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

belonged to different realms. But, printed on the same page, they showed mutual “secret” relations. He states: “All of it created in me an idea of a miraculous world that exists outside of the house in which I lived, that there is an immeasurable wonder of the universe that astonishes us at the same time explains something to us. ” 3 Pineapples and watermelons are brothers and sisters . Or, stated in poetic terms: Indian temples have become musketeer’s home Piranhas and pyramids are on the same page From volcanos erupt mummies and coins of Rome Kites, dirigibles, and cars fly on the celestial stage. All is connected: Papuans and papayas 4 Sprung from the large reservoir of childhood memories, or from the child’s perception of the world, the miraculous grows into the pivotal principle and aim of the poetic adventure of Urošević. His sense for the miraculous, as a dominant “strategy of perception” – to look at the ordinary, the every day, the banal, and to perceive the miraculous – is probably related to his great love, surrealism. “Surrealism was a significant school for me,” – he says, “because it has taught me to see the magic of the ordinary, as the surrealists used to say, i.e., to discover the miraculous around myself in every moment in life. (...) That is the message of my first collection of poems, Another City: in this everyday city, which is ordinary, gray, and tedious, there is another city that opens in front of us only at certain moments, and then we discover the miraculous. ” (“Lexicons from Childhood” Indiscriminate Laboratory ) 5 “A city exists / whose boundaries / merge / like rain and fog / with the cement frontiers of the city” – the central poem in the first poetry collection states. The city here is a space which – as the dark woods were once in Romanticism or the neglected gardens in Symbolism – offers entrance into the world of the unusual and the impossible – Urošević wants to say with his typically urban verses. The poet can discover that unknown, invisible, second side of reality, which earns poetic status and functions according to its miraculous rules. Here are a few paradigmatic verses: “A power plant suddenly resembled a matchbox,” “A leaf of grass became big, a poplar small” (“Summer Story”); “At the end of the city / the castle of the Tattered Queen rises and on / the hill the stones climb...” (the poem “Evening Games”); “Gnats in the air: the air teams with gnats. / Fire in the greenhouses. Glassworks are burning. / A taxi flees across the sunshine aimlessly. / The cyclists are but shining meteors.” (“The City at Sunset”). What is 3 В . Јанковски , Огледало на загатката (conversations with Vlada Urošević). Скопје , Сигмапрес , 2003, p. 16. 4 The poems quoted in the article have been translated by: Zoran Ancevski, Elisaveta Ritchie, Eugene Prostov, David Donnel, and Kalina Maleska. 5 В . Јанковски , Огледало на загатката (conversations with Vlada Urošević), op.cit., p. 54; 60. exciting and suggestive here? The play itself. The seductive principle of playfulness is one of the main postulates of the life/work of Urošević. That poetic principle is almost always connected to humor and irony as a protective mechanism from pathos and the banal of our existence. In the area of playfulness in the sence of discovering, and recreation or transforming of reality, becomes evident the closeness of Urošević with the act of foregrounding or “estrangement” promoted by the Russian formalists. The postulate of “estrangement” is in harmony with Urošević’s tremendous and permanent obsession with childhood. The childhood is another essential experiencing of the world and the “wonder” of his worldview. Leopardi has said that “the children see everything in nothing, and the adults – nothing in everything.” Likewise, for Urošević, childhood is “a wondrous period of our life.” For him, “all things seen through children’s eyes and touched by children’s hands have almost unrepeatable and irreplaceable meaning. ” 6 According to Urošević, the roots of our imagination are situated in childhood. Every poet (and artist, in general), tries to regain the power of childish discovering of the world “as for the first time.” The child’s free imagination offers a possibility to approach the every day from another angle, from another different, unusual, and alternative perspective. Opposed to rational logic and habit, the outside sensations carry the taste of a miracle for any child. “Each, even the banalest object or event opens the doors that lead towards the magical areas of the incredible” – Urošević considers . In the poem “The Golden Age of Childhood” ( Mane, Tekel, Fares / Мане , текел , фарес ), alluding to childhood as a lost paradise (“There was a miraculous light which reflected” – one verse goes), the poet makes current the ancient myth in an imposing way: There were empty snail shells in which could still hear the noise of the sea (...) There were butterflies upon whose wings were spread maps of an island with buried treasure with marked sea paths leading to it (...) But there were also vile wizards whose sorcery betrayed it all for plastic and paper money and who lied to us that we would become adults. 7 6 Л . Капушевска - Дракулевска , Секоја средба со Влада Урошевиќ е чудесна (A conversation with V. Urošević). Културен живот , 2019, No 3-4, p. 22. 7 Л . Капушевска - Дракулевска , Секоја средба со Влада Урошевиќ е чудесна (A conversation with V. Urošević), op.cit., p. 23. In this sense, the poem “Shadow Theatre” (outside of the collections, 1980) is illustrative: “The fire bites the great body of darkness. / The night as a wounded beast twists and wriggles,” “over the white wall of the house terrible flocks fly,” “The child stands in the yard at night / and waits for the electrodes of the welding machine to swish.” The poem’s end reveals the illusion, the © 2022 Global Journals Volume XXII Issue IX Version I 24 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2022 G Poetry as Playfulness and as Riddle (On the Poetry of Vlada Urošević)