Gazelle in Newest Bosniak Poetry

Abstract

Tradition, as a category that always resisted being fixated, and as a space of blending of the past and present, has always been a fertile soil on which new literary texts emerged, new forms and poetics sprouted. Creative representation of Oriental Islamic literary heritage in newer Bosniak literature is a result of spiritual and identity congeniality, but also of reading and studying creativity of Bosniaks in oriental languages, above all Diwan poetry. This paper is an attempt at examining modalities of filiation of a traditional poetic form in 20th century Bosniak poetry, from the perspective of intracultural comparatistics - although written in different languages (traditional Ghazel in Ottoman Turkish and newer Bosniak Ghazels in Bosnian) both belong to the same culture and literature. Research has shown that authors of ghazels in Bosnian language: Safvet-beg Bašagić, Musa Ćazim Ćatić, Zilhad Ključanin, and Salih Trbonja reach for the original Ghazel in order to create a pseudo-form which, in line with Aristotelian poetics, places the entirety above particularities and functions on a model of a hermeneutic circle.