ISTORIJA JEDNOG KNjIŽEVNOG (NE)PRIJATELjSTVA: BRANIMIR ŠĆEPANOVIĆ I DANILO KIŠ

: The purpose of this paper was detailed reconstruction of the ”Kiš Affair” as a turning point in the history of Serbian literature of the second half of the 20th century. Dwelling on the history of the informal group of writers to which Branimir Šćepanović and Danilo Kiš belonged, and establishing, on the basis of available historical sources, the nature of their mutual relations during Kiš’s early polemics with representatives of realistic prose, as well as after the controversial interview ”The Age of Doubt” published in 1973, which has permanently marked the author of Hourglass as an opponent of Serbian nationalism, we have shown that their we have shown that their latter conflict could not primarily be of a poetic or political, but only of a personal nature. It cost both of them a lot: until the end of their lives, they only wrote one more book each, Redemption and Encyclopedia of the Dead. But, while Kiš has become a member of Serbian academy of sciences and arts and one of the writers to whom literary critics have so far paid the most attention to, Šćepanović withdrew from literary life and sunk suddenly into oblivion.