"Сродници" на историјским раскрсницама
"Relatives" on the Crossroads of History

Summary/Abstract: Svetlana Velmar-Janković’s essay collection Relatives (Srodnici) draws attention to the literary modeling of the battle between good and evil in human nature, analyzing a wide range of various storytellers and poets, including Sveti Sava, Stefan Prvovenčani, Janko Veselinović, Svetolik Ranković, Ivo Andrić, Živojin Pavlović, Jovan Dučić, Laza Kostić, Stanislav Vinaver, Momčilo Nastasijević, Tin Ujević and others. While discussing prose works, the author often devotes her attention to the observer’s angle, the “storyteller” or omniscient narrator, particularly stressing the importance of the internal monologue, where the artistic imagination sometimes transgresses the borders of the writer’s original idea, with bountiful results. In relation to poetic texts, the author points out the transformation of ordinary words, moving away from their literal, standard meaning and transposing natural occurrences into spiritual and cosmic space via a metaphorically complicated coupling. As a spiritual thinker, novelist and expert for reflexive prose in European literary history, Svetlana Velmar-Janković points out – with some occasional biblical notes in her messages – the dramatic echoes of great historical crossroads in individual human destinies, often including recollections of the contemporary world’s moral crisis.

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