Writes: Emir Imamović Pirke

“Prokin gaj, an abandoned, dense and a rather big forest, located an hour’s walk from the foot of the mountain, had always been, even for the elders, a somewhat frightening and mysterious place. Old ladies whispered that it was haunted and that it was by no means a good idea to pass by it at night. In an instant, they say, an icy unknown monster’s hand can grab you and drag you off beneath the whispering canopy of the beech trees. And as for what happens next - brr! - it is terrifying even to think about it.”

Can life be beautiful in a forest devoid of water and food, a place filled with unexplored territories and the lingering fear born of the folk tale about a terrible creature dwelling within? More precisely, can life in a forest devoid of water and food, a place filled with unexplored territories and the lingering fear born of the folk tale about a terrible creature dwelling within be beautiful if, on top of all other hardships, one must visit these woods secretly, and return hoping that the secret hasn’t been revealed and hide it from those - for such exist everywhere - who happen to wander where they shouldn’t and whose tongues wag at the most inappropriate moments imaginable?

Well, if we are to trust the author of our thrilling childhoods, Branko Ćopić, it certainly can be. So much so that the camp Tepsija and the whole Prokin gaj from the novel Orlovi rano lete come across as more pleasant than any child’s bedroom, any bed in which you might lie down and read, and any day spent in warm and dry. Forests, just to clarify to the younger generations, don’t have roofs and are not air-conditioned.

“The sea does not belong to tyrants. Upon its surface they still may uphold their unjust rule, fight and devour one another… But thirty feet below the surface their power stops, their influence vanishes, their strength fades! Ah, Sir, live at the heart of the sea! Only here does the independence lie! Here I don’t acknowledge any master! Here I am completely free!”

Can life be beautiful in the depths of the ocean, inside a submarine in which nothing is lacking, except the possibility to leave when one longs for fresh air, solid ground, and a view of something that doesn’t swim and upon which one can move about just as one would in a living room? Can life truly be beautiful just above the unexplored seabed, there, where, just as on land, there is sickness, death, and storms…?

Well, if we are to trust the author of our thrilling childhoods, Jules Verne, it certainly can be. So much so that the isolation of the world, a solitude that is sometimes impossible to suppress, the tragedies and glaciers the submarine has to fight with, come across as more pleasant during a journey of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea than any child’s bedroom, any bed in which you might lie down and read, and any day spent in warm and dry. Down below, under the sea, just to clarify to the younger generations, lies a mysterious and truly unknown area, because our civilization has explored space more thoroughly than the depths of the ocean!

“Sometimes you will get hurt, and sometimes you will get sick; but every time you will recover.”

Can life be beautiful for a boy whose father is an alcoholic, and whose foster guardians are fanatically religious and prone to taking liberties with their interpretation of faith? Or, to be more precise, can life be beautiful for a boy whose father beats him, locks him up, and forbids him to go to school, leaving this boy, whose name is Huckleberry Finn, no choice but to flee to an uninhabited island, and then, alongside a runaway slave, sail the Mississippi - a river five times longer than the combined stretches of the Sava and Danube, which flow through Croatia?

Well, if we are to trust the author of our thrilling childhoods, Mark Twain, it certainly can be. So much so that the rickety rafts, deserted islands, and vast waters from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn come across as more pleasant than any child’s bedroom, any bed in which you might lie down and read, and any day spent in warm and dry. Rivers, just to clarify to the younger generations, flow however they please, run as fast as they please, and are as deep as nature has predetermined.

“Man thinks he’s a giant, but in reality, he’s a piece of shit.”

Does it make sense, and if not, can there still be beauty in a life where, as Meša Selimović puts it in his novel Derviš i smrt, every human being is always at a loss. and is there any better metaphor for such a life with everything that constitutes it than the one Abdulah Sidran chose as the title of his own autobiography: Otkup sirove kože? 

If it truly is the case, and it is, the entire history of the human race is a history of class struggle, as Karl Marx once argued, then the entire history of literature, a subject Marx did not deal with, as it is the domain of writers, is a history of human lives.

“We have prehistoric emotions and minds, medieval institutions, and godlike technology”, these are the words that the American biologist Edward Osborne Wilson used to describe us and our era. He passed away just a year before Russia invaded Ukraine and this godlike technology demonstrated its efficiency of killing to the great delight of those who harbor prehistoric emotions and minds.

A war that still lacks a name - the Third World War, the Second Great… - and an official start date, none of this prevents it from continuing and spreading, much like the war that once spread and of which Jaroslav Hašek wrote in Doživljaji dobrog vojnika Švejka za svjetskog rata, a work now brought into our language by the guest of honor at this year’s Pula Festival of Books and Authors, Book Fair(y) in Istria, Nada Gašić.

“A great era calls for great people. There are unknown heroes, modest, devoid of fame or the historical stature of Napoleon. The breakdown of their character would even cast a shadow over the glory of Alexander the Great. Today, on the streets of Prague, you might encounter a shabby man who himself does not realize what he truly signifies in the history of this new, great age. He goes modestly his own way, without bothering anyone and without being bothered by journalists begging him for an interview. If you were to ask him his name, he would answer simply and modestly: “I am Švejk…” And this quiet, humble, shabby man is truly that same good old soldier Švejk, brave and bold, who, back in the days of Austria, was on the lips of every citizen in the Kingdom of Bohemia, and his fame did not fade, even in the Republic. I am very fond of that good soldier Švejk, and as I recount his experiences during the World War, I am convinced that your sympathies will lie with this humble, unknown hero. He did not set fire to the temple of the goddess in Ephesus, as that fool Herostratus did, just to get into the newspapers and school textbooks. And that is enough”, wrote Hašek in the introduction to his novel about a man who never turned down a meal, drawing upon the wisdom of lieutenant Holub: “Every soldier must be intelligent enough to devour whatever he is given without a word of complaint, and he must possess enough discipline not to ponder the quality of what he is expected to devour. Soldiers, just imagine if a war were to break out. The ground where you are buried after battle could not care less what kind of bread you stuffed yourself with before you died. Mother Earth will gobble you up and devour you completely.”

That good soldier Švejk did not merely quote others. He also had thoughts of his own that are worth quoting. “A man thinks he’s a giant, but in reality, he’s a piece of shit”, one man remarked.  And one day, long after this war without a name will have finished, another humble hero will say, a man still waiting for his author to reveal how, in fact, even the redemption of the bare skin can be beautiful, despite everything. 

Only that redemption should know how to describe him the right way, and how a book, each for itself, demands.