The Creator

By: Dejan Stojanovic

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Poetry in translation. Translation of Tvoritelj (Serbian edition: 2000)

The Creator (Tvoritelj, 2000) is a collection of poetry by the Serbian-American poet Dejan Stojanović (1959). The book, originally written in Serbian, contains 62 poems in nine sequences: "The Light-Bearer," "Forest of the Universe," "A Talk of Fire," "The Whisper of Eternity," "A Smiling Sky," "Thought and Flight," "Same and Change," "The Dream Chamber," and "Nostalgic Elements."

THE WHITENESS OF THE WORLD AND PAPER

After three poetry books, Circling (1993, 1998, 2000), The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), and The Sign and its Children (2000), Dejan Stojanović once again embarked on a unique adventure of poetic creation. The demiurge challenge, which is at the core of every creation, is doubly realized in this book. With this book, the poet creates his own poetic world—he inhabits a desolate expanse (more specifically, the whiteness of the paper) with spirit and meaning. On the other hand, reaching deep into diachrony, he follows the creation of the real world and space.

The collection of poems Creator mainly consists of short poems; however, on the conceptual and thematic level, it can also be viewed as a unique poetic unit. To highlight the antiquity of the time, which the collection of poems includes (and is there any greater antiquity than the period of the creation of the universe, and thus of our world), Stojanović bases his poetics on the very foundations of man's cognition of the world: water, fire, earth, and air.

Stojanović's, or "Creator's," world is, in a certain way, "the world before the world"—a world that has not yet known itself. This is evidenced by the verses from the poem "Day and Darkness". . . "The silence that no one has heard / The darkness that no one has seen / The sleeping darkness / Waiting for itself."

With the collection of poems, Creator Dejan Stojanović established connections, relationships, and harmony between spirit and matter, giving both their rightful place—the first. Just as an idea cannot be embodied without matter, so poetic inspiration cannot make a work of art for itself until it speaks through the mind and hand of the poet. We could say that The Creator results from a great harmony of the poet's inspiration, mind, and hand that writes the whiteness of the world and paper.
~ Oliver Jankovic
Borba, 28, 29, 30. 11. 2000