14 Facts About Mak Dizdar

Mak Dizdar's poetry combined influences from the Bosnian Christian culture, Islamic mysticism and cultural remains of medieval Bosnia, and especially the stecci.

Mehmedalija Dizdar was born during World War I, to a Muslim family in Stolac, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In 1936, Mak Dizdar relocated to Sarajevo where he attended and graduated from the Gymnasium.

Mak Dizdar started working for the magazine Gajret, which his brother Hamid regulated and which was founded by Safvet beg Basagic.

Mak Dizdar spent his World War II years as a supporter of the Communist Partisans.

Mak Dizdar moved frequently from place to place in order to avoid the Independent State of Croatia authorities' attention.

Mak Dizdar served as head of a few state-sponsored publishing houses and eventually became a professional writer and the President of the Writers' Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a post he held until his death.

Mak Dizdar's son Enver was a journalist and publicist.

Mak Dizdar died aged 53 in 1971, having outlived his parents and both siblings.

Mak Dizdar drew inspiration from pre-Ottoman Bosnian Christian culture, from the sayings of heterodox Islamic visionary mystics, and from the 15th century Bosnian vernacular linguistic idiom.

Mak Dizdar's poetry referenced medieval Bosnian tombstones and their gnomic inscriptions on the ephemerality of life.

Mak Dizdar's literary work is a part of common heritage of Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins and Bosniaks.

Mak Dizdar used the symbols and the inscriptions on the stecci as the backbone for his most famous work, Kameni Spavac.

Mak Dizdar fought against the forced influence of Serbicisms on the Bosnian colloquial vernacular, in his 1970 article "Marginalije o jeziku i oko njega".