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
“A hidden spark of the dream sleeps In the forest and waits In the celestial spheres of the brain.”
“The night is still waiting.”
“To jump over centuries In one step is impossible. Jump too high or far, You’ll be way too late.”
“When magic through nerves and reason passes, Imagination, force, and passion will thunder. The portrait of the world is changed.”
“He knows he will be born again, And start fresh anew.”
“He awaits himself while walking, out of the icy circle to escape.”
“In the end, the world returns to a grain.”
“When the star dies, Its eye closes; tired of watching, It flies back to its first bright dream.”
“Will the day tell its secret Before it disappears, Becomes timeless night.”
“The world is always open, Waiting to be discovered.”
“You are hurrying to the sweet place, To the nonsense chasing your spirit And in the nonsense you look for answers.”
“Life into death— Life’s other shape, No rupture, Only crossing.”
“There are no clear borders, Only merging invisible to the sight.”
“You are not what you are; You are darkness Looking for light within.”
“There is a pledge of the big and of the small in the infinite.”
“The world contained in a seed, Determined by its program.”
“Into the day as by dream I swim To the music of nourished meaning.”
“I can see myself before myself—A being through dark scenery.”
“There is nobody to wake up eternal seekers.”
“The farther away, the closer the home becomes.”
“What does infinity mean to you? Are you not infinity and yourself?”
“Although personal calling I sense,Who am I? even if I am, I don't know.”
“Every star was darker than the night before it awoke.”
“Digressions are part of harmony, deviations too.”
“Earth is the source of light.”
“To come to nothing through something is the way to outside from both sides.”
“When he is most powerful, nothing does he become.”
“When everything hurries everywhere, nothing goes anywhere.”
“From nothing comes everything.”
“From everything, nothing looks to nothing.”
“Without nothing, everything would be nothing.”
“Nothing is part of everything.”
“If emptiness is endless, then everything rests in emptiness.”
“If emptiness is empty, how can something be borne or awaken from it?”
“To sense the peace of extinguished passionHappiness in not knowing the ultimate knowledge”
“The world cannot be translated; It can only be dreamed of and touched.”
“The eyesight for an eagle is what thought is to a man.”
“From what you didn’t say, lies that you did say.”
“Color is the overpowering of black; white – the final victory over black.”
“With your goal you make the one.”
“Heavenly bodies are nests of invisible birds.”
“It is vain futility to analyze the algebra of time.”
“It is futile to spend time telling stories about the fleetness of each day.”
“In every sound, the hidden silence sleeps.”
“In an endless silence even screams sound silent.”
“When within yourself you find the road, the right road will open.”
“Good is not always good.”
“Devil and God – two sides of the same face.”
“The world is a navy in an empty ocean.”
“Beauty is a cheap word, but beauty remains priceless.”