Figure i sjene (O žudnji, nasilju i svetom u dramama Jeana Geneta i Bernard-Mariea Koltesa)

We are talking about authors who have been present in the repertoire of Croatian drama theaters for several decades, their translations of the most important plays have been published, they are taught at colleges and art academies, but their dramatic oeuvre has not yet been adequately presented and evaluated in the Croatian language. Therefore, this excellent comparative study, in which the Genet-Koltès and text-performance connections are established above all, is at the same time a fundamental and pioneering scientific work.

The author convincingly proves that Genet and Koltès, with their small but extremely influential dramatic works, actually reacted to similar stimuli, dealt with similar issues and responded to similar existential, social, political and cultural questions. It also proves that their answers to these questions were different, sometimes contradictory, which is, of course, directly related to all the differences between the two of them as people and writers, and between their understanding of the function of dramatic literature and theater in contemporary society, as well as their relation to contemporary theater practice. Despite these differences and contradictions, according to the author, one can talk about a series of analogous procedures and attitudes. In both of these exceptional dramatists, she is primarily interested in the status of "desire", that is, the driving forces that their characters embody and that, by creating conflicting situations, set the dramatic action in motion; then "violence", which occurs in a wide range from verbal duels in the footsteps of French classicist drama to mutilations and murders to destructive coups; and the "holy", which most often appears thanks to actions that act like renewed or ironized rituals and stories that try to get closer to myth.