Érzelmes utazás; a regény tükörképe; a kultúra terrorja
Sentimental Journey, the Reflection of the Novel, and the Terror of Culture

Summary/Abstract: Although “Yugoslavian culture” has always been an illusion, nourished by politics, its historical afterlife still poses problems for the intellectuals of this country that has been. A kind of diagnosis of its present cultural situation could be given by way of a literary analysis of three representative authors: Bora Ćosić, Mirko Kovač and Ivan Čolović. Ćosić’s travel journal, Put na Aljasku (On the Road to Alaska) whose author has emigrated to Berlin, revisits the “frozen over” sites of his teenage and adult years as a metaphorical Alaska, while not trying to avoid moral judgment for the last Balkan war and the post-war events. Kovač’s novel, Grad u zrcalu (City in a Mirror) does not want to be read “psychologically”, but rather considers remembrance to be the territory of poetry. He also revisits the locations of his childhood and his personal and family history, yet without any lukewarm nostalgia and the complacence of the confessional style. Finally, the eighteen texts comprised in Čolović’s Vesti iz culture (Cultural News), which represent transcripts of his radio broadcasts, offer an account of the “culture wars” between the intellectuals of different nationalities from Yugoslavia.

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