The modern social situation force writers to turn to the intimate life of their protagonists, who are largely no longer in opposition to the outside world. In Andrej Blatnik's book with the eloquent title of Zakon želje (2000) the main characters, though supposedly free, are in reality compelled to submit not only to circumstances and relations, but also to their own desires. The key word here is "law". A distinctive feature of the modern world is that the literary figure no longer strives to achieve that which is hidden behind the concept of "freedom", as the free person is in practice caught in a "dead corner" (Mrtvi kot, the title of a book by Dušan Šarotar, 2002) of aimless inertia. The result of this is a sense of inferiority: an intense feeling of submission to stereotypes, coincidence, the will of others, death and so on. A sense of the exhaustedness of life has become the fundamental characteristic of contemporary Slovene short prose.
|
