Dekadentni erotismus a vražda. Obraz fatalni ženy v romanu Miroslava Krleži Povratak Filipa Latinovicza

• Authors: Alenka Jensterle-Doležalová

Title variants

EN

DECADENT EROTICISM AND CRIME. THE PORTRAIT OF THE FEMME FATALE IN MIROSLAV KRLEŽA’S NOVEL POVRATAK FILIPA LATINOVICZA [THE RETURN OF PHILIP LATINOVIC]

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

Miroslav Krleža (1893–1981) in his novel Povratak Filipa Latinovicza (1932) formed the myth of the femme fatale in the picture of two women: Regina and Bobočka. Women are the main obsession of the hero, the painter Filip, who returns home after twenty-three years to find lost sources of his identity and lost inspiration for his art. The novel – story of Filip’s life – regarding the problem that women are just objects of desire, is divided into two parts: the trauma of Regina belongs to his youth (first part of the novel) and affects his present; Bobočka is the frustration in his present. Women with no clear identity are mainly presented with the body, they represent the irrational world and mystery and they explore their body to use men and improve their position in society. Eroticism is the place of Evil. In this sense especially bizarre is Bobočka, with whom Filip falls desperately in love: she ruined men in the past and she does the same to present lovers. Filip plays the role of an observer: he experiences especially bizarre erotic scene in a threesome between Bobočka, her lover Kyriales and her man Baločanski. The grotesque, obscene scene is the place of modern hell, where the hero is punished by looking at his beloved with two other men. The end is very characteristic and amplifies the love by – connection death. Baločanski murders Bobočka, the solution of that decadent eroticism is Death. This figures also as a punishment for Bobočka in the sense of Christian philosophy: she was a vampire for the men and Baločanki murders her in the same grotesque manner. This novel was very modern in the literature of Central Europe at the beginning of the twentieth Century. Very modern is the theme of eroticism, its connection with the evil and death, even though the presentation of the woman follows the traditional stereotype of the prostitute. Eroticism in the broken mirror – in the schizophrenic perspective of sensible narrator – expresses the importance of Freud’s psychoanalysis.

Keywords

EN

MIROSLAV KRLEŽA; FEMME FATALE; BODY; EROTICISM; DECADENCE; DEATH; EVIL

• Publisher: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wroclawskiego
• Journal: Slavica Wratislaviensia
• Year: 2010
• Volume: 152
• Pages: 43-52

Contributors

author

Alenka Jensterle-Doležalová