Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.15291/csi.4319
Emotions, Identity and Body in Radovan Ivšić’s Language of Dreams
Sanja Balić
orcid.org/0009-0006-1293-4451
; University of Split, Faculty of Philosophy, Split, Croatia
*
Tea-Tereza Vidović Schreiber
; University of Split, Faculty of Philosophy, Split, Croatia
*
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
This paper explores selected work of the marginalized Croatian-French author Radovan Ivšić (1921–2009) centred around the dream motif which allows the poet to question (sur)reality, abandon mimesis, and create unusual associative relations typical for dream process(es). His poems Trideset i šest njenih čuda (1940) and Narcis (1942), as well as the collections of poems Bunar u kuli (1967) and Tanke (1954), republished in Pet stoljeća hrvatske književnosti (1985), U nepovrat (1990), Crno i crno (2003) and San na javi (2016) are read, extrapolated, and interpreted through signifiers of emotions, identity, and body. Due to the author’s stylistic contextualisation within Surrealism, the poet’s discourse will be categorised as so called Ivšić’s dream language, characterised by a specific syntax and morphology as well as remarkable combinations of poetic imagery which allow the author to: (1) express emotions authentically, (2) self-identify, and (3) demonstrate physical metamorphosis and relations to the body in general. In this context, the term Ivšić’s dream language is used instead of the general term oneiric, which is present in all literary periods and genres, to precisely identify his poetics and linguistic capital. Furthermore, as a bilingual author, the surrealist poetics allows him to go beyond the established stylistic framework and to realise his ideological attitudes about freedom which have legitimised him in the geographical, cultural, and political environment. Although his early and later work will be in contrast in both form and motifs, the dream matrix of the specific dream language will remain his fundamental poetic paradigm.
Keywords
body; dream language; emotion; identity; interpretation; poetics; Radovan Ivšić’s poetry; stylistics; Surreal
Hrčak ID:
312384
URI
Publication date:
28.12.2023.
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