Obiteljska kronika o prerastanju kulturnih i povijesnih granica (Nebo na Zemlji Jasminke Domaš)
Family Chronicle on Outgrowing Cultural and Historical Boundaries (Sky on the Earth by Jasminka Domaš)

Summary/Abstract: The novel Sky on the Earth by Jasminka Domaš is a family chronicle whose main bearers are the women from three generations of a Jewish family from Zagreb. The structure of the novel is twofold: on the first sight totally ordinary life story from the first layer is being interrupted by associative connections with the story about love past of grandma Haja, a photographer who had been taken to India by her work, then with the story of war childhood and growing up of mother Ada and with reflections of her daugther, girl Lior, who is faced with a life choice (choosing of the study). The interlacing of the everyday life with the memories from the past or with the reflections about the future is established by the associative value of particular motifs (applied things, food, social and religious customs of the Jewish and Indian culture) and daily situations that remind of some of the special events from the character’s past. What has to been emphasized is the spiritual relation towards the tragic Jewish destiny during the Second World War and migrations the family was forced on. The female characters of the novel and father Hagaj accept their existence as an inseparable intersection of their own individual life with the destiny of God’s Elected nation, which is visible in the connecting of their own life situations with situations from the Old Testament. In deep respect to the gift of life their relation towards the family and national losses outgrow the tragic leaning on the spiritual system of Jewish religion and Kabbalah, mystical doctrine about God and the world. So the family chronicle has not become the true historical chronicle, but has outgrown into a unique experience of the world and life as a dimension in which all time cathegories coexist, and all cultural boundaries are being outgrown by love.

• Details
• Contents