SUFFERING OF THE BODY AS A WAY TO WORSHIP ON THE EXAMPLE OF ANTIPSALM BY NOVICA TADIĆ

Text topic: The Body Aesthetics in Christianity

Text author: Жарко Н. Миленковић

The paper discusses the concept of Christian suffering of the body as a worship motive on the example of the poem Antipsalm by Novica Tadić. Following Byzantine aesthetics and the aesthetics of asceticism,we interpret suffering of the body as a kind of Christian struggle which strengthens our faith in God. The stronger the suffering of the body, the greater the faith in the Lord. The more numb the body, the stronger the soul. In most previous interpretations, the poem Antipsalm has been proclaimed as the highest kind of a poet’s aesthetics of the ugly, as a painting of the demonic and evil world. This paper aims to show that this Tadić’s poem is actually an inverted psalm, and that invoking torment and evil in this song is only for the purpose of strengthening faith in the Lord and bringing pagans to faith.