BLOOD is my daylight, and darkness too.
Blessing of night has been gouged from my cheeks
Bearing with it my more lucky sight.
Within those holes, for tears, fierce fire inflamed
The bleeding socket as if for brain a balm –
While my bright eyes died on my own palm.
“Yet, neither the international nor the domestic legal community prosecuted the crimes of the Ustaše against the Serbs during the Second World War with the same determination. The failure to recognize the atrocities of the past, and imbalanced focus on the offences committed by the Serbs during the Balkan Wars, has perpetuated the victimhood experienced by the Serbian nation.” – Angela Talic
Interview – Angela Talic
Author: Natasa Dinic
Almost everyone in the world has heard about Auschwitz, a place in Poland where approximately 1.1 million people were murdered by the Nazis. But how many people have heard about Jasenovac concentration and extermination camp, established by the authorities of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) and Ustaše regime, in occupied Yugoslavia during the WW II?
We had a great pleasure to interview Angela Talic, a recent UBC law graduate, who, for the first time in the history of Allard School of Law at University of British Columbia in Vancouver, wrote a comparative paper of Auschwitz and Jasenovac.
Continue reading “Recognizing the Wrongs of the Past: The Influence of Auschwitz and Jasenovac on International Criminal Law”When a German philosopher Oswald Spengler published the first volume of his book The Decline of the West in 1918 and then the second volume in 1923, the book was a great success, but it also brought about a real intellectual shock and ruckus in various circles of Western European society. As it often happens in the lives of many great thinkers and prophets, it is only after their death – when time itself is shifted to a new time – that people slowly begin to discover the truth of their words and wonder at them.
Continue reading “Of Breath and Spirit of Time”
Often, in the Repose of Evening her soul took a lightness from
the mountains across, although the day was harsh and
tomorrow foreign.
But, when it darkened well and out came the priest’s hand over
the little garden of the dead, She
Alone, Standing, with the few domestics of the night – the blowing
rosemary and the murmur of smoke from the kilns –
at sea’s entry, wakeful
Otherly beauty!
Continue reading “Beauty and the Illiterate”“The entire Metohija is my cradle – its winds intertwined with the sound of the bells coming from the monasteries of Zočište, the Holy Archangels, the Visoki Dečani, and the Patriarchate of Peć, sway me and prevent me from slipping into the dream of oblivion. They reawaken me and rock me gently from the Šar to Prokletije Mountains.” – Olivera Radić
Interview – Olivera Radić: Serbian Language and Literature teacher in Orahovac (Kosovo and Metohija), chronicler, journalist, humanist
Author: Nataša Dinić
In many different historical eras, just like in the Contemporary Era, numerous human kingdoms have done a lot of harm to peaceful peoples such as the Serbian people and their Church in Kosovo and Metohija.
The Battle of Kosovo is not over yet and all Serbian battles for the defense of Orthodoxy and Serbiandom are woven into it. All Serbs, wherever they lived, are appealed to and invoked to cherish the Kosovo Covenant – written by God’s hand – as their spiritual root, a gift and a pledge, and to treasure it as their cradle.
Continue reading “The Cry That Takes Us Back to the Cradle”VI
I once beheld on earth celestial graces
And heavenly beauties scarce to mortals known,
Whose memory yields nor joy nor grief alone,
But all things else in cloud and dreams effaces.
I saw how tears had left their weary traces
Within those eyes that once the sun outshone,
I heard those lips, in low and plaintive moan,
Breathe words to stir the mountains from their places.
Love, wisdom, courage, tenderness, and truth
Made in their mourning strains more high and dear
Than ever wove soft sounds for mortal ear;
And heaven seemed listening in such saddest ruth
The very leaves upon the bough to soothe,
Such sweetness filled the blissful atmosphere.
Translated by Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1903)
Photo: Courtesy of Annie Spratt / Unsplash
