Across the River: On the Poetry of Mak Dizdar

13. Message

13. Message All stećci known and unknown, individually and collectively throughout the land of Bosnia, those with images and epitaphs and those without —are all signs of the Stone Sleeper. In Dizdar’s poetic revelation, their cold passivity over the graves of our remote Bošnjan forbears is transformed into the Sleeper’s discourse on the uncreated and uncreatable Self. This discourse is a message. The Sleeper’s utterances lead the listener or reader to ‘‘Message ’’—the seemingly unfinished, long final poem of Kameni spavač. Although it contains the voices of many different speakers, the speaker ’s ‘‘I’’ and the listener’s ‘‘you’’ are fully distinct. Addressing that ‘‘you’’ which constantly threatens him with destruction, the Sleeper says: But by a miracle I will still be dreaming here on earth. And like a wise watchman from the East Forbidding others to dream and think You’ll pour poison Into the spring From which Message / 95 I drink. And you’ll laugh you’ll roar That I am No more. ‘‘Message’’ Who is the ‘‘you’’ of the Sleeper’s message? If he knows nothing of the inner self of the speaker, does that self know itself? A message relates the one delivering it with the one he is conveying it to. Who is the deliverer and who the recipient of this message? Kameni spavač becomes more comprehensible to interpretation firmly rooted in sacred science and sacred art. The specifically Bosnian form of the book must be understood in terms of an inner element , which is always one and the same, and an exterior, which exist in multiplicity and motion. Otherwise, this poetic discourse remains inarticulate and vulnerable to doubts and distortions. When received and studied with a view to bridging the gulf between the temporal and the spiritual, the earthly and the heavenly, multiplicity and Unity, a text emerges that transcends the words printed on the page and helps us orient toward the center—which otherwise becomes ever more obscure and remote. Let it be said once more that Kameni spavač was a poetic revelation in the darkness of the twentieth century’s ideological and dogmatic sermonizing. But unlike ideological sermonizing, no revelation seeks confirmation in an act of social enterprise. Revelation has a reason and value regardless of any of its consequences and thus regardless of any act in which the primal human perfection is not taken into consideration. It proceeds from and for the sake of the center of the self. It is for human perfection, and only in such perfection can a true revelation be witnessed and discerned. Nothing in the worlds can overpower the sanctity and inviolability of the human center. No human achievement is of any significance by comparison with the loss of the Self. The Sleeper’s discourse is thus a testimony to the meaning of sleep as a bridge between illusion and the Mystery that manifests itself and yet remains what it is. 96 / The Text beyond the Text Loss and discovery are always with us. In every human breath, mercy and wrath, beauty and ugliness, good and evil are all present. Although we do not choose our destiny, we are free at every instant to choose to embrace mercy, beauty, and good over anything else, to choose the beauty of the blossom instead of the fruit we repeatedly reach out for. What are the worlds to us if we lose ourselves in making the wrong choice? ‘‘Blue River’’ is not one of the poems that make up the book Kameni spavač. It was published under separate covers, but there can be no doubt that it acts as both prologue and epilogue to the book. It is like the gem on the Sleeper’s ring; and the clasp holding the gem in place is the poem ‘‘Message.’’ ‘‘Blue River’’ could thus be read as a continuation of Kameni spavač. The Sleeper begins to speak with the poem ‘‘Roads’’ and ends with the unfinished poem ‘‘Message.’’ His faith has no name but it is the reality of his ‘‘I.’’ Beyond its unity with being, the Sleeper is not overly concerned what that faith may be called, for that would prefigure the possibility of the loss or obscuration of that reality. Others send an army against him, defining him in their ignorance and fear of his ‘‘faithless faith.’’ The Sleeper’s faith is thus a reality...