Publication Date:
2020
abstract:
The last destination
The island (Ostrvo), the last novel written by the great Serbian writer from Bosnia, Meša Selimović, was printed in 1974 in Belgrade, as its publication in Sarajevo had met with many political obstacles. This book is a radical departure from the author’s major novels (Death and the Dervish, 1966 and The Fortress, 1970) and up to today it has been his least appreciated and studied work. The present work offers an in-depth reading of its textual (formal and thematic) and contextual (in the historical) reality, its interaction with the previous works and with the author’s autobiography as an essential part of the opus (Sjećanja, Memories, 1976).
The first chapter is dedicated to an autobiographical events that had a determining impact on the development of his poetics. Starting from his early activity in the Partisan movement and then with his political commitment to Socialism, Selimović indeed was a constant protagonist of the reality of his time, an era of great ideals and hopes but also of great contradictions and dramatic conflicts. His engagement with politics never wavered notwithstanding the contrasts and the conflicts that had developed as early as 1944 when his brother, also a Partisan, was murdered by order of the same Communist Party of Bosnia. The Yugoslavian political context of that period, in particular of the Sixties and of the early Seventies, constitutes the subtext of the novel The island.
The second chapter is an overview of the positions of literary criticism that from the very publication of the book underlined its alterity from all of the author’s previous production particularly its fragmentary nature, establishing the still current view that The island is an “isolated” case in the whole Selimović’s work.
The structure of the novel is analysed in the third chapter. In place of a real plot, there are nineteen unnumbred short story chapters, each one with a title of its own, dedicated to moments or aspects of the life of an old married couple, Ivan and Katarina Marić (principally his life, sometimes both of their lives, more rarely her's). They spent the last part of their lives on the island, living in a sort of exile which condemned them to solitude and to remembrance. The chronological relation of the different parts of the narration is uncertain, these story-chapters do not build a “story“, but they rather shed light on the two protagonists' dynamics, problems, events and above all reflections and memories.
An omniscient narrator leads the narration leaving ample space to dialogues, protagonists' reflections, frequent interior monologues in free direct speech, with an internal mostly mutable focusing.
Gradually a picture emerges, even if somewhat fragmentary, of the protagonist’s existence as individuals and as a couple, from the times before their marriage up to their experiences during World War II, and then to life in the new reality in Yugoslavia up to the current times on the island. In spite of the weak narrative construction, thematically and structurally fragmentary, it is possible to perceive a development internal to the narration and a sort of structure in which the meanings of the text articulate along thematic threads in appearance rhapsodically woven into the various stories. The development of this texture reveals the evolution, both on the thematic and on the formal technical level, of the premises laid out in Selimović’s previous work, so that it is possible to affirm that The island is the last destination of the writer’s artistic route.
In the forth chapter the personalities of the protagonists are analysed. Katarina's character is undoubtedely less highlighted than her huseband's . Sensitive and ingenuous, but ready to reflect
The island (Ostrvo), the last novel written by the great Serbian writer from Bosnia, Meša Selimović, was printed in 1974 in Belgrade, as its publication in Sarajevo had met with many political obstacles. This book is a radical departure from the author’s major novels (Death and the Dervish, 1966 and The Fortress, 1970) and up to today it has been his least appreciated and studied work. The present work offers an in-depth reading of its textual (formal and thematic) and contextual (in the historical) reality, its interaction with the previous works and with the author’s autobiography as an essential part of the opus (Sjećanja, Memories, 1976).
The first chapter is dedicated to an autobiographical events that had a determining impact on the development of his poetics. Starting from his early activity in the Partisan movement and then with his political commitment to Socialism, Selimović indeed was a constant protagonist of the reality of his time, an era of great ideals and hopes but also of great contradictions and dramatic conflicts. His engagement with politics never wavered notwithstanding the contrasts and the conflicts that had developed as early as 1944 when his brother, also a Partisan, was murdered by order of the same Communist Party of Bosnia. The Yugoslavian political context of that period, in particular of the Sixties and of the early Seventies, constitutes the subtext of the novel The island.
The second chapter is an overview of the positions of literary criticism that from the very publication of the book underlined its alterity from all of the author’s previous production particularly its fragmentary nature, establishing the still current view that The island is an “isolated” case in the whole Selimović’s work.
The structure of the novel is analysed in the third chapter. In place of a real plot, there are nineteen unnumbred short story chapters, each one with a title of its own, dedicated to moments or aspects of the life of an old married couple, Ivan and Katarina Marić (principally his life, sometimes both of their lives, more rarely her's). They spent the last part of their lives on the island, living in a sort of exile which condemned them to solitude and to remembrance. The chronological relation of the different parts of the narration is uncertain, these story-chapters do not build a “story“, but they rather shed light on the two protagonists' dynamics, problems, events and above all reflections and memories.
An omniscient narrator leads the narration leaving ample space to dialogues, protagonists' reflections, frequent interior monologues in free direct speech, with an internal mostly mutable focusing.
Gradually a picture emerges, even if somewhat fragmentary, of the protagonist’s existence as individuals and as a couple, from the times before their marriage up to their experiences during World War II, and then to life in the new reality in Yugoslavia up to the current times on the island. In spite of the weak narrative construction, thematically and structurally fragmentary, it is possible to perceive a development internal to the narration and a sort of structure in which the meanings of the text articulate along thematic threads in appearance rhapsodically woven into the various stories. The development of this texture reveals the evolution, both on the thematic and on the formal technical level, of the premises laid out in Selimović’s previous work, so that it is possible to affirm that The island is the last destination of the writer’s artistic route.
In the forth chapter the personalities of the protagonists are analysed. Katarina's character is undoubtedely less highlighted than her huseband's . Sensitive and ingenuous, but ready to reflect
Iris type:
3.1 Monografia o trattato scientifico
Keywords:
Meša Selimović, crisi della Jugoslavija negli anni Sessanta-Settanta, narrativa serba, romanzo jugoslavo
List of contributors: