Institutions and Falsified Culture in the Novel Evening Act by Croatian Writer Pavao Pavličić

Abstract

ABSTRACT`In one area of his prose work, the Croatian writer Pavao Pavličić belongs to a group of writers in the 1970s who used a fantastic narrative model and thematized irrational parallel worlds as opposed to a realist model of narration. Pavličić’s novel Evening Act (published as Večernji akt in 1981) has a realistic beginning, but it slips into fantastic narration when the main character, a young man called Mihovil, discovers his ability to falsify documents and works of art. At the same time, he is capable of recognizing falsified art works and documents that are accepted as an integral part of social, cultural, and historical memory. When this ability becomes dangerous, Mihovil falsifies his own body to escape from his unbearable reality. This paper will analyse the function of the fantastic model in Pavličić’s novel as a postmodern play with traditions of Croatian and world literature and culture. The ludic layer of the novel has a highly symbolic value: it draws attention to the relationship of cultural institutions and society to the authenticity of art works, the role of art, and ways of preserving (or destroying) cultural memory.