The Magic of Belgrade: A City Where Heritage Meets the Modern

Abstract

The capital of Serbia, Belgrade, is a city with a lengthy history dating back to the seventh millennium BC. In the third century BC the Celts named it Singidunum, whereas since the ninth century AD it has been known as Beligrad, meaning The White City.. Strategically located on the crossroad between the Occident and the Orient, between the Pannonian Valley and the Balkans, at the confluence of the Danube and the Sava River, this city, in which heritage meets the modern, is also the meeting point of influences from West and East. The city has been depicted by many authors, both Serbian and foreign, but among these literary works stands out the oeuvre of Momo Kapor, who devoted his whole life to writing about and painting the scenes from life in Belgrade. Kapor was well known and successful both as a painter, having exhibited his work in renowned galleries in Serbia and abroad, and as a writer, since his forty-odd novels and short story collections are bestsellers in Serbia and have been translated into dozens of foreign languages. In The Magic of Belgrade, Momo Kapor does not only describe the monuments and people of this beautiful city, he even searches for what he calls "the spirit of Belgrade". The purpose of this paper is to pinpoint such elements of Kapor's work that capture the spirit of the place by reflecting, on the one hand, its heritage and, on the other, its urban growth which has resulted in its modernity.



Author Information
Ljiljana Markovic, University of Belgrade, Serbia
Biljana Djoric Francuski, University of Belgrade, Serbia
Bosko Francuski, University of Belgrade, Serbia

Paper Information
Conference: HCNY2018
Stream: Language. Literature and Linguistics

This paper is part of the HCNY2018 Conference Proceedings (View)
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Posted by James Alexander Gordon