UNDISGUISED TRUTH OF LITERARY CORRESPONDENCE, ABOVE THE CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN DOBRICA COSIC AND VLADA STRUGAR

Abstract

The paper focuses on social, aesthetic and communicational dimension of literary correspondence. Correspondence, as “speaking over space” or “long-distance talking”, is considered to be a very old linguistic communicational action. Cultural history testifies that many prominent authors, especially philosophers and writers, left behind correspondence which represents an important document of the spirit of the times or a valuable work of art. Sometimes written as “strangled whisper”, with no intention of being published, individual letters of prominent authors were safe from censorship; hence their reliability is often greater than the one found in the diaries and memoirs that suffer from "hindsight". Not at all coincidentally, Roland Barthes recognizes the “symbol of freedom”in the letters.

The author is especially engaged in aspects of correspondence lasting quarter of a century between two academics, a writer DobricaCosic and a historian VladoStrugar. Their sectioned structure, tone, connotative ambiguity and breadth of reviews on current social developments in crucial periods of recent Serbian history (1988-2014), these letters greatly exceed the limits of the genre and offer historians and the public previously unsuspected insights into the dramatic period when there were no equal opportunities for different voiceson the air.These “sparkling miniatures” of undeniable literary relevance – made public for the first time – illuminate the Yugoslav and Serbian tragedy inside and out,testifying about the possibilities and constraints of intellectuals who share a common world of meaning and interest to put the truth above other interests.