Amphibolic space of Central Europe in the writings of Aleksandar Tišma and Danilo Kiš

Abstract

This article deals with the ideas of Central Europe in the writings of two Yugoslav and Serbian writers Danilo Kis (1935–1989) and Aleksandar Tisma (1924–2003). Central Europe is, in metaphorical terms, a transitional, central region, an area of passage that is filled with opposites. It is demonstrated that in Kis’s Hourglass and Tisma’s The Book of Blam (both novels were published in 1972), the region forms a complex literary image of the world of dispersal and disintegration, both in terms of form and content. On the one hand, views of these two writers can be summarized in a well-known and tragic fact that in Central Europe, the heart of Europe, there is also the heart of European darkness symbolized in the Central-European village of Auschwitz. On the other hand, Kis’s and Tisma’s poetics undoubtedly belong to the geographical and cultural space of a literary Central Europe (marked by Kafka, Musil, Broch). This paper will try to explain how this ambivalent position works as a complex and rich foundation of their fictional work.