Literature

Bosnian Culture: Literature

The Bosnian literature as such was born to Serbian and Croatian identity opposed to the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia. As the Bosnian entity is more sociological and political language: before the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina had never used the term Bosnian language, and even the term "learn Bosnian" is appearing for the first time in a document of the Dayton Accords. At one time, in fact, between the language of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia were not generally perceived by the speakers, really significant differences. The first written document of the area dates back to 1189, and a letter written using the Cyrillic alphabet, other texts medieval church in the Cyrillic alphabet are stored in a dozen manuscripts. The major corpus of the Middle Ages desk of Bosnia and Herzegovina, however, had an impact on thousands of tombstones of churches and cemeteries in the area (stecci). From the sixteenth century, the Ottoman rule in the region spread Arab culture: some Slavic literary production was indeed written in Arabic characters (alhamiado). Only with the romanticism of the nineteenth century in Bosnia and walked some nationalist consciousness, which led some researchers to document and collect oral traditions and legends of the region. In the twentieth century, writers born in Bosnian territory, as Ivo Andric, have always been considered the authors of the Serb-Croat literature, a category that included the first interethnic hatred of course, the language and the works of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and only with the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, and especially with the civil war, has begun a process of radicalization of identity that has resulted in the choice of field even linguistic and literary. Not all birth Bosnian intellectuals, however, share this nationalism background, as in the case of the writer Predrag Matvejević (b. 1932), born in Mostar but for years resident in Italy, the author of essays (Mediterranean Breviary, 2004) and works of fiction that partly reflect sull'improvvisa explosion of a world that seemed settled in its peaceful coexistence. Affirm their identity in Bosnia, and then non-Serb nor Croat, albeit with soft tones free from nationalist rhetoric and sincere adherence to the secular culture, the poet Izet Sarajlic (1930-2002), author of some thirty libraries, among which The Book of goodbyes and War Diary of Sarajevo, the narrator and dramatist Abdullah Sidran (b. 1948), and the playwright and essayist Dzevad Karasahan (b. 1953) - all brought in a different way to think about the fate of Sarajevo and the end of the coping skills that had once characterized the life of their beloved Bosnia - and the poet Marko Vesović, Bosnian Serb (b. 1945).