Fluminensia: Journal for Philological Research (Jan 1997)
THE STRATEGIES OF LITERARY HISTORICAL AVANT-GARDES
Abstract
The first part of the paper gives a summary of the thematisation of the space of the so-called 'historical avant-gardes', their dehierarchical and destructive relationship towards the civilisation as a whole. The decomposition of the semantic sign and reality, and the so-called 'discourse competitiveness' of historical avant-gardes makes allowances for ambivalent interpretation of the whole of avant-garde praxis. Thus, Josip Sever's text can be read on two levels: as a stereotypisation of historical avant-garde procedures and their fragmentation within their own discourse on the one, and as post-modern communication with the neighbouring discourses seen as textual rather than organic sense matrix on the other. In such an interpretation of thetraditionalisation of 'historical avant-gardes' and the actualisation within the discourse of post-avant-garde 'erasure' of the poetical subject, Josip Sever's poetical praxis represents an essential transition, or step, from the poetry of existence towards the poetry of language in Croatian poetical experience.