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BRIDGE, June 2006. SUDDEN AWARENES AND
CONFLICT WITHIN INCORPOREALITY Written by Sead Begovic Stanka Gjurić is the first contemporary Croatian writer
who employed a well-tailored logistic for the purposes of the promotion of
her poetry –a “do-it-yourself exhibit” or poetic illustration containing
photographs of her shy body in the nude published in the Croatian popular
press. There is no doubt whatsoever that the readers' lust is now
considerably greater owing to her reminding the public of her poetic work in
this fashion. During the 70s of the 20th century Katlin Ladik, a
performer from Novi Sad, did the same, though in a much more aggressive and
erotically daring fashion with her dance, phonic and body performances in
space. Such erotic provocations – which emerged with the well – and widely
accepted body art in the world –
neider helped the literary-critical reception of their poetic efforts
particularly nor did they reinforce the readership's awareness of their work.
What this provocations did was considerably quake traditional conceptions
exactly by this carnivalisation of the business of writing. It seems,
howewer, that such provocations, with which Gjurić has both stirred and
irritated pettybourgeois and middleclass taboos and inhibitions, are not her
unchanging intention. With this, her sixth – and even her seventh collection of
poetry – she has demonstrated that for her there is something beyond such
communication with the readership. The quality of her text mocks exactly
those readers whose expect and only take pleasure in the author's
disobedience to the canons of poetry, unrestrained hedonism, bizarreness and
authorial indiscretion. The extent to which Gjurić is discrete, allusive and
secretive is divulged by the attributive clause Sve što sja (All That
Glitters) – which is also the title of her book – with which she sets in
motion a peculiar shamanisation of both the text and the unconscious part of
everydayness. In her mostly proselike sentences – since her poems are poems in prose – she
perpetually enquires “who are we?” in “horrifyingly confortable cages” (as “
a concentration camp prisoner” or “in the cracks of bars”). She preserves
this neo-existentialist attitude o both the purpose and reasons for living in
all her four cycles: Pomak kolosa (Colossus'
move), Stigma (Stigma), Detalji
sjene (Details of Shade) and
Navještanje (Annunciation). Wraped
in the layers of serious discourse she she neither does nor can caricature
her own personal experiences by mere communication of messages; she, rather,
breathes a universal meaning into things by her seductive narration. Endowed
with images, her poetic sentences “listen attentively to the soothing snaps
of emptiness” and generally do not meet the readership's aesthetic
requirements. Through the tightened and confined structure of her poems she
emits serene reflections arising from
diverse situations and disturb us with a sudden awereness, i.e. a poetic view
which conceals in itself philosophical messages which are never fully completed
since what they veil in their nature is poetic sparkle. The whole, on the
other hand, serves the intellect or the intellectuality of her linguistic
messages. If indeterminacy of meaning and the darkened places of
conceptuality do not reveal them, these poems in prose (scenes, sketches or notes)
create the illusion of authentic and spontaneous oral speech. Even though Gjurić avoids talking of the ephemeral, her
attention is devoted to seemingly insignificant things and it is with them
that she encompasses her poetic world. And it is here that one arrives at a
paradox. In other words, as in all those poets to whom philosophy and
philosophising is the fundamental textual overtone, every corporeality soon
collides with incorporeality. A greater emotional level is discernible only
in the poems dedicated of referring to her dog Hooper (and these are
“Progonstvo” / “Exile”; “Krzneni soldat” / “Furry Soldier”; “Dvojnica” / “A
LookAlike; “Stigma” and “Hooperu” / “To Hooper”). The mimicry content,
naturally, always reveals something else, so that her thus-imposed animalism
is nothing but an excuse for her seeking answers to the most difficult
questions. These transformations from one state into another are not followed
by literal and elegant forms of animalistic imagination but rather wish to
affirm something and bring one to one's senses. The poetess's spiritual
obsession with knowledge necessarily forces her to reconsider countless
important questions of life. Thus, Gjurić most certainly confuses us with
this book, since – in contrast to our expectations that she would poeticise
about her own and others' unbearable needs and wishes (unberiable to our
consciousness and superego) which we tend to store in cellars – what she does
is receive us with exceptional speculations luring our our deepest understandings
of life. Instead of poeticising about herself unclothing and exposing herself
in text as her younger fellow poetesses, she almost rationally discusses the
questions she takes great interest in. once she breathes poetic energy, the
principle of causality and diverse forms of perception into the latter, what
she records are the reflections of her spiritual being – through this process
she probes herself following the principle of the greatest truths always
being personal. Interestingly enough, in the same year (in 2005) Gjurić
dedicated to publish a new handful of poems entitled Kažnjavalac dobrih navika (Punisher of Good Habits), this time
round with Alfa, a publisher from
Zagreb, and edited by Božidar Petrač, a poetry connoisseur and expert. Yet
again, flowing from her sixth to this or her seventh collection of poetry,
one senses the the predominance of
contemplative sententiality mostly consisting of both imitations and
observations of the most profound principles of life. The structure of the
poems is seemingly simple – her spontaneous experiences of her lyrical
subjects are soon transferred into the inner world of the deepest sequences
of thought (“Sve što me takne // prošlo je kroz hitru smrt // i prije nego
znalo je za mene”; “Everything that touches me // has passed through swift
death // even before it knew of me”). Or the very opposite process is at hand
– her more profound experience of the immediate world is garnished with
reflective-lyrical indeterminacy and is finally presented as a picturesque and
firsthand experience (“…netko poda mnom ravnodušno krvari”; “…someone beneath
me bleeds indifferently”). In Gjurić one can sense temporary speechlessness
of the living language – the one that, in its novel forms and experiences,
counts on the synesthetic and linguistic experiments of the immediate
experience of language. In contrast the above, on encounters a rounded off
poetic reflectiveness on the level of individual verses, whose expressively
enigmatic quality touches different spheres of life; whereas the suddenness
of the motifs suggests excessive freedom of untamed thoughts. What the
poetess persistently promotes is the feeling of the rolling of the body and various sensations are not, however, her
permanent obsession; their imposition only serves as an anthropomorphic leap
towards the unattained and blurred
intension of the spirit (“otisnuta bestežnost” / weightlessness set sail”;
“suptilna konačnost” / “subtle finality”; “obmana spokojnosti” / “the
deception of serenity”; “podlijeganje tjeskobnoj sklonosti” / “succumbing to
anxious propensities”, etc.). In her very best poems “Namjera” (“Intention”)
and “Odlazak” (Departure”) all the aforementioned qualities poetically fuse
captivating one while reading her latest book. |
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