The first contest organized by the Republic of Srpska Representative Office in Greece on the occasion of the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the creation of the Republic of Srpska, on the theme Srpska in the Heart, received 99 papers from all over our country. Students of secondary schools and final years of elementary schools demonstrated enviable knowledge of the history and culture of their homeland, which, along with the necessary writing talent, was a requirement for responding to the patriotic theme Srpska in the Heart.

Most of the papers highlighted the recognizable features of the Republic of Srpska (rivers, mountains, monuments, monasteries), as well as key points of (recent) Serbian history. Seen through the eyes of our youngest writers, these moments of the collective consciousness of the Serbian people obtained their new, authentic, child’s expression. The students also showed enviable knowledge of the works of the most prominent literary creators from the Republic of Srpska, with some of the papers following the literary trail of Kočić, Andrić, Dučić, or Šantić. In addition to prose works, a number of successful poetic achievements were submitted for the contest.

Considering that the contest met its expectations in terms of quality and response, the Republic of Srpska Representation in Greece decided to reward all participants by publishing all papers as an apposite publication. This publication will be a testimony to the talent and values nurtured by the Republic of Srpska, as well as a kind of identity card of the future of the Serbian people on the ‘other side of the Drina’.

The works of Anastasija Berić, Anastasija Tomić, Anđela Savić, Andrea Đukić, Danijel Milјatović, Đorđe Kovačević, Dragana Delić, Goran Brborić, Marija Jorgić, Milica Borovčanin, Milica Makitan, Ognjen Bošković, and Strahinja Prodanović entered the short list.

By unanimous decision of the jury, the prose composition by Goran Brborić, a student of the 5th grade of the Seminary of St. Peter of Dabar-Bosnia in Foča, was selected as the best work.

The work of Goran Brborić is characterized by eloquence, emotionality, what is of essential importance for this contest – an exquisite parallel with a tradition that goes beyond history, and on which Srpska has lasted and will last fundamentally, which it should preserve, cultivate, nurture, foster from ancestors to descendants in its pure form of love for the fatherland – and the character of the grandfather.
In a way, the grandfather is the Republic of Srpska itself, which will never die, because it has offspring such as the descendants in the young Brborić’s writing talent. It is noticeable that the shortlisted papers are full of magniloquent patriotic style that reiterates a set patriotic word-hoard, but the winning paper does not suffer from that. It is commendable that the shortlisted genres include many inventive and courageous approaches, but also, although in the form of a classic story, varied circular composition, intertwining historical facts with an intimate confession of the loss of the closest interlocutor, friend, special bond between the grandchild and the grandfather, with poetic characteristics typical for realism: a story for the purpose of characterization, parallelism of the atmosphere of the exterior with the interior, in this case, of the narrator himself, the deep and essential, almost pragmatic, tangible love for his country, is what ranks the work of Goran Brborić, a student of the final year of the Foča Seminary, first beyond any doubt.

Source: Republic of Srpska Representative Office in the Republic of Greece