DOK TIHO TEČE ŽIVOT KAO REKA: ROMANI „DERVIŠ I SMRT“ MEŠE SELIMOVIĆA I „TIHO TEČE MISISIPI“ VLADIMIRA TABAŠEVIĆA U INTERKULTURALNOM DIJALOGU

As an unexpected opportunity to establish intercultural relations between the novel Dervish and the death of Meša Selimović with the works of local and foreign contemporary writers, a possible literary dialogue between this classic by Selimović and the contemporary novel Tiho Teche Mississippi by Vladimir Tabašević was imposed. As in Selimović's work, in Vladimir Tabašević's novel Tiho Teche Mississippi, we follow the life of a Bosnian village, but in a different time period. Regardless of the fact that two centuries have passed between the actions of the two novels, in both works the main characters are equally searching for a long lost meaning, they are shaken by existential crises, they stand defeated between the past and the present, they consider the destinies of small places and individuals who come from such environments and they do not give up their search for identity. Time and context play a significant role in making the distinction between Selimović's classic and Tabašević's contemporary work, but the universal themes of human existence bring them closer to each other in a kind of intercultural dialogue that these two novels lead smoothly, based primarily on the metaphor of life as a river flow and identity as drowning (mergers).