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
“Everything that looks too perfect is too perfect to be perfect.”
“There is something perfect to be found in the imperfect: the law keeps balance through the juxtaposition of beauty, which gains perfection through nurtured imperfection.”
“To dream on occasion is not dreaming, To love on occasion is not love.”
“There is no born lover, There is no born Don Juan, For we are all lovers.”
“Great poets are great copy editors.”
“Total knowledge is annihilation Of the desire to see, to touch, to feel The world sensed only through senses And immune to the knowledge without feeling.”
“Without pleasure there is no sight or measure.”
“Senses empower limitations, senses expand vision within borders, senses promote understanding through pleasure.”
“Entering a cell, penetrating deep as a flying saucer to find a new galaxy would be an honorable task for a new scientist interested more in the inner state of the soul than in outer space.”
“To accomplish the perfect perfection, a little imperfection helps.”
“Perfection seems sterile; it is final, no mystery in it; it's a product of an assembly line.”
“I fly through memory to find a newborn love.”
“Trying too hard to be too good, even when trying to be bad, is too good for the bad, too bad for the good.”
“There is another alphabet, whispering from every leaf, singing from every river, shimmering from every sky.”
“My feelings are too loud for words and too shy for the world.”
“Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Is that all?”
“He tries to find the exit from himself but there is no door.”
“They will smile, as they always do when they plan a major attack late in the night.”
“Be aware of the high notes, of the blissful faces and their soft messages, and listen for the silent message of a highly decorated gift.”
“A word into the silence thrown always finds its echo somewhere where silence opens hidden lexicons.”
“He had an answer to almost everything and he retired at an early age.”
“Even great men bow before the Sun; it melts hubris into humility.”
“Dreams are our only geography—our native land.”
“History will be erased in the universal purgatory.”
“Every thought about death takes a moment of life away.”
“If birth is a manifestation of life, death is another.”
“Nature is an outcry, unpolished truth; the art—a euphemism—tamed wilderness.”
“Art is apotheosis; often, the complaint of beauty.”
“There is no competition of sounds between a nightingale and a violin.”
“Sound unbound by nature becomes bounded by art.”
“There is a moonlight note in the Moonlight Sonata; there is a thunder note in an angry sky.”
“Although all days are equally long regardless of the season, some days are long not only seasonally but by rewards they offer.”
“There can be no forced inspiration.”
“To transform a grimace into a sound sounds impossible, yet it is possible to transform a vision into music, to go outside an enslaved personality, to become impersonal by transforming into sand, into water, into light.”
“A big desire is not enough to meet the expectations of lost dreams.”
“Our desire to say more grows bigger and what to say about it, except that saying is not always about saying, growing is not always about growing.”
“Too often, feelings arrive too soon, waiting for thoughts that often come too late.”
“Love is almost never simple.”
“Accidents are not accidents but precise arrivals at the wrong right time.”
“Before the first before and after the last after, there is night waiting.”
“Without space, there is no time.”
“Tell me something only you know and make a new friend.”
“Forget decorated generals, tell me about Private Ryan.”
“There are countless circles of hell; believers never penetrate the ninth circle.”
“Nobility is not only in forgiveness.”
“Hope without love is hopeless.”
“If we were to understand how important it is to say something and say it well, maybe we wouldn’t write a single word, but that would be tragic.”
“There are many secrets; don’t try to resolve them all.”
“Beyond all vanities, fights, and desires, omnipotent silence lies.”
“For a moment at least, be a smile on someone else’s face.”