Sumários
Croatia and its borders: Cultural and civilizational circles
13 Março 2026, 14:00 • Albertina Knezevic
Cultural and civilizational circles that influenced Croatia:
1) Central European - Catholicism, Protestantism and Judaism, German language
2) Mediterranean - Catholicism and Italian language
3) Southeastern European - Balkan - Orthodoxy and Islam
The borderline position of Croatian literature (Border literature/Edge literature)
Three aspects of borderland:
-geopolitical position of the country
-linguistic border
-civilizational border
Geopolitical position of the country:
On the border of the Slavic world
On the border of the Christian world
On the border of the Islamic world
Linguistic border (Bilingualism and multilingualism)
Civilizational border (East and West/North and South)
Overcoming the borders
Student presentations
4 Março 2026, 14:00 • Albertina Knezevic
Students presented their observations on border literature and examples from Croatian literature
Predrag Matvejević: Mediterranean Breviary
27 Fevereiro 2026, 14:00 • Albertina Knezevic
Mediterranean culture has very deep roots; it is a very vital culture, one of the most beautiful that has ever appeared on earth.
For the purposes of the "Breviary" he traveled the Mediterranean three times, the first time literally, the second time using old maps, and the third time reading old dictionaries, diaries and travelogues. Hence the three parts of the book: Breviary, Maps and Glossary.
In the Mediterranean Breviary, we read about port captaincies, about architecture, about the borders outlined by the culture of the olive tree, about the transition of nature into history and art, about the spread of certain religions, about the paths of eels, about waves and piers, he records the destinies and stories that are stored in nautical lexicons, he records the language, jargons and speeches that change in time and space: chiacchiera, ciacola and ćakula, scirocco, šilok and širo, neve, nevera and neverin, barca, barcon, barcosa, barcuius, bragoč…
Matvejević tries to encompass the Mediterranean, to surrender to the charm of this word, but also to strictly define its meanings, and to draw boundaries and establish boundaries. He follows various Mediterranean paths, the paths of amber and Sephardic Jews, grapevines and riverbeds.
Ivo Andrić: The Bridge on the Drina
25 Fevereiro 2026, 14:00 • Albertina Knezevic
The Balkan or Eastern Question is a set of problems that arose from the political and economic instability in the Ottoman Empire from the late 18th century until the formation of modern Turkey in 1923, and the strategic and political competition of the European great powers.
Congress of Berlin and Treaty of Berlin - Austria-Hungary gained the right to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Sarajevo assassination, June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo, the capital of then-occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbian terrorist Gavrilo Princip, a member of the Young Bosnia movement that planned the Serbian occupation of Bosnia, assassinated the Austro-Hungarian archduke, Franz Ferdinand - the outbreak of World War I.
The Bridge on the Drina - Historical novel - deals with the events and destinies of people related to the bridge on the Drina over four centuries, from 1516 to 1914.
In the novel, the bridge is a symbol of a solid structure that is eternally present, while human lives are transient.
Miroslav Krleža : The Return of Philip Latinovicz
20 Fevereiro 2026, 14:00 • Albertina Knezevic
Krleža is one of writers who have described and analyzed the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in their works. In Krleža, this "Austrian" theme also finds its expression in the accurate reproduction of the linguistic conditions in the higher circles of Agramer society, where, in addition to Croatian, German was predominantly spoken.
The literary horizons of Miroslav Krleža were as broad as those of any other author of his time. He was familiar with Western literature (with a particular fondness for Marcel Proust, Jean-Paul Sartre, Lord Byron and William Shakespeare), then Russian, Polish, Hungarian, South Slavic (with a dislike for Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, but also a secret love for Maxim Gorky) and, of course, above all German and Austrian literature.
These components form a special cultural structure on the basis of which we can characterize Krleža as a European author, as an author who thinks and writes at the height of European philosophical and artistic problems, while being deeply rooted in his own (Croatian, Pannonian, Yugoslav) soil, both in reality and spiritually.