Socialist Realism, War, and Subtexts of Politics and Culture.
A Yugoslavian Bambi by Ahmet Hromadžić
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25365/lili-2023-59-2Keywords:
heroic tales, animal stories, socialist realism, concepts of relationship, intermedialityAbstract
Significant similarities to Bambi indicate that the Bosnian-Yugoslavian children’s writer Ahmet Hromadžić took his cue from Felix Salten’s classic when writing Okamenjeni vukovi (1963 ‘The Petrified Wolves’). In addition to parallels, the focus of this paper is particularly on divergences that express a different cultural location and ideological imprint of the two texts. With Srebrenko, Hromadžić transforms the clever and reserved Bambi into a cheerful hero who enjoys fame throughout the forest. His portrayal follows the socialist realist norms of a positive main character. While the existing research literature points to precariousness in increasingly anti-Semitic Vienna after 1900 as the background for the creation of Bambi, Srebrenko’s fierce fight against the wolves recalls impressions of the Second World War that Hromadžić experienced at a young age.
