Nirvana

My choir piece Nirvana is based on the poem of the same name by Serbian modernist/symbolist poet Vladislav Petković Dis (1880 – 1917) who was a prominent figure in the literary life of Belgrade at the beginning of the twentieth century. This particular text has been chosen as a part of the 14-18 TENSO European network of professional chamber choirs project, focusing on the texts inspired by or from the period of the First World War. The poem Nirvana, apart from being one of the most beautiful poems of Serbian language, in a poetically pessimistic way deals with the very topic of war, death and transcension. It is a part of the book of poems called Utopljene Duše (Drowned Souls) with its title being almost prophetic. The war took Dis's life very soon. He died when a torpedo hit and sunk the ship he was on in the Ionian sea on his way home in 1917.