Diwan 11

| Diwan 17 - 18 |

EDITORIAL

Dear & respected reader!

Unfortunately, the practice of Diwan's irregular issue has continued. In the year of the introduction of VAT and cancellation of the PLANJAX and GKS literary awards when the Gradačac Meetings will be significantly downsized, it is no wonder that issue 17-18 of Diwan is this late in coming out. When publishers have to let go of their staff and cancel projects, every literary initiative in BiH becomes and incident. Still, the contents of the long-awaited issue look something like this:

In her text "The Institution of Literature/Art and the Notion of the Cannon", Dubravka Đurić presents a viewpoint of cultural studies on a theory that interprets "and mediates the world" (C. Baker) since it modifies fact through the process of "verification", that is, it affects them by the perspective defined by the hypothesis and "the signifying practice which produces meanings in the context of social power". While the secular cannon, as the bases of institutionalised art, becomes "a guiding star of the common culture of the educated elite" (D. LaCapra). The pertinence of Đurić's examination for literary, intercultural and political phenomena of the pre-political Balkan communities is more than obvious.

The first thematic unit of this double issue - a transcript of the round table entitled "The Literary Left and Right Today" held at the Gradačac Literary Meetings on 28 May 2005 - is in a similar tone. Seeking out the possibilities of naming the literary polarisations in BiH and the region, the following people contributed to this discussion by "hook" or by "crook": Željko Grahovac, Marko Vešović, Zilhad Ključanin, Hadžem Hajdarević, Ismet Bekrić, Munib Maglajlić, Ivan Kordić and your non-editor. The nervous discussion from the beginning of the debate was transformed - in the end - into an exchange of arguments instead of labels and the initial failings of the organisation were thus overcome.

The second thematic unit is translation. Namely, in the deafness of isolation and poverty, every literature suffers from a deficit of translations, from a lack of communication, even with a friendly environment. The same is true of Bosnian-Herzegovinian literature. That is why our "transl(iter)ators": Ulvija Tanović, Svetislav Travica, Aleksandar Bečanović, Zdravko Kecman, Lukasz Szopa, Stevan Tontić and Kerima Filan "brought" you the texts of Elia Domenzain and Anna Akhmatova, Richard Rorty and Osip Mandelstam, Jana Putrle-Srdić and Pedro de la Peña, Gregorz Wróblewski, Christa Reinig and Marina Achenbach, Haldun Taner... We humbly hope, dear reader, that this will enlist your "multicultural" support for the Diwan editorial desk.

Two industrious young women - Branka Vujanović and Mevlida Đuvić - contributed their research on William Blake and Abdurezak Hivzi Bjelevac. They demonstrated how the environment of cultural predispositions and spiritual preoccupations of a writer does not depend upon the "wheel of time". How the hundred years between Bjelevac (beginning of the 20th century) and Blake (beginning of the 19th century) is a gap that cannot be bridged by either technology or emancipation. How the mature individualism of mythological (romantic) philosophemes is far "ahead" (!??) of petty bourgeois mannerism and pseudo-enlightenment. Which seems unfair to Bjelevac only at first glance. It is a matter of the "horizon of expectations", that is, the power of adaptation (coercion) of the member and citizen (minion) towards the cultural context and environment. And, you must agree, this is a problem even today.

Jasna Šamić, Rusmir Mahmutčehajić, Aleksandra Čvorović and Danijela Kambasković-Sawers wrote reviews of books by Frederic Mitterand, Adam B. Seligman, Vladan Matijević and Miljenko Jergović. This is our attempt to initiate the genre of review, so absent (and profaned) in B-H contemporary periodicals, to devote space and significance to the evaluation of literature and the writing process outside of "privatisation" and protectionism.

Apart from the thematic units, the poetry was contributed by: Fadila Nura Haver, Goran Sarić, Saša Skenderija, Ivančica Đerić, Jasna Šamić, Vlatko Marinović, Goran Karanović and your humble editor. And the prose by: Ferid Muhić, Miljenko Buhać, Srđan Papić, Bosiljka Pušić, Ljerka Car Matutinović and Mirjana Kapetanović. However, your special attention is warranted by the hypertext by Sanjin Sorel "Devils on Bread and Water". Sorel combined poetry, essay and prose into a unique linguistic being. Into a seductive space/time continuum. I hope you will enjoy it…

Pardon! It would be terrible to forget the fascinating illustrations of Bojan Bahić, our "cannonised" maestro of digital art. And in this issue of Diwan he is joined by the tempestuous genius William Blake and the German-French Lena Vandrey whose sophisticated philogyny is fascinating in its explosion of shapes and colours. In addition: it would be incorrect to term such diversity as "queer" in the "Paradigms of Uncomfortable Beauty" of Lena Vandrey (Paradigmen der unbequemen Schönheit, Bremen 1986), for they refine the "eye of the beholder" even if it is mired in the mundane.

Tuzla, 30 March 2006

Your editor, Dinko Delić

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