Hvar City Theatre Days, Vol. 51 No. 1, 2025.
Original scientific paper
Death and Trauma in the Posthumous Trilogy of Mate Matišić
Almir Bašović
Abstract
Starting from Darko Lukić’s understanding of the war trauma drama, who, using the example of selected Croatian authors, shows that these plays are significantly characterized by the demythologizing of prevailing cultural myths, this text deals with the place of trauma in The Posthumous Trilogy of Mata Matišić. Matišić’s plays The Sons Die First, Woman Without a Body, and No One’s Son are considered as war trauma dramas that are essentially determined by Death and that achieve their high degree of demythologization by insisting on the existential situation of traumatized victims as a dramaturgical base. This text takes into account the thoughts of Bernhard Giesen, who in his study Triumph and Trauma shows that heroes and victims are counterparts who stand on opposite sides of social life, as well as that the relationship between triumph and trauma significantly determines both the understanding of the individual and the collective identity. Matišić’s Posthumous Trilogy is also considered with regard to the relationship of the collective to dead individuals, which should be the foundation for cultural memory. By giving a warning about the status of victims of war trauma and the dead in post-war society, Matišić’s plays show that theater has a responsibility as a kind of »institutional arena« in which victimization could or even had to be acknowledged. Therefore The Posthumous Trilogy, due to the image of man as a »potentially killable« and potentially unburied being, could also be read as a warning that we live in a pre-dramatic spiritual environment.
Keywords
war trauma drama; demythologization; triumph; trauma; hero; victim; Death; pre-dramatic
Hrčak ID:
330811
URI
Publication date:
14.5.2025.
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