How to Say the Unutterable: the Trauma of War and the Identity of the Child in the Novels of Vesna Aleksić My name is Jelena Šuman and Violins Constellation

Abstract

At the heart of all conversations and reflections on trauma is an essential question about the possibility of its linguistic embodiment, its true translatability to the plane of communication, its introduction into the space of conversation about particular or shared experiences. The problem of communicability of trauma stands as a double-edged sword, or a Gordian knot, equally in psychology, sociology or litera-ture and science about it, if these things are at all arbitrarily separable. Literature, on the other hand, it is probably unnecessary to point out, has always applied the verbalizing method in question in its own way – the shaping of traumatic, personal as well as collective experiences in literature stands as one of the main foundations on which the art of words rests. The outlined hermeneutic problems acquire a new dimension when it comes to children’s literature. In one specific section with the problem of trauma in literature as a whole, a special place of a very important field of research can be seen, both for the science of literature and much more widely, for sociology, pedagogy, anthropology, cultural studies –and that is the question of how children’s literature shapes and treats trauma. This paper will ask those questions in relation to the novels of the contemporary Serbian author of literature for the youngest readers, Vesna Aleksić.