The Existential Condition of Indigenous Poets or Cultures in a Current Global or Regional Context

               — How in the Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Croatia Live True Writers

In several European countries in era of so-called transition, and in era of so-called globalization is characterized by flourishing trade, while manufacturing is very bad. The manufacturings almost not exist there. Such is the case in Croatia, a country where I lived as a writer for nearly twenty years and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country where I was born and where as a writer, unfortunately, I live back six years. With writing, especially poetry, is not so. Publishers in these two countries publish more translations books than books by local writers, but it applies to prose. With poetry is reversed. In these two countries are still mostly write poetry, and so it is now. There never been so many poets as today. Actually there never been so many people who write and are considered to be writers. On the other hand books of poetry before and now are less requested. That means how is there more writers than readers. But the number of true writers everywhere has always been small. Neither in Croatia nor in Bosnia and Herzegovina, doesn’t anyone live of writing. There are so-called freelance writers who have that status in Croatia and only in the Canton Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina and their state paid them retirement plan, but it’s mostly all they can get. How is impossible living of it writers must do something - to be journalists, editors, professors. But the number of these jobs is very limited and if they have the proper qualifications. Writers have to be manual workers, and to receive social assistance or pensions which so small in these countries. Greater support they get by relatives from abroad that the war took on the entire world. Of course if they have that cousins, who live in better organized countries. Writers can translate literary pieces if they know foreign languages and have skill for literary translation as is the case with the author of this text. It is certainly more profitably than writing original literary pieces. But in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina is difficult to obtain the engagement of translators it because there have plenty of them. If the gain has to be noted that there is underrated work, publishers frequently want deceive translators and publish a book without paying for the work done. If a translator gets the contract is not worth it to try putting on trial because it can take a long time, and should pay lawyers. After all it makes no sense to seek rights in countries that are not juridical organized, what is true for Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

It is better to be a writer in Croatia than in Bosnia and Herzegovina. There, the writer can get a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture. The author of this text, which has been the freelance writer in Croatia, naively thought that he is among those who have a preference for the scholarship for which he competed several times and never won. They were getting those who have a steady job and a number of sinecures. If you write poetry or prose, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and you not one of a very small number of so-called well-known writers who appear in the media, you will not be published or, if a publisher does not cover the costs of printing and editing of a book. You could get help from Ministry of Culture (in Croatia and Republic Serbska in Bosnia and Herzegovina) and the Foundation for publishing of Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina or competent institution in your canton or town. You can get the money to spend one month, if competent institutions purchase part of number of copies of the printed book for libraries. But if you would publish twelve books a year they would not have bought the titles for the libraries. 

If some not serious people asked Nobel Prize winner Ivo Andric whether he would never answered to this question. He thought that asking as unnecessary. A true writer always writes. In Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina there are many of them who boast themselves as writers, who are members of associations of writers, but twenty years they have not publish anything. And they would publish of a book without problem because they have access to institutions that would give money to publish their books unwritten. In addition they have the permanent staff, large salaries and sinecures. 

On the other hand there are the true authors and for them is easier to write than to publish a book and who often live on the edge of existence. They are not even in the media. Such people, the true writers, their states should help as their writers help the Scandinavian countries, for example. These countries are for their writers as mothers, not as stepmothers. For example, Denmark helps to its writers. It allows them to live decently, to publish, that their books are translated into other languages, to travel around the world…… 

But it is hard to expect countries such as Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in which exist, however, the ministries of culture, where culture is not considered particularly important. On that side the situation is worse in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the state does not help translating of books of their writers to other languages, nor any writer there working in diplomacy as in the former Yugoslavia, Ivo Andric worked. In this situation of writers in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina is worth another old saying —“To ugly woman does not need a mirror.” Why no organized countries should regulated attention to those who say that the emperor has no clothes? And true writers say i.

Two poems

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THE TIME OF THE GREAT FAST

The time of the Great Fast

Begins again

My neighbor

Prepares a small party

The time will be

Ancient Rome

NAPOLEON 

The Europe was small to me

The Island Helena is bigger

But two meters of my grave

Will be too much

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Zarko Milenic was born on January 14th 1961 on Brcko, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He graduated Economy faculty (Foreign Trade) in Belgrade on 1987. After it he moved to Osijek in Croatia and worked as free lancer journalist. Since beginning of 1999 he lived in Rijeka (Croatia) and worked as free lancer journalist and editor in literary magazine “Knjizevna Rijeka” (Literary Rijeka) and editor for books of foreign authors in Croatian Writers Society in Rijeka. From 2006 he lives in Brcko and Scelkovo (near Moscow) in Russia. He is novelist, dramatist, critic and poet. He is main editor of the literary magazine “Rijec” (Word) from Brcko. He is member of Bosnian and Croatian Writers Association. As writer and translator he was partic- ipant of festivals, congresses and literary readings in Moscow, Erevan, Berlin, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Tetovo (Macedonia)

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