detail from: KRK Art dizajn

LOVE IS THE ONLY VALUE THAT CAN'T BE PRICED

(Ilija Šaula – Nedrina – Literary Guild – Belgrade – 2025)

By Valentina Berić

From fertile soil, cultivated with understanding and watered with respect, has grown a collection of poetry whose root is deeply embedded in every atom of words that unite in love, for the one who returns that love. Before such a period at the end of each thought, all commas fall to their knees and surrender to the only immeasurable and boundless value, one rarely encountered in life. And when it is found, its blessing breaks down all hardships and obstacles before it.

Love gives, enriches, evokes smiles, and elevates the threshold of unconsciousness to a conscious awareness of tolerance. When the interiors of two hearts recognize one another and merge into a single being, feelings are born that defy stillness and silence.

Ilija Šaula’s poetry radiates with a sincere wish, for one to remain faithful to oneself in love, while simultaneously being willing to transform oneself for the sake of that two-way street down which love constantly travels.

Nedrina is a poetry collection filled with the sincere heartbeats of two souls. Woven into such a tapestry, the poems are rich with nobility under whose shelter there is no room for coldness. Even the heaviest snows melt when the time comes for love to embrace them. From birth to death, only love keeps the world awake.

In the poetry of Ilija Šaula, a respected poet, painter, prose writer, and publisher, each note is imbued with the beauty and strength of a woman: a mother, a grandmother, a wife, from whose womb rises new life, inspired by eternal love. Everything a person loses, love irrevocably heals and restores, for God has given everyone the ability to love and to be loved.

When even the last trace of self-awareness fades, for it is necessary to exist, that final spark of daylight transforms air, objects, and people into love, through whose eyes every image gain meaning, warmth of living, and the highest degree of emotional intelligence.

Within every human being lies a source of love, and its waters are the purest to drink. That very source is Nedrina, and every word that springs from it. From it, the poet draws strength, desire, will, and inspiration, transferring that energy to the reader. Once you dive into the depths of this poetic work, you will not remain indifferent but rather feel loved by every single word. Only sincere love can embrace in such a way and offer the most beautiful gift, a part of oneself in the mutual search for completeness in the one who loves you as you need to be loved to feel whole.

Ilija Šaula masterfully reveals through his verses just how much love is, in truth, the sole driving force behind the human body. That very mechanism functions like a clock, its movements rhythmic, its sound steady, beating so loudly and melodically, yet all the while gently and inaudibly, like a whisper or the calming tone of eternal affection.

From love we are born; surrounded by love we depart, until we meet again, somewhere, someday, where traces are never lost and where souls once more find one another, to love again.

By placing emphasis on humanity’s inherent capacity and gift to love, Ilija Šaula once again offers and entrusts to us a work saturated with the warmth of feeling, a place where love permanently resides as the only true bond and the ultimate meaning of existence.

Đevrske, near Knin, April 2025

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