Ratko Adamovic

The motives of Caravanserai are, as a rule, transposed into metaphorical,
symbolical and allegorical robes. The motives of the family chest (with a coat
of arms of the house and the standard), the theatrical Dome, the ark and
the chariot, water, wall, pre-Mother, whiteness, sage old man, beard,
voyage? not only are densely scattered over the wideness of the book, but
they also alternate their own meanings?BR> The motives of the chariot and the ark represent all the forces of the
unconscious, cultivated by those who steer, as the bearers of the spiritual
nature / conscience of the man. They are the vehicles of the wondering
spirit, the codes of communication between the sacred and the profane,
celestial and mundane, conscious and super-conscious, collective and
individual. In the "novel" The Celestial People on the Shore, the main
character, Petar, after a ship-wreck (the spiritual breakdown), dragging with
him only the family chest with the coat of arms and the standard (as the
reliquiae for the cyclic restoration, which found the Church and build the
foundation of the new Union, new Presence and the new Salvation from sins)
- reaches the shore of his ancestors (drinks from the spring of the origin,
and, thus nourished in the Kin, continues the quest for the answers to the
eternal questions).
The stone wall is the symbol of ontological stability, a counterpart - by its
strength, solidity and durability - to the Church Canon, i.e. to the Faith.
Obsession with walls - these thongs of Logos, the arrested/dogmatic Mind,
religious Canon, the boundary of Knowing... hits the gateway of
"Caravanserai". The motive of wall also recalls defence and bondage: it is a
sign of broken communication, with a twofold psychological consequence: it
preserves, but also ruins the spiritual habitus. It is akin to the symbolism of
the uterus... In The Wings of Petar Valdeg, the main character, a painter,
stands amazed by a wall on a cliff, over a great abandoned prison, on which
Nature depicted a Miracle: "a gateway" of a Woman who found herself in
labour there: petrified by an unknown terror. The terrified souls of the
executed prisoners made this opening in the wall of the abundant female
refuge: the opening calling with a magic of maternal protection, recreation,
salvation...: like and unexpected announcement... In the same way, the
walls/boundaries to the penetration of the human mind into the anarchistic
domains of the Universe (astray from the canonic path marked by the hand
of the All-Holder) - torment the characters of Caravanserai.
The motive of prae-Mother - as the first form of Anima, the source of all
instincts has utmost importance in Adamovic's book. The longing for maternal
protection, for her warmth and gentleness developed into a real cult in the
"novel" In front of the Picture of the Green-Bearded Man. In his "novel", the
theatrical building (The Temple of Arts) was erected on an empty armchair,
the emptiness of Her (the deceased mother), the utmost important spectator
of the actor's Theater... But, Adamovic's attitude toward the phenomenon of
Woman (this motive is marginal, relative to the scope of the book), is
extremely neuralgic and far more complex than it first appears: he is torn
between excessive love for the idealized mother and cynical humiliation of
the typical woman (devoted exclusively to the instinctive life: the love for
husband and child), between the type of the mistress (the seducer having
the greatest impact upon social life), and the integral, dreamed woman (who,
in her being, joins the primary, archetypal with the spiritual-intellectual)... In
the cynicism, then the resignation of the Green-Bearded (from the "novel" In
Front of the Picture of the Green-Bearded Man) have grown wildly on the
background of the insatiable appetite of women who are never under the
influence of the Apollonian-Dionysiac principle in men, but only under the
influence of the Faunal in them. It is therefore, not surprising that the main
character of this "novel" insists upon his beard (green beard, therefore
characteristic), and is bound to enchant, psychologically, a woman. The
Beard is but the transformed potency of the male member: it is meticulously
cultivated by its owner, for he has resumed the role of Don Juan, the
insatiable seducer, using his erotical powers in fulfilling his supreme aim:
success in Creation. The enchanting, hypnotizing effect of the phallus (and
of the beard, as its diminished reflection) in its essence bears a deep,
defeating base consisting of interest, which diminishes the value of the
feminine principle. Namely, Caravanserai (more precisely: the mentioned
"novel") backs up the faith in the male procreative principle (supersensual
and righteous), as well as in the absence of the ethical and
spiritual-intellectual equality of the sexes. For the male ideal of Woman -
chaste, beautiful and sage - can live only if a male/conscious principle is
embedded in it. As the same, the imminent, God-like ideal of Man - in spite of
the sin of deliberate and insatiable seduction - is enthroned and ontologized
here. Man in Woman keeps searching for a Human (with the developed logical
and ethical - creative - being therein). Intercourse is only an Asiatic "wage"
given by a man to a simple-minded woman, who in return and unconsciously,
opens the gateway of social Power to him.
The motive of Old man - as the bearded of Wisdom, Virtue, Prophecy - keeps
wondering through the novelistic "bloodstream" of Caravanserai. The old man
Harun, the father Dimitrije, the grandfather Stefan... lay the stones of
authentic wisdom into the novelistic flower-beds of the book. And they raise
it to the status of the pagan Bible.
The motive of the theatrical Dome, as we have seen, is founded in Plotinian
and Platonic ideas. It recalls the mystical aura that radiates the essence of
divine, procreative Mercy. But it also brings into the thematic repertoire of
the book the supreme Criterion of Value, important for Creation. In the
"novel" In Front of the Picture of a Green-Bearded Man, Adamovic develops
his own poetics, in writing, ironically, the disastrous history of the treatment
of works of Permanent Value in an environment that laughs at and destroys
everything that it does not understand.
Ratko Adamovic, in Caravanserai, recreates the ancient world densely
inhabited by meanings, messages, spirituality, divine announcements... -
expressing them in a heraldic language. This is the world of the distorted
vision, of the enstranged... that flourishes on the matrix of neurosis and
Christian ethos. And the mythopoetic activity is enacted through the writer's
strong feeling for the supernatural.
Caravanserai is the glossary by which its creator, as the creative, as the
creative transmission of the Divine, teaches us about the pattern of the
world. Caravanserai is also a clandestine tractate that gives ready answers
to some neuralgic questions. That is, the question of the relation between
the creative ingenious spirit and the divine (The Wings of Petar Valdeg), as
well as the question of the relation between Ethics and Creation (In Front of
the Picture of the Green-Bearded Man). The confusion imminent in the first
question is resolved and confirmed mainly in the chapter For Atheists Only,
where the Canon (given from Above) turns into a literary burlesque. The
creativity of the Man-God (the artist of the brush) juggles with
predestination. The Creation is not represented solely in the sinful, inhibited
character of "rewriting" of the divine Secret writing (when the pulsation of
the invisible world, uncultivated by the divine marks, suddenly crashes upon
the soul of the sinful artist who impudently ventured into the excessive
Realization), but also in the character of elaboration of the divine Gift by the
aggressive intervention of the creative genius... The other complexity is
answered, as we have seen in the story of the Green-Bearded, with a
symptomatic reply: for the sake of the supreme Values, the Divine rules may
be transgressed: for the path to the supreme Goal sometimes may, or even
has to be, paved by mundane sins. The scandalous attitude of the
Green-Bearded actor towards women - as towards aids in the Christ-like
progress of the Artist towards eternal glory (supreme Art) - unveils this
problematic axiology. The desire for the materialization of the dreamed
Woman, perfect in all respects (Marie Curie, Clara Schumann) does not
diminish the shameless splendor of enthroned Sin!
The language of Adamovic's prose is a stored language: the one taking over
the information enclosed in collective memory, thus borrowing the role of the
oral language (maternal orality, the memorial language of the Muses,
mnemonic function of tradition). Metaphors emphasize its fluidity: it flows like
a continuous stream. It is easily accessible, simple, natural and concise, yet
loaded with miraculous/timeless meanings. And yet, it preserves the pearls of
the primary/folk Wisdom, which, in the context of literature, provokes a
special kind of aesthetic excitement. The mute, irrational spirit of the oral
epics as an accomplice to the written expression of the thinking spirit opened
the indefinite and ancient spring of Adamovic's expression. And picturesque
scenes - akin to the bright symbolical scenes from The Revelation of St. John
the Baptist - drench this text with the spirit of paganism.

(Translated by Mira Orlovic)