ТHE TRADITIONAL REPRESENTATION OF A VAMPIRE IN PEKIĆ’S SOTIE HOW TO QUIET A VAMPIRE

Abstract

Through the analysis of the traditional representation of a vampire in Pekić’s sotie How to quiet a vampire we came to some significant conclusions that will certainly help to interpret Pekić’s poetics. The sotie’s vampire is a metaphoric projection of Rutkovski’s past. Rutkovski’s reluctant participation in a Nazi-movement and the mentorship of Steinbrecher produced his psychological deviation, i.e. a dual personality. Rutkovski’s interaction with Steinbrecher is por- trayed by means of subjective-objective mechanism. As a dual personality, the protagonist has all the prerequisites to make a vampire out of an unquiet past. Analytical plunge into the mythical matrix resulted in the analogies that shed the light on Pekić’s poetical actions. In fact, the Archean man confronts the world that is unknown to him precisely through its “personalisation”. Similarly, but with a significant distinction, Pekić confronts his hero with his inner world – fathomless to an ordinary man – through personalisation of the past and its results. By shedding the light on the dark layers of hero’s subconsciousness, Pekić points to their significance giving them more power in comparison to the empirical circumstances. Accordingly, Pekić draws distinction between the external and internal history on one hand, and between the visible and invisible revolutions on the other, whereby it is evident from Pekić’s work which ones of those bear more importance for the development of the mankind. It is precisely these invisible and empirically improvable revo- lutions that are coded by a folkloric layer of Pekić’s works. In this way the author of the sotie problematised the historical discourse, the syllogistic reasoning and the position of the scientists. The author also generously questions his own position, by murdering Rutkovski with a black um- brella, that is, by marking him as a vampire. Therefore, we may see Pekić’s clash with his own past, his confrontation with the prison memories.