Poetry
Песма тишине
Not translated into English
Stevan Raičković · 1952
Synopsis
A cycle in seven parts, from the “confession to the return” to the “black servant of the birds”, in which the poet falls silent the better to hear a nature that sings in a low voice. Silence becomes a way of speaking and of experiencing: the landscape is personified, moods are diffuse, and contemplation, more existential than religious, touches both man and the world. One line sums it up: I am silent, and that is my song.
Context
It is the author's second book, published two years after the first, and the one that brought him notice. It was read from the outset against the manner of Vasko Popa, which dominated the young poetry: where Popa denied romantic effusion, this collection claimed emotion and primal nature, while keeping from surrealism a spoken syntax, associative metaphors and the abandonment of punctuation. Branko Miljković noted that silence here means neither peace nor harmony.
Who it is for
A collection of brief poems, in a simple and almost minimalist language. Nothing in it requires prior knowledge: one only has to accept its slowness.
Prizes and reception
The book that established its author, counted among the major collections of postwar Serbian poetry and still studied today.