THE TRAUMA OF THE GREAT WAR IN THE SERBIAN AVANGARD NOVEL
Text topic: Culture and National Trauma
Key words:
Text author: Предраг Петровић
The Serbian avant-garde novel expresses war experience that goes from nihilistic experience of historical terror and complete collapse of all values to the activation of vitalistic potentials, exaltation of the senses, physicality, sexuality, the need for reconstruction and new establishment of the individual and the collective being. This is evident in each of the mentioned novels: in The Journal of Čarnojević (Dnevnik o Čarnojeviću) it moves from the senselessness of the war to the need for metaphysical consolation; in Red Fogs (Crvene magle) heroes are facing both cowardice and desertion, but also find the strength to sacrifice themselves for others and make heroic gestures that a man is capable of making only in war; in The Wings (Krila) there is a range of phenomena from grotesque and horror to visions that war pilots experience while observing the skies. Finally, the novel The Sixth Day (Dan šesti) tells a brilliant story of war and peace, of the everlasting cycle of birth and death on the earth. The literature that was created in the years immediately following the Great War is characterized by the motifs of disappointment, disaster and revulsion for the forces of destruction. It doubts the ethical and humanistic values. The literature calls into question the social progress and the ability of history to give answers to the questions about the meaning of life and of the world.