Symbolic Representations of the Death of Europe in Miroslav Krleža’s The Devil’s Island and The Return of Philip Latinowicz, and Miloš Crnjanski’s The Journal of Čarnojević

Abstract

In this paper, we observe the symbolic representations of the idea of The Death of Europe in two novels by Miroslav Krleža (The Devil’s Island and The Return of Philip Latinowicz) as well as Miloš Crnjanski’s The Journal of Čarnojević. Employing the insights of Wolfgang Schmale and Oswald Spengler, we will regard Europe as a cultural, historical and immaterial notion, which profoundly influenced the formation of the characters in the aforementioned works. In doing so, we will rely heavily on the concept of bioculture, as well as on earlier interpretations of particular segments of these novels. We focus on the shaping of heroes and their self-awareness, as well as the symbolic manifestations of the theme that follows them. In these novels, they will discuss and think about Europe, resonate and ascertain its state, but also the state of their inner transformation. Thus, the death of Europe can be seen as one of the sources of identity rootedness, and the search for balance, to which Petar Rajić, Gabriel Kavran Jr. and Philip Latinowicz are committed. The conclusion is that these three heroes are members of the same world that have been transposed to early 20th-century fiction. Their pursuit of a better world, originating from youthful idealism, will be directed at almost identical etheric visions of a utopian and unpolluted reality. This essentially modernist view of the world speaks of human individuality as an inseparable part of the environment from which it originates and the desire to overcome its imperfection from within.