The Cry Of The Human – Book Review

Once, not so long ago, we were taught that the nation is a historical creation that occurred at a certain stage of social development, and that at a certain stage it will disappear. It was a sort of some kind of Marxist definition of the nation, which our teachers held as something sacred. Today, however, the greatest sacrilege is to try to mention that there is any opinion of that kind. If you’re wondering “why” it happened, perhaps the answer rests as some argue with Marx, who said that the consciousness of the people does not determine social being, but conversely, that the circumstances in which we live determines our consciousness.

However, it is quite clear that Sabahudin Hadžialić doesn’t see the issue as resolved and indeed does ask the question “how did this happen – or how did it happen” in his essays.

Of course, any serious man — the one with an intellectual mission — should have to ask himself that. But the question is when and who will ask that publicly? Sabahudin Hadžialić dared to ask himself, i.e. us, at the beginning of the third millennium, or the 21st century.

Due to the size and selection of topics these questions are still reviews, but in the form of the treatment and the style of writing, his reviews take on the characteristics of mini-essays, and the essays are publications between journalism and science, and closest to the art world.

The mini-essays published in Eurasia Review have the genuine author’s signature, a personality that is particularly reflected in the fact that these essays are an unusual inner dramaturgy. There are two characters in most of the essays presented: Student and Professor. The author, somehow himself, and his artistic position, identifies more with the Student – because the student is the one who asks the questions. A Professor, who had taught the Student one thing and is nowadays is doing something totally different, is trying to justify his actions. The Professor is actually the author’s alter ego, the Student’s loyal friend or assistant, who should help him to realize that he has moved from one “I” to a different “I” or “Me”.

In an article titled” BEGGARS OF THE MIND, WE, BY OURSELVES“, Hadžialić calls his Professor “the alter ego of my suicide” and in that way introduces a question of identity, i.e., that he, as the same person, is not identical to himself (people forget that they are getting old and becoming even wiser), or how we all (or the vast majority) overnight took diametrically opposed views. How can the same teacher who taught us one thing, be the one who today is teaching our children something else, quite the opposite thing.

The author does not hide his nostalgia. But his nostalgia is not the so-called “Yugoslavia nostalgia” which has been used to disqualify all the critics of society-organized anarchy (the author’s patriotism for Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot for one moment be put into question), but the nostalgia of the middle-class social groups that should be, in any developed society, a measure of social maturity and balance.

Hadžialić in short essay referred to as “I AM GOING INTO THE NIGHT” compares his father (a teacher/professor) when he was forty to himself, when he turned forty years old. His father could go on holiday to France, have a house by the sea and always had a rich table of food. On the other hand, Hadžialić finds that he can now go to France only if he is invited, and at the sea he goes into his father’s house where the food table is “poor rich with basic vitamins.”

Namely, through the detailed analysis of content of Sabahudin’s essays it may be found that the idea of such weight can change the entire contemporary sociological science. He does not develop those ideas, but via them we all should imagine or think about the subject.

I would particularly emphasize the following thought from the essay “COLLECTIVENESS OF DIVERSITY OR LOVE THY NEIGHBOR.” Hadžialić writes: “Today is the scene of the killing of the society and creation of interest groups and not just of any kind, but creation of a group which, closing into its own shell of insanity creates conditions for their own disappearance.” This is a phenomenon with which will soon be faced our society and our sociology, and God help us, the ethics, and philosophy, theology, economics, political science, and psychology, and so on.

Hadžialić, perhaps unconsciously, but with too much right, cries, demands, and  requires an intellectual awakening of social consciousness, and finds that there is not any — and as such,  there’s nothing then but to challenge the premise of the need for an “additional amount of time” for ripening. Bosnia at this time simply does not have more time! And Hadžialić loves Bosnia and Herzegovina! With the realization that there is a lack of time, and this, his love, everything else falls into the water…

Using one aorist as a past continuous time, Hadžialić regularly possesses a subtle wire coined to convey the same type of thinking, analytical intersections and, as well, the result is to obtain a fifth angle of perception of reality.

And we are left with the pain within Hadžialić’s observations and calculations. All that he writes is a diagnosis of the condition of Bosnia and Herzegovina, its more or less conscious man, and the establishment of the disease of impotence from its intellectuals. But he also criticizes the unwillingness for the incurring of a preliminary conceptual leadership just through being a mind bodybuilding zoo politikon. This writer does not accept such a situation. Hadžialić’s critique is sharp and principled, but his blade is always set to the image of thoughts, which I often like to spin on the fact that, “you do not like the state – you love the country”.

Bosnia, as a country, probably asks nothing more than to be loved. A pure love. And, through that, for its inhabitants, and therefore for her, to be  better …

Boyishly naive, full of wormwood bitterness over the fate of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and yet confident in his reason, even to such a need, turning, towards a cultural community in a broader, geopolitical – world – meaning, with the flagrant call to awakening and awareness, Hadžialić by himself is talking about the manipulation of human souls. Is that too naive? It’s not! He is aware of the long past ago, or of a missed moment of cult-cultural and intellectual awakening, if you will, of even a confrontation with pseudo intellectualism.

Does the writer become lost and forgot his origins? No way! Although it has not been written elsewhere, Hadžialić’s awareness of this radiates in his writing, and his vision peeks behind the country’s history of at least a hundred or so years ago. Specifically, his writings point to the shadow of 1848 and the then growing industrial revolution. This was a time when the country not only lacked an industry, but also a labor force and its awakening, and the subsequent labor consciousness. How then will it enter with a new feudalism in the cultural consciousness of capitalism? Especially without the mentioned leaders.

A phrase did not die, that in the revolutionary turmoil intellectuals are the leaders of machines that move forward, and who become the social ballast after the upgrading of the established system. This Hadžialić knows, and on this fact should it not be in vain. Still, Hadžialić cries, and offers himself, for the beginning of such. This is his sharp criticism of the sleeping, of the dead or death, who are without a fight, left aside…

Worth A Read, And That Means To Publish In The Name Of Despair

It is for no other reason that Hadžialić wrote:

“ANIVOGEZREH DNA AINSOB”.

And secondly, upside down. But even that does not help. Maybe I am relentless, but it is like this. But, in the whole, good. You see everything, the weakness and the strength and validity, through the innocence and naiveté, with belief in self-protection, just in the passage of his art-work:

“Carefree plunging into dreams, dreaming of everyday nightmare of the cruel awakening. In this way it cannot work anymore. Simply put, it cannot … I do not know the answer to the question HOW to overcome this.
Maybe you know, dear brave reader?
Although,
…fragile if the knowledge …. of The Balkan …

If this is the only thing that is valuable is this book, which of course it is not, the effort invested in its publishing would be justified. The book is full of incentives, and conciliatory, thoughtful texts, with an authentic writing style.

Even when presenting classic stories, reportages, interviews and reviews about the books of other authors, the form of Hadžialić’s reflections are directed towards us in the  classical understanding where he always asks questions. But what about the answers? They are also in us, in addition to responses emphasized in Hadžialić’s writing.