Abstract
<jats:p>The subject matter of this paper is the poetics of erotic experience in the short stories of Bora Stanković. Controlled and censored thematization of the erotic in Serbian literature of the period of Realism and its restrictive rhetoric conditioned the need for the application of various alternative procedures in the poetics of erotic writing. The hardship of the hero obsessed with love suffering and desire under the pressure of the rigid norms of patriarchal morality is one of the frequent orientations in the storytelling prose of Bora Stanković. The intimate conflict of the hero grows into a tense personal drama, and the suppressed “Eros” assumes its destructive form with a tragic outcome. The theoretical and methodological framework of the paper encompasses the views of S. Freud, G. Bataille, M. Epstein, V. Jerotić and J. Striković. The paper investigates the functions of a lyrical folk poem, body language, silence and description of nature as alternative procedures to the poetics of the erotic in the short stories The Old Days, In the Night-time, Stanoja, The Deceased Man’s Wife, In the Vineyard and A Withered Rose. The paper aims to contribute to a more comprehensive consideration of the poetics of Bora Stanković through identifying the aesthetic effect of the given procedures at the level of metaphorization, symbolisation and sublimation.</jats:p>