Desires and Wishes: Aleksandar Vučo's Work for Adults and Children

• In Event: Yugoslav Aesthetics II: Surrealism’s Uncharted Territory: The Belgrade 13, and Counting

Abstract

While many Surrealists were interested in the aesthetic potential of the childlike and the child’s viewpoint, poet Aleksandar Vučo regularly wrote for both adults and children and reflected on the close symbiotic relationship between his poems for both audiences. The tension between the erotic charge of unbridled desire and the unlimited fantasy of wish-making is central to Vučo’s genre-ambiguous works like the 1932 Humor Zaspalo and the later 1960s and 1970s publications Poziv na maštanje and Nepovrat Humora zaspalog. In this talk, I will discuss these and other works for children and adults with special attention to the resistance to genre definition and categorization and its aesthetic and political meanings.

Author

• Ainsley Morse, UC San Diego