The imago of the other in the Miroslav Toholj's Kosovo story and Serbian symbolic heritage
In the story 'The Christmas Morning or the Cross According to Griška' Miroslav Toholj depicts the last days of Grigorije Božović, a significant Serbian writer between the two wars, who was killed by the partisans' government due to the unproved collaboration with the occupying forces....
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Institute of Serbian Culture Priština, Leposavić
2017-01-01
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| Series: | Baština |
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| Online Access: | https://scindeks-clanci.ceon.rs/data/pdf/0353-9008/2017/0353-90081743033A.pdf |
| Summary: | In the story 'The Christmas Morning or the Cross According to Griška' Miroslav Toholj depicts the last days of Grigorije Božović, a significant Serbian writer between the two wars, who was killed by the partisans' government due to the unproved collaboration with the occupying forces. When narrating Božović's trial, the time he spent in prison and death penalty execution, Toholj creates an entirely epic spirit putting it into the form of the modern story by means of the hero's internal monologue which is overburdened with the explanation. The writer adjusted a quotation from Božović's story and separated the protagonist from his own time and era. At the same time, he did not care about the principles of probability and persuasiveness in the story based on the realistic literary technique. Toholj tried to make his hero a leader of a kind of national program whose key spot is the attempt to prove the Serbian historical right to the region of Ancient Serbia. Thus, his hero realizes the connection among the language, nation, and space, being in double jeopardy - ideologically and nationally, whereas the Arnauts were represented in the form of the typical ideologized hetero-images. Within the interior monologue of his hero, Toholj interpolates the words of Njegoš's Abbot Stefan, without any artistic justification. Thus, he portrays the romantic and epic spirit of the story, based on the identification of the protagonist with the voice of the people. By adopting the symbolical meaning of The Mountain Wreath, the writer widens the time-span plan and creates the totalizing historical picture which is being almost demonically tested by ideological and national other. His Grigorije Božović is an unfinished hero, being of pseudo-psychological characterization, merely an empty form having the function of marking, which enables 'the presence of the marked,' as shown by Roland Barthes, which, in this particular case, represents the system of belief and values of Toholj himself. |
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| ISSN: | 0353-9008 2683-5797 |