СТАРО ВРЕМЕ, НОВО ВРЕМЕ И МИТСКО ВРЕМЕ У ПРИПОВЕЦИ „КИР ГЕРАС” СТЕАВАНА СРЕМЦА
OLD TIME, NEW TIME AND MYTHICAL TIME IN STEVAN SREMACʼ SHORT STORY “KIR GERAS”

Summary/Abstract: Time (“zeman” or “vakat” in Turkish) in Stevan Sremac’ short story “Kir Geras” seems to exist on three different levels. We can say that these levels contain in themselves a certain reflection of folk literature, as well as of the Greek myth. The three levels are: mythical time, old time (symbolically represented by Kir Naun and Kir Geras) and new time or “recent time” (represented by Geras’ children). Old time (old world) and new time (new world) are the main polarities present throughout the entire short story. There is a kind of negative charge between these two polarities which, through conflict, strives towards a resolution. The confrontation of these two worlds leads to the death of old time which is then resurrected in the new world order through harmonizing with it. Mythical time, in this case, is a given “cosmic archetype of a story” about the world’s metamorphosis, and two other types of Time align themselves according to the archetype. Thus, this “shift” describes the crisis of old time sublimated in the fate of Kir Geras which imitates the path of the world’s metamorphosis engraved in the abovementioned mythical time. In that manner, as this analysis has shown, Geras’s fate puts forward the significance and meaning of the relationship between the motif of the shift from old to new time present in the myth of Chronos and the motif of recent time in two versions of the poem “Sveci blago dijele”. Therefore, apart from the reflections of Serbian folk literature, the reflections of the Greek myth are to be identified in this Stevan Sremac’ short story as well.

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