Learning from Bosnia: Approaching Tradition

Preface

Preface Available in the original Bosnian, and soon in French and Italian as well, the entire text of Bosanski odgovor: O modernosti i tradiciji appears here in English for the first time. An earlier version of the present translation (see ‘‘Author’s Note’’) has inspired a variety of comments from readers and translators. A question frequently asked of that version is, why ‘‘a Bosnian response’’ when the book contains relatively few references to the political, cultural, and social situation of Bosnia? When a writer’s efforts are transformed into a book that is sent out to readers, some of them known and many of them not, the writer needs to listen carefully to their comments, for only then can that writer better understand and interpret the writer’s self and the world. When a reader opens and starts reading this book, knowing perhaps less about the writer who has sent it and more about the Bosnia of the title, the reader ’s own preconceptions, combined with the observation that the book’s title seems not to match its content, might prompt the question just raised. It is a question the book does in fact attempt to answer; and though the answer might not be the expected one, this can only benefit the reader. Indeed, because a little knowledge is all too often a dangerous thing, the very purpose of writing this book is to disconfirm the reader’s expectations. In failing to find the expected answer, the reader is returned to the question, which in turn makes the reader more receptive to the actual answer—to how the destiny of Bosnia can serve both as a paradigm and as an antiparadigm for the human condition. Though the adjective Bosnian can be read as a paradigm for the pluri- xxiv / Preface formity of human attitudes toward the world and God, this is not and cannot be its only or its final reading. The Bosnian tradition of accepting the inevitability of, and thus the right to, differing Christologies among people who speak the same language and share the same history can also find itself reduced to the antiparadigms of confessionalism, ethnicism, and ultimately nationalism. The descent into nationalism excludes the possibility of and the right to diversity. Differences become implacably reduced to territories with clearly defined boundaries, within which everything that is other and different must either cease to be or become subordinate to the majority. Power and quantity pass judgment on weakness and frailty, which means that power and quantity become the arbiters of beauty and clemency . Authority is vested in whatever is greater in number and superior in power. Multiformities of ritual, heritage, and temple (synagogue, church, and mosque) are replaced by a single, homogeneous entity, which instigates and upholds violence. In this process, the sanctity of the human individual, of the temple, and of nature itself becomes lost. Each individual is part of the world as a whole, but is also its image. As all that is dispersed through the world is gathered together in the individual human being, the human individual must also encompass the original purity of nature. This original purity is no one’s, because it belongs to no single, specific individual; but as it belongs to the Creator , it is also everyone’s. The temple is the point where all things that are dispersed through the world, all the Creator’s manifestations, are brought back together by humankind. The temple is a place of human openness toward the Absolute, for in it the exteriority of the world is focused and concentrated through the interiority of humankind. Hence the temple belongs to no one but the Creator, which also makes it the property of each individual. Nowadays, it is difficult for many to understand why the original purity of nature and the authenticity of the temple should be preserved, and in this very difficulty we recognize and see corroborated the tension between the modern and the traditional. Both extremes, modernity and tradition, are premised on a crucial question: what is reality and what is its opposite? At either extreme, the question may be ignored, or it may be asked so forthrightly that only one answer is possible: that, by ‘‘translating’’ what lies beyond, one should accept all that is alien and unknown. Another possibility is that reality, in all its multiplicity, may be distorted by the presence of the observer at its center. The question, [3.147.42.168] Project...