Belgrade, Dubrovnik, Byzantium and Rome : Western and Eastern European cities as texts of culture in selected poems by Ivan V. Lalić

This analysis aims to present the understanding of Belgrade, Dubrovnik, Byzantium and Rome as texts of culture in Serbian author Ivan V. Lalić’s poems "Kamerna poema za grad", "Dubrovnik: zimska priča", "Vizantija", "Vizantija ponovo posećena" and "Rimski kvartet". The sense of the presented poems is created by the reinterpretation of these texts of culture based on a structure of "text within a text" by Jurij Lotman. By using the signs of the four cities in his poetry, Lalić proves that both Western and Eastern European tradition is his heritage which he values and develops, finding himself a place in a semiotic process of creating the culture. The sense of the poems analysed in this article includes an opposition between the decadence related to the passing time and remembering (collective and individual) as a way to keep the meaningfulness of life, which is understood as a mission of human being.