Essayistic selections of Danilo Kiš

• Main Author: Bečejski Mirjana M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Institute of Serbian Culture Priština, Leposavić 2020-01-01
• Series: Baština
• Subjects: essay writing; selection; criterion; self-criticism; representativeness; evaluation; po-ethics (1972); po-ethics, book two (1974); homo poeticus (1983)
• Online Access: https://scindeks-clanci.ceon.rs/data/pdf/0353-9008/2020/0353-90082051045B.pdf

Evaluation of the essayistic opus of Danilo Kiš and his authorial choices, if we exclude one scientific paper by R. Ivanović, dedicated to the book Po-ethics, has not been the subject of a serious discussion so far, although the critics mostly agreed that he is a world writer. The subject of interest of this paper are the selections of essay texts that Kiš published during his lifetime in the books Po-ethics (1972), Po-ethics, book two (1974) and Homo poeticus (1983). The research focus is on the composition and structure of books - criteria for the selection and arrangement of texts, the logic of their content, the level of authorial self-criticism and representativeness. When making a judgment about the objectivity of Kiš as the compiler of these selections, essays that for various reasons remained outside the covers of the mentioned books are also taken into consideration - their literary-aesthetic, cognitive, cultural and autopoetic value. The composition of the book Anatomy Lesson, although in the genealogical sense it is a book-essay, deserves a special study, and therefore is not the subject of analysis of this paper.