The Memory of Sarajevo in the Memoirs of Prose Authors from Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

The aim of the article was to indicate the importance of memory and forgetfulness in human life based on memories of three authors born in Sarajevo — Emir Kusturica, Alexander Hemon, and Miljenko Jergovic. This made it possible to show Sarajevo’s image preserved in their memory and to show the differences between the period of peaceful existence of the ethnically diverse society of the federal period of Yugoslavia and the period after the bloody war in Bosnia and Herzegovina 1992–1995. In their works, the memory of the city in which they grew up and spent their youth before the war indicates the peaceful coexistence of an ethnically diverse society. The war destroyed the current order and rituals, and also brought the necessity to define their national and ethnic identity. Retaining the memory of the family and its roots became a defence against forgetfulness, proving how much people need rooting in a family, neighbourhood, social, state or ethnic community, although the confrontation of the remembered image with the current place becomes a painful clash with one’s own remembering.