Pain by Miroslav Maksimović

Abstract

Reviewed by: Pain by Miroslav Maksimović Biljana D. Obradović Miroslav Maksimović Pain Bloomington, IN, USA: Three String Books, 2021. Translated from Serbian by John Jeffries and Bogdan Rakić. Illustrations by Svetlana Rakić. 104 Pp. Introduction, Appendix. ISBN 978-0893575083 Miroslav Maksimović's, Pain, was translated from Serbian by John Jeffries and Bogdan Rakić and illustrated by Svetlana Rakić. This facing page translation of sonnets (Serbian original on the left and English on the right) has a forward by Bogdan Rakić, and an appendix, "Sweet Fear: Down the Ancestors' Path," presumably by the author, Maksimović. although this is not clearly stated. The appendix is both in English and Serbian, not facing page; it should have been reversed, with the original language first and the target second or just made facing page as the rest of the book. Interspersed throughout the book, are twelve moving response drawings to the sonnets by Svetlana Rakić. There are no biographical notes of the author (although B. Rakić gives us information on him in his introduction), translators nor the artist. The sonnets are divided into three parts: part one containing only one, part two twelve, and part three also one, so altogether fourteen sonnets. The sonnets have a rhyme scheme, in Serbian and in English divided into four stanzas: two quatrains and two tercets. Translating rhyme is not easy at all, so kudos go to the great translators' efforts. Miroslav Maksimović (b. 1946) is the author of fourteen collections of poetry, four collections of essays, a volume of polemics, according to B. Rakić in his introduction who says that Maksimović wrote, "about seemingly trivial details of everyday life" (p. 1), in his pre-nineties books. Then "prompted by the Yugoslav[ian] wars and their devastating consequences—[he] turn[ed] to … much larger issues: the never-ending cycle of violence in the Balkans" (p. 1). [End Page 184] It's unfortunate that he turned to the past, if I may add, instead of looking at the future. Those seemingly trivial issues he wrote about before are what writers strive to look out for and what makes great poetry. Instead, and for an important reason, his most recent book, Pain, is "a perfect example of his change in focus" (1), about "real events that took place in August 1941, when the entire population of the ethnically mixed village of Miostrah near Cazin in Western Bosnia were massacred by their Muslim neighbors, the supporters of the Croatian Ustashe" (p. 1), which was part of a "genocidal campaign and the complete extermination of the Serbs from the so-called Independent State of Croatia" (p. 1). One hundred-eighty women and children and all the remaining members of Maksimović's family: his mother Stoja Uzelac, her mother and six siblings (which included a two-year-old brother). She was wounded, mistaken for dead, yet she survived by crawling out of the pit she was thrown in. She then joined the partisan forces fighting fascism and that's how she met Maksimović's father. Her own father had been killed before the rest of teh fmaily members. Maksimović was only vaguely aware of his mother's tragedy, but once his mother died in 2017, he finally pieced the story of his mother's trauma together and it became his own. The introductory sonnet, "I Remember This," was written thirty years before the middle, second part, while the final sonnet predates them by ten years. He wrote the middle, cathartic outburst in twelve days, one a day. All fourteen sonnets (like the fourteen lines of each sonnet) are thematically connected, but the last line of each sonnet is not the beginning line of the next, and there is no master sonnet containing all first lines, as is the case in sonnet wreaths. He has created his own hybrid genre here, as Bogdan Rakić says, which still does adhere to some of the strict formal requirements. So these twelve sonnets were written in February 2016. They deal with the story of Stoja Uzelac's first life. The second sonnet discusses the deadly weapons used in the massacre (axes and knives), the third describes the parts of mutilated human bodies, the fourth introduces the victims...