Слика породичног дома у роману Смоква Горана Војновића

Abstract

The beginning of the novel The Fig Tree by Goran Vojnović clearly reveals the framework of its main character’s worldview: only that space in which there are no traces of previous existence can be called one’s own; in any other case, it i s alien, and as such, hostile towards any potential new occupant. One gets the impression that Aleksandar tried with all his might to preserve his own and his wife’s reality, despite the fact that it was irreversibly collapsing, both externally and due to the war events in Yugoslavia. With the death of the one who fi lled that space with his presence, it inevitably lost certain characteristics that the subject assigned to it. This meant that it was no longer the same space at all: the hero no longer felt protected in it; the only thing such a place could now evoke was nostalgia. The end of the novel is given in an optimistic tone within which the house is given a new meaning, which rests on Bachelard’s ideas of the house as a world, a refuge, and a shell in which, like pearls, shared memories gather.