УКРШТАЈ, СИМЕТРИЈА, (С)МИСАО: Трагом Аријаднине нити Костићеве мисли
Abstract
Докић, Марија. 2024. Укрштај, симетрија, (с)мисао: Трагом Аријаднине нити Костићеве мисли. Београд. Институт за политичке студије. ISBN 978-86-7419-394-5
A new book published by the Institute for Political Studies, Belgrade: INTERSECTION, SYMMETRY, MEANING: Following Ariadne’s thread of Kostić’s thought. In an impeccable style, in the manuscript in front of you, Dr. Marija Dokić, the author of the monograph, provided a wealth of facts about the work of the Serbian erudite Laza Kostić and the importance of the terms INTERSECTION, SYMMETRY AND MEANING in his philosophical thought.
Kostić is a dialectician, the author states, but he is also an esthete and an idealist who observes the whole world through the prism of beauty and light, eternally striving to fathom the secrets of the cosmos, a dreamer, an idealist, but above all an excellent thinker of the Serbian philosophical scene. The motif of light follows him, not only in his aesthetic writings, but also in his poems, where everything is as if under the light of the ideal he wants to reach, and which he certainly reaches in a certain sense. The way he looked at the world is heavily influenced by ancient thought, and the ideals of symmetry and harmony remain the basic concepts under which he writes and through which he tries to conceive and paint the entire world. Harmony has a destructive power, but it is only there to show the face of symmetry and, by crossing, to achieve the kind of overcoming that Nietzsche also talks about. One aspect always influences the other, and one leads to the other, and in the end, like Hegel’s thought, we arrive at a circular and immediately complete representation of the world, we arrive at the outline of reality under the distant Greek sky in the interpretation of Laza Kostić, within his aesthetics but always and most of his Hellenism.
The author deals not only with the research of Kostić’s concept of intersection, as a key moment of his philosophical thought structure, to which the first part of the monograph is also dedicated, but also with the influences that are present in Kostić’s thought, but also observes that the direct inspiration for the concept of intersection was precisely The Iliad, which on several occasions also represents the center of gravity of Kostić’s aesthetics. The entire monograph is shaped by Kostić’s parameters of symmetry and harmony, and it is the unity of opposites that is the basis of every individual work by Kostić, and as the author observes, it is most clearly present in his poem Santa Maria della Salute, where the philosophy of symbols and intersections becomes the main reflection of the poetic. The first part of the monograph is divided into chapters that deal with Kostić’s philosophical thought and his philosophy of intersectionality, while in the second and third parts the author studies his aesthetic writings and at the same time points to undeniable elements of connection with his philosophical predecessors, of which, in the domain of his aesthetic contribution, he is especially significant Nietzsche.
With her contribution, Marija Dokić opens the door to a more versatile view of Kostić’s thought and a deeper understanding of his philosophical and poetic oeuvre, which points to his insufficiently researched but incommensurable contribution to Serbian culture, ideals and thought. This work helps us to see the face of Laza Kostić as a thinker who shaped the ideas of the next generations with his unusual ideas and thoughts, and whose influence from that aspect can be seen even today.
