Na rubu.
Mihailovich, Vasa D.
Na rubu (On the Edge), the twenty-eighth book by a leading writer in
the Serbian diaspora, Mateja Matejic (b. 1924), offers a representative
selection of his entire poetic opus. Written at various times, the
fifty-eight poems in this collection show the poet from different angles
and with a varying choice of topics. They also demonstrate the main
spheres of his interest. Above all, the poems show Matejic, a priest
with a long and distinguished career, as a pronouncedly spiritual person
whose main concern has always been the spiritual values of his flock and
of his homeland. It is therefore not surprising that most of the poems
deal with these values.
Among the best poems in the collection are those devoted to the
centuries-old Serbian relic, the monastery of Hilandar on Mount Athos,
featured in his earlier book Hilandarski rukopis (Hilandar Manuscript).
A frequent visitor to this Mecca of Serbian Orthodoxy, he sees the
monastery as "a stone / heaved by one of the gods / into the sea /
and turned into / the church of God," "a garden planted for
the Mother of God," and "a ship docked on earth / with its
sails spread wide." In the famous icon from the monastery, depicted
as "three-handed," she never ceases her vigil over her flock.
Other examples of the poet's exalted spirituality can be seen in
the many poems of a philosophical nature dealing with the meaning of
life, its inevitable transience, and the relativity of man's
existence. "I slowly grasp," he says, "that to some
everything is a shadow, to others shadow is everything." Throughout
the poems are grains of wisdom such as "all yesterdays were
tomorrows / and all tomorrows / will be todays." The poems
containing deep thoughts are the most gratifying in the entire
collection.
Matejic also touches upon other Serbian relics, such as the cult of
Kosovo, the great Serbian poet Njegos, and the crimes committed against
his people (as in the heartrending poem "Eyes"). Other themes
are inescapable for a poet forced by political turmoil during and after
World War II to spend most of his life in a second homeland. The sad lot
of his fellow emigrants finds adequate expression in these poems,
together with such human foibles as discord, envy, and a lack of respect
for national shrines. There are also poems for special occasions, which
are poetically less successful although not devoid of significance. Most
important, the poet transforms all these impetuses into genuine poetic
images, best illustrated by the poem "Oblak" (A Cloud), in
which a cloud disappears only to be brought back to life through the
innocent smile of a child. Perhaps the most expressive is the title
poem, which shows the poetic persona sitting alone, shivering in the
dark night and waiting for dawn.
The concluding words in the book, "He who reads these poems
ought to know: they are written not by me but by life," are true
yet misleading. Without the poet's spark, the poems would be
quickly forgotten. As it is, they stand as some of the best achievements
in Serbian poetry in the diaspora. It is no wonder that this is
Matejic's third book to be published in his homeland, after decades
of studied neglect.
Vasa D. Mihailovich University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
