Book: Bosnian Chronicle
Quotes of Book: Bosnian Chronicle
Ivo Andric, Bosnian chronicle {Quote about nostalgia, free translation from Bosnian lenguage}More than three hundred years ago, brought us from our homeland, a unique Andalusia, a terrible, foolish, fratricidal whirlwind, which we can not understand even today, and who has not understood it to this day, scattered us all over the world and made us beggars to which gold does not help. Now, threw us on the East, and life on the East is not easy for us or blessed, and the as much man goes further and gets closer to the sun's birth, it is worse, because the land is younger and more raw and people are from the land. And our trouble is that we could not fully love this country, to which we owe becouse it has received us, accept us and provided us with shelter, nor could we hate the one who has unjustly took us away and expelled us as an unworthly sons. We do not know is it more difficult that we are here or that we are not there. Wherever we were outside of Spain, we would suffer because we would have two homelands, I know, but here life is too much pressed us and humiliated us. I know that we have been changed for a long time,we do not remember anymore how we were, but surely we remember that we were different. We left and road up long time ago and we traveled hard and we unluckily fell down and stopped at this place, and that is why we are no longer even a shadow of what we were. As a powder on a fruit that goes hand-to-hand, from man first fall of what is finest on him. That's why we are like this. But you know us, us and our life, if we can call this life. We live between "occupiers" and commonalty, miserable commonalty and terrible Turkish. Cutted away completely from our loved ones, we are careful to look after and keep everything Spanish, songs and meals and customs, but we feel that everything changes in us, spoils and forgets. We remember the language of our land, the lenguage we did take and carried three centuries ago, the lenguage which even do not speak there anymore, and we ridiculously speak with stumbling the language of the comonalty with which we suffer and the Turkish who rules over us. So it may not be a long day when we will be purely and humanly able to express ourselves only in prayer, and which actually does not need any words. This so lonely and few, we marry between us and see that our blood is paling and fainting. We bend and shred in front of everyone, we mourn, suffer and contrive, as people said: on the ice we make campfire, we work, we gain, we save, not only for ourselves and for our children, but for all those who are stronger and more insolent, impudent than us and strike on our life , on the dignity, and on the wealth. So we preserved the faith for which we had to leave our beautiful country, but lost almost everything else. Luckily, and to our sorrow, we did not lose from our memory reminiscence of our dear country, as it was, before she drive away us like stepmother; just as it will never extinguish in us the desire for a better world, the world of order and humanity in which you goes stright, watches calmly and speaks openly. We can not free ourselves from that feeling, nor feeling that, in addition to everything, we belong to such a world, though, we are expelled and unhappy, otherwise we live. That's what we would like to know there. That our name does not die in that brighter and higher world that is constantly darkening and destroying, iconstantly moves and changes, but never collapses, and always for somebody exists, that that world knows that we are carrying him in our soul, that even here we serve him on our way, and we feel one with him, even though we are forever and hopelessly separated from him. book-quoteDa, to su muke koje muče ljudi hrišćani sa Levanta i koje vi, pripadnici hrišćanskog Zapada,
ne možete nikad potpuno razumeti, isto kao što ih još manje mogu razumeti Turci. To je sudbina levantinskog čoveka, jer on je poussière humaine, ljudska prašina, što mučno promiče između Istoka i Zapada, ne pripadajući ni jednom a bijena od oba. To su ljudi koji znaju mnogo jezika, ali nijedan nije njihov, koji poznaju dve vere, ali ni u jednoj nisu tvrdi. To su žrtve fatalne ljudske podvojenosti na hrišćane i nehrišćane; večiti tumači i posrednici, a koji u sebi nose toliko nejasnosti i nedorečnosti; dobri znalci Istoka i Zapada i njihovih običaja i verovanja, ali podjednako prezreni i sumnjivi jednoj i drugoj strani. Na njih se mogu primeniti reči koje je pre šest vekova napisao veliki Dželaledin, Dželaledin Rumi: »Jer samog sebe ne mogu da poznam. Niti sam hrišćanin, ni Jevrejin, ni Pars, ni musliman. Nit' sam sa Istoka ni sa Zapada, ni sa kopna ni sa mora.« malo, izdvojeno čovečanstvo koje grca pod dvostrukim Istočnim grehom, i koje treba još jednom da bude spaseno i otkupljeno a niko ne vidi kako ni od koga. To su ljudi sa granice, duhovne i fizičke, sa crne i krvave linije koja je usled nekog teškog i apsurdnog nesporazuma potegnuta između ljudi, božjih stvorenja, između kojih ne treba i ne sme da bude granice. To je ona ivica između mora i kopna, osuđena na večiti pokret i nemir. To je treći svet u koji se sleglo sve prokletstvo usled podeljenosti zemlje na dva sveta. To je... book-quoteTada se moglo videti šta znači i kakva može da bude uzbuna turske čaršije u bosanskim varošima. Po nekoliko godina čaršija radi i ćuti, dosađuje se i životari, pazaruje i računa, upoređuje jednu godinu sa drugom, a pri svemu tome prati sve što se dešava, obaveštava se, »kupuje« vesti i glasove, prenosi ih šapatom od dućana do dućana, izbegavajući svaki zaključak i izraz sopstvenog mišljenja.
Tako se polako i neprimetno stvara i uobličava jedinstven duh čaršije. To je najpre samo jedno opšte i neodređeno raspoloženje, koje se ispoljava samo kratkim pokretima i psovkama za koje se zna na koga se odnose; zatim se postepeno pretvara u mišljenje koje se ne krije; i najposle postaje tvrdo i određeno uverenje o kome više nije potrebno ni govoriti i koje se još samo u delima ispoljava. Povezana i prožeta tim uverenjem, čaršija šapuće, sprema se, čeka, kao što pčeie čekaju čas rojenja. Nemogućno je prozreti logiku tih čaršijskih uzbuna, slepih, besnih, i redovito neplodnih, ali one imaju svoju logiku isto kao što imaju svoju nevidljivu tehniku, zasnovanu na tradiciji i nagonu. Vidi se samo kako buknu, besne, i jenjavaju. book-quoteOva briga oko čuvanja i održanja novca liči, kao sestra sestri, na onu brigu u detinjstvu za grošem koji je stalno nedostajao, a ove muke štednje i tvrdičenja na muke nemaštine i oskudice. Šta vredi sve to? Šta vredi kad se, evo, posle tolikih napora i uzaludnih bežanja i uspona, čovek vraća na polaznu tačku, kad u njegove misli, samo drugim putem, ulazi ista pakost i grubost, i u njegove reči i postupke surovost i prostota; kad je, da bi se očuvalo ono što je stekao, potrebna ista ružna muka koja prati sirotinju. Ukratko: šta vredi imati.mnogo i biti nešto, kad čovek ne može da se oslobodi straha od sirotinje, ni niskosti u mislima, ni grubosti u rečima, ni nesigumosti u postupcima, kad gorka i neumitna a nevidljiva beda prati čoveka u stopu, a taj lepši, bolji i mirniji život izmiče se kao varljivo priviđenje. book-quote
