This thesis explores the structure of Dževad Karahasan's novel Vzhodni divan (Eastern Divan). The bosnian-herzegovinian's author novel takes the structure of an arabesque, employing it to emphasize content. According to Karahasan's essay collection Knjiga vrtova (The book of Gardens), the literary arabesque is a structure in which the parts reflect the whole, their repetition creating a sense of infinity. In this manner, Vzhodni divan's structure reflects a fundamental esoteric idea that doubles as the novel's principal theme, while simultaneously including other literary themes, such as fear, the question of art and artist, the role of language and the dilemmas of historiography, and, through these, the fundamental question of absolute truth. The novel, through its structure, demonstrates that truth is always an amalgam of varied, often even contradictory views, and thus, it is always relative. The author applies this idea to the intercultural dialogue between Eastern and Western cultures.
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