Il cibo in esilio

Abstract

In Cankar’s prose the characters drink aplenty, but they do not ingest any food. According to Kermenauer this happens because Cankar gives shape to ideas, not to people. Differently from Cankar, Marko Marulic fills his poem "Judita" with descriptions of the food consumed both by the heroine herself and by Holofernes’s court. The references to the food are a way of helping the fellow Dalmatians to relate to the biblical tale and to understand it not only as a story referring to the struggle between Syrians and Hebrews, but also as a tale about themselves and their struggles against the Turks. The essay goes on exploring texts in which the cultural differences between religions or nations are shown in food culture as well. "Gorski Vjenac" by Petar Petrović Njegoš is taken into consideration. However, Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian literature rely now on texts by authors who are in exile. These writers have a double identity and belong to their original as well as the new literature of the European or American nation they live in. In exile, food always tastes differently. The recipe of a dish becomes then of primary importance in order to remember the original taste of the past. Some works by Aleksandar Hemon, Stevan Sremac, Ivo Andrić, Danilo Kiš and Dubravka Ugrešić are discussed.