Across the River: On the Poetry of Mak Dizdar

1. Introduction

1. Introduction In 1969 Mak Dizdar1 was named Golden Laureate of the Struga Poetry Evenings, the internationally acclaimed poetry festival held annually in Struga, in Macedonia, for his ‘‘Modra rijeka’’ (Blue River).2 This poem lent its title to a volume of poetry published in 1971 and is a continuation of the poetic discourse Dizdar began so momentously with Kameni spavač (Stone Sleeper) and which forms the basis of his reputation as a poet. To be a poet is to be caught between two extremes, and, as a result, talk of poets and poetry is invariably about these extremes, or inclinations toward one or the other. To delineate the range of this discourse, one might do well to begin by defining these two extremes as they are defined in the Recitation.3 The question of Man involves three essential elements—the patency of Unity as the Principle of all existence, our descent from, and our return to the Principle. All of us, poets included, find ourselves somewhere in between. Let us see, then, what God says of poets with regard to both these aspects of the self: ‘‘And the poets—the perverse follow them; hast thou not seen how they wander in every valley and how they say that which they do not?’’ 4 The Messenger said, ‘‘It is better for a man to fill the inside of his body with pus than to fill it with poetry.’’5 Introduction / 113 This is the basest extreme of the human self in its obsession with poetry. The antithesis to such poets is ‘‘those that believe, and do righteous deeds, and remember God oft, and help themselves after being wronged.’’6 The Messenger says of their poetry that it ‘‘contains wisdom ’’7 and, speaking of one of them, prays to God that He ‘‘support him with the Holy Spirit.’’8 The Faithful Spirit sent the Revelation as a dream into the Messenger ’s heart.9 The Dream Revelation was then spoken, making divine speech accessible in human language. To distinguish one kind of poet from the other, one should study their poetry in the light of the Recitation and the discursive current that cleaves to its language. Poetry that belongs to this current retains its link with the Principle, as source and impetus, trajectory and out- flow. Poetry of this kind bears witness to Unity and maps the upward path from our descent to the depths back to our supreme potentiality, closeness to the Principle. ‘‘Blue River’’ is a poem but also indissolubly part of the ‘‘eternal wisdom’’ of ‘‘the standing debt’’ (sophia perennis and al-din al-qayyim ).10 Eternal wisdom illuminates, as already observed in the first part of this work.11 It is therefore the poem itself which makes possible the conjugation of the metaphysical, cosmological, anthropological , and psychological content of the discourse of Stone Sleeper with the traditional point of view. It will hardly be disputed, after our study of Stone Sleeper, that Dizdar’s poetry belongs to the second type, the poetry of wisdom. Here, we will attempt to link the perspective of Stone Sleeper with that of ‘‘Blue River.’’ It should be noted at the very outset that the sleeper in Stone Sleeper is closer to reality than a person who is physically awake, as sensory experience is of a lower order than dreams, and death leads into the deepest of sleep. A dream experience may speak of Truth, but also of that which diverts from Truth. The diverter from Truth, however , cannot assume the person or the discourse of the Messenger Muhammad , the Praised,12 who realized in his own being the ascent to Unity, after Unity Itself had first descended upon him. All speech 114 / Across Water: A Message on Realization about sleep is thus on the scales of the Praised, by whom truth and falsehood are held in the balance. In ‘‘Blue River,’’ the narrator is ‘‘we’’—humanity, man as such. The tale of the blue river begins with the line ‘‘Where it might flow nobody knows,’’ and culminates in the exclamation ‘‘A river that we need to cross.’’ With these two lines and the poem they enclose, the poet created something one might describe as a discourse on Unity, as descent from and return to Unity. The poet’s name and his time are known; but his speech transcends both. Its origin and end are both in Sophia...