The Poetical Function of Toast in Petar Kočić’s Literature

Abstract

A toast is one of the oral-poetic forms that, in Petar Kočić’s literature, carries strong evocativeness and artistic expressiveness, particularly in the cycle of stories about Simeun Đak. Through intertextuality in Kočić's work, complex processes of simultaneously continuing and modifying connective structures of collective memory are reflected, finding their poetic sublimation in oral-poetic forms. We have shown that Kočić's appeal of toasts, for the purpose of literary elaboration of the themes of his time, primarily serves to create complex autoimages and hetero-images, i.e., to depict the mentality of the Krajina region and its distinctive characters. Autoimages about oneself and one's own, as well as heteroimages about others, are realized through humour, at the level of subverting canonised forms of toasts and playing with them. This approach represents a way of repetition, memory, and preservation of tradition and identity through literature. The toast emerges as one of those folkloric creations through which the artist succeeds in illuminating the people's wisdom and reflection with new brilliance and expressing them with greater complexity of meaning.