Stecaks are Bosnia’s (*) unique gravestones, unseen elsewhere in Europe. The engraved symbols, crosses, swords, animals or human, revealed what the medieval Bosnians worshiped at the time.

1094 -You, who are now reading my stone, may have journeyed to the stars. And so you returned, for there was nothing there, but only yourself.

A man can see what he had never seen, hear what he had never heard, taste what he had never tasted, and step where he had never stepped, but once and for all, only himself he may find… or not.

My hands have done much on this Earth, yet no one was killed or murdered by them.

Had I left my bones in a far, foreign land, even then would I only dream of Bosnia.

Man, lest you be damned, touch neither me nor my stone.

I was laid to rest in the summer of 1094, when the draught reigned and the sky could not spare a single tear for me.

1205 - Hereunder does not lie Bogcin Radinic from Bosnia, the land of silver. Here, on his noble property, where the tombs of his father, his grandfather, and his grandfather’s grandfather lie, rests only this stone, for he himself died and was buried in a foreign land, where the Sun is different, and the wind is different, and God and water and air and people are different and foreign to my soul.

I was faithful to my sword, my spear, and my lord Kulin more than to my beloved Radaca, and I am neither sorry nor ashamed of it.

And if I were to be as you are now, I would still do the same as I had done.

You will never be like me, whilst I cannot be what I once was.

May the one who reads and spares a thought be blessed and may the one who tumbles this stone go insane.

1258 -Hereunder lies Ljubljen, in Vrhbosna born, in Vrhbosna buried, in his own soil, his noble property.

I was the one to spend my whole life at the crossroads, standing, contemplating, hesitating. I was the one who wondered: how come the skies never get old, though they bear and deliver new seasons, one after another.

And in the room, that I stood in, had a window, and behind that window, the view was endless. Yet, stubbornly, only at the floor I stared. And I thought that with my death it would all cease and stop bothering me.

But it has not, and my death only grows older and more confining.

This stone was cut by Drazeta, and this epitaph chiseled by Husan, not to mark that I existed, but that I no longer do.

1303 - Hereunder lies Prijezda Viganj, in his own property, the noble land by Jajce.

I traveled, but I never arrived. I built, but I never completed. I sowed, but I never reaped. I spoke, but never expressed myself. I loved, but was never loved.

Now I am gone, and I am not bound to return. Although I’d wish to, for I have not completed anything.

Do not touch this stone, for God will put the same one upon your bones. You will have not completed everything you started, either.

1447 - Hereunder lie Krksa and Kalija, in their own soil, the noble land of Kljuc. We loved each other dearly and love made us a husband and a wife and God blessed us with many children.

Then, twenty years after we spent our first November together, we looked at a rainbow, and we realized we viewed it differently, and we wished upon different wishes.

And we wondered how our life together could make us more different than we were when we started it.

When Krksa died, on that very same day my heart died for him, and I died after him.

Do not tumble this stone, for even now, in the moonlight, our bones quarrel about who and how much was right and who was not, and even in our death we grow further apart, more so than ever when we were alive.

Yet, if you were to separate our bones, we would die without each other, again and finally in our second death.

****

Many thanks to a reader who sent me the English translation of the poems about these gravestones. See more stecak, their locations, and text written in Bosnian.

(*) And former Bosnian state (11th to 14th century) including part of the Dalmatia and western Serbia-Montenegro.

Tags: , , , , ,