GRADSKO OKRUŽENjE I PROSTOR UTOPIJE U ROMANU ZA DECU ERIHA KESTNERA „EMIL I DETEKTIVI“ I U POEMI ALEKSANDRA VUČA PODVIZI DRUŽINE „PET PETLIĆA”

Erich Kästner, a journalist and essayist of the Weimar Republic, and Aleksandar Vučo, a prominent figure of the Belgrade circle of surrealists during the late 1920s and early 1930s, published their prose/epicо-lyric works for young audiences almost simultaneously. Kästner’s novel Emil and the Detectives, illustrated by Walter Trier, was released in 1929. Aleksandar Vučo’s poem The Feats of the Five Roosters’ Company was initially serialized in the children’s supplement of Politika and later published in book form in 1931 as part of the Surrealist Editions series, with a foreword and collages by Dušan Matić. This paper examines the innovations introduced in these works for children’s literature: narratives set in urban environments, reflections of contemporary life, and the moral dilemmas faced by child protagonists. In addition to the comparative analysis of these works, the paper highlights the similarities between Kästner’s novel 35th of May. Conrad on the Horse — Heading Towards the South Sea and Vučo’s poem Dreams and Wakefulness of the Brave Koča. The author argues that through fantastic-dreamlike (and, in the case of the German writer, anti-utopian) journeys, both works deconstruct established patterns of children’s epic literature. This paper performs a comparative analysis of Kästner’s work and Vučo’s poem. This interpretation is inspired by Marko Ristic’s essay On Children’s Literature from 1934. In his writing, as an example of bad social literature, Ristić contrasts Kästner's novel with Vučo’s poem, an example of surrealist literature.The paper examines the function of referential descriptions of the urban environment (but also the utopian space) in the above-mentioned works.