Bosnian Melancholy {Bosanska melankolija}

What is easier to speak: Bosnian or English?  First you have to define the word "easier."  English is good at defining and somehow making everything logical.  Bosnian is poetic and mysterious.  And so you are stopped immediately.  Stuck between philosophy and art. 

Is delving into the metaphysics of language easier than defining the language?  If you delve into the metaphysics of Bosnian language, you're not only entering into the maze of words, but of history and memory, both collective and individual.

And what happens when it's easier to speak English because the words in Bosnian have been lost, or what's more likely, they are laying dormant somewhere, in some old house, in some village, in some room, in some cellar, but the path toward it is so vague that you have no idea how to get to it?  Has the landscape changed?  Has the war ruined the mountains?  No, it has not.  But it has made ruins but even ruins have voices.  Particularly. 

Maybe if I go back to a time before the war, it'll be easier.  But it's not, you know it's not, you just pretend that it is.  Because there is always an anticipation of war. 

"Hey, look at me!" you exclaim.  There's me, that me that was very young and very childish, and I had to leave the childish things, and I am angry that they made me leave my childish things.  Who are you, you cowards, sitting on top of the hills, aiming your cowardly snipers at me?  Do you even care?  Do I care?  Is my anger so big that I will never forgive?

"Hey, look at me!" you exclaim.  So worn out, not a child anymore, but a being aware of evil. 

Yes, it's easier to speak English because you can't bleed all the time.  But what if I lived in Bosnia, I would have no choice but to speak and think in Bosnian.  So, there must be a way to speak Bosnian without bleeding, right? 

So, I ask you: what's easier? 

{Šta je lakše? Možda život nije lak ili lagan ili se ne može živjeti lako ili lahko. Živjeti izmedju jezika je živjeti izmedju različitih geografija, i pošto su geografije takodje metafizičke, onda naravno slijedi da je tvoje biće velika mapa različitih geografija. Pa se onda pitaš ko si i šta si. Zar ne bi bilo lakše da sam jedno i da nema nikakvih komplikacija i da biće, koje sam ja ne pita pitanja?

Ne, ustvari ne bi bilo lakše, jer ovo dijete je vidjelo zlo. A kada se vidi zlo, onda se moraju pitati pitanja o ljudskoj dobroti. Ne bi bilo lakše, jer to bi onda značilo da ovo dijete i ova žena i ovo biće je budala. A budala ne pita, ne razmišlja, ne uživa, nego samo ide u krug a misli da je krug put.}

“Translation”:

What is easier? Maybe life is not easier or easier or you can't live it easier or easier. To live in between two languages is to live in between different geographies, and since geographies are also metaphysical, of course it follows that your being is a big map of different geographies. And then you ask who am I and what am I? Wouldn't it be easier if I were only one thing and that there are no complications and that the being which I am asks no questions?

No, actually, it would not be easier, because this child has seen evil. And when you see evil, then you have to ask questions about the good. It wouldn't be easier, because that would mean that this child and this woman and this being is a fool. And she's not a fool, because a fool doesn't ask, doesn't think, doesn't enjoy. A fool runs in a circle thinking that a circle is a path.