АРМАГЕДОН: РАЗМИШЉАЊА О КРАЈУ ИСТОРИЈЕ КУРТА ВОНЕГАТА И ГОРA ВИДАЛА
Armageddon: contemplations on the end of history by Kurt Vonnegut and Gore Vidal

Summary/Abstract: In the paper we will compare the attitudes to history and politics of two important American writers, Kurt Vonnegut and Gore Vidal. Both have written about Armageddon, the end of the world brought about by the kind of historical paradigmes mankind contiues to pursue. As engaged writers Vonnegut and Vidal insist on the important role Art can play in changing these destructive ways of seeing. Art can challenge the normalized horrors of history by showing to the world the truth about institutionalized injustice and misuse of man, built for centuries into all human relationships and contacts. Literature is useful because it encourages thinking outside the boundaries and frames imposed on the mind by political preasure and other strategies of thought control. Vonnegut and Vidal see writing as a quest for social justice identified by Peter Sellars as the central concern of all great art, from Sophocles and Shakespeare to modern modes of artistic engagement and activism. In their works Kurt Vonnegut and Gore Vidal demonstrate how it is possible to talk about justice, truth, mutual understanding and acceptance, and use Art not to divide human beings into black and white, modern and traditional, bad and good, but to point to the difference between the just and the unjust, the servants of Truth, and the generators and manipulators of the Lie. The truth they reveal about history is cruel but necessary, because in the world outside of art there is almost no place left for it.

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