TIME IN THE NOVELS OF MILOS CRNJANSKI - Nottingham eTheses

CHAPTER FOUR
chronic~e. The events have no necessarv causa~ sequence
bevond their strict adhesion to succession in time.
The
chronic~e
voice is separated trom the events bV a
temporal eap which is indeterminate. but tixed at some
time in the tuture.
In the chronicle time is represented as a natural
matrix in which the succession ot events requires no
explanation.
Their order coincides with the real order
in which the events took p~ace.
However. the apparent
neutra~itv ot this tvpe ot tempora~ oreanisation has
been questioned bV Ricoeur in his book Time and
Narrative.
A series ot events which are placed in a
re~ationship which simp~v states that one event
happened. and then another "sueeests that the phases ot
action are in e)Cterna~ re~ation" and that such episodes
"constitute an'open series ot events" (10).
To sau that
"the phases of action are in external relation" is to
describe the events as thev are arraneed in linear
sequence bV the chronicle voice with no causal
connection.
Furthermore. as "an open series of events"
the ~inear proeression ot the ~ournev is not a neutral
presentation of time. since it denies anv role that
Pav~e
mieht plau in occasionine action. and the
historical_circumstances which have broueht him to
undertake the journev.
It denies all as.oc1ation w1th
the human dimension of time. the memories. tears. and
hopes which determ1ne human aeencv 1n time.
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