“You can’t live in Sarajevo”: The Sarajevo text vs The Petersburg text on the example of the poetry of Abudalah Sidran

Abstract

Unlike the Petersburg text, the genesis and structure, the language and authors of which are well studied and theoretically substantiated thanks to the works of the Tartu-Moscow school and the fundamental research of V. N. Toporov, the Sarajevo text and its theoretical basis are still in their infancy. Despite the fact that an incredible number of texts have been written about Sarajevo as a city, its architecture, history, culture, streets, etc., and the fact that it is also present in the oral tradition, the Sarajevo text as a term that could unite the texts about this city in their semantic and semiotic connection is still not generally accepted. The article deals with the Sarajevo text and the poetry of A. Sidran: his three central collections (Sarajevska zbirka, Sarajevski tabut, Morija) describe the city as a space of history, culture, memory and testimony. Sidran’s opus prompted researchers to realize the importance of studying the genesis and structure of the Sarajevo text, which indicates the need to define this term in a broader sense. Consequently, the poetics of the city of Sidran for the Sarajevo text is the same as the works of Dostoevsky are for the Petersburg one, according to Toporov.