Participants
Ivana Brković, Goranka Šutalo, University of Zagreb
Imagery of space and time in Miroslav Krleža’s short story collection Hrvatski bog Mars (The Croatian God Mars)
The paper deals with representation of space in Miroslav Krleža’s The Croatian God Mars, a short story collection, which thematizes the life of Croatian soldiers (domobrani) during the First World War.
Settings, characters and plots located in the historical period from 1914 to 1918 refer to the space of war, as well as of the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Constructed by the dominant perspective of the Croatian soldiers, the space suggests the opposition periphery vs. centre. Thus, the Croatian space of identity as the political, economic, social and cultural periphery implies the Austro-Hungarian imperial centre as the space of the Other.
Implied by the mythological meaning of the title (The Croatian God Mars), the space of identity indicates the cyclic idea of history, which is marked by constant wars. Accordingly, the construct of space points at a specific philosophy of history which distinguishes both Krleža’s works and the historical context of the European fin de siècle.
