Original scientific paper
Representation of the Adriatic Sea in the Hungarian Literature of Vojvodina
Éva Toldi
; Filozofski fakultet Univerziteta u Novom Sadu
Abstract
The article starts out from the fact that every Hungarian writer in Vojvodina has some kind of experience related to Croatia and the sea which they display in their texts. Among the depictions of the Adriatic, the author distinguishes in particular those writers depicting the sea as their first experience who, by reference to their own identities, discover the multifariousness of the sea motifs. The look of the traveller encompasses the vastness of the sea, yet searches for his own identity in the seaside places to recognize in them his native village. When he manages to abstract himself from that, he moves around freely and easily in a new environment. An example of this expanded identity is when the "one's own sea" becomes the basis for self-definition between a Hungarian writer from Vojvodina and another from Hungary. The acquisition or loss of the sea both greatly affect the construction and changing of identity. The Thalatta-experience can also be related to the formation of intertextual identity and shows intertextual parallels. Finally, there are those writers giving expression to their sense of belonging who were born in Croatia and in spite of living in Vojvodina regard themselves to be Croatian-Hungarian writers who base their identity on individual decision wavering between origin and choice. The works also unfold a rich web of emotions, and the feeling of alienness ceases to exist: the “adoption” of the Adriatic sets in. Hungarian writers from Vojvodina do not depict the sea as a mere geographical object but also subsume it into their own identity at all times. This is why the Adriatic never turns out to be forbidding but functions as the object of yearning on the imaginary geographical map of their own creation.
Keywords
Hungarian literature; the Adriatic Sea; geocultural identity; domestic and foreign; Hungarian and Croatian cultural contacts
Hrčak ID:
171301
URI
Publication date:
12.12.2016.
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