KULTURNI KONTEKST SELIMOVIĆEVE UMJETNOSTI
THE CULTURAL CONTEXT OF SELIMOVIĆ’S ART

Summary/Abstract: In his Memories and Discussions about the novels Death and the Dervish and The Fortress, Mesa Selimovic drew attention to the understanding of the topic of Bosnia as a specific cultural-historical space in which intertextuality became the property of Bosnian/Bosniak mentality, psychology, ethics and aesthetic perception, all that by the historical circumstances of encounter of civilizations, and the co-existence of diverse cultures, religions and ethnicities. Thereby the question of the identity of Bosniaks, their complexity and the oppositions to the other ethnic identities, raises to the level of problems. A distinctive culture of family life, shaped by the tenets of Oriental, Eastern glow of poetry and stories, was created in terms of a social passivism, which favored the creation of female-type culture that prefers personal and individual experience, fantasy and imagination, and therefore a tendency to lyricism is understandable. The title Four Golden Birds, under which a manuscript of Dervish was written and partially published in the first version, is a leitmotif, and its metaphoric images are full of signs of tradition, customs and religion that have modeled the world of Selimovic’s suggestive testimony about the cultural-historical existence of Bosniaks. While the main stream determines the border situation – Dervish and death – an existential convulsion and a tragic aura, another opposite flow – Four golden birds – implies a mystic seeing through its symbolism, and moreover it inserts memory medallions deeply into the memory that present situation brings by associative flashes, as a longing and a light/epistemology. Such statements of a fantasy speech of an inner speech intensity provide a catharsis and a relief from a meditative state of scepticism that does not allow a deeper pesimism as it is not typical for the culture in which Islam is a Form Vitae and a Form Mentis. In tandem with a modern expression and a historic milieu, Selimovic has succeeded to absorb and draw attention to the spiritual, aesthetic and traditional values of the old Bosniak literature.

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