The Sisyphean pattern of resisting evil: Farewell to the poet Bogić Rakočević

The Word has brought us together again. And the Poet. And the Man. Our Bogić Rakočević.

The fact that I am saying a lament over our beloved God is an extraordinary honor for me. Because speaking about a poet always and in all days represents a challenge and responsibility, speaking about a man who left us early represents pain and unhappiness, and saying something about a poet and a friend and a man who resurrected poetry, friendship and humanity anew in a country that particularly cherishes these cults means stopping, thinking deeply and carefully, taking a breath and realizing that we have lost one of the greats of the contemporary Montenegrin renaissance of humanity and literature. And when a man leaves, poetry also stops for a moment.

Our Bogić wrote his whole life, permanently and almost without a break. And when he discovered a previously undiscovered illness in himself, he continued to write and certainly did so, at least for a short time, healing and cleansing or delaying the streams of an, nevertheless, unstoppable monster. And then he told his and our daughter Xenia gave wills about the literary legacy, reminding her dearly not to forget anything. And then, waiting for hours in the corridors of the oncology ward, he followed the fates of people, admired their courage, recorded their invigorating humor, the humor of the dying, but the living, and from everything he created a Bogić-esque mimesis of creation and living and survival. And continuation. A mimesis of quiet but persistent defiance and resistance to death and evil. And then he composed folders of the written word and created resources of the unstoppable Montenegrin cultural genesis.

In his short stories, sketch stories, novels, essays and criticism, in anthologies of stories and poems prepared by prose writers and poets, and in reports and interviews, and finally, in poetry to which he returned most often and in which he found dominantly the entirety of his being, therefore, wherever there is a written or oral trace of his words, an exceptional identity was synchronously built and shaped to an undeniably supreme artificiality - aesthetic, ethical, creative, artistic, altruistic and humanistic. Being and remaining in everything he wrote, always loyal to another person, and thus to all kinds of otherness and diversity, he discovered both himself and his vast possibilities of understanding and accepting the other. Discovering himself, he approached the other and built friendships and comradeship with people all over the planet. And if we ask ourselves today who is at the center of the interesting interpretation of his works - Motifs of awakening, Breathing from the side, A picture full of traces, Disorder and dance, Traits, Splitting the web, Impressions, Dedication, Incidental, Deflection, Returning home, Warnings... and even the last ones dedicated to the most luminous light, his Sparks, I will tell you that the pivot of all the verse-stitching and storytelling of his literary biography is a man who does not accept stagnation and inhumanity of any kind, who does not agree to dehumanization, but rebels and defies while he breathes. Critics have long noticed that the heroes of Bogić's narrative prose are innovative and postmodern, and that they have added to the model of eternal humanity and heroism the substrate of the dilemma of modern man - the existentialist absurdity of wondering about the struggle and its outcome, but also the Sisyphean pattern of resisting evil. They do not agree to compromises, they are hurt by injustice, nationalism, courtship, idolatry, and every other tragic circumstance of survival in modern society. And, as he says Lidija Vukcevic, hence the restlessness and calm, the light and shadows, the sun and darkness of open and unfinished scenes.

An identical, only poetic mise-en-scène, occurs in Bogijev's verse creations, in the poetry that was his alma mater. His poems do not lend themselves to rhymes either, although he masterfully knew how to use them. His verses have wings, so how can they be enthroned and given the structure of a connected verse? They contain rustic chronotopes, landscapes of northern Montenegro - our idyllic Arcadia and our cornucopia or spiritual and human-rich Cornucopias. They contain streams and apples, stars and rivers, meadows and loves, promises and joys, youth and joy, stumbles and rises, individual and collective. They contain duration. And everything he knew about us and himself.

And how do we say goodbye now and say - Goodbye, poet?

How, when in this panegyric there is no day after (Title of the book of stories Day after Kemal Musić), but not even in the spark of our hope and disbelief?

And where will we find you again, our mountain man?

Our Mediterranean.

In a world that has done all sorts of things to you (From the collection Warnings Bogić Rakočević); In the steps with which you counted the steps of this world intended for you: In the oyster from which you drank even with poisonous plants and then poured it into a song and created myrrh-flowing nectar and ambrosia; And then we drank and got drunk...

With you, mountain poet (Syntagm from the poem How to become a mountain poet Jevrem Brković, as well as the motif of oysters and poison ivy)…

Or we won't say goodbye.

There's no point in saying goodbye, they say. We'll just spill holy water, Zamzam water, after you.

And when you come up and meet Dionysus, and his equal Apollo, and when you are with them at the tavern table, the Sun will wink at us; Rejoiced that it too has been deified by the God; And that the gods of song are in good company; And that they will be humanized by the Soul of a poet...

Blessed

Milolikog

Humanoid

Duklja!