Death Representation in Contemporary Kosovo and Bosnian Poetry: Views on War Deaths

Abstract

This paper examines the representation of death and dying in postwar literature in Kosovo and Bosnia. It covers the representations of death and loss in poetry and the way writers reflect on violent deaths caused by the war. By comparing the textual strategies of dealing with death as a dominant theme in the poetry of the Bosnian poet Faruk Šehić and Kosovo poet Lulzim Tafa, I will argue that the authors' approaches toward the theme of death are very similar in content, despite their different point of view. Šehić's and Tafa's poems related to the war in Bosnia and Kosovo, arise as a need to testify to human evil in general, and especially to the history of evil and dis-honour in their societies. How do writers perceive the truth of death in war reality? Do these representations serve as a complementary projection of historical reality and reveal the socio-cultural repercussions of a national human tragedy? By evoking the aesthetic notions of death as represented in certain select literary works, this paper looks at the role of literature in creating an artistic view that seeks to understand and acknowledge death as the unavoidable, all-pervasive entity in war reality.