The short story is a favorite form of many readers. However, long story short, we are in crisis in the Western Balkans and beyond. There are few authors who skillfully and unquestionably master this demanding literary form. One of the rare masters of the short story Kemal Music published a new collection entitled "The Day After".
The collection is divided into five chapters that make up: Entering Life, The First Silence, The Second Silence, and Exiting Life, and about fifteen stories embroidered with filigree gold threads that introduce readers to the magical world of the storyteller. Starting from the title itself, the author wants to draw the attention of every reader to what follows him not only on the pages of this book but also in life itself.
What is life really like that is full of twists and turns, from the day we open our eyes to the day we cross to the other shore. In the collection itself, with an inimitable prose fluidity, Musić seems to have translated it Borgesova symbolism, Chekhov's indelible traces, Fitzgerald's authenticity, Markesov style, Kortasareva recklessness, Carver's durability, Sijarić originality... It is necessary, right at the beginning, to try to clarify the title, since Musić in his other collections of short stories also kept the simplicity of the title, which to some extent hides the key for the reader's decipherment. It is interesting to note what important (life) topics the author himself talks about in an exceptional and, above all, persuasive way, the family saga in the opening stories illuminates an era and many lives.
The author shows his own world and characters, plunges into the depths and goes deep below the surface of the psyche and emotions, building stories of timeless value. Musić writes down feelings and the path of reflection, (self) reflection, but his erudition is also visible.
That's our teacher playing the violin is the opening story. It is actually also an introduction - at all our beginnings we are full of cheerfulness and optimism, not knowing what life brings and arranges for us. The secrets of life are many, and the important secrets of knowledge and learning about all of this are conveyed by the teacher. In this story, he is not a classic teacher, he is also a beacon who dedicated his Promethean-enlightenment path to his students and to all the secrets that life carries.
Life is not life until you begin to experience it yourself and experience it on a land dominated by jackals and pain, while the teacher's violin slowly reminds you of the entry but also the exit from life. Pushkin they did not leave indifferent. Musić's succinct and concise permeation is enriched with literary dynamism, diverse dramaturgy from which the most beautiful stories emerge. The author's writing style is simple, but strong in emotion - it shows the storms and storms of certain periods of life.
Story Father speaks to us through the prism of a figure who dominates life with music. Moving from one mountain to another, then from the second to the third - there is also the wolf as a symbol of survival in the mountains, and life is not life if the horsemen of fate do not roar through it sometimes bringing joy and sometimes death. There is no room for anxiety and sorrow, and for eighty-two years the hero of this story defied that same life. Then silence, sounds and whistling, gallops and skies, the road and roads on which each of us is our own tread. The revival of a past is performed thoughtfully and dramatically convincingly with descriptions of toponyms in which a life ends. Transience always reminds us of the traces of the past and the revived memory that makes these stories precious.
Story Sister represents the very peak of the mastery of the author who has woven the pain of a moment into a small number of words. The moment in which before your eyes as in Voltaire's the realization crossed my mind: "The moment we are born is already a step towards death", and what happens to those who are between those two paths so that they do not touch life without going to death. Undoubtedly, one of the strongest and most authentic stories about great human dilemmas and fears. The whiteness and purity of the dove that represents the innocent soul left floating between two worlds. In this story of expressive power, Kemal Music had to witness but also face the moment in which a life disappeared.
Story Death and the experience of the author himself while the chainsaw is the only thing heard in those moments and cuts the sky. The very realization of death and the hand of his cousin Camil stroking his hair represents a kind of paradigm between the two worlds of the world in which he lives and the world in which he realizes the moment of "departure" and the land that smelled like a hard laborer's life. The writer is not afraid to admit the pain of loss. All this is united in a young soul that feels strongly and is just at the beginning of life. The author skilfully gives the framework to the story, and then universally leads it to a simple, sharp style enriched by intertextuality. Musić skilfully represents the depth of relationships between generations by presenting a part of himself from the past, events in the present and wishes for the future. With this story, the author shows that simple family relationships can be written and described clearly, without superfluous details and events, and that they are again precisely and clearly placed in a certain time and narrative framework.
Story Pisac it shows a way out of the sphere we call life. And what is life actually a moment and a moment. Everything stopped at that moment: hopes, desires, expectations, love. Books scattered on the asphalt and a testimony of a time. Musić's story and (other stories) contain elements of chronicle and autobiographical moments that combine (unite) elements of memoir and fiction. In this story about life and death, the past and the present must be turned into eternity. Historical facts intertwined with cultural and traditional knowledge, but also with contemporary criticism, shed new light on the form of a short story that accompanies not only this story but the entire collection.
Day after is a collection of short stories that talks, among other things, about one of the most complex and delicate human phenomena: the loss of a loved one. As well as the search for ourselves and all our inner silences. Using specific examples and stories, the author explains how pain and loss are an important part of understanding the world, growing up and developing every human being. In these stories, an experience is presented that makes the reader stop and take a deep breath, but at the same time motivates him to continue reading, because the stories are made of everything that life does or doesn't do.
Due to the writer's exceptional storytelling skills and the narrative procedures he applies, each story takes the reader to a new world. From stories told in a realistic form, in the form of dialogue or (internal) monologue, through surrealist to postmodernist elements, they make this book unique in many ways. These stories show us that each of us is an individual, each with his own thoughts and melancholy that are written on the pages of this collection.
The writer gives such a comprehensive, artistic, aesthetic view of human destiny through the eyes of his heroes. Musić is someone who brings stories to an end in an exceptional way. The endings complete the picture as if they were just that part of the missing arabesque that was necessary to complete the story. He does not end before the end, nor at the very end, but after all that was necessary to tell. With this process, he leaves the characters alive, while indirectly saying that there is only one life and that only our good deeds remain behind us. The author's stories, as the end approaches, suggest a new beginning, or rather, an attempt to return everything to the old way. But nothing is the same anymore, even when it seems that way. The more we try to ignore the present, escaping into the past, the closer we are to the future, and it has only one question, how much time do we still have.
A collection of short stories Day after will undoubtedly be warmly received by the readership, especially by all those who closely follow the work of Kemal Musić.
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