The World in Nowhereness is a translation of the pentalogy Svet u nigdini, written originally in Serbian. The book is in the form of the so-called prosimetrum—a combination of poetry and prose; it contains 19 poetic forms that have never been used in Serbian poetry, four of which have never been used anywhere in the world. (One example: a double sonnet wreath with 29 sonnets appears for the first time in this book, which is unique in world poetry from a formal point of view.) The book characterizes epic momentum and various themes, including the Earthly dimension interwoven with extra-terrestrial and otherworldly dimensions embodied by the Cosmos and God. Also, the book contains elements of an epic work, essay, novel, drama, and a dominant line of pure philosophy.
THEY SAID ABOUT THE WORLD IN NOWHERENESS
“When I got my hands on Dejan Stojanović's book The World in Nowhereness, I was amazed and read the book with great pleasure. I did not even believe there was someone today who could write such a long poem, an epic as if I opened to read the Iliad in our time. I recommend this book to all believers in poetry because faith in poetry is the same as faith in eternity and eternal life.” — Matija Bećković
“The World in Nowhereness is Dejan Stojanović’s utopian absolute book, a Mallarméan absolute. An absolute story, or an absolute book, according to Borges, is a desert-like book: sandy, grainily unforeseeable, and corpuscularly innumerable. It is simultaneously a vision and a chimera. Isn’t that precisely why we long for an absolute book? The World in Nowhereness by Dejan Stojanović is, in his way, an embodiment of that dream.” — Srba Ignjatović
“I have always wondered, even about my poetic work, what a total poem is… Can the pentalogy by Dejan Stojanović be called a total poem that every poet of note has dreamed about since Homer? I felt such impulses while reading The World in Nowhereness. This is an absolute poem, of an absolute system of thought that reaches across the totality of our civilizational legacies.” — Duško Novaković
“Exactly 17 years ago, in the last year of the 20th century, I came across the work of Dejan Stojanović, and then I wrote a text from which I will extract a few sentences. “Dejan Stojanović, in the last two years, made a real feat; he published six books, except for one, all books of poetry.” This first five-book collection was published in the last year of the 20th century, and here we are now with the five-book collection in the XXI century, nearing the end of the second decade. And then I also wrote the following: “Stojanović is a poet who searches for the perfect poetic form because at the same time he searches for the absolute meaning of human existence.” Whether it was a hunch or not, there is the Pentalogy, and there is that word, that concept – an absolute, an absolute book, an absolute poem that could be sensed even in that first pentalogy, in those poems that he published at that time.” — Aleksandar Petrov (January 17, 2018)
“(The World in Nowhereness offers) the joy of cognition due to discoveries worthy of the Nobel Prize…” — Milan Lukić
Dejan Stojanović is a writer who thinks very sovereignly and broadly. If you read Dejan Stojanović, your life will not be the same – it will be better.” — Muharem Bazdulj
“It has been quite a while since we had, if at all, a poetic pentalogy in Serbian poetry.” — Dušan Stojković
Dejan Stojanović's poetic-philosophical book The World in Nowhereness, both in form and content, is an original and exceptional literary work and can be considered a rare literary event in Serbian poetry and on the world stage. — Nevena Vitošević
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