SHOPOV, THROUGHOUT HIS ENTIRE LIFE, HAS STANDED FOR MACEDONIA TO RADIATE IN THE CULTURAL MOSAIC OF THE WORLD

Abstract

The book “On the other side of the Not-Being: conversations with Svetlana Shopova about Aco Shopov” by Ivan Antonovski has a vision of that weaving that Blazhe Koneski insists on in his “Embroidery”. This book is built through a “simple and strict” dialogue, a “simple and strict” conversation, as Antonovski himself writes in the preface, “between times – that of Shopov and today” and “between generations”. And that means that the author had to thoroughly clean Shopov and thus master that complexity and then elevate it, transform it into a simple conversation. Because only in that way could he be a (somewhat) equal interlocutor to Shopova. The paper attempts to clear this literary conversation between Antonovski and Shopova through the several modalities of memory (witness, memory, souvenir, monument and museum).

Keywords: literary conversation; “simple and strict” dialogue; philosophy of memory; modalities of memory.