Odyssey’s Bitterness?

Even though primarily a poet, Mirko Magarasevic is renowned as an
essayist, anthologist, translator, and travel writer in Serbian literature.
As an essayist he combined a sense for analysis of literary works, disin-
tegration into elements of the poetic structure, with contextualisation
of poetic meaning in the broader systems of the language, history, cul-
ture and tradition. Tradition – in his perspective – is composed of facts
of both Serbian and European literary experience. Hence, Magarasevic
analytically, culturally and historically illuminated many works of
Serbian poetry, from Classicism and Romanticism until contempor-
ary Serbian poets. In the tradition of European poetry, he directed his
attention to Anglo-Saxon poets: with particular interest to Ezra Pound.
As a translator, he extended his essayistic concentration and put in
special effort into translation of Pound’s works. As an anthologist, he
came out long ago: in nearly every issue of the influential Belgrade’s
magazine Savremenik, from the late seventies of the XX century, in the
column “The Anthology poem” we could have read knowingly select-
ed verses of Serbian poets from different epochs, of different poetics
and character, from Sterija (Tombstone to me by myself ) and Sarajlija
(Debauchery), Laza Kostić (That face of yours), until contemporary
poets like Milan Komnenić (Who are you, Who are you). His every
selection was followed by the inventive critical review of the poems
themselves. As a travel writer, Magаrasevic in a new and interesting
way illuminated spaces of the Mediterranean, especially Greece and
Turkey, by combining cultural and historical knowledge and literary
evoking of spaces, people, customs and habits, into storytelling that
represents true value of our travelogue. He confirmed the accurateness
of Slobodan Jovanović’s thought: “It is not hard to describe what one
sees but it is hard to see what is worth of describing.” Magarasevic can
actually see and describe all that is worth of readers’ experience.
This many-sidedness of our poet has its place also in his poetry.
The ability to be aware of things in disorderly but not in orderly array,
as a feature of travelogue storytelling, represents a visible quality of his
poetic perception, as if it is flowing out of it. Profound knowledge of
Serbian and European poetry, convincingly presented in his work as
an anthologist, has its place in poet’s choice of diction and tone with
which he chooses to speak in his own poetical creations. Essayistic
concentration reveals reflexive character of poet’s verses as his logical
inner choice, as one kind of poetical kinship by choice; powerful critic-
al impulse, shown particularly in revealing Serbian critical poetry, has
its place in poet’s verses that touch poet’s present moment, express his
ethical attitude and determine additional character of poetical actual-
ization. This visibly corresponds to – a more recent – political essays
from the book Čija je istina? (Whose Holds the Truth) and the book of
poetry Ode i pokude (Odes and Reprimands).
All these features occur conjoint in dominant poetical dimension
of the latest poetry book Mermaids’ Song: in culture-historical and re-
flexive dimension of verses of our poet. By deciding that this dimen-
sion be poetical and poetic center of his poetry book, Magarasevic
demonstrated again his affection towards poetical line that – in the
second half of the XX century – manifested Miodrag Pavlović and
Jovan Hristić as historical basis of the verses that acquires originality
and value of poetic expression only in manifold process: by identify-
ing with the poetic situation that educes, by evoking of its intensity
within new articulation, and by inscribing of inventive solution into
a basis that fulfilled reader’s spirit. Only those three moments secure
poetic reach in poetical creation conceived in this way.
In the poetic basis of the poetry book Mermaids’ Song we find
odysseyian theme as one of the most complex and the most demand-
ing themes of European poetry. Sole wanderings, separation from
the land, swinging on the water and swaying on the wind, miracu-
lous world of encounters and dangers that mark unknown moments
of human understanding of oneself and of the world, as newly dis-
covered forms of the birth of independent spirit within an individ-
ual, that gradually separates itself from the collective, represent im-
portant meaning of Odyssey’s topos in European literature: all until
Joyce’s Ulysses. As a poet of distinctive poetic and culture-historical
awareness, Magarasevic shapes different moments of odysseyian com-
plex of meanings so that he could give his own artistic redaction.
When the poetic basis is layered with contents of European experi-
ence, individual articulation must fulfill basic situation. How can we
recognize it in this poetic experience? Surely it is necessary to create
– as in the third of the beginning poems – Mediterranean poetic land-
scape. The warmth and glow of the scene, “the mirror of the sea in the
eyes of basalt,” mixes with the conscious about the poet, “in a ritual
as the bard spoke,” to be a sign of a virtual reality, confirmed by the
concluding point: “the measure of the sea and the legends”. The bond
of the sea, as a nature, as a call for traveling, and the tradition, as Odys-
sey as the one who roams around it, marks seemingly calm and un-
blurred background on which a strange difficultness of consciousness
can barely be seen – or it is just a mirage. It seems to us that it is the
true center of poetic experience, although all affection – as always –
Odyssey’s figure takes away, who hears and knows it all, even the Siren
song and resists it.
In these poems there are remarkably evoked literary reminiscen-
ces. In accordance with humanistic motives – like gentleness and good-
ness of the father – that fulfil his character, Hector’s relationship with
his daughter is described while antique tradition knows only for his
relationship with his son Astyanax, or Laodaman and Laomedon.
But, the sole sublimeness and goodness of the greatest Trojan hero has
poetic point in the experience of the “beauty of the world.” For, the
great Hector of the flashing helmet, the pillar of the state and its last
sword, carries within his soul a quite ordinary dream: “Sparrows and
other birds to watch / to open her a horizon of green / width with the
inchantations by all the beauties of the world”. Thus, Hector is being
poetically marked as a wish for one yes that is addressed to a quiet and
hidden existence. In a stylization like this there is an indirect paral-
lel with Odyssey: as unexpected closeness by choice. Just as Odyssey –
in Plato – chose new life in a form of an inconspicuous and quiet man,
Hector dreams “but to watch all colours of flower-bouquets instead
/ playful to pick them in spring time.” Hence, Hector in his dream
experience of the world is in the place where Odyssey – through the
winding roads of his travels, as levels of individuation – barges. There-
fore, Hector’s dream and Odyssey’s late reality coincides because they
both touch deeper existential truth than the heroic one: that indirectly
indicates that poetic situation is crystalized in a distant and by a reflec-
tion guided spirit of our poet. For, hidden and suggested coincidence
seems like a trace of individual redaction within one proven tradition-
al continuity.
There is no doubt that a layered erotic disposition of a Siren song
is presented. That is how Achilles’s enamor for Penthesilea is being
shaped: in a moment when he is killing her. This famous motive of
antique tradition that in the art of literature and the art of painting
had many actualizations, it was even the central motive of Kleist’s play,
implies many associative and allusive circles in which core is the knot
of death and love, and our poet gives it a distortional resonance in
Thersites’s laughter: “And Thersites watches Achilles from aside, /
curves his lips and Achilles mocks.” In an emphatically pathetic scene
of recognition of mortal love occurs ‘depathetisation’ that came from
modern distrust. For, Thersites is an epilogue of this uncondition-
al erotic exaltation, the late one, just as Achilles’s heroic grandness
became late. But our poet has turned all his attention to a moment
of Thersites’s mocking, not to a consequence of that mocking: famous
Achilles’s fury that brings death to a hunchbacked, bandy-legged with
a lame foot but also smart and mean soldier of the Hellenic army. In
the poetic focus, hence, is mocking – the feast of forces of late times,
untouched by the force of deep and later discovered passion.
But in our poet’s stylization, Thersites’s appearance is not deprived
of indirect ties with Odyssey. Because Odyssey closed Thersites’s mouth
open in protestation in the Trojan War: Thersites is therefore possible
as a mockery, as a ludicrous echo of the impossible (heroic, gigantic)
love, but he is not possible as a protest. While Odyssey is close: this in-
direct tie naturally complies with antique tradition according to which
Thersites’s shadow – in the reign of the dead – chooses the company
of Odyssey’s mortal enemies. Lit up in a moment when he is mocking
Achilles, Thersites remains annunciated in his hidden dispute with
Odyssey also. That shows that in the book Mermaids’ Song there is a