How deep are the traces of memory! How deep our mind and our heart is connected and how a break of the heart my affect our mind, our memory of the present loss or the memories of the memories of this loss!
My Heart by Semezdin Mehmedinovic - translated from Bosnian by Celia Hawkesworth - published by Catapult reunited disparate fragments of the author´s life in America following his and his wife heart attacks. Essentially autobiographical, this short novel is also a kind meditation about the time passed and growing old - or growing up, depends who is in the center of the story - in a family dislocated by war.
Language and its distorsions are a frequent topic. The author writes literature in Bosnian, his native language, although not living any more in his country of birth - once Yugoslavia, now Bosnia-Herzegovina. Compared to other exiled writers, he is not even trying to convene his thoughts and words in a translation. He´s radically dismissing the suggestion of one fellow writer he met in America to switch to his adopted language: ´(...) this one language in what I wrote was enough for me, and I wouldn´t want to change it´. Language is a creative prison and refusing to switch between cells is a very brave art of creation.
The family dynamics are treated with the deepest love and emotion. Either it is about his son, or his ailing wife, the ties that connect them are larger than life. A life lived together under the threat of a war, when even fellow literates like the once poet turned into perpetrator of mass-murderer, Radovan Karadzic.
The relationships are shaped by those common memories created during times of hardship, like the Siege of Sarajevo (1992-1996). He said to his son: ´We are two bodies filled with trauma that were never appropriately treated´. And about his wife: ´But when I say, ´she´s my wife´, that is a simplification. She´s more than that. For instance, in 1993, during the siege of Sarajevo, a murderer pointed the barrel of a Kalashnikov at my chest. And she stepped between the gun and me´.
Although there is a certain commonality with Mehmedinovic and other literary memoirs when dealing with coping with life abroad: from the challenges of the language to the difficulties of pronouncing his name, but what matters in such a situation is the quality of the testimony and the kindness of living the experience.
I particularly loved the balanced voice for sharing such strong memories. The voice is not resentful or dramatic, but follows the flow of a smooth story recovering fragments of stories long stores in the shelves of memory. Memory, this traitor who treates both individuals and countries with the discontent of the time passed.
My Heart opened a shelf of my literary and political memory long gone, from the times when I was not only reading about the Balkans and particularly the ex-Yugoslavia, but I also extensively travelled in this part of the world. Time to resurect my ´Balkan´ section of my virtual and physical library, maybe.
A special well deserved mention for the poetic cover, which encompasses so beautifully the essence of the writing.
Rating: 4 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment