Already in the following collections there is an expansion of the thematic coverage, which results in a number of other innovations: lexical, semantic, associative, psychological, intertextual, dialogical. There is an initiation of freedom, in a person capable of setting himself free from fear, opposing the canons and stereotypes. What is expressed here is the “wild thought” of the intellectual, prepared for sacrifice, because he is prepared for ideals that have transcended the family ideal, tribal urge and turned to the more universal Good. This poetry was written in a time in which “the world around you crumbles” (“The City and the Child” from the collection with the same title, 1996). The poem is written as a “chronicle of pain” in its centre. The passion of the word is no longer sufficient. Now the poet realizes that “the historical ritual is repeated” (“Hunter’s Dedication” 2004: 65). The presence of the Shadow is felt, the Yugoslav personification of the Shadow archetype. The fear is deeply rooted in the people (“Second Baptism”, a poem dedicated to Milan Djordjević – Belgrade). Nothing is immaculate anymore (“The Young Muse”). One can sense the smell of war, the breath of bestiality, the hell and meaninglessness. All of this is a good basis for establishing an “aesthetics of the darkness”, as the title of one of the poems from The City and the Child reads.
In Smugglers (1st issue 2009, quoted arcading to 2011), in the cycles “Here”, “Empty-handed”, “Inner Circle”, “Obligatory Exercises” and “On the Wrong Side” (which again have the same numbers of poems, each cycle has eight, this time each poem is made of four quatrains), one can deconstruct the topography of the post-war state of affairs of the literary, spiritual and existential areas of the disintegrated common Yugoslav state, the modern Atlantis. The literary, collective and personal memory of those Yugoslav intercultural times are a rich “spiritual heritage” as the author of the afterword of this book, the Croatian critic Delimir Resicki states (2011: 99). The poems move along the road of traces of memories of the lost times and along the traces of the material remnants (cities, people) of those times, more specifically of that Balkan-European Peninsula… The first cycle walks through several micro-troponins of Ljubljana, along the “places of private memories” (“Elegant Bow”, 2011: 17). What is especially impressing is the strategy of seeing and speaking through the awareness of the persons (writers, translators, immigrants…) to whom the poems of Debeljak’s various collections have been dedicated (Edward Kocbek, Josip Osti, Mojca Soštarko, Simona Šrabec, Igor Šiks, then Ivo Andric, David Albahari, James Joyce, Tomas Šalamun, Miljenko Jergović, etc.). In this way we have a transferred image of the world, more specifically a crossed image of the double lyrical subject. The emotional memory is fierce, the diction is defying, the rhetoric gnomic, sentential, suggestive (“Each encounter between the man and the woman is the first one”, 35; “It is important that our desire stubbornly lasts and lasts” – 33; – “the one who loves, risks many shapes / of surprise” – 29; – “only the one who does not rule, but serve comes” – 31; – “your words sound honest when they are the least true” – 47; – “there is no place with so many stars as the broken window of your native house” – 49; – “This unhappy city where the defeats repeat” – 57; – “Everything is allowed for the common good and survival of the tribe” – 59; – “I am not an exception, I am not sensitive: I have many / wounds and even more bandages as reserve and for unexpected cases” – 85; – “the cuckoo does not make / nests, it is a guest in other cities”; – “The twilight of gods / starts behind the corner, at the bar, on the threshold of the yard.” – 81; – “our balance styles are different, but the obsession is the same: to cross to the other side, to touch the blade and return” – 65; – “the warmth grows when it is shared, when you lie in somebody’s arms…” – 37, and many others.
The stage-semiotic tension in Aleš Debeljak’s poetry takes place supported by intellectual techniques and tactics. It is an occasion to review the world and one’s own poetry in it. This tension strives to a reflected history. In these poems where the historical and anthropological being is contemplated, even the erotic discourse becomes more corporal. This is clearly illustrated, for example, with the poem “Newborn Ode” (2013: 72):
“Your breath / drives me to the edge. Sometimes it makes me dizzy. Yet I stand firm.
When I hold you in my arms I’m the rock from the Old Testament.”
This tense scenography, or, if you wish, topography, makes his poems of the second phase (1996-2009) provocative for reading and rereading. It (the tension) is the introduction to this a bit stage and tense interpretation of Debeljak’s poetry. Tense, because on one side it tries to be an interpretative and value cross-section of his overall poetic work, and on the other hand it does not have an easy access to its original version (it is more difficult for me to read Slovenian), but more via the Macedonian, Croatian, Bulgarian and English translation, and on the other hand it does not have elaborate pretensions to illustrate all the given views with examples from the poems themselves but it rather relies on the procedure in an inductive and trans-aesthetic hermeneutics which values the text in a selected cultural-historical, intertextual (primarily literary) and intermedial (music, film, art) context.
The context of this interpretation essay is primarily culturological, and therefore some phenomenological, structurally semiotic and development aspects of Debeljak’s poetry have only been vaguely mentioned (including his prose poems). However, since the interpretative interest has been directed to deciphering the signature of the Yugoslav flood, the optics of the poet lying between the different poles of nostalgia (yearning) and indifference, returning home and travelling the world, tradition and modernity, subjectivity and alterity, then it is logical to also expect references to style, because style is also a view of the world, a matrix of the poetic identity, an introduction in the symbolic archive of the poems…
Apart from this, this interpretation has also faced the weight (or validity) of a verse from Ales Debeljak’s poem “Urgent Questions” (translated into Macedonian by Igor Isakovski) which warns, not so much with excitement, but with wisdom, that:
“the basest of evils assumes a beautiful shape”
(Космополис, 2010: 46)
Ales Debeljak also (as other writers as well) reminds that behind the aesthetic beauty of poetry there is lot of hidden suffering, and behind the suffering a lot of evil – archetypal, mythical, biblical, historical… If the evil is the constant of humanity, then beauty is also its constant, i.e. art, poetry, music, painting, film… Besides this, art of living. Because, let us admit, it fits a poet like Aleš Debeljak – a top essayist and literary critic, a university professor, engaged intellectual, sociologist of culture, culturologist, philosopher, archaeologist of Yugoslav literary and cultural Atlantis – to have the skills of art and living. Such a poet is typical for conquering the space of freedom, again and again. Always setting himself free of fear, free in his fear.
References:
Господинов, Георги. „В републиката на буквите“, поговор кон книгата Край на носталгията, София, ДА, 2013: 85-86.
Дебељак, Алеш. 2004. Избрани песни. Скопје, Блесок. Превод и предговор на Лидија Димковска (застапени се песни од збирките Речник на тишината, Мигови страв, Градот и детето и Недовршени оди).
Дебељак, Алеш. 2008. Под површината. Скопје, Блесок. Превод и поговор на Игор Исаковски.
Дебељак, Алеш. Космополис/Kozmopolis/Cosmopolis, EvaTas, Skopje Blesok 2010 (превод Игор Исаковски).
Debeljak, Aleš. Krijumčari, Zagreb, Fraktura 2011, prvo ed. 2009 Tihotapci, Ljubljana Mladinska Knjiga (prijevod Edo Fičer)
Debeljak, Aleš. Balkansko brvno (eseji o književnosti jugoslavenske Atlantide), Zagreb, Fraktura 2014.
Дебеляак, Алеш. Край на носталгията, избрани стихотворения (превод на Людмила Миндова), София, ДА, книгоиздателство за поезия, 2013.
Димковска, Лидија. „Проста и строга песна“. Предговор кон книгата Избрани песни од Алеш Дебељак. Скопје, Блесок, 2004.
Исаковски, Игор. „Замисленост пред повторувањата на историјата (кога лириката и епиката се сплотуваат)“. Поговор кон книгата Под површината од Алеш Дебељак. Скопје, Блесок, 2008.
Rešicki, Delimir. „Za autostopere koji su morali, preko mnogih granica, krijumčariti sjećanja na svoje živote“, pogovor in Krijumčari, Zagreb, Fraktura, 2011: 91-103.