Honouring Mesa Selimovic

Selimovic was one of the great writers of his time, but no one is sure what country should claim him. Born to a Bosniak family, he later declared himself a Serb.

By Ljiljana Smiljanic for Southeast European Times in Tuzla -- 13/05/10

A statue of Mesa Selimovic stands in Tulza. [BiH government]

Writer Mehmed "Mesa" Selimovic was born just over 100 years ago, on April 26th in Tuzla. To mark the occasion, lectures and exhibitions were held on his life and work, and the national TV station broadcast a documentary about him.

But some say the centennial did not receive the attention it deserved, in part because of controversies surrounding his nationality. Although Bosniak by origin, Selimovic later embraced a Serbian identity, and that decision has made his role in BiH cultural history hard to pin down.

According to Cazim Sarajlic, director of Tuzla's Museum of Portraits, Selimovic is "the most significant name in Tuzla when it comes to art".

"Such great literature and art treasure we don't have every 100 years in Tuzla," said Sarajlic. The city is not shy about honouring its own: the high school where Selimovic taught bears his name, as does the street with the house in which he was born. At Sarajlic's initiative, a statue was placed in a city square.

Over the past ten years, literary gatherings have been held in Tuzla at which participants select the best novel from the Western Balkans for the Mesa Selimovic Literature Award.

Jasmin Imamovic, mayor of Tuzla and founder of the award series, says he intends to turn Tuzla into a centre of writing, books and literature, and, by doing so, honour Selimovic.

"I wanted to make Tuzla the capital of literary awards. Tuzla deserves it due to Mesa Selimovic and other authors from this city," Imamovic said.

In 1910, Selimovic was born in Tuzla, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied literature at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philology, and then returned to Tuzla to teach high school. He later moved to Sarajevo, and in 1971 permanently moved to Belgrade where he lived till his death in 1982.

Among his novels, the most notable are Death and the Dervish, which has been compared to Kafka's The Process, and The Fortress. His books are studied in schools both in BiH and Serbia.

His wife, Darka, was Serbian, and he himself made a decision that has left his status open to debate.

"I come from a Muslim family in Bosnia, and I am a Serb by nationality," he wrote in a letter to the Serbian Science and Art Academy in 1976. "I equally respect my origin and my choice, because I am attached to everything that determined my personality and my work."

Then again, his most famous novel, Death and the Dervish, opens with a quotation from the Qur'an and tackles a Bosnian theme, albeit one that is universal in essence. Moreover, even after declaring himself a Serb, Selimovic continued to express a love and longing for BiH.

"Bosnia is my great love and my on-and-off painful hatred," he wrote. "Numerous times have I tried to run away, and I always stayed, although it does not matter where one physically lives. Bosnia is inside of me, like blood."

Source: SETimes.com