MILOŠ CRNJANSKI AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR
MILOŠ CRNJANSKI AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Summary/Abstract: As a subject matter, as a motive for debate, as a synthesis of heterogeneous impacts—ranging from political to cultural, and from ideological to art-related ones—war poses a challenge: whatever stance one takes on it, whatever rhetorical or artistic stylization one resorts to with regard to it, objections may be raised. The subversive character of war—as an experience or involvement—always seems to be more radical than the subversiveness of involvement: we cannot take any attitude toward war, for there is a hardened pre-understanding which excludes some of the possible attitudes. There are some more-than-good reasons for that, but the presence of good reasons does not make hell less of a hell caused by the inherited or projected instrumentalizations in our public awareness. We lack the capability of repeating—in our own experience of things—something of the inherited multiple facets of war-related ideas: assertive when condemning violence, ready to satisfy the expectations encoded in our selves, disinclined to breaches of public instrumentalizations, we are increasingly becoming unable to understand stratified modernist storytelling. Is the postmodern condition narrower than the modern one? Is postmodern sensibility disabled by the modern one in a far-reaching manner?

• Details
• Contents