6533b85afe1ef96bd12b8ed2

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Andreasa Bana ucieczka ze świata ("Belladonna” Dašy Drndić i "O starzeniu się” Jeana Améry’ego)

subject

memoriessolitudeillnesseradicationpast

description

The paper analyses the final phase in the life of of Daša Drndić’s Belladonna’s protagonist. In the last years of his existence, Andreas Ban’s consciousness is dominated by the thoughts about illness and the nearing retirement. Commonly, both these phenomena mark the threshold of an old age. When it comes to this particular character, they amplify the sensation of solitude (initially stemming from the keen sense of criticism that Ban displays) as well as impotence (connected to the disagreement with the existence of asenile and poor life of an aged man to which Ban is doomed). Drndić uses her novel’s protagonist to accuse both the Croatian state and the contemporary civilization of fetishizing youth and beauty, which, in turn, sentences the Other to “non-existence” (in Drndić’s prose, the Other is always anonconformist who, additionally in her latest novel, is in advanced age).

10.19195/0137-1150.163.66https://doi.org/10.19195/0137-1150.163.66