DRAGANA

KRSENKOVIC BRKOVIC

The Dream-like Connections

(written by Bogic Rakocevic and published in the Montenegrin Literary Magazine,
No. 103, March 15, 2005)

Dragana Krsenkovic Brkovic’s book The Master’s Palace, consisted of stories or novels (although the genre indicators are quite relative and unreliable in the contemporary literature), has a strong foundation, through a theme and a structure, in the simple forms of oral inheritance, primarily in fairytale and legend. Fondness for them Dragana clearly expressed in her last book The Secret of a Blue Crystal (2001). Conotated in such manner, the narrative pattern above all else means an interpretation in which the magical appearance and existence in the universe of the twinkling emotive signals is given to so-called ordinary things .

The Master’s Palace is a collection of five stories contextualized in different manner, and linked in semiotic plane through the atmosphere of ages in which thrilling meetings of diverse worlds happened, and through the tension characteristic for oral believes and myths.

On the basis of the general motives, in general prose rhythm which embraces eternal themes of human existence, the author builds the autochthonous dream-like connections and thoughts that in the anthropological key seek for understanding of the perpetual questions of human’s (not) coping with the world. Special attention she draws to the sensitive, unchangeable psychological categories. The author pulls on surface so-called extreme conditions of human consciousness, so hate and suffering, falling and brutality march throughout the whole book. Indeed, she builds the stories on a main motive of human suffering - as the constant of life and literature that repeatedly embodies in every new life-story, catching in an ambush even those sure of avoiding it. That is why her story does not indicate a happy end, and on that level the point of departure from fairytale is created.

Dragana Krsenkovic Brkovic writes smoothly, picturesquely and indicatively. She cares for a description, a detail, continuity and for the dynamics of the certain passage and the story in the whole. The reader can immediately notice baroque expressions, pliability of the sentence and stylistic playfulness. In other words, her story-telling is like complex and beautiful ornamental chains which is the feature of talented and crafted writers.

Time-space relations and whole context, in which the author settles characters and events, seek a compositional strategy based purportedly on the archaic sensibility. Literature has to know the order of the world, which The Master’s Palace does. The author dexterously builds and locates time-space relations, heroes, ambient, etc. through applying the logical concept of the blending dream and reality, the fiction and the facts. She shows that perception of senses in construction of a literature peace, in spite of opinions of renowned theoretician, is not part of the past, yet. The psychological and the emotive game of the heroes in her stories, reminds in the stylistic and semantic aspects of the classic literature, where we can find the continual lines, the clear streaming of the story, purposefully integrity, dramatic plot and epilogue – which are the good consequences of her dramatic fondness.

The Internet Source:
http://www.ckl.cg.yu/arhiva.phtml?akcija=unutrasnja&id=2669
or:
http://www.ckl.cg.yu — then search in archive for number 103

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