engleski

"Hamlet" Between the Characters of Bukara and Učitelj/Teacher: On the Most Famous Play by Ivo Brešan

Abstract: The paper discusses the most famous play written by the Croatian playwright Ivo Brešan (1936-2017), which is based on Hamlet. The issue of representation, even defence of literary, aesthetic and ethical values comes up quite often in Brešan's plays on the grounds of an equal mechanism: between primitivism and brutality on the one side (following Hegel: Brešan's "Antithesis") and enlightenment and idealism on the other ("Thesis") there is a literary text as an extension of the Thesis ; it is a template with a purpose to build up a new dramatic storytelling, which will be adjusted to spatial, social and philosophical circumstances to which the author belongs. A literary text in Brešan's plays functions as a mediator (be it Shakespeare's Hamlet or another play) and enters the zone of "popularization" ; it has the role of an "arbiter" (Souriau) that emphasizes the values of the Thesis (the transfer between the scope of "serious" literature and reality) presented as a structure that should be made accessible to a wider audience, regardless of whether the receiver has recognized the mediator text or not. From the conscience of such a construction arise the questions on stratifications and goals of a transfer or "borrowing" from classic literature. We can conclude that the mediator text, in this case Shakespeare's Hamlet, with the milieu associated to it (Antithesis) together make Brešan’s Synthesis, which turns into a new potential Thesis. A classic text that was meant for Elizabethan people throughout the centuries turned into an elitist canon of the educated and grew distant from its roots and its primary purpose of folk entertainment. In the 20th century the same text receives a role of a highly valuable work of art, and the performance based upon it turns into an aesthetic event meant for the educated. Created and represented this way in Croatian playwriting during the 1960s and 1970s (in SFRY, i.e. former, communist Yugoslavia) – Shakespeare's text was used as a foundation for the construction of a new text, and this new text – Brešan's The Stage Play of Hamlet in the Village of Mrduša Donja (today considered a classic play in Croatian literature) – is to be used by a future playwright for creating a new literary work, i.e. for a new intertextuality. Keywords: Ivo Brešan, The Stage Play of Hamlet in the Village of Mrduša Donja, Croatian drama, Intertextuality, Reality, Ideology, Reception

Ivo Brešan

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