IDEOLOGY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN NIKO BARTULOVIĆ’S NOVELS

Abstract

Niko Bartulović is nowadays a completely forgotten writer. Although he is the author of two novels, two plays and several collections of short stories, he is nowadays only a parenthetical fact in historiography overviews. He is usually not even mentioned in histories of literature and handbooks, and when he is, it is frequently without significant cultural and literary pretensions. Only occasional studies, commentaries and critical evaluations deal with his work which was once the focal point of interest, and is now covered by the dust of literary oblivion, under-researched and undervalued. The reasons for this are complex. Besides those that relate to the limited literary value of his work, they are also partly the result of Bartulović’s political work – radical integralist ideology of monarchic Yugoslavianism and his later apologies of the Chetnic movement, and partly the result of the fact that the greater part of his work (not only literary) is connected to Belgrade and as a result of this he became an ‘exclusively Serbian author’.