OD OLTARA DO POZORNICE: DESAKRALIZACIJA SVEŠTENSTVA U „GROBNICI ZA BORISA DAVIDOVIČA“ DANILA KIŠA

Abstract

The proposed paper examines various representations of Christian priests in Danilo Kiš’s A Tomb for Boris Davidovich, ranging from repressive figures (“Dogs and Books”), through corrupted party collaborators (“A Tomb for Boris Davidovich”), to those already subjected to repression (“The Mechanical Lions”). Due to diverse totalitarian and ideological procedures, both external and internal, the priesthood undergoes a process of desacralization: sacred acts are reduced to folklore and ritual, the liturgy is supplanted by theatrical performance, and Stalin, marked as the “Father of the Nation,” substitutes the divine figure. In its concluding part, the paper briefly addresses two different conceptions of God ‒ the metaphysical and the apocalyptic ‒ pointing out that the apocalyptic God, embodied in Christ, cannot be manipulated and therefore has no place in totalitarian regimes. Such regimes, as Kiš demonstrates, can have no priests.