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Aleksa Šantić (1868-1924) was a Bosnian Serb poet. Though often confined by nationalist agendas to the narrow designation of "Serb poet" or "Serb lyrical poet," he endures as one of the most radiant and expressive voices of Mostar and beyond.
A native son of the city, he is remembered as both one of Mostar's finest representatives and one of its cultural ambassadors. This, however, is but a fragment of the story yet untold.
As Sanja Bjelica Šagovnović, President of Mostar's Serb Educational and Cultural Society "Prosvjeta," remarked during the centenary of his death in 2024: "A century after the death of Aleksa Šantić, our greatest poet, he is very much alive in our Mostar and today, a hundred years after his death, he is the best and most faithful guardian of Serbian culture, history and tradition in Mostar." Šagovnović's struggle to reconcile what is Serb, what is Mostar's, what is Bosnian, and what is meant by "ours" reveals that there was more to Šantić than meets the eye. Those attuned to his wavelength grasp this intuitively. Indeed, reconciling the actual and often manipulated truth with the authentic ambitions of an authentic Mostar, and by extension an authentic Bosnia, remains a deceptively difficult endeavor.
Šantić's wide-ranging poetry amalgamates themes of love, longing, social injustice, and national identity. In his verse, he appears as patriot, revolutionary, lover, and bohemian. His poetry is suffused with powerful emotions-love's sorrow interwoven with pain and defiance on behalf of the socially and nationally disenfranchised people to whom he himself belonged. His muse dwells at the threshold between love and patriotism, between the image of the ideal beloved and the suffering nation.
But one must ask: which people, which nation, and what forms of injustice and suffering truly occupied his thought? Certainly not the departure of Islamic rule, which unleashed a chain reaction that exposed above all the Muslims (the Bosniaks) to debilitating challenges oscillating between religious‑cum‑civilizational affirmation and sheer biological survival.
Yet emotional, cultural, historical, and idealistic sentiments notwithstanding, Šantić was first and foremost an Orthodox Serb, one who happened to reside in Mostar, a city that embodied Bosnian Islamic religio-cultural identity and historical consciousness. Inspired by Serbism and guided exclusively by Serb literary-nationalistic figures, Šantić followed the well-trodden path of his co-nationalists. Living in Mostar, however, surrounded by a Muslim majority and familiar with Islam, Muslims, and their history-amidst the worsening predicaments of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries-Šantić was compelled to grapple with realities not of his own choosing.
He never strayed from the fixed objectives of Serbism; but to arrive there, he had to confront the obstacles posed by the Muslim religious and cultural presence, which persisted even after the formal and bona fide annexation of Bosnia and Hercegovina by the Austro‑Hungarian Empire in 1908. From 1878 until that annexation, the country had remained under a dual arrangement: de jure Ottoman sovereignty and de facto Austro‑Hungarian administration. By the way, it was no secret that many Bosnian Muslims remained optimistic that, as long as the office of the Caliphate in Istanbul survived - however weakened - the possibility of an Ottoman administrative return could not be entirely ruled out, just as it remained a fear among their enemies. The Caliphate, however, was officially abolished in 1924 by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, the very year Šantić died.
It is only through these lenses that Šantić as a person, and his poetry as his mouthpiece, can be properly viewed and judged. His verse, in fact, drove further nails into the Muslim civilizational coffin, exacerbating Islamic and Muslim decline through poetry that was, in truth, a poisoned chalice. His undermining attacks were subtle, cynical, and indirect-yet as deadly as any other genre, perhaps even more so.
Muslim vocabulary and sensibility were deployed as rhetorical traps, projecting innocence and benevolence while fostering complacency and gradual acceptance. Šantić's underlying intention, nevertheless, was unmistakable: to extract, strip, and expose the Muslim woman under the guise of liberty and permissivism, subjecting her to the ravenous hazards of the outside world and the unrestrained desires of men and women alike. His fundamental aim was to divest her of Islamic alignment and authentic Bosniakhood, thereby denying her very selfhood.
Šantić was preparing the Muslim woman-and the Muslim man alongside her-for a new Mostar and a new Bosnia and Hercegovina, a world in which Islamic authenticity would be contested, diminished, and at last rendered non‑existent, and where Bosniakhood would be swallowed by orchestrated crusades of assimilation and integration. At this early stage, however, dictated by the provisos of the rule of gradation, the Muslim woman remained portrayed as unwilling, evasive, and concealed, though beleaguered and increasingly vulnerable.
That something was seriously amiss, and that intensified undercurrents were at work, was more than obvious. For Šantić, as a non‑Muslim, to dream of and crave a Muslim woman was as much a religious blasphemy as a cultural abnormality. It denoted an affront for which even blood was ready to be spilled. Such was a no‑go territory, a forbidden prospect. Not so in the anticipated future, though, in Šantić's and other Serb and Croat nationalists' imagined world, for which preparations had to be made here and now. In that world, Muslims would be either utterly de‑Islamized-living as anomics and nonentities-or Serbianized. Thus, it stands to reason that Šantić's poetry was visionary and futuristic, ahead of its time, so to speak.
While men are responsible chiefly for life outside the house-engaged in the wider spheres of society and preoccupied with catering to the needs of the family in its external dimensions-women are responsible primarily for the multilayered and demanding life within the house. In other words, his role is macro-social, hers micro-domestic. Both men and women may cross the boundaries of their assigned realms when necessary, productive, and convenient, but never at the expense of the responsibilities originally assigned to each. Whatever the circumstances, men remain responsible and answerable for the overall progress and sustainability of the family, whereas women remain responsible and answerable for all dimensions of the house. Thus, the two earthly roles and heavenly missions complement one another, their honorable statuses converging, separating, intersecting, and supporting each other whenever required and expedient.
The house is woman's primary jurisdiction; beyond it, if viable, lies a secondary sphere. If she underperforms or fails outside the house, little damage is incurred; but if she underperforms or fails as the leader, director, and manager of the domestic universe, the consequences are numerous and dire. Whole societies - even civilizations - may yet crumble under the weight of such neglect.
It is surely only through Islamophobic bigotries and venomous intrigues-aimed at the systematic destruction of the Islamic corpus, history, culture, and civilization-that this honor assigned to Muslim women could be misperceived as dehumanization or degradation. For that reason, Muslim women are often branded as backward, illiterate, uncivilized, oppressed, and humiliated, accorded pejorative titles such as "prisoners of the home," "breeding machines," or "backward matrons." Even the ostensibly neutral label of "housewives" conceals pejorative undertones.
Yet little do such detractors know-or wish to know-that Muslim women are in truth queens of dignity and virtue, architects of moral order, roots of societal stability and equilibrium, and sanctuaries of communal trust and civilizational continuity. What the so-called well-wishers of Muslim women propose instead - driven by a blend of envy and resentment - is in fact to dethrone them and to debase, dishonor, and impoverish their being as well as prospects. Muslim women stood as the pivot of Islam's endurance and the Muslims' vigor, and thus were singled out to be dealt with before, and more than, all else.
Self-evidently, the status and role of Muslim women as elaborated above are not the product of any terrestrial thought or philosophical speculation, but a voice from above-from the Creator through the Prophet-who knows best the unsurpassable advantages assigned to all His creation. To defy Him is to defy nature and oneself, and to march steadily towards self-ruin. Thus, the Prophet said: "Everyone of you is a guardian and is responsible for his charges. The ruler who has authority over people is a guardian and is responsible for them; a man is a guardian of his family and is responsible for them; a woman is a guardian of her husband's house and children and is responsible for them; a slave is a guardian of his master's property and is responsible for it. So, all of you are guardians and are responsible for your charges" (Sahih al-Bukhari).
The whole reality is beautifully and subtly captured by the words of the Qur'an: "O you who have believed, protect yourselves and your families from a Fire (Hell) whose fuel is people and stones..." (al-Tahrim 6).
None can deny that women, in general, were always cast as vulnerable prey, hunted by wolves of exploitation whose motives ranged from ravenous appetite to indulgent excess, from ego inflation to vanity feeding. Such is the law of life, which no force can overturn. Thus, women often went to great lengths-even extremes-to fend off these dark forces, not merely to remain safe but to preserve their utmost peace and calm. Precaution outweighed remediation; an ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure.
This approach became even more pronounced in Mostar after the withdrawal of the Ottomans, when rule passed into the hands of the infidel Austro‑Hungarians, who never hesitated to undermine the credibility of Islam's official presence and, beyond sidelining it, inflicted all manner of institutional harm upon Muslims. To this must be added the subtly heterogeneous, multireligious demographic landscape of Mostar, laden with negative implications. With the Ottomans gone, hostility towards Islam-fueled by the ever‑intensifying nationalistic tendencies of Serbs and Croats-grew stronger and more overtly articulated, both in theory and in practice. The socio‑political milieu of the city became increasingly precarious, and outright dangerous, with each passing day.
The allegedly well‑intentioned notions of freedom, modernization, prosperity, public participation, and education were in fact deployed as decoys and smokescreens, behind which avalanches of dark forces operated. Under such circumstances, Muslim women struggled, underscoring the critical significance of their houses-how they had been built, how they had functioned, and how precariously vital it was to keep the outside world at bay.
Lives nevertheless had to be lived and navigated, but without giving up the ideals for which people stood, regardless of how such fidelity was dismissed as odd, weird, unfashionable, or objectionable. The world beyond was saturated with negativity, tastelessness, abusiveness, and immoral filth, every so often making detachment and isolation the most desirable option. People were prepared to go to extremes to preserve and embody their existential paradigms and religious values. All may come and go, but they had to endure.
This resulted in Muslim women, when outside, completely covering themselves, including their faces. Their goal was to draw a clear and indelible line between themselves and the world they were compelled to inhabit, and thereby secure an ethical sovereignty. They rendered themselves present, yet cloaked in indiscernibility-visible in form, but invisible in essence. To cover themselves entirely, and to say "no" to what was unfolding around them, was not precisely what the religion of Islam demanded; yet the women of Mostar were content to take the matter "into their own hands," in the name of serving an elevated plane of meaning, direction and destiny.
The truth of this claim is borne out by history itself, as the following two examples attest. In 1908-thirty years after the Ottoman withdrawal, when the Sultan's symbolic yet nominal sovereignty was finally extinguished and Bosnia fully annexed by the Austro‑Hungarians-Robert Michel, a German-born Italian sociologist, turned his ethnographic gaze upon Mostar. He observed that the city's Muslim men possessed lofty and vigorous stature, marked by noble bearing and handsome features. By contrast, he remarked that virtually nothing could be said of Muslim women, for they remained veiled and unseen in public life. Yet, judging from the appearance of young girls-who had not yet adopted the veil-he discerned delicate, wax‑like faces, refined features, and large, smiling eyes framed by long lashes, concluding that many would mature into women of striking beauty.
Michel further noted that the Muslim woman was most readily recognized by her meticulous practice of veiling. Whenever she crossed the threshold of her home, her face was concealed. In both winter and summer, she was enveloped in her second dark, lined cloak-the feredža-which descended from the crown of her head to the ground.
As late as 1938, Mostar was still described as the most conservative, the most Ottoman, and thus the most religious urban ecosystem in all of the monarchic Yugoslavia. Within its streets and quarters, religious symbols, practices, and norms endured in forms unseen elsewhere. The city's women, through their persistent religiosity and veiling conservative dress, embodied a collective defiance against the encroachment of deceptive notions of progress and development. Such were the forces that most critically sought to redefine and reshape them. In resisting both de‑Islamization and dehumanization, the women, together with the city itself, came to be portrayed as eccentric and out‑of‑date. Some contemporary observers likened their veiled appearance to penguins, with sleeves resembling flippers, fins, or wings, and visors shaped like birds' beaks. They were perceived as heavy, inelegant, and entirely "sealed."
His reference in his poem "Migrations (Seobe)" to Miloš Obilić as a legendary knight celebrated as the assassin of Sultan Murad I at the Battle of Kosovo, in the sense that Serbs, to succeed, need Obilić and lions of freedom, they need the strength of men and knightly hands, they need more deaths and more torments, "for, far away, our dawn lies asleep," says it all. If Miloš Obilić, in his valor, was able to slay the Sultan, then only a Serb nation of Obilićs can purge Ottomanness from the loci destined for Serbdom.
To some critics, such a compass still places Šantić in the same ideological bracket as Njegoš, the father of Serb Islamophobia, whose "Mountain Wreath (Gorski Vijenac)" is often considered to be the blueprint of a genocidal Serbian culture directed against Muslims. True, Šantić did not unequivocally glorify those who interpreted Kosovo as the symbol of Serbian heroism, awakening, and definitive liberation, but he lived and collaborated with figures who did, and he never denounced either their personalities or their ideas. Nor did he repudiate the tradition of advancing and extolling the Kosovo myth.
Šantić likewise urged Muslims not to emigrate to Turkey or other Muslim‑majority lands after the collapse of Ottoman rule, insisting that Bosnia and Hercegovina was their home, not the Orient. Reading between the lines, he invited Muslims to celebrate the departure of the oppressive Ottomans and their regressive religious norms, and to return to their "original" Slavic selves either as Christians, by persuasion or coercion, or as secular moderns. Like so, they could coexist peacefully with Serbs, either as co‑religionists or as co‑secularists (atheists, progressivists). United thus, they would be able to resist Austro‑Hungarian domination and move forward together.
Towards this end, Šantić's poems often juxtapose the Ottoman legacy - depicted as oppressive and backward - with perennial yearnings for liberation and self‑rule. He positioned the Islamic heritage as an obstacle to progress, while lionizing Serbian resistance and sacrifice, and calling for a South Slavic awakening. He regarded the confrontation with Ottoman and later Austro‑Hungarian authorities as the defining struggle of his age; still, Ottoman religious, intellectual, and cultural currents remained pervasive even after Austro‑Hungary's installation, making victory over them the most exalted triumph.
In his emblematic poem "Stay Here (Ostajte Ovdje)," Šantić exhorts Muslims: "The sun of foreign skies will not warm you as this one does; bitter is the bread where you have no kin, no brother." To Šantić, Bosnian Muslims bore no true kinship with Turks or Arabs. Islam, in his historical imagination, was a misstep that had estranged them from their natural Slavic brethren, to whom they were far closer than to the remote Turks, Arabs, or Persians.
His exhortation to stay is, needless to say, far removed from Shaykh Rashid Rida's celebrated fatwa, which urged the Muslims of Bosnia and Hercegovina not to migrate but to remain, to struggle on every front if required, and to safeguard Islam and their authentic identity. In doing so, they were to stand as living models of perseverance for other Muslims who might face similar trials, particularly at the close of the nineteenth century when Islamic civilization was descending its steep path of decline.
In "My Homeland (Moja Otadžbina)" Šantić advances notions of collective Serbian suffering, Serbdom as destiny, the sacralization of the hearth, and loyalty to the homeland: "Within me wail the souls of millions; My every sigh, every sorrowful tear; Cries out with their pain and pleads; And everywhere a Serb soul resides; There is my homeland; My home and my native hearth." Hence, wherever a Serb dwells, a homeland is found; and wherever a homeland is imagined, Serbs must gather, weaving together the fabric of a vast Serbdom.
To be fair, Šantić's nationalism was not as uncontrollable or militant as that of many contemporaries. It was more cultural and intellectual, and only secondarily religious and ethnic, where common ground could be sought with other groups. His nationalism was unmistakable, but its intensity was tempered by character and circumstance. He wanted Muslims to remain and participate as partners - but not as Muslims faithful to Islamic teachings and values. Rather, he envisioned their role in the realm of cultural symbolism and historical revisionism, detached from everyday Islamic practice. He wanted them rehabilitated, brought back as reverts.
One can imagine that had Šantić witnessed Muslims championing pan‑Islamism, Shari'ah, jihad, or Islamic lifestyles en bloc, he would have been far less disposed to accept them as co‑nationals in the project of future nation‑building. They would have been perceived as Turks, alien to the newly liberated lands wrested from Ottoman rule. They would have been interpreted as lingering remnants, vestiges of a past no longer welcome. For that reason, Muslims in Europe at this critical juncture were generally regarded as Turks and, by extension, as Orientals - outsiders who did not belong within the emerging modern and liberal Europe, or the West. This perception was not confined to colloquial prejudice; it was echoed and reinforced within intellectual circles as well. Being part of Europe meant undergoing de‑Turcicization, a process synonymous with de‑Islamization.
For example, when the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was created in 1918 - a watershed that marked the sidelining of Muslims and inaugurated long, painful periods of local persecution aimed at their religious, civilizational, and even biological extermination - Šantić, who lived six more years, is not known to have voiced concern or condemnation. He may not have approved, but silence was consistent with his ideals and priorities. His vision was cultural, intellectual, and national, not protective of Islamic identity or its survival. Accordingly, successive genocides were interpreted as legitimate and even honorable projects of purification, designed to expel religious and ethnic communities regarded as alien. The presence of incompatible elements was intolerable; they were destined to be cast aside.
Beyond Emina, Šantić composed three poems about a Muslim woman named Šerifa: "Šerifa," "Vatra (Fire)," and "Na Mermeru Česme (On the Marble of the Fountain)." Each situates her within different symbolic registers, from passion to architectural reverberation. He also wrote one poem about Ferida, "U Ljuljajci (In the Swing)," which induces innocence and tenderness through the imagery of a young innocent Muslim girl's playfulness.
Šantić portrayed Muslim women as mysterious, exotic, and sensually charged figures rather than as real individuals. They became romanticized symbols of hidden beauty, marked by secrecy and allure-reinforcing stereotypes rather than reflecting lived realities. Though distinctive in style and method, Šantić was nevertheless part of a broader Western current which, through the pseudo‑science of Orientalism, sought to rationalize the imposed fate of Muslims and their faltering civilization.
By casting Muslim women as mysterious, exotic, sensual, concealed, and passive, Western domination over the Orient-centered on discovering, possessing, unveiling, and controlling-was not only vindicated but valorized. In this framework, new potentials and riches were imagined as resources to be optimized for the advancement of a new world order shaped by Western worldviews and value systems. The sun was seen as setting in the East, even as it began to rise in the West. The hour had come for the East's shadowed ambiguities and concealed treasures to be drawn into the open, renewed by the light cast upon them.
Muslim women were imagined as otherworldly splendors, placed in lush gardens, secluded harems, or hidden behind veils. Their allure was heightened by distance and inaccessibility, transforming them into objects of fantasy rather than autonomous beings engrossed in the ordinary dynamics of life. The veil or seclusion was interpreted not as a religious or cultural practice but as a metaphor for mystery. Beneath it, it was imagined, lay a secret and irresistible charm waiting to be uncovered.
Thus, the Muslim woman became an enigma-a phenomenon and sensation worth living, and even dying, for. She was rendered priceless, valued above faith, virtue, and destiny itself. She appeared happy, joyous, playful, idle, and enticing, imagined as ever‑ready to be engaged with and to give out her hidden treasures. At times she was portrayed as shy, resistant, or stubborn, though only to heighten her allure and uniqueness. This overtly erotic framing reduced her to an object of dreams, a symbol of desire, and a repository of fantasy.
Accordingly, Šantić envisions all three Muslim women within their gardens-domestic courtyards where they delight in themselves and interact with the surrounding natural beauty. As if he invites them out, to be seen, to be shared, to enjoy and to be enjoyed, to indulge in the pleasures of the world and of life, and to offer in return a gift to that same world and that same life. Without doubt, Šantić, with the avalanches of his emotions, stands as the very epitome of the latter.
But the barriers and obstacles that stand between Šantić and his aspirations, and between the Muslim women and their own yearnings, remain strong and unyielding, demanding patience, devotion, and the labor of time to dissolve. This is underscored by his desperate plea to Emina in "Pred Kapidžikom (Before the Small Doorway)." He implores her to open the gate, warning that otherwise nothing will prevent him from tearing out the post and its heavy hinges, forcing his way inside. In this moment, he disregards the possibility of unlawfulness, reproach, or even discipline, for his passion has driven him to irrational extremes-he is dying for Emina.
Ferida is portrayed with innocence and playfulness in her courtyard, alone, swinging gently upon the mulberry branch. So near were they that Šantić's window looked directly into her courtyard. He watched her moving "like the pendulum of a clock; back and forth she sways." Her hair whirled like golden flames, and, being so close-if only in imagination-Šantić anticipated that soon "her steps will draw near." And indeed, she audaciously did the unimaginable: slipping from her cradle into his window, where he received her into his waiting arms ("U Ljuljajci [In the Swing]").
In "Vatra (Fire)," Šantić begins with the dramatic event of the Mrahorovi Palaces being razed to the ground, an inferno so vast and intense that clouds of smoke hovered ominously over Mostar, threatening the surrounding mahallahs and throwing the city into unprecedented panic. Yet for Šantić, the greater fire was not external but internal; it was the blaze ignited by the beauty of Šerifa's eyes, which overturned his emotional and actual life, pushing him to the borders of insanity. Nothing else mattered, nor seemed to exist. In his frenzy, he nearly joined the terrified crowd of Mostar, running helter‑skelter and screaming in terror. But unlike them, his cries of "fire, fire, fire" were directed inward, towards the conflagration consuming his heart and soul. As he confessed: "O Šerifa, since the moment I saw your eyes; I too burn within, finding no peace anywhere; A mighty fire has consumed and shattered me!; Like the crowd in frenzy, like none before; I too would run and cry out madly; Clutching my heart: 'Fire! Fire! Fire!'"
In "Emina," for instance, Šantić refers to her hair as something extraordinary, almost unseen elsewhere. The wind blew, loosening Emina's thickly braided tresses, with her hair giving off the scent of blue hyacinths. Similarly, in "Pred Kapidžikom (Before the Small Doorway)," whoever once turns into Emina's street and beholds her dark eyes is bound to return home distraught, maddened, and tormented-drunkenness being the inevitable consequence.
We have already mentioned that Šerifa's eyes were the cause of his inextinguishable inferno inside his heart and soul. In "Na Mermeru Česme (On the Marble of the Fountain)," Šantić also eulogizes Šerifa's hair entangled with the golden rays of the sun, with some mistakenly thinking they see soft, tender silk drifting lightly in the air. He insists, though: "Yet I would swear, that is no silk at all; It is the sun that met with my Šerifa; And in its imperial purple became entangled; With a few golden threads of her hair." Šerifa is further described in "Šerifa": "Upon her bare heels the slippers strike; And beneath her throat the necklace shimmers with light."
Ferida, too, was depicted along the same lines. Like a flame of gold, her hair whirled in the wind. Swinging gently back and forth-drawing nearer, then receding-she suggested both hope and despair. She was so beautiful and dear, "as if the dawn itself awakens." So lovely and enchanting was she that the poet declared himself ready to sacrifice everything for her: "All the servants I own, the countless fields; I would give them all for her-and my life besides!" ("U Ljuljajci [In the Swing]").
Constantly dwelling on the themes of passion, love, sensual magic, and fascination, Šantić sometimes pushes beyond restraint into striking explicitness. He transcends the conventional, insinuating the most profound treasures and sensations buried beneath veils, walls, and impediments. Because these realities remain uncertain-suggested rather than revealed-he turns to language that is general yet evocative, intensifying allure through ambiguity. By doing this, his depictions become more intriguing, more captivating, and irresistibly tempting. The mysteries, instead of remaining concealed, grow ever more enchanting and engaging. They expand into greater enigmas, demanding deeper dedication and imagination to unravel. What is withheld becomes not absence but presence, which is a poetic strategy that magnifies desire, transforming the unseen into the most compelling of visions.
To this effect, Šantić's words about the vision of Emina in "Emina" resound: "Ah, how enchanting she is! She would not be shamed to stand before the Sultan's glare!" The meaning unfolds in the next line, where he implies a synchronization between her alluring body and her equally graceful movement: "And when she walks, her shoulders gently sway." Even her hair-those densely woven braids-was loosened by the wind, cascading down her bare shoulders.
This poetics of revealing culminates in the portrayal of Šerifa in "Šerifa", where the language turns openly erotic. She is singular, lively, and lovely, singing in her father's opulent garden upon a carpet of poppies. She bears on her shoulder a basket full of large apricots-yet all the while her body sways, her presence flowing with desire. The poem's final lines break through every barrier, expressing Šerifa's breasts in bold metaphor: large, restless, and trembling, like ripe pomegranates not yet split open: "Ah, how strong, how radiant, how serene she is!; How her yearning breasts shake; Swelling like pomegranates before they break open!"
Consequently, the avant‑garde figure of Emina emerges as the daughter of an Imam-the emblem and highest authority within Islam's religious and social affiliation. He is not merely a custodian of faith; he is aged, his presence intimating that his era-and by extension, the era of all Imams and the structures they embodied-is drawing to a close. Their authority is to be staged as outmoded, obsolete, and consigned to memory. In contrast, Emina's world, her appearance, and her conduct stand as luminous insignias of a new ethos, heralding the sensibilities and aspirations of future Muslim generations.
Those who resist change are to be confined to the fading recesses of their existence-at home, in solitude, in galleries and exhibition halls-while the change of guard unfolds in the living theater of public life. Though Emina resists with defiance, refusing full engagement, the horizons whisper of promise; she remains visible, approachable, and vulnerable to the net of desire.
In "Emina," the line "not even the hodja's (the Imam's) talisman can help me anymore" intimates the fading and eventual demise of the highest religious clouts. In "Pred Kapidžikom (Before the Small Doorway)," "then let all the scholars' (ulama's) wrath fall upon me" reinforces Šantić's primary thesis: he is willing to break into Emina's courtyard and force himself into her private world, indifferent to consequences anchored in Islamic teachings and values and articulated by learned Muslim leaders (ulama). He does not care: who are they now, and what can they do? Their time of sway over people's lives is portrayed as over.
The crowning point of his idea arrives when he claims that, before Emina's otherworldly allure, even the qadi-the embodiment of Shari'ah and piety, second only to the Imam-would not remain indifferent upon seeing her once. He too would become a partygoer, drinking not from a glass but from the jug; he would never look away nor return to himself thereafter ("Pred Kapidžikom [Before the Small Doorway]). Having symbolically subverted all authorities and role models, the scene becomes one of dissolution: all are "free," all surrender to the world's intrinsic and artificial beauties, undone by them and yielding to revelry. The pleasures of life-beginning with women-are pictured so overwhelming that they overturn social and religious order.
Here Šantić positions himself as an archetypal pioneer, charting the road and blazing the trail. He knows he is a non-Muslim, an Orthodox Serb, and that-technically-he has nothing to do with Islam's internal life, including its women. What he fantasizes about and seeks to achieve is a sacrilege and a profanity, religiously and culturally: Muslim women forsaking everything of themselves, staring into the vagueness and uncertainty of transgression, indulgence, and sin. Šantić does not relent, presenting a proposal that recognizes no value, standard, dignity, or self-worth. Everything is open to all and completely free for everyone.
Thus, alongside the degrading of Muslim women and the dismantling of authority and devotion, he continually verbalizes key components of Islamicity and Bosniak identity, recasting them within the broad architecture of immorality, corruption, and nationalist distortion. For him, such components have lost relevance and meaning, and stand as relics of a dark past to be buried and forgotten. As such, no one can claim rightful ownership; they become open to manipulation, exploitation, and mockery. Serious protest, censure, or correction did not follow. Instead, Šantić and his poetry are broadly celebrated and placed among Bosnia and Hercegovina's most prominent and influential literary achievements.
To illustrate: Šantić swears by iman (Islamic faith) when beholding Emina's beauty, fully aware of his intentions; as a non-Muslim, he conveys salam, the exclusive Muslim greeting emblematic of religious and cultural individuality; in courting Emina, he twice swears by his din (religion)-a term, in the Bosnian multireligious context, largely reserved for Islam; and he swears by Allah using the distinctive Arabic-Turkish "valah," insisting that even the qadi would deviate and become a drunkard upon seeing Emina once.
His poems brim with Turkish and Arabic vocabulary, projecting the message that he and the Muslims are, in a way, one-or part of a new, blended one. Through words every Muslim could hear as their own, arose senses of proximity, concord, fervency, and acceptance. But in truth, they were mere lures leading into snares.
Genocide in Bosnia - April 1992
