TIME IN THE NOVELS OF MILOS CRNJANSKI - Nottingham eTheses

CHAPTER THREE
open, in surprise, and shiverine ~rom the
c01d. He was no 10neer dreamine. He
cou1d hear the cocks crowine and the docs
barkine. His wi~e. who had ~allen as1eep
on his arm. was breathine on his chest.
And havine stretched his neck he cou1d
hear the murmur ca11ine. ~or there was
sti11 so much si1ence in ~ront o~ the
house. Throueh the crack in the wood.
however. he noticed a thin stream of
1ieht break throueh and he came to his
senses comp1ete1v. Xt was time to co.
Each sentence contains its own main verb. eivine the
impression o~ a series o~ actions. Althoueh some
are takine p1ace simu1taneouslv thev are narrated as
separate events. or as if noted in sequence bv an unseen
observer. The temporal order of events is c1ari~ied bV
the use o~ the pluper~ect in "who had ~allen asleep".
a tense which is not commonlv used in modern
Serbo-Croat, and the past eerund "havine stretched".
Althoueh the use of verbs such as "he heard" indicates
the point of view o~
the character. his point of view is
contro11ed and ordered. in contrast to the impression of
chaotic sense perceptions in the two passaaes quoted
earlier. The difference between the immediate point of
view of the character's consciousness and the controlled
narrative of the narrator is manifested in the use of
verbs in the two tvpes of sentence structures.
The characters are separated bv a ereat distance.
with Daf~na
and Aran4el in Z •• un. and Vuk awav at the
war.
The observer-narrator traces the course of events
in both loci o~ action. His voice frequentlv dominates
the open1nas of chapters I
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