Intermedijalnost i naracija traume u romanima Daše Drndić Belladonna i April u Berlinu
Intermediality and Narration of Trauma in the Novels Belladonna and April in Berlin by Daša Drndić

Summary/Abstract: Daša Drndić’s novels are emphatically intertextual, intermedial and interdiscursive, marked by documentary elements and preoccupied with the content of individual and collective trauma (the Holocaust, totalitarian systems). Part of this content belongs to the representation of emotions that arise from the confrontation of contemporary protagonists with the consequences of traumatic events from the collective European past. In selected novels (Belladonna, April u Berlinu [April in Berlin]), the textualization of emotions that accompany trauma is explored. The effects of intermedial interventions on the level of trauma narration are recognized and described, focusing on the interaction of photography and verbal expression in the literary medium, thereby examining the semiosis between the visual and the verbal in overcoming the ineffability of trauma. Using several examples from the novel, the types of storytelling with photographs are analyzed according to Ch. Schwanecke’s typology: narrative thematization of photographic elements in the story; iconic imitation of photography at the discursive level of the narrative; media combination defined as the inclusion of photographs in the text and punctual visual storytelling according to M. Šuvaković’s definition, as well as the role of discontinuity (spatial and temporal) in storytelling with photographs. The article reveals that the narrative of trauma is supported by photography, which can be viewed as a text and an intense sensory phenomenon and that such an intermedial intervention provides the writer with an appropriate stylistic foothold in the literary symbolization of social suffering and the reader’s confrontation with the historical trauma of the Holocaust, in overcoming the ineffability of trauma and in the artistic shaping of the author’s engagement and narrative empathy.

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