A travelogue of the second degree: “The Letters from Norway” by Isidora Sekulić as a pretext of the book about Norway of Vida Ognjenović

The work of the Serbian writer Vida Ognjenović “A Travel to a Travelogue” (2004) is dedicated to her stay in Norway and the perception of this country through the prism of the well-known Serbian travelogue “The Letters from Norway” (1914) by Isidora Sekulić. Ognjenović’s text contains not only impressions of life in Norway, but also a reflection on the travelogue genre, on the text of her predecessor and the controversy caused by Sekulić’s work. Within the framework of Serbian literature, “The Letters from Norway” became a hypotext for the perception of Norwegian culture. In addition to the extensive metatextual layer Ognjenović’s work contains “The Letters to Isidorа Sekulić from Norway”, in which the author addresses her predecessor in an epistolary form and tells her about the trip to Norway. Having studied the Norwegian route of Sekulić in detail, Ognjenović decided to repeat it and to share her impressions with an imaginary Sekulić. The hypertext by Ognjenović offers not only a new reading of the Sekulić’s travelogue, which has become a reference book for Serbian emigrants in Norway, but also contains a bold assumption that Sekulić’s “Letters” were addressed to the famous critic Jovan Skerlić, who would later call the writer “Scandiphile”, and would condemn her for lack of patriotism. Ognjenović’s travelogue with its intense intertextual connections and palimpsest elements has pronounced features of a postmodern text, but does not completely fit into the paradigm of postmodernism, occupying a borderline position between the veneration of Logos, of authority and the postmodern irony.