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Starting from the concept of death in contemporary Serbian culture (in the context of thanatological and anthropological studies), the author focuses on the analysis of communication with the deceased in dreams, which is still perceived as an important form of contact with the otherworldly. The analysis of material collected during field research at various locations in Serbia and in Serbian communities in Romania (from 2017 to 2024), supplemented by dream narratives from the internet, has shown that based on the main messages conveyed by the deceased to the living, dreams can be divided into: (1) dreams about "the unappeased deceased" (who lack something in the otherworld, usually due to an omission by the living related to funerary rituals); (2) dreams in which the deceased show the otherworld and provide verbal assessments of it; (3) dreams in which the deceased inform of their departure or final passing into the world of the dead; (4) dreams in which the deceased demonstrate their presence in the world of the living, i.e., providing information pertaining to the sphere of the dreamer's social reality; (5) dreams in which the deceased convey their messages, advice or warnings to the living; and (6) dreams interpreted as the deceased person's call to the dreamer to join them in the otherworld. Basic element analysis of the spatial world image, projected via the dream, highlights the importance of the locus perceived as a border space. Dreams about the deceased seem to be ambivalent in this respect, given that, on the one hand, they are perceived as an important means of communication between this world and the otherworld, and on the other hand, through the ideas on which they are founded and that they further transmit, they are also part of the narrative strategies of the boundary between this concept of two worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artists understand the importance, value, and freedom of the studio space as a place within which the interpretation of their creative thoughts transforms into diverse art forms. Throughout history, art has been born there. For the religion of Spiritualism, which supports a belief in life beyond death, the séance appears to be the studio space for pioneer spirit art mediums such as Victorians Georgiana Houghton, Anna Mary Howitt, and David Duguid, and, in modernity, Susan Barnes, Shannon Taggart and myself, to retire to in order to conjoin with believed-to-be communications from the spirits of deceased persons and produce spirit inspired, and created, art. Information has been sought from Houghton’s biographical journal, Howitt’s notations on her spirit art, plus the scribed statements from Duguid’s séance in 1872. This information, accompanied by spirit drawings and paintings, is explained alongside contemporary ethnographic experiences. Spirit inspired paintings and drawings are the backdrop for this paper which seeks to unearth the significance of the séance as a studio space for the mediums who create and created spirit art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from the concept of death in contemporary Serbian culture (in the context of thanatological and anthropological studies), the author focuses on the analysis of communication with the deceased in dreams, which is still perceived as an important form of contact with the otherworldly. The analysis of material collected during field research at various locations in Serbia and in Serbian communities in Romania (from 2017 to 2024), supplemented by dream narratives from the internet, has shown that based on the main messages conveyed by the deceased to the living, dreams can be divided into: (1) dreams about “the unappeased deceased” (who lack something in the otherworld, usually due to an omission by the living related to funerary rituals); (2) dreams in which the deceased show the otherworld and provide verbal assessments of it; (3) dreams in which the deceased inform of their departure or final passing into the world of the dead; (4) dreams in which the deceased demonstrate their presence in the world of the living, i.e., providing information pertaining to the sphere of the dreamer’s social reality; (5) dreams in which the deceased convey their messages, advice or warnings to the living; and (6) dreams interpreted as the deceased person’s call to the dreamer to join them in the otherworld. Basic element analysis of the spatial world image, projected via the dream, highlights the importance of the locus perceived as a border space. Dreams about the deceased seem to be ambivalent in this respect, given that, on the one hand, they are perceived as an important means of communication between this world and the otherworld, and on the other hand, through the ideas on which they are founded and that they further transmit, they are also part of the narrative strategies of the boundary between this concept of two worlds.

The article is devoted to the study of the description of the otherworld in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s mystical story “Bobok,” first published in 1873 in the author’s column A Writer’s Diary of the weekly Grazhdanin (Dostoevsky was at the time both author and editor of the magazine.) The short story is considered in the context of other texts of the column and the writer’s previous statements about the problem of human afterlife. Special attention is paid in the article to the interpretation of the title of the story, with its reference to beans, which have been related to the world of the dead in many cultures since ancient times. For this reason, various sources on the history of religion, ethnography and folklore are considered. The article also deals with the theme of the dead souls’ passing through aerial toll houses in the story and the unexpected role people play in this passage according to Dostoevsky. It is proved that the most obvious and attention-grabbing journalistic and satirical layer of the story “Bobok” does not exhaust the author’s intention at all, and it is not able to determine the depth of this work.

The paper identifies the linguistic manifestations of suspended time, represented by chronotopes of the "other world" of fairy tale and certain rap lyrics worlds. The article is aimed at scrutinizing the semiotic, stylistic, conceptual-metaphoric and narrative properties of suspended time in fairy tales and rap lyrics in a comparative aspect, revealed through the use of the textual-semiotic, conceptual blending and stylistic analyses added by the elements of narrative, componential and archetypal analyses, which were applied in 4 consecutive stages of the study. "Suspended" time, defined as a time of everness and standstill, is identified either in the tale oneiric worlds, or the "otherworlds" related to the kingdom of the dead. It is manifested by symbolic images associated with the meaning of "eternity", by narrative speed retardation and "pause" as well as by connotations of "serenity" and "tranquility". It correlates with three topoi, denoted by lexical means of indefiniteness and spatialtemporal remoteness; nominations related to the archetypal elements of worldbuilding or their metonymic designations. The temporal distance separating suspended time from narrative time is "iconically" conveyed by the syntactic redundancy of the sentence structure. In rap lyrics suspended time characterizes the world of the rapper's Ghetto past, metaphorically interpreted as a time loop, or the oneiric world, and is marked by metaphorically reinterpreted symbols of eternity and conceptual metaphors conveying the meanings of "imprisonment", "lock up", "vicious circle", "temporary trap" and "stop", associated with narrative speed retardation and "pause" and connotating "danger", "despair" and "vicious circle". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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