A PARODY OF MYTHICAL AND FOLKLORE IN THE NOVEL "THE EPIC OF WATER" BY ENES HALILOVIĆ
Authors: Jelenić Milica Ž. 
Published: June 2023

The paper deals with the parodic procedure in the novel "The Epic of Water" by Enes Halilović. Considering the significant share of mythical and folklore, the nature of these silts in the work was illuminated and the parodic relationship to tradition was observed. In addition to the above-mentioned elements, the share of the historical can also be seen as significant, which was observed through the prism of the postmodernist text, which results in a specific relationship with the past.
The socio-historical context, the system of social and moral values and the influence of the social component, appears as a basis for parodic and satirical effects, but with the final aim of raising it to the level of the universal. Part of the historical elements appear as an inseparable creative element of the parody complex in "The Epic of Water", because it is a particular event from modern history (the emigration of the population and the submergence of fertile land due to the construction of the artificial Lake Gazivode, which Halilović clearly mentions as one of the localities in the index of terms at the end of the book) that is the undisguised inspiration for the creation of the mythological guide to the flood and after it, as the author himself defines his narrative in the subtitle. However, Halilović's historicism is seen in the work as specific, because in his critical consideration of the value of the past, he elevates the local to the level of the universal. The author's attitude that history is subordinate to fiction can be interpreted as a view of history characteristic of postmodernist art, where history figures as a kind of intertext. The postmodernist attitude towards tradition, interpreted on the basis of the material the author takes from folklore and myth, is reflected in an ambivalent attitude towards tradition, where its conventions are established only to be destabilized in a parodic way. The ending of the novel is interpreted in the key of the eschatological vision of the created world, in the form of an aquatic apocalypse. Such an unraveling of narratives is seen as an example of the myth of doom, but also as a necessary stage of purification. Halilović's Paljevo is condemned to complete disappearance. The rapid moral degeneration of Muriz's lineage begins with Zahit's marriage to a mute and weak-minded foreign woman of unknown origin. From such a marriage is born Zaim, the first Paljevac who collects coffins for his closest relatives and who marries a woman who practices black magic, which leads to the culminating degradation of all virtues. It is interesting that in the same generation, Char's lineage visibly deteriorates - Charovac, whom Aljo goes to in order to free himself from the magical effects of Zaim's wife, himself performs black magic rituals. Therefore, in the end, the multiplied sins of the hero of the novel are symbolically dissolved by the water, disappearing in the purifying flood. In addition to the mythic layer that can be read at the end, a satirical moment related to modern society that boldly and brazenly manages human destinies, assuming the role of a higher power that decides on the justification of the flood for the sake of representing apparently general, but actually its own interests, is also pointed out. The motif of the flood was also analyzed at a metanarrative level, as a punishment from the author himself as the creator of his personal cosmogony, but at the same time with the hope of a new beginning, a new order, the emergence of which, in truth, is not even announced yet, but which exists as a logical continuation cyclical understanding of the cosmos and history, according to which the world catastrophe marks the end of one period and the beginning of a new one. In the claim that maybe no one needs the story, but that the author needs it, the irony of the poststructuralist position that the author is not a person in the psychological sense and that the work continues to live after the author, thanks to the readers is made clear. However, the statement from the novel that the story is indestructible ultimately reveals the exact opposite - despite the aquatic apocalypse of the world it narrates, the narrative itself is indestructible, which is why "The Epic of Water" still essentially appears as a masterful apology of both story and telling. This is exactly how we saw the apocalypse of a world built from universal motifs, translated into a special postmodernist fantastic prose with an emphasized parodic relationship to myth and folklore heritage.