The paper attempts to identify the implicit and explicit mythic elements in the collection of short prose Bukovska mati by Vlado Žabot, in which the protagonists, as inheritors of the contemporary subjective mind, which has been created in modern times and is radicalised in short prose, find themselves in an uncontrollable mythical world. The atmosphere of this world is composed of swampland, mud, slime, fog and night – which are all paradigmatic attributes of chaos. Narrative time is linear and causes consequences, but is not always successive. Another even more symptomatic characteristic of a myth is the organisation of the human collective, which is as a matter of fact a real tribal community with principles and rituals of their own. Getting in touch with this kind of community, a protagonist often becomes the object of sacrifice. Female characters play the ambivalent role of desirable but fatal women, thus resembling the images of bela žena, divja žena or matoha. The author’s great affection for mythical content which is present in all his novels and the work Bukovska mati is also displayed in his initiative for a generational collection of Young Slovene Prose Rošlin in Verjanko ali Dolgo odlagani opravek slovenstva.
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