Metafore sebstva u autobiografskom diskursu Vesne Parun

Abstract

By using the concept of the Self as the human personality in its totality, as defined by Carl Gustav Jung and furthered by P. Ricoeur (the theory of narrative identity, the Self defined as an identity constructed by narrative configuration, the dialectics of the discovery of the other in one’s own Self and one’s own Self in the Other), this work will focus in the analysis of metaphors which express the Self of the auto-diegetic narrator as can be found in the autobiographical discourse of Vesna Parun. The corpus of this research is to be found in selected texts from her volume Noć za pakost. Moj život u 40 vreća (2001). From the first chapter of this volume [which consists of the following works of autobiography and essays: Poljubac života (1993), Do zalaska sunca hodajući za kamilicom (1958), Pod muškim kišobranom (1986)] the reader comes to realise that, for this author, the writing of autobiography is itself a problem of self-expression and that she had constantly deferred it, while, on the other hand, feeling a great compulsion from within to do so. This sense of paradox finds its reflection in some of the constitutive elements which can be found in her autobiographical discourse. In the relationship between literature and reality, which is something which the genre of autobiography questions in its own way, the author noticeably distances herself from the mere documentary transmission of factual information from her life. A reflection of this can be seen in the negation of a strict chronology of events and confessions, as she makes recourse to a technique which uses collage and appears fragmentary; furthermore, here prose here has a lyrical quality, negating "metaphor as a literary device" and transforming it into "literature as metaphor". The autobiographical prose of Vesna Parun is especially dense with metaphor, and it can be concluded that it expresses her Self. Attention is directed here to three metaphors in particular – the umbrella, which can be both "masculine" and "feminine", a map of the world, on the wall of every house in Vesna’s community, as well the sack, which is followed by the symbolic number 40, as many in which she could fill her life in. Besides the metaphors mentioned here, what will be proposed here is that in the autobiographical discourse of Vesna Parun literature itself is presented as metaphor of her Self, appearing to the reader as significantly (auto)meta-textual.