a dragon, a horse with wings. Objects were transformed: the sewing needle under a magnifying glass could become a baby in swaddling clothes, the fork - a frightened man or a three-toothed person standing at the entrance of a seductive underground world of shadows. I have forgotten many of those tricks and metamorphoses, yet I remember them now when the electricity fails during a thunderstorm, as I try to reproduce the figures for my daughter. In those days the electricity was often cut off in Skopje. They called it a restriction. I do not know why there are no restrictions today. Perhaps we are richer now. Yet, I know we are poorer in the world of shadows. We read about this world only in books of ancient mythology. I dedicate this piece to the people of my generation who sold the shadows and departed to a world of light, a world of lathed metals, preserved minerals, pale neon and bright perspective.

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