Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.31820/f.37.2.10
“The Soul and the Horizon Are Nothing but Stone”: An Interpretation of Tin Ujević’s Poem “Okamine”
Ivana Drenjančević
orcid.org/0000-0002-6037-5088
; Sveučilište u Zagrebu, Filozofski fakultet
Abstract
This paper analyses the poem “Okamine” by Tin Ujević, which is included in the poetry collection Žedan kamen na studencu (1954). A very characteristic feature of Tin Ujević’s entire body of work is the frequent presence of metatextual commentary embedded within both his poetic and prose texts. Until now, the poem “Okamine” has gone largely unnoticed in scholarly and critical works dedicated to Ujević’s literary oeuvre, yet it seems possible to analyse it as a highly layered lyrical poem about the act of reading lyrical poetry itself. As a methodological framework for interpreting Ujević’s “Okamine”, I have drawn upon the literary-theoretical insights of the French philosopher Maurice Blanchot, whose ideas inspired and significantly influenced the development of poststructuralism. The analysis seeks to highlight the unusual resonance between Blanchot’s views on reading and Ujević’s poem. My aim was to show how Ujević’s poem draws attention to its own poetic form—its backward and forward movement, both horizontal and vertical—as necessary preconditions for reading; how it engages in linguistic games with its readers and carefully selects exotic and archaic expressions; how it signals to the reader its emptiness of any final meaning; and how it invites a “palimpsestuous reading” (Genette), which implies reading a single text within a complex web of relationships with other texts. In conclusion, I emphasize that the poem invites the reader to engage in reading despite the fact that no single methodological approach can provide a definitive or once-and-for-all valid reading of the poem.
Keywords
Tin Ujević; Žedan kamen na studencu; poetry; interpretation; representation
Hrčak ID:
342888
URI
Publication date:
31.12.2025.
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