Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.47960/2303-7431.21.35.2026.7
ON SOME AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PLACES AND THE ROLE OF THE CAFÉ IN ŠIMIĆ’S PROSE FRAGMENTS
Krystyna Pieniążek-Marković
; Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań
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* Corresponding author.
Abstract
This paper examines Antun Branko Šimić’s prose fragments in which the café serves as a setting for various events. Cafés, understood as synecdoches of the city, may be interpreted through selected perspectives within cultural geography. In Šimić’s writing, the café constitutes one of his autobiographical places, alongside his native village, Herzegovina, Mostar, and Zagreb. The paper argues that Šimić’s cafés do not fit neatly into Yi-Fu Tuan’s concept of “place,” Marc Augé’s concepts of the anthropological “place” and “non-place,” or Ray Oldenburg’s concept of the “third place”, although they exhibit certain features associated with each of these concepts. Šimić portrays cafés as places in which artistic ideas and artists are born, but also as sites of their symbolic “death.” The figures inhabiting the café scene are depicted as puppets performing on a theatre stage.
Keywords
A. B. Šimić; autobiographical places; prose fragments; cafés
Hrčak ID:
352631
URI
Publication date:
30.10.2026.
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