THE ILLUSION OF MAMMON
THE ILLUSION OF MAMMON
I’m meeting you,
In the vastness of all-knowing,
Tearing apart thoughts,
That lead to hell.
I search within you
For the horizon
Of the shining cloak.
Crushed thoughts,
Poisonous arrows fall.
Embedded in the asp's tissue.
Where are you?
Wild ego
In the madness of rage.
I tear down the old,
Evil roams the heavens.
The world boils in the abyss,
People blinded by passion,
Engulfed in greed.
Princes of darkness reign
Chaos erupts from the pores of the earth,
Choking on the illusion of Mammon.
Only in some places,
From the cries
Of the few ascetics,
Who make the desert sing
With Jesus' prayer,
The fragrance of peace spreads.
The hesychasts,
Are the living bread,
Crushing the heads of asps,
While on the other side,
From apparent power,
Built from pride,
The explosion of cunning
Spurts like a geyser
From everywhere,
From nowhere,
From emptiness.
Nothingness boils,
Demons of rage
In a pool of innocent juices,
Rejoice...
Tears of heaven
From the depths of the All-Seeing
Avenge the blood and bodies
Of every victim,
That the elements
Slaves of satan,
Release
Upon the earth
To erupt...
Until when?
The desert answers:
"Wake up,
From the false 'self',
Step out,
Take off the masks,
The explosion of vanity,
Quench the fury...
One by one,
The light in the beginning
Is weak.
Step by step,
In awareness it will be found...
Some.
In meaninglessness
I find meaning.
By Your providence,
Lord,
Grant us understanding...
Marina Matić
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Poetry Verses Spiritual Poetry A Collestion Of Poetry Petamorphosis The Ilussion Of Mammon Marina Matic
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Marina Matić was born in Belgrade, SFR Yugoslavia. She is a prose and poetry creator who combines various artistic expressions in her work, such as literature, dance, music, and acting. Through the interpretation of her poetry and prose, as well as other literary works, she explores a wide range of themes, including spiritual, love, reflective, philosophical, social, descriptive, elegiac, and erotic.
Her poetry is characterized by a rich blend of lyrical and epic elements. She employs free verse and, like contemporary Serbian and foreign poets, ventures into prose poetry. Her prose covers a diverse range of topics, from philosophical and spiritual introspection to vivid depictions of nature, deep emotional explorations, and freedom of erotic expression, all underscored by profound understanding and empathy for human and natural suffering, as well as compassion for everything that disrupts the harmony of our human and divine garden.
Marina Matić writes short stories and narratives, and her prose is distinguished by the poetic richness embedded within it. Her first poetry book, "Reflection of the Soul," was published in 2007, followed by the second poetry book, "The Glow of Secrets," in 2008. Her third poetry book, titled "Dawn of Joy," was published in 2015. In 2021, IP Prosveta released her fourth book, characterized by Serbian writer Nebojša Ćosić as a mosaic novel, titled "Transformation," as well as the epistolary poetic work "One," created in collaboration with poet and prose writer Igor Tintor. Her prose and poetry have found a place in both domestic and international anthologies and literary collections.
Marina Matić has been a member of the Association of Writers of Serbia since 2007 and the Association of Serbian Writers in the Homeland and the Diaspora (USKOR) since 2008. She continues to create, transcending the limitations of time and space, in her hometown.
Lyrical Circles of Love
The poetry book "Transformation" by Marina Matić (1976, Belgrade, poetry books "Reflection of the Soul," 2007, "Radiance of Secrets," 2008, "Dawn of Joy," 2015) contains a collection of new short and long lyrical poems divided into five parts (cycles). With their lyrical and thematic-motivic interconnectedness (as well as subtle deviations), these poems may lead readers to perceive it as a mosaic lyrical novel.
The foundational theme revolves around the love relationship of the one who writes/sings, the leading poetic voice (lyrical subject), towards the "eternal theme." This relationship poses a challenge for humanity (perhaps solely for it) from the earliest times, i.e., from the era before the invention of poems used by people to leave their records about the lives of individuals and communities in which they lived. Love poetry and a series of other emotions (motifs related to the overarching concept of love: longing, desire, yearning, passion, anxiety, sadness, joy, happiness, betrayal, care, farewells, misunderstandings, etc.) belong to an indispensable paradigm in the historical vertical (poetry of the Far East, ancient civilizations, pre-Columbian New World). Our contemporaries naturally encounter this paradigm in their artistic creations that center around love, from which everything originates, especially the facts we call life and the preservation of life.
Building on her previous three books, the poetess, through a carefully chosen lexicon, expresses numerous nuances of feelings and intellectual ranges that we (can) place in the embrace of the concept of love. Doesn't some of the most sublime works/achievements from the rich tradition of artistic language testify to this?
The book "Transformation," a mosaic novel in verse, embodies spans from the sensual, bodily, and earthly circle of feelings and desires to elevation/transformation towards religious feelings and reflections. Especially in the first part (I Surrender, 12 poems in the form of 12 prayers), the poems often lead to the absolute merging of the poetic voice with the subject of singing. The poems from the cycle I Surrender are prayers, or simply the prayers of a believer addressed to God. They may remind one of biblical psalms, the poems of Saint Teresa of Avila, or the religious-artistic achievements of "Prayers by the Lake" by the Serbian John Chrysostom, Saint Nikolai Velimirović. They are as self-contained, deeply lived, and artistically (aesthetically) highly articulated. If it were not so, in this era of technology, they would be epigonism, repetition, a mere sheltering of personal sensations in the shadow of the works of giants from distant and closer traditions.
Marina Matić is far from such aspirations. After all, which authentic artist would reconcile with the epithet of an epigone (imitator) and wallow in false fame under the wing of other greatness? Literary-critical terminology and theoretical observations quickly recognize and differentiate imitation from the creative and fruitful influence of older figures (canonized through the centuries) on living creators, contemporaries who can artistically articulate something about this era and their experience of it, shaping more or less convincing artistic wholes. Whether through the voices of contemporary lyricists ("the voice crying in the desert") or through complex relationships among characters in novels, dramatic situations, in film art, or visual expression.
By insisting on lyrical/direct discourse about love and its manifestations (from the unreal to dry, perhaps even sovereign reality), Marina Matić joins the ranks of very few contemporary poets who place the aforementioned concept at the center of their interests. We say few because most contemporaries, whether due to the burden of tradition in all national and global literature or due to personal choice (the inviolable freedom of artists in choosing themes and shaping them), avoid the theme of love (man-woman, patriotic lyrics, family love, religious inspiration...).
This contemporary Serbian poetess makes a clear departure from the majority, consistently facing the demanding theme and its aesthetic shaping.
Nebojša Ćosić, September-October 2021.
The strength of metamorphosis
The poetess embarks on her journey in the collection "Metamorphosis" with a kind of ode to the Almighty, where she sings from her soul and every pore of her being about pure love towards Him. As much as it elevates the readers at the beginning of her path through the metamorphoses of her body and mind, she immediately reveals the sincerest sorrow, pain, and everything that wounds her soul in the next poem. She yearns for His voice, His love, continuing the struggle for love and understanding of herself in His world throughout the entire first cycle. With delicate threads of her soul, she seeks and finds Him, knowing that this quest and her love will last as long as she exists in this transient world. From this cycle, we journey through her soul into a new one, where we can witness the magnitude of someone who loves and burns sincerely, who knows how to forgive and remember the goodness of earthly love. The first love, the most delicate emotions of the soul, the first union of two worlds—love that still resides within her. Amidst beautiful and painful memories, she wonders where the one she loved is now, cherishing a place for him within her like an angel. She forgives everything because one who loves purely can only love that way. The struggle for love, for understanding the purest emotions, dignified sorrow, tears of forgiveness. The poetess gives herself entirely, even when she is most vulnerable. That's just how she knows and understands—through love alone she exists. For God, love, beloved ones, beings, and the nature of this world, she creates and burns with her entire being. The poet both loves and suffers, gains and loses. The loss of a beloved friend spreads sorrow throughout her pen, bestowing upon our readerly souls all the emotions and qualities that adorned their friendship. With the sincerest words, her friend's words, the verses of truth about her, the lonely and brilliant being. But she will never be just that; through her work, she will enter everyone's home, everyone's soul, to remain there forever. In the third part, she writes to her father, the father she lost too soon, but only bodily, for loved ones remain with us even when the body is absent, in memories and in the soul, where death cannot snatch them away. With this, she also returns to her first collection of poems and the piece she dedicated to her father, but in a different way, with the same strength of love and remembrance! Continuing to travel through this emotionally powerful work, she gifts her love through verses to her sister, retracing the years when their mother was a child, a child who awaited her mother, a mother taken from her early in life. With the persistence of someone who can wait with boundless love, and whose love, although the mother is absent physically, allows her to feel and see all the love and purity of her child in eternity. The poetess returns to love, she yearns for it, but does not beg. She loves as pure love can only love—through eyes, lips, touch, desire, imagination, soul, blood, body, heart. She gives herself to all of us, to the entire world, and through the greatness of her warm soul, she teaches us to open ourselves without hesitation, surrender without objection, give ourselves wholly to others without seeking or conditioning, for she is blessed with the universe of love for all of us. She brings to life the images of when two identical worlds collided, two souls created for each other, the gentle touch of his hair upon her, the verses that flowed from her lips in the evening of God. The bench, the paths she walked, the rain, the wind, the sun—everything gains new meaning and significance by merging the two worlds that were seeking one another. This work is abundantly rich in emotions, thoughts, images, and the magic of the pen. It encompasses everything that constitutes and embodies the essence of poetic expression. Christianity, the biblical way of expressing truth, Indian beliefs embodied through karma, the belief in the eternity of the soul, in the Holy Trinity, and some poems subtly contain elements of astrology, but astrology that serves poetic expression and figures, not beliefs. The entire universe of feelings, the most sincere ones, given in the way only poetess Marina Matić knows how to offer them to you, the readers, as a gift to uplift your faith, strengthen love, remind you that there is no limit to giving in love for God, nature, fellow human beings, loved ones, for those who are physically absent but not absent in spirit, and through reading this poetic work, show you most sincerely how much a poet gives, boundlessly, to this world and to all of you who will read these poems. The heart is present in every poem, the spilled soul in every image, a totality given to all of us, asking for nothing except for you to sail the ocean of creation not to get lost but to find yourself, your soul in the depths of this work, "Metamorphosis," which is what this work truly is, not only through this word but through every line, every poem that has lived and continues to live through the entire being of poetess Marina Matić's creative expression. The poems of Marina are filled with the sky, the earth, the sea, the nocturnal, the metaphysical, the stylistic, the sincere and lived experiences, hopes and fears, inner struggles, and love that knows no boundaries of giving, images of the life beyond and within. The eternal fire continues to burn in her soul and pour itself as a gift to us in this collection, as well as in every subsequent poetry collection by Marina. That is how she knows to give herself to poetry, to God, to the world, and to us mortals—whole, undivided, unique in her poems. I sincerely thank her for that from the depths of my heart.
Writer Igor Tintor
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Božidar Mirković: Lični duhovni osvrt na svet koji tone u beznađe i pokušaj pesničke duše da duhovnom i.....
Lični duhovni osvrt na svet koji tone u beznađe i pokušaj pesničke duše da duhovnom i unutrašnjom porukom ukaže na put duhovnog izlečenja.. Predivno!
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