The smell and colour of words. Attempts at intersemiotic translation and synaesthesia in Damir Miloš’s works Smetlar and Bijeli klaun

Abstract

The aim of the intersemiotic and conceptual prose of Damir Miloš is to overcome the limitations  of language  and  literary  description,  especially  when  presenting  reality  through  the prism of sensual experience, both visual and olfactory. In Miloš’s prose the interconnectedness of art forms, often perceived today as a symptom of a literary crisis or a trend towards intermediality,  becomes  a special  and  convenient  pretext  to  use  intersemiotic  translation, visuality  and  synaesthesia  as  a means  of  presenting sensuality  in  literature.  The  Croatian author creates a world in which his protagonists, marked with certain incapacities or hypersensitivity of senses (an absolute sense of smell,  colour-blindness or blindness), conjure up their own individual and subjective reality. Thus, Miloš stresses the postmodern aspect of the multiplicity of truths and perspectives.