ELEMENTS OF DESACRALIZATION OF POETRY IN STEVAN RAIČKOVIĆ'S "SLUČAJNI MEMOARI"

Abstract

The first part of the text describes the process of autosacralization of modern poetry. The metaphor of autosacralization represents the process by which modern poetry singles out the poetic act and poetic language from the sphere of the expressive theory and the language and space of everyday. Autosacralization is the connection between the respective poetry of Valéry and Elliot, despite the poetic differences, as well as Heidegger’s interpretations of Hölderlin and Rilke. Further on, the text demonstrates the way poetry is sacralized in Raičković (ending with the first edition of the collection Kamena uspavanka in 1963), and then desacralized in Raičković’s later poems. Our analysis of the long poem Slučajni memoari [Accidental memoirs] (1978) will determine the following elements of desacralization of poetry: 1) the transformation of the question of the sense and value of poetry into a question of the status of poetry (the question what poetry is gets supplanted by the question whether something is poetry); 2) the transformation of a poetic motif into a poetic instrument; 3) the substitution of the timeless source of the poem (the myth) with the temporal source of the poem (notes, papers, news articles); 4) the change from the argumentative quotation of a verse to the non-argumentative quotation a word; 5) resubjectivization of poetry and the return of the subject in a form of a new sociability which connects the poetic subject to other people.