Veljko Petrović or a Man Standing High in the Plain – Geoanthropology of the Literary Mind

Abstract

This work explores mythology and semantics of the land in the Veljko Petrović’s poetry and prose. In Petrović’s work, the land is a polyvalent symbol: it constitutes itself in metaphorical strings that are national and human, historical and metaphysical, personally experienced and archetypically lived through, sum into specific pictures of the plain, home, and motherland. Lyrical subjects in Petrović’s poetry and narrative persons of his prose are established in a way that is an expression of a specific literary geoanthropology. Presenting and understanding a Serbian man of the plain and his destiny as stated, Veljko Petrović achieved by crossing symbols and images from different life levels: historical, ethnogeographical, social, religious, psychological. Credibility and depth of this artistic vision is strongly confi rmed by the writer’s anthological essay “Praise the Plain”.