Original scientific paper
Speech and Trauma in Ivo Andrić’s Devil’s Yard
Bernarda Katušić
; Institute for Slavic Studies of the University of Vienna
Abstract
Freud traces the origins of the first trauma in the early bodily events between the infant and the mother. Experiencing the mother in some type of imaginary space, the infant lives in a world of plenty which enables unlimited fulfillment of his natural needs for self-preservation. The imaginary plenitude of the mother-infant dyad stops only with the obtrusive intrusion of reality (Father/Law) into the pleasure principle, which, according to Freud, is the basis of all further traumatic experiences of the individual. Hence, an (im)balance between the
desire for the lost idealistic unity between Id, Ego and Superego becomes not only a matrix for the constitution of selfhood but also a model for subsequent traumatic experiences of the individual. Freud argues that the primary traumatic experience, as well as the subsequent ones, can be surpassed, if not erased entirely,
through the workings of fantasy, by transforming the experienced pain into new forms, which is achieved with identification, sublimation and creation. Traumatic experiences of the individual, those remaining, unprocessed experiences, those leftovers of the real as well as the stories about it can be identified as one of the central thematic backbones of Ivo Andrić’s overall poetics. Using the stated difference between “empty” and “full” speech, this article shall focus
on Andrić’s novel Devil’s Yard (Prokleta avlija, 1954). The purpose of this analysis is to offer a close reading of traumatizing mechanisms and the possibilities of resolving traumatic experiences with speech, story and narration about them.
Keywords
speech; trauma; Freud; Lacan; “empty” and “full” speech; Ivo Andrić, Devil’s Yard
Hrčak ID:
190782
URI
Publication date:
15.12.2017.
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