My Voice

I have been witness to the world’s oldest Poetry Festival (Struga Poetry Evening) recently. Struga, where poetry blossoms as a tree in a poetry garden, swims delightfully in the River Drinn, bursts out like fireworks, and roams around like the soldiers of Alexander. Struga Poetry evening is the oldest festival, which still keeps alive the hopes and dreams of poetry.

I wonder how is it that such passionate love for poetry can blossom in the country of an invader, who just wanted to win the world with his physical might. How come the physical prowess has become subservient to mental prowess? Is there any relation between paradoxes such as war and poetry, between anger and love, between proximity and distance? Sometimes I feel that the army of Alexander might have missed their country so much that their souls have come back to their country as poetic words.

In fact the song, which is an anthem of the festival, describes the pain of being distanced from one’s own country. Macedonia was a country of great fighters, the fighters who wanted to capture the sun – the direction of the sun (east). The great fighter was crossing forests and rivers on horseback with thousands of followers. They were living in the illusion that they were winners of the world; in fact they were leading their lives on their horsebacks all the time. Their world in effect was only as big as the back of a horse. The irony was that even when they were imagining themselves as the happy conquerors of the world, they were tasting the salt of the sea sand and of their own tears.

The great Alexander won the entire world, but could not be the master of even two feet of earth after his death….did his soldiers cry consumed by the pain of memories, did they suffer from home sickness?

When I heard this famous song of the Macedonian poets, I felt that it carried the pain of Alexander in its flowing words–

 

If I had an eagle’s wings

I would rise and fly on them to our shores,

to our own parts,

To See Stambol, to see Kukus, And to watch the sunrise

is it dim there too, as it is here?

If the sun still rises dimly,

If it meets me there as here,

I’ll prepare for further travels,

I shall flee to other shores

Where the sunrise greets me brightly

And the sky is sewn with the stars.

It is dark here, dark surrounds me,

Dark covers all the earth,

Here are frost and snow and ashes

Blizzards and harsh winds abound,

Fogs all around, the earth is ice

And in the breast are cold,

dark thoughts. No,

I cannot stay here, no;

I cannot sit upon this frost.

Give me wings and

I will don them;

I will fly to our own shores,

Go once more to our own places,

Go to Ohrid and to Struga.

There the sunrise warms the soul,

The sun gets bright in mountain woods:

Yonder gifts in great profusion

Richly spread by nature’s power.

See the clear lake stretching white-

Or bluely darkened by the wind,

Look at the plains or mountains:

Beauty everywhere divine.

To pipe there to my heart’s content.

Ah! Let the sun set, let me die.

T’ga za Jug” (Longing for the South)

Konstantin Miladinov

(The name “T’ga za Jug,” which translates as “longing for the south,” is taken from a historically significant poem by Konstantin Miladinov, considered to be the founder of modern Macedonian poetry. Miladinov wrote the poem while living in Russia. “He was disappointed and nostalgic in Russia and obsessed with the idea of going back (to Macedonia). The “south” in the poem is Macedonia. Stambol is Istanbul, then a significant cultural center in the “south,” and Kukus is a city that today belongs to Greece. Ohrid is the most significant cultural and historical city of Macedonia to this day, as well as Struga (where the writer was from). Every year the large poetry festival held in Struga in honor of Konstantin and his brother Dimitar is kicked off by a ceremonial reading of “T’ga za Jug”)

The Poetry festival in the great country of Alexander tells the world that love is the essence of life; if you want to win, win the hearts of our people, not their land.

If you want to sing, listen to the gurgling sound of the river, not the roar of guns. Is the world listening to the message sent out by the land of the great Alexander?

Let us keep poetry alive for peace, love and faith

 

Rati Saxena