Searching for Rade Tanasijević’s «Quiet Places»

Abstract

«Постоје» (Tanasijević 2009, 64), «They exist», thus begins the poem Tiha mesta (Quiet Places) from the poetry collection Klimatske promene (2009, Climate Change) by Rade Tanasijević’s, later reprinted in his book Salon odbijenih (2014, Salon des refusés). This poem, however, would not be included in his books of new and selected poems Nestajanje (2013, Dwindling) and Stvari oko mene ubrzano stare (2020, The Things around Me Are Rapidly Aging) – at least not in the form it had in the earlier books. Instead, it would be condensed and transfigured into the title of one of the cycles of poems, which raises the question of whether the poet had lost faith in the existence of quiet places or whether he just wanted to expand and deepen this topic. Tanasijević often used the title of his poems for the title of the cycles of poems, which is especially noticeable in the selected and new poems (Tanasijević 2013; Tanasijević 2020). The poet, however, usually included the titular poem in the cycle itself – which (significantly) is not the case with the poem Tiha mesta. The basic premise of the following paper is that the poet’s quiet places, the idealistic and somewhat utopian spaces, are scattered around Tanasijević’s poetry and that they can be found, described and interpreted by close-reading all of his books of poems.