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
“He did not waste time in a vain search for a place in history.”
“Teaching others, he corrected himself.”
“In the lie of truth lies the truth.”
“Truth is hard-hearted and unrelenting, too clear, precise; a lie is much more imaginative.”
“A smiling lie is a whirlwind, easy to enter, but hard to escape.”
“The deeper thought is, the taller it becomes.”
“How alive is thought, invisible, yet without thought there is no sight.”
“We forget old stories, but those stories remain the same.”
“When the long bygone Lee Po wanted to say something, he could do it with only a few words.”
“We hear only our own voices, still echoes returning to our emptiness.”
“Everybody talks, but there is no conversation.”
“How many unuttered words died in the heads of those for whom a word was too expensive.”
“Different languages, the same thoughts; servant to thoughts and their masters.”
“Through words to the meaning of thoughts with no words.”
“The same word we love and hate, leaves in different directions, taking different paths.”
“Arrival in the world is really a departure and that, which we call departure, is only a return.”
“Sunbathe from within.”
“Get close to grass and you’ll see a star.”
“God is busy and has no time for you.”
“Two forces create eternity – a fairy tale and a dream from the fairy tale.”
“Universe is the Sun watching its own self.”
“Sun is a hearthstone, a merry-go-round of extinguished hearthstones.”
“Infinity is the end. End without infinity is but a new beginning.”
“When following God, Zero we never find.”
“Knighthood lies above eternity; it doesn’t live off fame, but rather deeds.”
“Eternity is a glorious word, but eternity is ice.”
“Unborn eternity does not die; existence is dying and falls asleep in the eternity beyond existence.”
“Existence is the end of endless eternity without a beginning or an end.”
“Procreation annihilates eternity.”
“Absolute is a game with only one player where Absolute forgets itself so it would have a reason to fulfill the motion while returning.”
“Deceit dispels the boredom of the Absolute.”
“In the essence of truth lies deceit.”
“Life is only a flicker of melted ice.”
“God is a cloud from which rain fell.”
“Darkness does not age; nothing is always nothing”
“Real geniuses would like that what we think of ourselves is true.”
“Absolute equals nothingness.”
“Omnipotence and omniscience are the end of power and knowledge.”
“Cosmos is God, who whispered the syllable of life.”
“The world is a fairy tale; we are its guardians.”
“The world is God's salvation.”
“Everything and nothing are the same in the Absolute.”
“Stars are only the rain of the Absolute.”
“The universe is God's son.”
“Burning the witch Giordano Bruno is one more wound inflicted on Christ’s body.”