I finished my literary duties in Podgorica, which didn't look like itself at the beginning of October – two days of rain and wind that played on people's bones. But on the third day – when it was time to get ready to return to Belgrade – the sun shone over Podgorica. And it was already possible to sit in the gardens of cafes in the center.
I had previously visited a large tent on Independence Square where regional publishers were showing off their skills. At the stand of Lom Publishers, I noticed a book by one of the most famous literary names of today – a man who connects Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia and Montenegro through his life and literature.
Goran Samardžić, whose father was from Nikšić and mother from Priboj, was born in Sarajevo and raised in Belgrade. He has won literary awards for almost every book he has published in the last three and a half decades.
IN THE BEGINNING THEY WERE "DUMMETS"
Goran and I are generational brothers from the Sarajevo literary scene. I published my first book in 1988 in Svjetlost, and in the same edition of Nada, Goran published a book of poetry "Lutke" in 1990. The book was written in Ekavica, Goran said so. He entertained us with sorcerer's anecdotes in the literary taverns of pre-war Sarajevo - from Korzo to Zvon.
His poetry captivated with a kind of cheerfulness and subtle innocence that post-Dizdar's Bosnia was almost unknown to.
The photo of the poet for the cover, which was mandatory in Svjetlosti editions, was already out of date in 1990. Probably from some time as a witch doctor, before coming to Sarajevo. I conclude this from the abundance of hair on the poet's head. Already at the time of his debut poetry book, the twenty-nine-year-old poet's hair was thinning. His mother Bela was amazed, because her father Đorđe was a man according to her taste - he had a sheep on his head. Goran told me all this in one of our countless conversations in Sarajevo. "Dolls" were then a mature minimalist work. Fresh, even bizarre images were produced in a pared-down language. The read intersected with the lived - the pages were paraded by Silvia Plath, Oscar Wilde, Ernst Hemingway, Tolstoy, from historical figures Caligula and Gavrilo Princip. The mother, father, grandfather and grandmother are also together, immortalized in a gentle and dark humor. There are also girls, the poet's most constant obsession.
The war slowed down the literary trajectory of this man, but it filled him with scenes that, due to the imperative of mental hygiene, had to come out of him. He began writing stories even before the war, but in several post-war collections he gained a regional reputation as a master of short prose texts. He wrote them in the same charming and silly language as his poems. All this was crowned with the novel "Forest Spirit", which already has a cult status. He became a novelist for the second time last year when he received one of the most important regional awards, awarded by the Zagreb V. .Z.
FROM DOG GRAVEYARD TO CRACK
I also read that novel in manuscript. A marriage seen in the rearview mirror, at its agonizing end. “However, it seems that the intensity of the love story here is only to write a loving dedication to the dachshund with the eyes of a saint, and he, with his many angelic qualities and agendas, does his best to save that marriage and the people he loves,” wrote Vanja Kulaš. She characterized Samardžić’s narrative voice, the product of a “hyperactive, disheveled mind,” as “brazen and exhausted, harsh, and yet extremely gentle.” Finally, the editor of the Zagreb publishing house and literary critic Vanja Kulaš recommended the novel as follows: "Apart from the themes and structure, this book is magnetic because of its good style, prose full of poetry and silly humor, always and exclusively at its own expense, and what distinguishes it from 'The Forest Spirit' is Samardžić's authorial handwriting. The novelistic debut of this prose writer, poet, and publisher has long since become a myth, and with 'The Dog Gravedigger', exactly two decades later, it gains a full-blooded successor."
All this goes through my head as I open Goran's poetry book in Podgorica with a cup of "deutsch" which the publisher, in a clever marketing move, subtitled "a novel in eight hundred stanzas".
I read the book page by page, devouring it as if I hadn't talked to the poet for months about the hot verses that were electronically delivered from Sarajevo to Banovo Brdo or Leskovac, depending on where I was staying. I interrupt my reading to go to the Podgorica airport. The taxi ride takes a bit longer because of the Pride Parade. The plane is late, so I finish reading at the gate. In my opinion, this is the best poetry that Goran Samardžić has ever written.
The book could also be called "A Severe Love-Life Hangover in 84 Songs." Because Goran realized long ago, ever since puberty, that love is "the best free drug in the world." And he has been an addict his whole life.
How does that sound in the book "Break"?
"The hospital floor prays in Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim languages. And in Hebrew. If the world were a hospital, no one would go to war. They would just be brave."
In another place I read: “It’s nice to be a mother…” The sick call out to their mother, and Samardžić finds a beautiful word for this call. The poet’s humor never leaves him: “Despair is my job. No one gets paid for despair.” On crutches, in a tavern, among losers who smoke and drink, the poet sees himself like this: “Right now I’m a character from a Russian novel who is deeply silent and disgusted with himself.” And in front of the mirror, the temporary invalid says: “That’s healthy. Staring at your living remains.”
The poet carries several countries in his heart, and one, unnamed, could be Serbia: "I hide that I love a country where I often visit. I was a host and now a guest. A child, a young man, then an old man. That country is a sow among piglets, a pig among piglets."
At the end of the book, the poet says: "Not everyone is worthy of being a bearer of sorrow. Not even me. I can't wait for this present of mine to pass."
I could say a lot about this book of poems, which I predict will have cult status among literary connoisseurs. But I am wise enough to immediately ask Goran Samardžić to comment on his "Lom". What follows is an autopoietic entry that arrived from Sarajevo to Cologne - I have changed my place of residence again. This text also has its own nomadic destiny. It began with a reading of "Lom" in Podgorica, the first sentences were written in Belgrade, and I am finishing the entry in Cologne. Now it is joined by a text that I somewhat forced from the poet at the beginning of October of the summer of our Lord 2025.
"A STATE OF TOTAL INTELLIGENCITY"
"From the first collection of poems, Dolls, published in 1990, to this one, through Cancelled because of the rain, Tooth in the Wood, and White, the author permutes the lyrical Self into the epic and brings himself to a state of total intelligibility."
Metaphor is kept to a minimum and linguistic equilibration is reduced to modest measures. There is no space between what is written and the audience. The poems do not have individual titles and crowns, but ordinal numbers, reduced to just one word - Lom. That is why the publisher dared to stigmatize the book in the subtitle as a novel in eight hundred stanzas. Perhaps the book is not so much a novel as a poem with the characteristics of prose in verse. The central theme is a home emptied of meaning and content overnight. Smoothly, as if on rails and a devil's timetable, the composition of a woman, children and two dogs leaves it. To all this, under the influence of tranquilizers and numbing agents, the main bearer of sadness and grief falls from the motorcycle, breaking bones. Disability is transferred from the soul to the body. He ends up chained in a plaster and delirium of writing. He spikes it with humor and self-irony. Destruction. He has an ear for global and local tragedies, but his own, oh my, is what burns him the most. Life is a cage from which one watches and is watched. Most often with his own eyes. The sky is a cover, not a blue coating with a bird in sight. The hospital is a womb; the nurses are strict, the nannies are as efficient as wasps. The writer has no desire to go home. He wants to be employed like a sick person. He is not given a bed or a corner to someone else and sicker. The toilet in the hospital is a smoking room and a latrines, a smaller place for excreting waste. Crutches are already an integral part of the anatomy and being. Fortunately for the writer who is his own hero for the tenth time, if we count his published books, a woman comes to his aid, offering her soul and body for a band-aid. This naturally results in the second and more relaxed part of the poem that heals us than the first. Sadness bursts along the precisely drawn seam under which healing is visible. Enough whining and moaning. In the throes of life, someone is kneeling by the side of the road and traveling, only slowly. And riding a motorbike is in sight. Happiness, not exactly happiness but something like that, peeks into view. The subscription to sadness has expired and there is nowhere to go. What is left is offered, not what was too much a long time ago. This book confirms that great books are based on misfortune and its derivatives."
AGAINST THE TITLE
If I were on the jury for a literary award, I would recommend "Lom" to my colleagues. It is a book that is written once in a lifetime. And against the writer's will. Those are the most significant. If I were by any chance the editor of the last novel as well as this poetry book - these two works actually form a thematic whole - I would use my discretion and call the novel "Kučkar", and I would put the verses under the umbrella title "Poems on Crutches". I am writing this to secure titles for future publishers - the poems will one day come from Belgrade to Sarajevo, where they were created. Maybe to Zagreb before. And the prose, poured from Ijekavica to Ekavica, like brandy from bottle to bottle, will probably also dawn in Belgrade.
Bonus video:
