PITANjE REFERENCE I REPREZENTACIJE U KIŠOVOJ PRIČI ,,GROBNICA ZA BORISA DAVIDOVIČA”

Abstract

This paper explores the complex relationship between history and fiction in Danilo Kiš’s story ”A Tomb for Boris Davidovich”, with particular emphasis on the transformation of historical fact into a symbolic and ethical narrative act. Drawing on theoretical frameworks developed by Linda Hutcheon, Paul Ricoeur, Brian McHale, and Lubomír Doležel, the analysis demonstrates that Kiš’s prose exemplifies postmodern historiographic metafiction—a form that both employs and interrogates documentary and historiographic modes of narration. The study shows that, in Kiš’s text, the document does not serve as proof of truth but as a means of questioning it, revealing that the truth of fiction lies in ethical coherence and the internal logic of the fictional world. Through the use of historical realia, footnotes, archival materials, and references to real historical figures, Kiš does not aim to verify the past but to construct a new mode of remembrance in which history, literature, and moral consciousness intersect. In this sense, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich transcends generic boundaries and becomes a space of ethical reflection on the possibility of representing truth in an age marked by ideological manipulation and collective amnesia.