Dejan Stojanovic
Dejan Stojanovic was born in Pec, Kosovo (the former Yugoslavia), in 1959. Although a lawyer by education, he has never practiced law and instead became a journalist. He is a poet, essayist, philosopher, former journalist, and businessman.
Books of poetry: Circling, The Sun Watches the Sun, The Sign and Its Children, The Shape, The Creator, Dance of Time, THE WORLD IN NOWHERENESS (A PENTALOGY) - [Ozar, The World and God, The World in Nowhereness, The World and Humans, The Home of Light]. The Hidden Light, Primordial Spark, Centuries and Steps.
Books of Essays: Creator and Creating, The New Man and the New World.
Anthology: Selected Serbian Plays.
In 1986, as a young writer, he was recognized among 200 writers at the Bor (former Yugoslavia) Literary Festival. He also received the prestigious Rastko Petrovic Award from the Society of Serbian Writers for his book of interviews with major European and American artists and writers.
In addition to poetry and prose, he has worked as a correspondent for the Serbian weekly magazine Pogledi (Views). His book of interviews from 1990 to 1992 in Europe and America, entitled Conversations, included interviews with several major American writers, including Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow, Charles Simic, and Steve Tesic.
He has been living in Chicago since 1990.
THEY SAID ABOUT THE WORLD IN NOWHERENESS
“(The World in Nowhereness offers) the joy of cognition due to discoveries worthy of the Nobel prize…”
— Milan Lukić
"When I got my hands on Dejan Stojanović's book The World in Nowhereness, I was amazed and read the book with great pleasure. I didn't even believe that there is someone today who could write such a long poem, an epic, as if I opened to read the Iliad, in our time. I recommend this book to all who are believers in poetry because faith in poetry is the same as faith in eternity and eternal life."
— Matija Bećković
“The World in Nowhereness is Dejan Stojanović’s utopian absolute book, a kind of a Mallarméan absolute. An absolute story, or an absolute book, according to Borges, is a desert-like book: sandy, grainily unforeseeable, and corpuscularly innumerable… It is simultaneously a vision and a chimera. Isn’t that precisely why we long for an absolute book? The World in Nowhereness by Dejan Stojanović is, in his way, an embodiment of that dream.”
— Srba Ignjatović
“I have always wondered, even about my poetic work, what a total poem is… Can the pentalogy by Dejan Stojanović be called a total poem, one that every poet of note has dreamed about since the time of Homer? I felt such impulses while reading The World in Nowhereness. This is an absolute poem, of an absolute system of thought that reaches across the totality of our civilizational legacies.”
— Duško Novaković
"Exactly 17 years ago, in the last year of the 20th century, I came across the work of Dejan Stojanović, and then I wrote a text from which I will extract a few sentences. “Dejan Stojanović, in the last two years, made a real feat, he published six books, except for one, all books of poetry.” This first five-book collection was published in the last year of the 20th century, and here we are now with the five-book collection in the XXI century, nearing the end of the second decade. And then I also wrote the following: “Stojanović is a poet who searches for the perfect poetic form because at the same time he searches for the absolute meaning of human existence.” Whether it was a hunch or not, there is the Pentalogy and there is that word, that concept – an absolute, an absolute book, an absolute poem that could be sensed even in that first pentalogy."
— Aleksandar Petrov (January 17, 2018)
"The World in Nowhereness is primarily the result of great literary ambition and faith in literature." — Muharem Bazdulj
“To hear never-heard sounds, To see never-seen colors and shapes, To try to understand the imperceptible Power pervading the world; To fly and find pure ethereal substances That are not of matter But of that invisible soul pervading reality. To hear another soul and to whisper to another soul; To be a lantern in the darkness Or an umbrella in a stormy day; To feel much more than know. To be the eyes of an eagle, slope of a mountain; To be a wave understanding the influence of the moon; To be a tree and read the memory of the leaves; To be an insignificant pedestrian on the streets Of crazy cities watching, watching, and watching. To be a smile on the face of a woman And shine in her memory As a moment saved without planning.”
“It is not possible to express the most precious insights, To see all that craves to be seen, To visit even the closest neighbors in the universe, To learn all that needs to be learned, To live without dying, And I am sad about it.But I livedAnd I am happy about that.”
“Busy with the expensive success we forget the free beauty.”
“Quixote shines from Lorca and Picasso, From Dalí and El Greco, From the gloomy 'View of Toledo.' He was born before Cervantes.”
“Those in Argentina, Mexico and Peru, Colombia and the Caribbean Bear La Mancha and Quixote in their heartsFor he is an ultimate and overlooked Don Juan.”
“Marquez was not born in Colombia.He was born in Macondo, And his Macondo is his La Mancha.”
“It is not important what happens where; Where we fall or rise, What we conquer or lose, How big or small we are.”
“Neruda had his first dream, First meeting with the Moon and the Sun In sunny La Mancha, hiding in his heart,Where he learned how to sing like a nightingale.”
“Don Quixote is not just Don Quixote; La Mancha is not just geography; It is our personal territory—Terra Nostra.”
“Don Quixote is not an imaginary person; he is as real as Alexander the Great.”
“We grow from our dreams.”
“We only live if we dream.”
“We dream and fight with demons real and imagined.”
“They are both spectacular, Life and death.”
“In greatness, life and death merge.”
“Nothing is made, nothing disappears. The same changes, at the same places, never stopping.”
“We don’t know anything about silent sages, buried knowledge, the eye of the mute poet, serene seers, yet how many talkative destroyers, prophets and ideologues, teachers and beautifiers there are on the other side.”
“He will understand when it is too late that it is easier to love.”
“While gazing at myself from yourself, I was beautiful.”
“Long ago an uncalled rain fell and a called-upon God stayed equally distant.”
“Long ago we conquered our passions looking at ourselves in the mirror of eternity.”
“What you gain here, you lose on the other side.”
“From one bell all the bells toll.”
“In a myriad of ways you tell one truth.”
“Wherever I go, I meet myself.”
“In the biggest and the smallest I sleep but at the same place I stay.”
“Through everything I have passed but nowhere I have been.”
“Mathematics doesn’t care about those beyond the numbers.”
“I lose faith in mathematics, logical and rigid. What with those that even zero doesn’t accept?”
“With me: one minus one = one; with you: it’s zero. Here lies the only difference.”
“My mathematics is simple: one plus one = one.”
“I travel, always arriving in the same place.”
“I am the shore and the ocean, awaiting myself on both sides.”
“Instead of imitating me, you simply loiter.”
“Creating means living.”
“And this that you call solitude is in fact a big crowd.”
“You ask how it is possible to be your own father and son. You should seek answers, although it is better to anticipate some, to be the light and dream.”
“I enjoy it when the world smiles; the more smiles, the warmer I am.”
“I recreate myself; that is my only power.”
“One hand I extend into myself, the other toward others.”
“We will go far away, to nowhere, to conquer, to fertilize until we become tired. Then we will stop and there will be our home.”
“A word only writes Its night and ridesIts dream.”
“Death swallows death.”
“Neither alive nor dead; No one lets up, No one wins.”
“Life eats life to live.”
“Deliver thunder, GodIf you choose not to talk.”
“Vandals listen only when others are stronger.If vandals are equal or strongerTheir word is the last word.”
“New Rome will be destroyedBy the attacks of new vandals.God always remains silent.”
“To the knights of faith nobody believes.”
“All dust is the same dust. Temporarily separated To go peacefully And enjoy the eternal nap.”