TIME IN THE NOVELS OF MILOS CRNJANSKI - Nottingham eTheses

CHAPTER FIVE
Greek honeyed words. and swim toa
forest. where she would be waitinc.
The sailor displays no sense of shame or cuilt. there is
no confusion of Eros with Thanatos. and no fear of
retribution. He and Raji~
function as aspects of
Carnojevi6's self. Raji6 is the "I" of the diarist's
memories.
His time is static in that it is repressed
and locked in the past.
He is a projection of the
diarist's memories of what he once was. and that time is
larcely a repressed time of awakeninc from innocence.
The sailor represents a possibility of chance.
He is a
dream ticure whom the diarist teels he oucht to be.
Theu are both distanced from the "I" of the diarist
whose beinc-in-time is set in an isolated present.
He
survevs his life. and from this vantaee point is cut off
from his life. as succested in the tollowinm imacel
I nilta me ne vezuje ni za dobro ni za
zlo. I tako sam se oslobodio sveca. 3a
dr!im moj mali !ivot aav potrelen i
uplalen u rukama. ~ude6i mu set kao Ito
dr!i crni evnuh prsten sultanije u rukama
dok se one kupa. Onje u mOjim rukama a
nije mojo I sve Ito je oko mene moje je
i nije moje (39).
And nothinc binds me either to cood or to
evil. And so I am liberated trom
everuthinc. I hold my small life in my
hands. shocked and afraid. wonderinc at
it. as the black eunuch holds the
sultana's rinm in his hands while she
bathes. It is in mv hands and it is not
mine. And everuthinc which is around me
is mine and is not mine.
The diarist's vantace point cives him a sense of
liberation. but a liberation which alienates him trom
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