ABSTRACT
Božidar Jezernik Introduction According to Robert Musil, the most obvious comment to make about public monuments is that people do not notice them: though erected to attract attention, they are in fact attention-proof (cit. Hojda and Pokorný 1996: 9). Attention focuses on them only at the critical moments when they are being erected or removed. Otherwise, people appreciate them in a state of ‘distraction’, as they pass by, unlike the ‘concentrated’ absorption given to statues in a gallery. Response to monuments is obviously not intellectual or positivist; rather, it involves fantasy, wish processes and dreams (Urry 1996: 51). Like all symbols, statues and the ideologies they represent organize people’s experience and express relations between groups. The narratives people attach to statues give meaning to their identity. Contrived to ‘speak’ to the proverbial man in the street, they serve as a school of patriotism, open to everybody. ‘Until recently,’ suggests David Lowenthal, ‘most monuments were exhortations to imitate the virtues they commemorated; they reminded people what to believe and how to behave’ (Lowenthal 1985: 322).
