Drazan Gunjaca - The Shade of Reason
REVIEW
The
Shade of Reason
- book on-line
- editor's note
- review
Dr. Massimiliano Zantedeschi
The jury of the award Premio Annalisa Scafi 2004 (Italy)
Prof. Giuseppina Scognamiglio
Francesco Mazzetta, Italy, 2004
- 5. Emilio Diedo
Few authors have succeeded in the difficult project of summarizing the patterns of history of a whole people through short fortunes and misfortunes of fictional characters. Even fewer are those who are able to do it when the word "people" has been transformed, multiplied into "ethnoses", "nations", and whatnot, and when the memory of history has seemingly disappeared. That is precisely what Drazan Gunjaca succeeds in doing with his play "In the Shadow of Reason". And more than that. He offers his readers and viewers, including those remote ones, a delayed perception of war devastation in the former Yugoslavia, an opportunity to experience for the first time, or to experience anew, the immense tragedy of the tormented Balkans. He does it, no matter how weird it may sound, with a smile on his face. Yes, with a smile. With exceptional and brilliant sense of irony Gunjaca is telling us about Ante and Hussein in funny, but, at the same time, bitter and grotesque undertones, and, while doing it, brings the action kind of miraculously to its sublimation, nearly reaching the source that precedes the events, where the creative imagination again becomes History. As if nearly touching the source where characters, invented heroes, again become human beings. The lives of the heroes in Gunjaca's play are lives left to the mercy of chance in no man's land of which no one actually knows between what sides it is situated. But the torments they are going through, their frustrating metamorphoses, inaction to which they are condemned and which may well lead them to a mocking fate, cannot but make us reflect on our own fate.
"In the shade of reason» by Drazan Gunjaca, has been awarded for its crude yet humane way of telling about a conflict that set nations and cultures apart. A friendship between two men fighting for the opposing sides is not a new theme, but this text deals with it in a detailed and profound manner and with a very original and intelligent style. The dialogues stem from tradition but none the less contain a clear mosern sensitivity, from both the point of view of language and that against the war, which eventually becomes a voice against all wars that make man evil, brutal and unable to think. The author reconstructed the history of a country in an excellent manner, even if the plot is placed in gloomy rooms of prisons and army barracks. Excellent is also the portrayal of a friendship that is touching for its power and generosity, given through a view that is theatrical yet never sentimental, and cristal clear to the end.
Drazan Gunjaca presents himself as a great tragedian. His drama "In the shade of reason" is an extremely topical play and difficult to metabolize to an unprepared reader or viewer. As we procede through the three acts, we feel trapped in a sort of mental prison with solid, yet invisible bars, while he, the demiurge author is not offering his hand. Instead, he lets us get close to the shade and lose our way in the darkness.
The Shade of Reason (Prospettiva Editrice, 83 pp., € 10) is the third theatrical text by Drazan Gunjaca, and the second translated in Italian. We would also like to mention the previous one, Balkan Roulette, and his novel Balkan Farewells, both published by Fara Editore in 2003.
The play Balkan Roulette and the novel Balkan Farewells both tell us about the drama of the Balkan conflict, just like the play The Shade of Reason.
Of the three, the only one containing "geographical" notes is the novel with its descriptions of the protagonist's pilgrimage through the war torn Balkans. The two plays, on the contrary, are claustrophobically limited in space and time.
The first, in the time span of a single night, tells us about Petar, an ex Yugoslav officer who is suddenly a Serbian on Croatian land. In his apartment, he meditates about suicide after his Croatian wife leaves him and takes their children with her. The second play takes place in a prison cell where, in a single day, three different prison guards take over - first the Croatians, then the Serbs and in the end the Bosnians - and the prisoner is Ante, a retired history professor. Ante is Croatian, just like the soldiers who captured him because he was wearing a Serbian uniform in the attempt to cross the border and reach his family. His "compatriots" believe him to be a spy and want to execute him by firing squad, but Ante feigns madness and starts to lecture them on recent Balkan history, as if he were still at school. The numerous changes on the front do not bring freedom to him or his Bosnian inmate because every time, he remains trapped in the madness that seems to be chronical in this part of the world, making the people here hate and fight each other. Today, when this hatred seems to be dying away and Croatia in particular is becoming a favourite destination for Italian tourists, to be able to read a story about the madness that has devastated this country in a prose balancing between farce and tragedy, told by someone who has experienced all that personally (the author is an ex officer of the Yugoslav Navy currently living in Pula and practicing law), is a privilege that makes us think about the tragedy experienced by a country so close to us.
5. Emilio Diedo (Punto di Vista, n.45/2005, Italy)
Chronologically, In the Shade of Reason is the third play written by Drazan Gunjaca, but it is the second edited play. While the first two were one act plays, this one is structured in three acts organized in only one scene. I have already had the possibility to praise his first play, Balkan Roulette, by awarding it at the San Maurelio literary contest (2nd edition 2004), and I can only confirm the quality of this last one. It is proof the the Author has the making of the comediographer along with being a dramatist, as well as an already established narrator and essayist.
I consider In the Shade of Reason to be an exceptional work, characterized by a rare and precious existentialism capable of capturing the reader or the viewer - should it be put on stage. There is a double dialogical projection of the protagonists, a Croat Ante and a Serb Husein, inserted in a strictly ideological conflict (political and religious) which is a drama in itself. With profound introspection, the preventive incarceration of the two heroes, first by the Croats, then the Serbs and in the end the Bosnians renders the sense of alienation this triple war (it should be multiplied further due to fanatics: chetniks, ustasha and mujaheddin) has caused in the people fighting in it or simply living in the territory, no matter of their involvement. Every statement, every question and the consequent answer given by the two prisoners make up a kind of game at rope-tugging with destiny. Every single moment they feel like balancing between existence and non-existence.
In time they reach the difficult decision to self-destruct, considering suicide as a serious option. They never actually put it into effect but till the end suicide remains an alternative to the firing squad. A halucinating, nonsensical alternative that nevertheless gives sense to a possible death by somebody else's hand.
