A round table on the topic "Where is that other door" dedicated to the literary work of Ćamil Sijarić was held today in the gallery of the Cultural Center in Bijelo Polje.
Academician Faruk Dizdarević, Prof. Dr. Draško Došljak, Prof. Dr. Dijana Hadžizukić, writer Darko Cvijetić, President of the Bosniak Council Suljo Mustafić and MA Denis Martinović spoke about the great writer's work.
Academician Faruk Dizdarević said that Ćamil Sijarić entered literature with the collection of short stories "Ram bulja" published in 1953, and that with the introduction of Bihor into literature, Sijarić began with short stories.
"Sijarić generally - if we exclude a small number of his poems published in the Skopje magazine "Vesnik", the student magazines "Mlada kultura" and "Student", Kršić's "Pregled", and the Sarajevo "Gajret" - began his literary work in the 1950s with stories and short stories, that is, prose texts," said Dizdarić.
Among critics and interpreters of Sijarić's work, for a time, as Dizdarević explained, there was an opinion that he was primarily a writer of native motifs and reminiscences.
"Being a native writer in our country has, for the most part, had a negative connotation for a long time, probably because native writers are usually individuals who have never left their homeland and it is their only inspiration. There are few who would be able to make the entire world native, or who would manage to invent their own homeland, build it from the ground up and make it peaceful so that the reader believes that, in fact, there is no more important place on Earth. Only recent literary-theoretical thought, with its teachings about the layers of being of an artistic creation, provides arguments for eliminating this misunderstanding. In its spirit, the assimilation of the spiritual foundations of a region and its cultural habitus (folklore, history and landscape) is only the path to the realization of a specific work of art, and not a condition for its value. Its value is revealed in the correlation of all relationships and layers in it, including the regional-cultural and historical ones," said Dizdarević.
Emphasizing that some of Sijarić's texts, such as "Ram Bulja", were published during a kind of revolutionary situation, characterized by the paradox that those writers and literary critics who believe themselves to be the most visible and progressive, act in a one-off manner and fail to see what is most significant, what is gifted and what claims the right to development in the future.
"This can explain why the literary efforts and achievements of Camil Sijarić were greeted with prejudice. However, Sijarić, with his persistence and talent, endured this and over time created significant literary works. He therefore overcame the narrow-mindedness of literary criticism, the narrow-mindedness that accompanied his development and maturation as a storyteller and novelist. In 1956, his novel Bihorci was declared the novel of the year by the jury of the Sarajevo Publishing House Narodna prosvjeta. After that, he published a series of extraordinary literary works. Now it can be said quite clearly that Čamil Sijarić, with his total literary opus, belongs to the top of Sandžak, Montenegrin, Bosnian and Herzegovina and Yugoslav literature," said Dizdarević, adding that his work remains permanently and surely as one of the most significant in the literature of our region in the 20th century.
Dizdarević noted that storyteller, novelist, and poet Ćamil Sijarić is primarily a master of storytelling and one of the rare writers who tells stories directly, while preserving and perfecting the characteristics of oral artistic storytelling.
"Both the one in us, which is its linguistic and creative starting point, and the tradition of oral storytelling in general, especially the enchanting one that came to us from the Orient. This storytelling heritage is permeated with the experiences of a modern man and a writer familiar with the literary procedures of the twentieth century, but in a way that does not harm the laws of speech that is intended more for the listening ear than the reading eye. Thus, it creates, very suggestively, the illusion of a living voice, telling a story, similar to what happens with Scheherazade's mediation in One Thousand and One Nights, in that, as Gorky said, (AM Peskov) the most monumental monument among the magnificent monuments of oral folk creativity," said Dizdarević.
The special and rare value of Sijarić's work, Dizdarević concluded, is represented by a distinctive and original storytelling gift that unites diverse elements and methods of oral storytelling, tradition and fairy tales, séretskikh sleights of hand, elegant restraint, gnomish wisdom of folklore inspiration and simple formulas that summarize the intellectual and spiritual experience of modern European consciousness.
In his commentary on the importance of Sijarić's work for the Bosniak literary heritage, the overall Montenegrin cultural and literary scene, and especially the presence of his work in school programs, reading materials, and in media and cultural content, Suljo Mustafić said that if there is a writer who has drawn from the deepest well of the past, myth, mentality, customs, and language of his Bosniak people, then it is Ćamil Sijarić.
"He managed to shed light on the long-buried mines of the Sandžak region and revive the linguistic fossils of a dialect that was doomed to become an exhibit in a museum of linguistic history."
He brought them to life, shaping and building a new world with them. The writer introduces them to it with literary seduction, an adventure that leads the reader through fields and ravines, in a constant desire and passion for searching and discovering. In the story, in the magic of storytelling, in the true, but contrived and domesticated writer's cosmos, a seemingly Arcadian, but actually harsh space is revealed, in which enchanting colors and landscapes are only the stage or backdrop for life stories, unpredictable destinies, tragic plots, mystery, uncertainty and fatalism.
Ćamil tells us: "A writer without a homeland is like a house without a foundation. Homeland is a kind of tenderness that envelops you with every memory of it, a kind of peace that overwhelms you and some sounds that only you can hear. That is the world of my childhood. A museum world, very dear to me, full of surprises and rare human beauty. I love to enter it, as someone loves to enter a museum. Nowhere are the movements of the hand, the glance, the accents in words and sentences so sublimated by history, tradition and an almost unimaginable isolation, as with a man in Sandžak. Sandžaklija strives for every action to be elegant and dignified. It is not an imitation, but his intimate decor and a manifestation of himself," said Mustafić.
Ćamilo's stories, Mustafić emphasized, testify to the special skill and inspiration of the great master, whose story is built, naturally, with characters and destinies, which indistinguishably intertwine and crystallize into a delicate epic-lyrical lace, with an abundance of life wisdom.
"Camilov's entire literary opus is a magical narrative and poetic adventure, which takes place and reflects the tradition and past, the spirit and mentality of this area, always at the border of worlds and in an exciting meeting of civilizations. In other words, an exceptional multicultural and civilizational value transposed into literature," said Mustafić, appealing from the gathering that Sijarić's work should be more and better represented in both the educational and media space in Montenegro.
As Prof. Dr. Draško Došljak said, Ćamil Sijarić is one of the most important writers of the South Slavic region, known for his special sensitivity to man, homeland and tradition.
"In Travelogues of Montenegro, Sijarić describes not only the areas he passes through, but also the soul of those regions, the people who inhabit them and the history that is deeply woven into them. His travelogues represent a combination of literary beauty, ethnographic observations and personal experiences. Montenegro appears in Sijarić's writings as a land of strong contrasts: harsh mountains and gentle valleys, stone and water, silence and loud history. The author observes nature with special attention, but it is never an end in itself. Landscapes are always connected to man and his life, struggle, poverty, but also dignity. Mountains are not just a geographical concept, but a symbol of the endurance and pride of the people who live in them," Došljak pointed out.
The special value of these travelogues, as Došljak explained, is the characters that Sijarić meets on his journey - ordinary people of the folk spirit whom the writer does not idealize, but approaches with understanding and warmth, showing deep respect for their fate and experience.
"The language of Travelogues in Montenegro is simple, picturesque and permeated with folk expressions, which gives the text authenticity and liveliness. The author often uses a lyrical note, so his travelogues approach poetry. This way, the reader not only receives information about the space, but also a strong emotional experience.
"In the end, Sijarić's travelogues are not just a journey through Montenegro, but also a journey through the past, identity and man's inner strength. They teach us to look more carefully at the world around us and to recognize great human and cultural value in seemingly modest and forgotten places," he said.
Došljak recalled that speaking about literary genres that unite historical and scientific interest with artistic design, Milivoj Solar said: "Among such literary and scientific genres, travel writing is also of particular importance. On the one hand, it can represent a contribution to geography or ethnography, while, on the other hand, it represents a special literary genre in which travel and the description of the regions or countries traveled are the occasion for a broader artistic design of observations, impressions and reflections on everything that preoccupies the travel writer during the journey."
"In this way, a travelogue often approaches an essay or a novel, in which the plot is organized as a sequence of events that occur during the journey of a character or group of characters. Although there is an opinion that a travelogue is approaching an essay or a novel, and also that there has been a greater interest in such a literary genre recently, the travelogue is certainly a less researched, studied and, ultimately, read area. This is also shown when it comes to Čamil Sijarić, Sijarić is better known as a novelist than as a travelogue," said Došljak.
"I studied Ćamil Sijarić in my master's thesis a long time ago, and in my doctoral thesis, and I also wrote about him later. He is one of the writers who truly attracted me, primarily with the way he writes, his lyrical expression, the poeticization of the novel, the beauty of the language, and his syntax is incredible," said, among other things, Prof. Dr. Dijana Hadžizukić.
This year's laureate of the "Ćamil Sijarić" award, Darko Cvijetić, said that he is not a scholar who would speak about Sijarić in an appropriate way, but that he is an admirer and reader of Ćamil Sijarić's work.
"And only from that perspective can I speak about him, and as the winner of this year's award. I can say that I am his child, successor, heir to his work, words, and his search for depth in language. I am infinitely proud to be here and to be the winner of this year's award," said Cvijetić.
MA Denis Martinović emphasized that Sijarić's prose is simultaneously literature and an archive.
"It preserves speech, mentality and customs, but also the inner fractures, fears and silences of people who would otherwise remain invisible... Although Ćamil Sijarić has no formal psychological education, his literary intuition and shows exceptional precision in understanding the human personality. Through narrative, dialogue and the fates of the characters, he provides insights that are comparable in depth and accuracy to those we find in the works of Karen Hornay, one of the key figures of 20th-century psychoanalytic thought," he said.
Hornaj, Martinović recalled, believed that people try to resolve internal contradiction and existential anxiety through three basic orientations in relation to others: moving towards people, turning away from people, and moving against people.
"In Sijarić's prose, these orientations are not abstract models, but living experiences. Characters who move towards people seek acceptance, security and meaning in the community, often suppressing their own needs for the sake of belonging. Those who turn away from people retreat into silence and solitude, carrying their wounds without words. And those who move against people develop defiance, rudeness and stubbornness as a way of self-defense in a world they perceive as hostile. Sijarić's uniqueness lies in the fact that he does not moralize these strategies. He understands them. His heroes often change their patterns of behavior depending on the circumstances, confirming what Hornaj pointed out: that these are primarily attempts at survival, not weaknesses of character," Martinović pointed out.
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