KHAZAR PALIMPSEST – THE SUBVERSION OF THE HISTORIOGRAPHIC SPEECH
KHAZAR PALIMPSEST – THE SUBVERSION OF THE HISTORIOGRAPHIC SPEECH

Summary/Abstract: Milorad Pavić brings Serbian literature to the attention of literary criticism by publishing the Dictionary of the Khazars in 1984 that combines history, its reflection, myth and legend. Because of the existent gaps created by controversies throughout history, the theme of the Khazars allows him to apply the particularities of postmodernist fiction in his novel. The main orientations in literary criticism approach the study of the form, the three dimensionality of the work, the relationship between the author, the character and the reader, focusing in particular on the central place given to the latter, as well as on the fantasy and oneiric elements found in the novel. This paper proposes the approach of Dictionary of the Khazars through three levels of emphasis on the relevance of the palimpsest metaphor in the interpretation of the text. Starting from the postmodernist theory and that of the representation specific for the historiographical metafiction, the paper analyzes first the structural level of the novel, continuing with the documentary one, as well as the thematic level generated by the first two. The three levels testify to the existence of the palimpsest metaphor within each of them. Using postmodernist techniques, Pavić combines true and false sources, providing contradictory information. The author highlights the mechanism of building the historiographical discourse through not just the past of the Khazars, but through the history of its representations thanks to the coexistence of several points of view specific to the three religions: Christian, Islamic and Jewish.

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