MORE KAO UTOPIJSKI PROSTOR U KNJIŽEVNOSTI ZA DECU GORANA JOKSIMOVIĆA

The space of the sea is the starting point for examining the way in which the lyrical subject achieves happiness in Goran Joksimović’s children’s poems. Using Juri Lotman’s structuralist concept of the semiosphere, the central concept — the sea — is associated with loneliness, dreams, secrets, family, utopia, happiness. The Bachelardian phenomenon of daydreaming and a strong Jungian psychic dynamism are present in Joksimović’s poetic images, which are, on the one hand, contemplative, and on the other, pregnant with action. The former are focused on moments of loneliness, while the latter are manifested in the school and family activities of the poet’s self with his students, children, and grandchildren. The central topos of Joksimović’s singing is Kalymnos, a Dodecanese island in the Aegean Sea. Through several poetry books (The Teacher in Shorts, Where Does Love Come From and Grandfather’s Poems), published over a long period of time (1998–2021), we can follow the emotional development of the lyrical subject from happiness, through nostalgia to complete emotional fulfillment upon reuniting with the people of Kalimantan after more than twenty years. Reading Goran Joksimovićʼs poems inspired by the sea against a utopian backdrop, we witness a kind of eupsychia (ideal state of consciousness) and eudaimonia (pure happiness).