TIME IN THE NOVELS OF MILOS CRNJANSKI - Nottingham eTheses

CHAPTER FOUR
question which misht be taken as too direct. However.
the question as phrased in Enelish contains no such
subtletv.
The Enslish phrases are·as spoken bv Rjepnin.
and the Serbo-Croat phrases indicate what is in his mind
at the time. but which he cannot ~ender
preciselv into
Enslish.
In this short passaee the ve~bs a~e eiven in the
p~esent tense. The passaee p~eceedine it describes the
scene in the park and is dominated bv the perfect tense
of the impersonal na~rato~
relatine the events
retrospectivelv, and opens, "To se doeodilo jednos
petka" (":tt happened one P'ridav tl 43).
The shift from
pe~fect top~esent tense is a shift from the diach~onic
narration of the impersonal observer to the svnchronic
narration of the character.
The use of the present
tense in this wav in Serbo-Croat is used to convev a
sreaterimmediacv of action. However, in Roman 0
Londonu, the present. tense i.s part of the novel's
compositional desisn.
The perfeot.tense .indioates the
voioe of the impersonal narrator, and the present tense
indicates the voice of Rjepnin.
This particular use of
verbs has been described bv Uspenskv, when the p~esent
tense is associated with
a .eries of scenes. each beine presented
frOm a s¥nchronic point of view and
within which time seems to stoP. Verbs
in. the past tense. however, describe the
shifts that take place between the
8cen.s. formine the context aaainst which
the svnch~onio scenes must be perceived
(Ill).
193