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Just published on the blog “Ahref="https://www.literaryworkshopkordun.com/latinica/autor/ranko-pavlovic"target="_self"> Kordun Literary Workshop ” in the USA. Thanks to the author (who is not my cousin and whom I did not meet) and the editor Ilija Šauli!

About Ranko Pavlović's book "Kroz iglene uši"or:

TO BE A SONNET THREAD

Ljiljana Pavlović Ćirić,

poet and professor of Serbian language

In Stalać, on Sveti Stefan, January 9, 2022.

                     In his new book of poems, Ranko Pavlović skillfully, measuredly and with special tact dresses verses in a new man, as evidenced by the sonnet "New Adam". Man is sung here like a crumb, a speck invisible in the eye of the cosmos. The bridge between the two worlds is the thought that unites us with it. Here the moment lasts forever and vice versa. Pure cosmic force - aspiration, passed through the organ of poetic relativity, imposes a rhetorical question that carries with it the answer:

"Don't ask how long that moment lasts,

Because if it makes sense, it is equal to eternity. "

The poet says that one should walk through life with raised heads, and the philosophers themselves have not grasped the essence (cosmic thread). Yet no one remains immune (especially not a poet of special sensibility) to the question sown by the old, biblical motif) fratricide:

"Will Kain kill Avelj again /

fratricide to sow the seeds?

In epic-lyrical poems, what is a combination of "solid", pre-given (expected) form on the one hand and the change of intertwining of soft interiors of a wide range of feelings and emotions, on the other hand, is virtuously defined by Pavlović through (literary-theoretical) notion and poetic ) SONNET:

“The sonnet is a male song sprouted from the female soul

and it doesn't matter whose hand it is

His verses can tear down a stone wall

and they raised it up to be what it was before. "

Further, he explains the origin and origin of this poetic form:

“Because he is stronger than the throne and brighter than the scepter

it is not written with the sword, but is created by love,

grows out of language, in words of prosperity "

The purpose of the poet in the process of creating the sonnet is illustrated by the following verses:

“While writing a sonnet, like an ancient student

in ceremonial attire, in the midst of storm clouds

the poet restores peace in the hatch of aspens "

 Aspen directs us to the earthly, the earthly, which is overpowered and defeated by the only pure and sublime weapon: the love with which the sonnet is woven. He sees the sonnet as a kind of song on the border, just as Karadzic set epic-lyrical songs between men (epic) and women (lyric). However, the poet here not only gives a "recipe" of how to create (from what he builds) but also provides, like a teacher, with a lot of patience and generosity, the opportunity for the reader-student to understand the essence of creating a sonnet thread because it does not matter who is a carver. Every poet is like a student of the ancients.

                Lovćenski sublime, Njegoševski vaskoliko, the poet believes in the future man; such "will know that life is a constant struggle" in which the Future Man (if you are) should be able to see "the bright side of the day in the dark". The light must win, but there are few gifted who have the strength to, as the chosen ones, be a Man who "will defy everything with his bare chest." The motif of despair and suffering is found in some verses in a renewed way:

"The martyr was crucified on the edge of his self

forges the shackles of slavery for themselves "

We can see the martyr as a kind of Job who, sinless and self-sacrificing on his right path, "will not be spared the fate that life turns like a roulette wheel." The feeling of shackles on the justice of the Fire and the Sun, we meet in the song "Prometheus' Tear", where the cliff and the depth of the gorge are at odds:

Drunk face, chained on a rock

Prometheus observes the deep gorge "

                When we want to get closer to someone or something, we beat ourselves up wanting to show our tameness. The poet Ranko Pavlović beats the rot in the song "Trun, trunak, trunčić". With the hypocrisy of trunak and demining, trunčić wants to receive, perhaps, the biblical trunk in his eye in order to come to life and make friends. That corpse is unknown "you don't know what it is from / where it comes from or what gives birth to it". He is "lurking around", he is a trunk and a log to him. He does not pass, he suddenly comes as in Nastasijević's mother's melody, when he starts, he does not leave:

"You drive him away in vain, he does not give up,"

It hits like a needle in a wound. "

The question of style and stylism through the motif is visible in the poem "Žubor" through the dwarven aphoristic verse:

"Be your own, it's more valuable than gold"

The motif of chivalry is seen through the Middle Ages, but also in a modern way; Knights used to have symbols such as swords, falcons and horses (some even had a dog, remember Banović Strahinja):

"Because without a horse, a warrior is nobody and nothing

I will whip the horse man into my heart

Man and horse follow the same fate "

Apparent pessimism is interwoven through these verses; we remember Dolap Rakić; here, however, is optimism in the radiance of chivalry for the sake of which one suffers and suffers.

The motif of Sumatraism can be found in the song "My Olympus":

I have my Olympus, my refuge,

The hill above my parents' house

In my sleep I am there when my heart beats

When an unquenchable desire calls me on the road.

The chronotope of Pavlović's Sumatraism can be understood in two ways here: breg = hum (ka), and "above my parents' house" can mean a completely new time-space plan: outside the original, material one: a generation later, everyone goes after their parents. The adverb above can mean: NEXT, MORE, and it can also mean LATER.

Also, all in the sign of Sumatra continues in the song "Mountain in the distance". The title itself once again confirms the thought dimension of this motif, which spatially transcends the material. That special place where the poet dreams and forges his own self, is located on an unnamed distant hill. So, both high and far:

"I will never come to her eager,

to touch the secrets of longing "

It is difficult to reach her, and her stupor never dries up:

"She is there. Powerful. Look, attracts!

I'm stuck here. I sleep in solitude "

The torment of numbness and swelling is heavy and gloomy.

Pavlović's faith sinks deep into the oak, into the drain canopy, where unleavened bread "grows" in the soul of the poet and the hungry eye of the observer; From this bite grows a nationwide missionary vision:

"We will not go under the plum tree, let Tarabic forgive

only dren defies, does not darken on himself "

              Memories of home, roots, homeland are found in the song "Mother's Horse". The thought of philosophers and psychologists about male-female relationships and interpersonal love and happiness is woven here in an essentially gentle and unobtrusive way, and that is: for the happiness and mental health of the mother, the father is solely responsible. Mutual-consequential love through the image of the mother shines in the verse:

"With the joy of his face, his father washes"

This can further guide the reader to the correctly laid family foundations that have been raised within the poet's being. Healthyly shaped forms, solid walls and the inviolable structure of the spirit of this poet are noticeable, which carries a certain reciprocity in the versification of his poetry.

                      The motif of the mother is elevated, as in many great poets, to a universal plane whose light we can see through the Mother of God. Up to unimaginable heights and durations, the mother's calmness radiates as she sits by the horse:

"Mother's horse in Kum's straw

And now I often see when he is alone

This is where (and so) the wheel of the universe turns. In special moments of solitude, the poet turns his spiritual eyes to the sky, to the stars, especially to the all-luminous one that reminds him of the Mother.

The motif of transience did not escape this poetic weaving either. Instead of grinding flour in the old mill, she grinds memories and recollections. In the poem "Stara vodenica", the reader will think that some pessimistic tone has moved in because a ruined picture is found:

"Kneel the foundation, stumbled beams", and there is "rot that eats greedily". However, the lyrical subject immediately unrolls the "sewn-up days" like a gift towel in the song "wear and tear" and sends a clear message about the point of life:

“Life trembles in the piano fugue

And it falls like fruit overripe. "

No man's ball lasts forever; to each of us, sooner or later, "the thread is getting thinner, stretches, breaks".

                     Like the ancient thinker, the poet Pavlović wonders about the givenness of man and the givenness of man; about its micronomic in the macrocosm. Such moments are of inestimable importance both for the poet and for literature:

"And that's how the Sun and I talk, confused,

About the duration in which a man is given a moment "

When to follow in crucial moments, to whom to return, if not to the sun, the life-giving energy, the Ancestor and the Primordial. The microcosm opposed to the macrocosm of the damara inside the chest stored in the song "Marble Slave":

"Cosmos is trembling in the fire of his chest / and he is mad, so he doesn't know what he wants." Can we travel here with our thoughts to the beautiful Haikuna who dances enchantingly over Radojica, seduces, and covers his eyes with a primrose, so that no one sees the liveliness? Can we compare the Cosmos with Radojica, and the song with the beautiful Haikun? Her enchanting dance would be life alone, and who has to resist, if not the lyrical subject (the closest relative of the poet)?

In the beginning was the Word..and the Word was from God..and God was the Word… it says in the Bible. The word is from the Creator, from the power of heaven, shows the poet Pavlović in the song "Word about the word":

“That little seed, the beads of the shackles,

Or graffiti that hides a life-giving germ,

Which the spirit of heaven from the sense of forging

To give birth to a word, from it a sentence "

The letter is the equivalent of the Light that connects the essence with the cosmic thread:

"That divine letter, on the altar the weevil / light that connects the being with the universe"

Sunlight, ancestral radiance is scattered and multiplied in conjunction with the traditional

"Ilin's scrolls, messengers of the moon

Creator of luminous writing

In the summer they write a prayer to the dumb "

The song of the Dionysian tone "Seasons" is interesting, where "spring cries out to the sun: take me up", in summer the sun is ripe, chubby, sail, in autumn "you know that everything that pleases you passes", and "winter is pure feed the soul. "

                       Ranko Pavlović uses stylistic figures in this magnificent collection of sonnets, such as epithets, metaphors, comparisons, contrasts. in the deepest vortex of the river in which the stars swarm ”. In many places in this book, Pavlović's personifications virtuously surpass many: "an easy dream catches a yawn", "a hot sky cries out for a cloud", "an apple smiles", and "the sun has mercy", "the flower struggles to wake up what is petrified “…

                      At the very top of poetic skills are the words neologisms such as the adjective "forgiven (life)" and the perfect verb "dokrila".

While we are still talking about form, I will say this: it is easy to wrap a cloth around yourself and improvise a suit, anyone can do that; but few of those (and such!) tailors who, to the right extent, without a concession, at the same time, persistently cut suits. Ranko Pavlović is just one of such tailors - with his sonnets he certainly improved our literature a lot by showing exceptional poetic mastery. "

                     Reading this book, I felt like a wandering Sinait in front of the foundations of seventy-seven forgotten, and centuries-covered churches.

Therefore, indefatigable reader, continue this common pilgrimage.