ART BENEATH THE GALLOWS: VILLON, RIMBAUD AND DAVIČO AS ALTERNATIVE VOICES OF A HISTORICAL PERIOD

Abstract

Among the most obviously visible aspects of François Villon, Arthur Rimbaud and Oskar Davičo as not only poetic voices, but, in general, as persons in a cultural period, was their relationship towards artistic and political praxis, as well as towards literary language, form, and consequently, more or less explicitly, towards the relationship between thought, consciousness and language. Partaking directly in the social of their epochs, and merging their singularly innovative stylistic expression with their subversive political orientation in the midst of these events, the three poets form a sort of chronological axis of poetics. In this paper, through comparative analysis, we intend to, first and foremost, interpret the works of Oskar Davičo in light of the two earlier poets, as his historical forerunners or analogues. This is to be done by means of three different aspects: the aforementioned matter of language, consciousness and form; then, the matter of the concept of the body and the physical; and finally, as the synthesis of the two former aspects, the matter of daily life as reflected in the poetry of these poets, and likewise, the position of the lyrical subject, the self, in their opus.