TIME IN THE NOVELS OF MILOS CRNJANSKI - Nottingham eTheses

CHAPTER THREE
dominates much o-r the text to one o-r de-riance in his
-rinal sentence "Ali ako umrem. poe1eda6u poslednji put
nebo. utehu moju. i sme.i6u se" ("But i-r I die. I shall
look ~or
the last time on the skY. my consolation. and I
shall smile" 42).
He delivers his statement with
re~erence
to the skv. the universal symbol o-r in~initv
in which he ~inds consolation ~or present su-r-rer~nc.
Theee succestions o~
chance and open-ended time indicate
the inclUsion o-r the temporal principle of rhuthm into a
work which is otherwise dominated bv the principle ot
simul.taneity.
In Dnevnik 0 Carnojevu6u Crnjanski's use o~
lanauace and orcanisation o-r the narrative re-rlect the
disturbed consciousness o-r the diarist himsel-r.
Time is
ordered as a psvcho10cica1 catecorv.
The order of his
memories. the repetition of motifs. and the -rinal
succestions o-r hope -ror an open-ended -ruture are
features of the novel.'s structure which denv anv
assumptions that events have a unifvinc 10cic. and that
temporal sequence is a causal relationship.
The
temporal order required bV classical poetics is
disrupted in the diarv. as Mendilow remarks on time in
modernist literature cenera1lv:
The old Aristotelian definition ot
becinninc. middle and end. and the unitv
of action no loncer hold cood (43).
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