SHARDS OF BROKEN GLASS: DAŠA DRNDIĆ’S ARCHIVAL POETICS

Abstract

This paper examines Daša Drndić’s April in Berlin (April u Berlinu, 2007), alongside the author’s other Holocaust novels, as a literary response to historical revisionism and outright denialism of the Holocaust in Croatia, which had entered the political and cultural mainstream during the War of Independence (1991-1995) and has persisted into the post-war period. Since the historical legacy of NDH in Croatia has been de-traumatized, it no longer represents a crisis of historical consciousness, which would entail a confrontation with the violent past as well as a painful transformation of national identity and the political space in which this identity is articulated. In contrast to this de-traumatization, as an ethnocentric strategy that normalizes the nation’s fascist crimes, Drndić’s novels stage a shocking confrontation with the shards of the violent past. Through both their innovative graphic layout and interdiscursive textuality—which combines historiographical narration with fictional devices, words with images—Drndić’s novels function as archives-monuments intended to disturb, disrupt, and jolt the reader into awareness of history, laying bare the ideological mechanisms of control and bringing the bodies of the victims to our doorsteps.