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Jadran Zalokar, Croatia

A Wonder of Transformation

Dušan Vidaković: S prebolene obale/From the Forsaken Shore (Copyright: Društvo “Apokalipsa”, 2005, Lili Novy 25, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia). ISBN 961-6314-81-5, 86 pp, 15 cm, softbound, graphic design: Slavoljub Stanković and Božo Viher; translation into Slovenian: Edin Saračević, translation into English: Saša Važić; orders: Društvo “Apokalipsa”, Lili Novy 25, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Haiku is a planetary phenomenon of polylogical evolution in the poetic being dimension. It also has its specific proceeding and development in the context of contemporary spirituality and living experience of modern poetic sensibility. Therefore, some deviations from traditional haiku canon are noticeable. Classical haiku has been evolving, it's a fact. We cannot regard it as a wild haiku nor just as an experiment. The haiku poet tries to use new possibilities of his urban existence. Haiku ceases to be beautiful and perfect; it becomes a new being in the jungle of the technoid life. It also becomes a satyr and paradox, and something vague that the poet's soul discovers in himself the world and wants to share concisely and poetically with others. Haiku is also bravery, courage to start on a new path. It is not repetition by means of the established solutions, referring to the idyllic and pastoral of the soul. Haiku is the power of the new, the power not to accept a lower life, rejection of any kind of barbarization.

That “new” haiku may sound blasphemous to the ear accustomed to classical haiku. Haiku is the power of the deepest living and poetic sensibility, addressing to the fullness of the moment in any surrounding, and it is the consciousness of the emptiness, momentary and transient. But these things must be noted; they have the right to their truth, their uniqueness, and to the attention of a poet's soul.

Haiku is a miracle of perfection in everything that is imperfect. It is the freedom to fly to any shore and to speak about anything that the soul asks from the pure mind. Haiku is a miracle of transformation which creates and destroys canons, a pulse of vigilance for everything in life, even for the most horrible occurrences brought about by urban existence. Haiku cannot be measured beyond itself; it is the spirit illuminating every appearance with the light of unveiling and recognition. Therefore, everything cannot be explained by the uniqueness of the author, by something that we add to him or that “categorizes” him.

With his book, “S prebolene obale/From the Forsaken Shore,” Dušan Vidaković bravely moves along a new path of haiku poetry. This collection consists of 51 haiku, 8 tanka and 3 haibun. Its title indicates that path of separation and simplification, and even of “wearing out” of classic haiku. Haiku is the deepest honesty and strictness with no possibility for escape and rigging. The author completely devotes himself to heresy and preserves in it, rebelliously clean and innocent. The combination of discipline and inspiration follows a fertile new identification of the being, a new light of the truth.

The form of haibun is perhaps the most ecstatic to show the combination of poetic modernism (postmodern) and classic haiku. In the narrative context haiku emerges as a swallow's tail sticking out of the nest under the eaves.

Longing for the wind/ from mountain meadows./ A city dandelion.

The haiku masterfully speaking about the truth of urban existence can be nothing but – anti and rebellious. It is an amazement before the presence of a dandelion, as well as before every event and phenomenon belonging to the nature of an urban “landscape” of the soul.

Haiku/haibun needs no commentary nor any discursive justification. Everything is an open presence, the whole universe is here, there's no need for the clumsy trembling of the mind. The mind which likes to explain, to make up fiction out of reality.

A dandelion is not a being from another planet. It is the suchness and the essence. The haijin may bow to it or laugh at it; Zen remains the same! A haiku becomes a joke, a cue, a repartee, a riddle… many a thing! Nothing is alien to it, nothing odious, ugly or disgusting. The author marvelously documents it.

I breath in the scent/ of an absent woman's clean underwear./ Dizziness.

Although careless,/ dazzled by neon lights,/ I drop my glance.

To exist in a “neon light”-like way, brutally thrown out into the nightmares of an urban conscious-like vision, all-encompassing acceptance and distance at the same time. Everything that comes fluttering by or that bursts out from the closeness of the being and the fate of an encounter, remains recorded:

Detonators / had a good journey./ To the “Surgery”.

He dies to nobody./ He lived for others./ Others for themselves.

Between my dreams/ of waking up reason -/ I breath in nightmares.

Missing the ball/ a boy stumbled and fell. / An open fracture.

Two especially important haiku are to be emphasized! The first, excellently parodying the image of classic haiku, and the second, ironical about the cosmic charge of blood brotherhood.

It always finds/ a good reason to spy on me (fugitive)-/ the moon.

Frozen at once/ a drop of urine on the snow -/ a star's sister.

This tanka is also worth mentioning:

If I did have/ an instinct to turn into a smoke/ the reason for this/ was the way/ you smoke “Lord”.

Dušan Vidaković confidently walks his pilgrimage path of classic/new haiku mischievous postmodern. In praise of roadlikeness of everything, irritation of emotions, twitching of afterimages, wondering about the lasting of the moment.

Whether it is an “elliptic haiku form” or “distance,” etc. – it's irrelevant! For haiku, there is no triviality, no disdain of the small and tiny, no neglecting tiny things, no “ugliness.” Indeed, there is no “superhaiku” or “antihaiku,” but only a praiseworthy act of self-irony and self-ridicule. There is nothing but the honesty of an image and the purity of the brave soul. There's no place for conceptual or terminology inventions, there's no rigging; one should set off “beyond the name,” feel the influence of the truth of existence – all is and all becomes a haiku!

Dušan Vidaković dares start off a new path – haiku only, or even not haiku at all! Don't I recognize here a Zen Mind, a Watchful Mind? Breathing can be deep and healthy, regular or irregular, uterine or rapid, it can be a rattle, can be… / but it is always and remains BREATHING! And so is haiku…

Translation: Saša Važić