The Topos of Sarajevo in Prose of the Croatian Writer M. Ergović (Based on the Storybook Sarajevski Marlboro)

Abstract

The article gives a brief analysis of the use of the term “topos” in the modern Russian history of literature, and explores the topos of the city of Sarajevo based on a storybook of the Bosnian-Croatian writer Miljenko Jergović. He manages to convey the originality of the city through the twin concepts of own / alien. The besieged Sarajevo in Ergović’s stories is filled with everyday, but important, symbolic objects, while the war plays the role of a magnifying glass, thanks to which everyday things come to the fore. These objects become the center of stories, acquiring allegorical meaning. Sarajevski Marlboro is not a collection of stories about the war, but it is about life, about people and their relationships, and the war itself is only the context of their interaction. The narrator is emotionally detached, but his voice breaks through the suffering and emotions of the characters. Building a story around everyday objects such as a cactus, writing or photography, the writer brings history closer to readers who do not know war, which allows everyone to at least get a little closer to understanding how it influenced the fate of people. Jergović’s narrative strategy is close to the tradition of the Bosnian story of the beginning of the twentieth century, which reflected the lives of individuals against the background of historical or cultural upheavals of Bosnian society at the turn of the twentieth century. The Sarajevski Marlboro endorsed a story of this type as an identification mark of Bosnian-Herzegovinian literature itself. Jergović made Sarajevo “a symbolic historical topos, showing the collapse of the basic moral and humanistic values of modern, technological and information civilization against the backdrop of a terrible war.” An analysis of the storybook Sarajevski Marlboro is the beginning of a study of the topos of Sarajevo, both within the framework of Miljenko Jergović’s work, and more broadly – the beginning of the study of the Sarajevo text in Bosnian (as well as Serbian and Croatian) literature. The literary embodiment of Sarajevo can act as a special object of artistic comprehension, providing a kind of integral unity.