President Stevo Pendarovski, as the patron of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Blaze Koneski, addressed the celebration of this great jubilee via video message, which took place at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. The event also celebrates the World Poetry Day – March 21.
There is one intimate stronghold in every one of us that opens all the questions we carry in us as joy, burden or sorrow. One slightly open door through which all the dilemmas of existence can be seen. That is the word. That is the thought translated into poetic language that manages to move the horizons of life’s temptations that are always associated with freedom.
Blaze Koneski is the quintessence of the poetic language in whose work the wisdom and the challenges of existence are intertwined. Koneski subtly explains the grammar of life, creating an armature on which relies not only the continuity of a national culture, but also has its contribution to the world poetic and spiritual heritage.
Koneski’s poetry is deeply reflective and clear – both when it comes to the intimate paths of man, but also when it comes to social turmoil, and in general, to all the abysses of life. Both as a poet and as a linguist, he constantly insisted on being a dedicated and critical reader and interpreter of the world. Blaze Koneski is a poet who fights against the dictatorship of unanimity and that is why he is a poet of democracy, or as he himself says “the real intellectual should act in his environment as a person who moves forward…, to have a sense of the historical dimension and of the contemporary topicality, and especially to advocate for humanization”.
Silent in word, but powerful in thought, in these noisy times, silence in his poetry speaks, articulates and argues in a noble way. His entire work incorporates our past, present and future, but his legacy, indeed, belongs to all those who understand how a modern, emancipated and cosmopolitan world is being built.
