2025 MSA Annual Conference. THEME: Beyond Crises: Resilience and (In)stability. WHEN: 14 - 18 July 2025. WHERE: Prague, Czech Republic. Pál Száz will give a lecture at the conference at Charles University in Prague. More information: https://msaprague2025.dryfta.com/.
Pál Száz: Metaphors of Sarajevo in the context of the siege from the perspective of memory (abstract)
The study examines texts related to the siege of Sarajevo, i.e. literary representations in which urban space is textualized. Specifically, it analyses texts that explicitly seek to capture the essence and phenomena of the city, not only as a site of the plot. These textual representations, narratives as textual resources for collective memory are examined are examined from a poetic point of view. It is necessary to answer the following questions: which metaphors are used to describe the city? What are the typical metaphors, and how did their use change in the context of the siege of the city?
The paper applies a specific branch of cognitive metaphor theory related to spatial theories and memory studies as well as the literary tradition of the urban text and specifically the phenomenon of the "Sarajevski text" to demonstrate that these metaphors have a mnemonic function. Different types of essayistic texts will be examined from Miljenko Jergović, Dževad Karahasan, Abdulah Sidran, Bogdan Bogdanović and Raymond Rehnicer. In these Sarajevo texts the city appears as labyrinth or shell close to itself, a map, or a book, what one can read the second Jerusalem, the fata morgana, the island. The occupied city appears as anthropological laboratory, or tabut (Muslim coffin) enclosing the dead, or as a man lying down in the valley, weighed down and not allowed to get up. Four codes of metaphors can be distinguished: enigmatic-cryptic, morphological-architectural, mnemonic-temporal and anthropomorphic-corporeal. They evolve in the context of the siege: the first type disappears, the second and third change their function, and the fourth code only emerges at this point.
The metaphors have an important cognitive role to play in memory, and the thirtieth anniversary of the city's liberation provides an excellent opportunity to raise awareness of this fact.
