Global Journal of Human Social Science, G: Linguistics and Education, Volume 22 Issue 9

Poetry as Playfulness and as Riddle (On the Poetry of Vlada Urošević) Dr. Lidija Kapuševska-Drakulevska P oetic T rajectory lada Uroševi ć 1 Urošević’s poetry is not rigidly closed in narrow national frames, although he is primarily a Macedonian poet, but is dialogically turned towards the European (and world) culture/civilization heritage. Urošević builds his very original and typically recognizable poetic discourse from this remarkable symbiosis of the national and the foreign, the personal and the universal, his unquestioned unique talent, and his experience with : author-epoch, remarkable intellectual, wondrously curious spirit, exceptional person, man-labyrinth. Equally successful in a variety of literary genres and artistic practices. As a writer, he considers poetry his primary vocation. He appeared on the Macedonian literary scene as a poet, mostly in journals. At the same time, his debut book Another City ( Еден друг град ) (1959) marks the beginning of his original individual investment in the achievements of Macedonian poetry, literature, and culture in general. Since then, poetry has remained his endless love and continual creative challenge. 1 V. Urošević (1934, Skopje) is a Macedonian poet, prose writer, critic, essayist, anthology editor and translator. He is a member of the Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences, the European Academy of Arts and Sciences (Salzburg), the European Poetry Academy (Luxemburg), and the Slovenian Academy of Literature and Art (Varna); an external member of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences (Belgrade) and a corresponding member of the “Mallarmé” Academy (Paris). He is a retired full professor at the Faculty of Philology “Blaže Koneski” in Skopje, at the Department of General and Comparative Literature. He has published 12 poetry collections, six story collections, seven novels, three books of notes and travelogues, several books of criticism and essays, two books about the fantastic in literature, and two books about the fantastic in painting, and he has edited several anthologies. He translates from Serbian, Russian and French into Macedonian. The Government of the Republic of France has named him a Knight of the Order of Art and Literature and then an Officer of the same Order for his literary and translation output. He is a winner of numerous national and international awards. Urošević’s books have been translated into: English, Bulgarian, German, Danish, Polish, Russian, Slovenian, Serbian, French, and Spanish. For this occasion we list the titles of the poetry collections: Another City ( Еден друг град ) (1959), The Invisible Land ( Невиделица ) (1962), A Mannequin in the Landscape ( Манекен во пејзажот ) (1966), Summer Rain ( Летен дожд ) (1967), Star Scales ( Ѕвездена терезија ) (1973), Diving Bell ( Нуркачко ѕвоно ) (1975), The Dreamer and Emptiness ( Сонувачот и празнината ) (1979), Hypnopolis ( Хипнополис ) (1986), Risks of Handiwork ( Ризицит e на занаетот ) (1993), Mane, Tekel, Fares ( Мане , текел , фарес ) (2002), Secret Gold (2016) и Indiscriminate Laboratory ( Безразборна лабораторија ) (2019). literature, the individual affinities and the collective heritage. This poetic discourse, in its content, hide palimpsest traces from ancient cultural layers (primarily mythical), and corresponds intellectually with some other artistic (painting, architecture) and extra-artistic, above all scientific (archeology, anthropology, astronomy, physics, psychoanalysis), but also pseudoscientific spheres (esoteric studies). Poetically, his discourse is much closer related to the heritage of the European literary (artistic) tendencies (especially the European avant-garde, whose experiences undoubtedly correspond to Urošević’s sensibility) than the current national developments. Placed in the Macedonian context, his poetry, at its appearance, is a reaction to both intimism in poetry and the revolutionary pragmatism and realism in Macedonian poetry after World War II. “This is poetry that has set off on a long counter-current adventure ” 2 Urošević relates the genesis of his interest in the wondrous as an aesthetic ideal with his childhood and the first “visual” book he was reading – the German lexicon “Duden.” In the conversations with Vladimir Jankovski, he emphasizes his fascination as a child with the drawings and all the miracles in the mentioned lexicon, from the unusual objects and creatures that , which has provoked the earliest labels attached to this poet by some critics, such as: “enfant terrible” of modernism, “Dadaist,” and “aesthete,” of course, in a negative connotation. Later, the “European” or, rather, the cosmopolitan orientation of Urošević will be adequately valued, and will become an advantage and recognizable trait of his creative profile. Today, Vlada Urošević has his prominent place in the Macedonian poetic Pantheon. He is, above all, an urban poet. But at times, he is a careful listener to the secret speech of nature. Urošević is a poet who, from one collection of poetry to another, traces new excitements and broadens the borders/horizons of the poetic. This text is only one possible interpretative aspect of the great map of persistent, extraordinary curiosities and challenges of the poet Vlada Urošević. Yearning for the miraculous “If I were a critic of my work, I would say that my poetry strives for the miraculous.” Vlada Urošević 2 М . Матевски , Forward in: В . Урошевиќ , Ѕвездена терезија . Скопје , Нова Макед o нија , 1973, p. 8. V © 2022 Global Journals Volume XXII Issue IX Version I 23 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2022 G Author: Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, N. Macedonia. e-mail: l.drakulevska@flf.ukim.edu.mk