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Mehmed Alija ‘Mak’ Dizdar (1917–1971), considered one of the greatest Yugoslav writers, was born in Stolac, southern Bosnia. After the war, in which he was a partisan in Tito’s army, he became a prominent figure in Bosnian cultural life, working as newspaper editor, as book publisher and, finally, as President of the Writers’ Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He died in Sarajevo. Francis R. Jones translates poetry from various European languages – especially from Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian and Dutch into English, though he has also worked from Russian, Hungarian and Caribbean languages, and into Geordie and Yorkshire dialect. Among his solo book-length translations are six collections by Ivan V. Lalić. Jones’s poetry translations have won fifteen UK and international prizes. He lives in Northumberland, and is Emeritus Professor of Translation Studies at Newcastle University.Inspired by tombstones and their inscriptions, Mak Dizdar’s rich and haunting poems in Stone Sleeper, his most famous work, are a journey into the mysterious heart of medieval Bosnia. The poems form a three-way dialogue between the modern poet, the Christian heretics awaiting Judgement Day beneath their enigmatically-carved tombstones, and the heretic-hunters. Beneath the local and temporal, Dizdar explores universal issues: the value of resistance, though it might be futile; of faith, though it might be illusory; and of life, though it ends in death. His vision of life and death owes much to the Gnostic traditions, Christian and Muslim, depicting life as a passage between ‘tomb and stars’.
Francis R. Jones’s inventive and beautiful translations convey his deep understanding of Dizdar’s purpose. In addition a penetrating analysis of Stone Sleeper’s historical, religious and spiritual background is given by the distinguished scholar Rusmir Mahmutćehajić.
Unwilling Warrior
This old head has lived through many a war
From the hills of the north to the south sea’s shore
And glory wreathed it everywhere
To the horn and sackbut’s warring blare
In a single battle I caught two wounds
But they healed my wounds with a flower’s juice
Until I lost my right hand in a final fight
And all my glory and praise vanished in bloody days
Glory like mist which rises into the skies
Glory like straw which blazes up and dies
To be given back my shilling is nothing new on earth
To be left alone on an empty road is poor reward
They whispered round me Nowt that’s what his life were worth
They do not know that wounded I still overheard
Nor do they know that I will deal my final blow
To this evil fate whose ways are known
To me alone
Translated by Francis R. Jones