PORTRET REVOLUCIONARA U MODERNIZMU – DISKURS REVOLUCIONARNE UTOPIJE U PRIPOVECI „U PRAZNOM OLTARU” DRAGIŠE VASIĆA

Abstract

In this work, we tried to show that epochal modernistic perspective always keeps its influence, even in those works where the author tries to be tendentious. Dragiša Vasić, one of the most prominent writers of Serbian modernism, in his early postwar novels emphasizes the nihilistic experience of the subject and his incapability to find an optimistic way of being after modern degradation of Christian values. However, the story „In the Empty Altar” has been characterized by the majority of Serbian critics as a pure social realistic novel. Although we don’t have a subject that is dualistic in his attempts to achieve a pure ontological perspective in this story, that dualism has been transferred to narration itself, instead of being developed into the main protagonist. In that sense, there is no difference between this story and all the other stories in the book, except the ways in which the author is showing us the presence of modernist dualism. Vasić is using many textual strategies to contest absence of doubt in his main character Petronije Svilar’s psychology. The most important strategy is subtextual identification between Svilar and Jesus Christ. This identification turns Petronije Svilar into a mainly grotesque figure, incapable to accomplish his revolutionary ambitions of changing the world, because these ideals are shown as unrealistic by modernist narrative that doesn’t allow finding any ontological or metaphysical way out from the condition of questioning these possibilities.