OD NOSA DO KARAKTERA: FIZIOGNOMIJA KARAKTERA U PRIPOVETKAMA JANKA POLIĆA KAMOVA
FROM NOSE TO CHARACTER: PHYSIOGNOMY OF CHARACTERS IN THE SHORT STORIES OF JANKO POLIĆ KAMOV

Summary/Abstract: This paper is on the research of the impact of physiognomic theories on the dependence of a person’s character on his outer appearance in the characterization of protagonists in short stories by Janko Polić Kamov. In Croatian literary realism there is a significant number of examples in which the personality of a main character is shaped according to his physical appearance. The prose works of prominent representatives of Croatian literary realism followed the pattern of characterization in line with the physical appearance of a character with a particular focus on his nose. In the examples of the characterization of protagonists in Kamov’s prose it is noticeable that there is an unavoidable relationship between a character’s nose and his human values and conduct. In accordance with the accomplishments of previous research on the impact of physiognomic theories on attitudes expressed in the essays by Janko Polić Kamov, in this paper the research is extended to his short stories to determine more precisely his view on modernist literature. It is concluded in the paper that Kamov often motivates the behavior of a character and his value judgments according to his outer appearance and that, in a short story written by Kamov at the end of his life, he departs from characterizations that equate the physical and ethical. Abandoning the process of equalizing the physical and ethical is accompanied by strong irony, as well as the inner crisis of the main protagonist of the short story „Bitanga” (“The Scamp”). The failure of physiognomic theory to serve self-analysis confirms it is not trustworthy in advocating a strong causality between the physical and moral, but it also confirms the assumption that Kamov is an author who did not manage to avoid the contradictions of modernist literature.

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