A comparative study of Finitude, Infinity, and the Human Condition by dr. Eva Premk Bogataj
In Timely in Timeless, Eternal in Temporal, Dr. Eva Premk Bogataj undertakes a bold, interdisciplinary study that bridges comparative literature, philosophy, cultural memory, and trauma studies. Through a cross-cultural and multilingual lens, she examines how Nikola Šop (Croatian-Bosnian poet) and Gregor Strniša (Slovenian poet and dramatist) articulate the relationship between finitude and infinity, temporality and transcendence, and the enduring human search for meaning amid the ruptures of twentieth-century Europe.
Both writers emerged from the borderlands of Central and South-Eastern Europe — a cultural space marked by shifting empires, languages, and ideologies. The book situates them within this intercultural geography, revealing how their poetic imagination transcends the political divisions of their time. Writing in the wake of war, exile, censorship, and spiritual disillusionment, Šop and Strniša transformed personal and collective trauma into metaphysical vision. Their works embody a dialogue between the finite human condition and the infinite horizon of being, creating a poetics that unites existential depth and historical awareness.
Moving beyond conventional literary criticism, the study places both authors within a multicultural and multilingual framework, tracing intersections between Slavic, Mediterranean, and wider European traditions. It shows how their writings engage with multiple civilizational heritages — Christian, classical, mystical, and humanist — and how this diversity fosters a distinctly Central European humanism, simultaneously local and universal. By weaving together comparative textual analysis, philosophical reflection, and symbolic interpretation, Dr. Premk Bogataj reveals how literature becomes a mirror for historical consciousness and a vessel of spiritual resilience.
At the methodological core of the research lies the Perennialist School of thought (Guénon, Schuon, Nasr, Coomaraswamy), whose metaphysical insights are applied not as dogma but as a hermeneutic bridge connecting world traditions. Within this framework, Šop’s and Strniša’s works appear as literary responses to the crisis of modernity — a world in which technological progress coincides with spiritual erosion. The study interprets their art as a gesture of re-sacralization, where poetic language becomes an act of remembrance: the recovery of sacred measure in a disenchanted age.
Structured in four major chapters, the book first introduces the historical and intellectual context of both authors, followed by an exploration of their shared metaphysical vocabulary and critical stance toward the “civilization of the machine.” Subsequent chapters develop the theoretical and interpretive apparatus of the Perennialist School, culminating in a synthetic reading of their poetic universes as symbolic cartographies of fall and return, loss and renewal. In this dialectic, the descent into material and temporal experience is inseparable from the ascent toward the transcendent — an idea that resonates with mystical traditions across religions and cultures.