Љубавне нити : концепти љубави у европској и српској култури
Love threads : concepts of love in European and Serbian culture

Author(s): Ivana Bašić
Subject(s): Anthropology, Psychology, Communication studies, Semantics
Published by: Етнографски институт САНУ
Keywords: Love; Serbia; Cultural aspect; Europe; Serbian language; Semantics
Summary/Abstract: Edgar Allan Poe was not entirely right – the death of a beautiful woman is undoubtedly not the most poetic theme in the world. What is essentially poetic in it is another great theme, the theme of love and death or – simply – love, because it is always overshadowed or, rather, co-determined by death, to the point that one could argue that the mortality of a human being is the germ of love. And vice versa. For for us, the only truly existing thing is the death of those we love. Therefore, Denis de Rougemont, writing about love and the West, quotes Bede's Tristan at the beginning: "Would it be good for you, gentlemen, to hear a wonderful story about love and death?", concluding that he considers it "the ideal type of the first sentence of a novel", because the coincidence of love and death deeply shakes our soul, emphasizing that there are reasons to see in it the definition of Western consciousness: "Love and death, mortal love: if it may not be pure poetry, it is at least all that is popular, all that is most touching that exists in our literature, both in our oldest legends and in the most beautiful poems. There are no stories of happy love. There are only novels of mortal love, that is, of love that life itself exposes to dangers and condemns to destruction. Western poetry does not glorify sensual pleasures or fruitful marital harmony. It sings more of the passion of love than of reciprocated love.

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