It is not easy at all to interpret the interpretative discourse. It’s easier to write about poems, short stories and novels. But how to express criticism about criticism? How to find a common denominator for the pluralistic interests of this complex critic writing? In the effort to sum up my impressions, I would say that along with her outstanding literary education and knowledge of the works of Macedonian and world critics and theoreticians of literature, Lidija nevertheless returns the faith in a well-intentioned, honest and spontaneous reading of literature and its phenomena. She is also able to deal with hermeneutics and imagology and intercultural relations. But she has not fallen under the influence to fully adhere to the trendy current fashion and tendencies, she is interested solely in literature. At times, it seems both innocent and naive this decisive plunge of hers into the depths of the literary text, as if she herself was Alice in the land of literature, to paraphrase one of her most commonly used metaphors.
In the text devoted to the essay book titled The Wonderful Worlds of Alice, by the young Mersiha Ismajloska, Lidija quite passionately goes back to this (also her favourite) character from the work of Louis Carroll, as a symbol of entry into the world of the magical and the unknown. In doing so, she describes a recent visit to the Permanente Museum in Milan, where within an exhibition dedicated to Marc Chagall, she attended an unusual multimedia performance titled “In the Land of Alice”. This musical and visual spectacle, Lidija writes, was realized with mirrors placed in the space through which the images broke or endlessly multiplied; even the floor and the ceiling were some kind of screens onto which there were projections of Alice, the White Rabbit, his pocket watch, the Cheshire cat, especially it’s grinning mouth, the Caterpillar with a hookah, the army of playing cards and chess pieces… We visitors were literally moving over and through these objects that hovered, so we ourselves entered the labyrinths of a miraculous world, we fell into the rabbit hole, we stepped through the mirrors, we faced our own modified image or shadow, together with Carrolls’ heroes, and we were infinitely amused… The leaflet for the mentioned exhibition in the end read: “We are all Alice!”
I do not know about us, but Lidija certainly is a gentle, clever and lucid Alice in the world of critical readings and thoughts. With this book she proves that on her critic’s path she always boldly enters the domain of the new and the unknown, but also that she can competently and patiently build her mosaic of colourful pebbles, which with age becomes increasingly richer and more complex, but never undeveloped, constantly open to new curiosities and emotions, new colours and new shapes.
Translator: Zorica Teofilova