Is the New Paradigm in the Balkans Old Enough? An Introduction to Postpoetics, the First Step

Abstract

The paper circles around difficult issues that concern the relationship between life and poetry, trying to create a new paradigm through their ultimate identification. Poetry of life might prove to be the oldest paradigm for both literature and human existence and a challenge for this millennium. As paradigmatic literary feasts from Homer’s Iliad to the love dinner in Pavić’s best-selling novel Dictionary of the Khazars show, representations of real life are not the only thing making a poetic creation ‘seem’ alive. A Homeric transgression from tragedy to the vital power of poetry, embodied in Achilles’ transformation from a hero into a poet, comes after politics and after poetics. It also appears to be necessary if we truly wish to eradicate old conflicts and prejudices that have haunted the Balkans, among other parts of the world, for too long.