Original scientific paper

Trauma in the Semantic Field of Šegedin's Concept to Live

Vlaho Bogišić ; Leksikografski zavod Miroslav Krleža

Abstract

Petar Šegedin began to figure in Croatian literature and in the Croatian arts public at a time when trauma had driven deep into the pith and marrow of the rhythm of society. The dramatic experience of the war and the controversy of the uncertain post-war years had defined the aesthetic projections irrespective of the ideational pre-text of the concept being shaped, whether one were cleaving to the much to be desired optimistic narrative of new stability and revival or voicing concern at the insecurity in which civilisation had found itself. In the twenty-year-span from the first existential writings of Šegedin (God’s Children) to the Cyclops of Ranko Marinković, this poetic key in Croatian was to be clarified through the authentic and sustainable images of the direct verse of Kaštelan’s Typhus Carriers, Krleža’s pseudo-diaristic war essays and Kolar’s novellas of character. The present paper demonstrates the consistency of Šegedin’s working base about the phenomenon of life, which he gradually developed from the ideational pre-text into similarly named units, independent fragments or chapters of a cyclically structured novel up to the television film To Live, a finale, as it were, of the author’s radio and television practice. The paradox of the reciprocal cultural effect of trauma can be seen in the destiny of that film, the premiere screening of which was stopped by censorship, not because of the viewpoints represented in it, rather because of the dispute about whether the author was acceptable or not. The dramaturgical development of the proposal for the film To Live demonstrates the constancy and strength of the world that the author elaborates while gradually reinforcing his early recognised anti-thesis about the »life that lives from life«.

Keywords

Petar Šegedin; trauma; to live

Hrčak ID:

330789

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/330789

Publication date:

14.5.2025.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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