Hvar City Theatre Days, Vol. 41 No. 1, 2015.
Original scientific paper
KRLEŽIANIC GROTESQUE: WAR AND POLITICS IN MÒRA BY TOMISLAV BAKARIĆ
Boris Senker
orcid.org/0000-0001-5158-610X
; Faculty of philosophy in Zagreb, University of Zagreb
Abstract
Mòra (The Nightmare), written by Tomislav Bakarić, was published and staged in 1978 to almost hostile critical respond. The play, defined in this article as a stage grotesque which enters into »dispute« (Jan Assmann) with Miroslav Krleža’s writings, deals with the last years of life of Croatian politician Frano Supilo and with the position of Croats and Croatian lands in the Worl War I. Although the central focus in the play is on political issues, especially on the issue of federalistic or unitaristic form of government in multinational states, three scenes that take place at the battlefield shift readers’/spectators’ attention to the World War I and war in general. The playwright’s thesis is that during this war Croatian soldiers were fighting on both sides, Austro-Hungarian and Serbian, and that Croats were by the both sides treated as military desirable but politically unreliable and potentially subversive allies. The key scene for understanding war in Bakarić’s grotesque is the final scene of the first act: Franz Joseph’s praise of the beauty of young soldiers’ corpses and the imaginary meeting of the three emperors – Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Italian – on the battlefield .
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
139000
URI
Publication date:
30.4.2015.
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