ЖИТТЯ НА ТЕРЕЗАХ ОПОВІДІ: ОСОБЛИВОСТІ НАРАТИВНОЇ СТРАТЕГІЇ РОМАНУ МЕШІ СЕЛІМОВИЧА “ДЕРВІШ І СМЕРТЬ”

Abstract

Background : “Death and the Dervish” (1966), a novel of the prominent Serbian writer Meša Selimović, has been attracting literary critics’ attention since the moment of its publication. Historians of the 20 th -century literature study it as a sample of existentialist prose in the then Yugoslavian literature, focus on the correlation between fiction and autobiography in this novel as well as analyze it as a novel of the new type and as a novel-parable. 21 st -century researchers consider Selimović’s writings via the prism of contemporary literary theories, assess the novel “Death and the Dervish” in the context of Muslim religion and culture, address to comparative problems that testifies to literary critics’ interest in the further study of the poetical features of this author’s creative heritage. Purpose: The researcher studies specific narrative features in Meša Selimović’s novel “Death and the Dervish”. Having selected the figure of scales as an emblem of the narrative strategy, she explores the functioning of the structure of the text, the system of images, numerous plot reverberations and echoes as a manifestation of the desire for harmony and the search for universal discourse that balances the subjective and the objective, the personal and the universal. Results : In his novel “Death and the Dervish”, Meša Selimović achieved the highest narrative equilibrium: the story of one hero, Ahmed Nurudin, creates an impression of a story about many different people, and numerous stories, experienced by the reader, are perceived as variations of one universal story. The figures of doubling, reflection, echo, “silence place” and the use of allusions create an extremely rich field of senses. The harmony between the mimetic and nonmimetic models of narration, which is achieved by the author, makes the study of his narrative narratives particularly important for 21 st -century literary criticism.