TIME IN THE NOVELS OF MILOS CRNJANSKI - Nottingham eTheses

CHAPTER FIVE
crne, svi1ene, 1a1e.
Oko to~a bi10 je mno~o smeha, kao
u Sankt Petersbur~u (74).
Their Russian friends at the time used to
come here to dance, to the roar of
cannon, when thev danced in the ce11ar.
Thev used to ~o down a 1adder, and the
skirts of the women - as had been
foreseen - ba1100ned on descent 1ike
b1ack, si1k tu1ips.
Thev was a ~reat deal of lau~hter
at that, as in St Petersbu~~.
The on1v 1i~ht
moments which he -fee1s in London are
those memories of Russia:
Svet1i- su sarno oni trenutci, kad, u
nje~ovom !ivotu, u Londonu, kad mu se u
mis1ima, pojavi nje~ova Nebere!naja. To
je omi1jeno se10 i imanje nje~ove matere,
koje mu je pok10ni1a (75).
On1v those moments are li~ht, when, in
his life, in London, when in his
thou~hts, his Nvebverezhnava appears to
him. It is the favourite vi11a~e and
estate of his mother, who ~ave it to him.
The inner voices whiohconfront Rjepnin, and his
memories, 1ink him to his past life in Russia before the
rev01ution.
At an ear1v point in the novel Rjepnin ref1ects on
the links between the past and the present which his
memories brine, but the objective stance he takes in the
f0110win~ passae·e is ra~elv repeated. Whi1e lookin~ at
an advertisement for a job as a chimnev-sweep in
Readin~, he remembers a poem about Readin~ Gao1 which
his teacher required him to learn, and another poem
about an I~ish
Guardsman who ki11ed his mistress. The
sarne teacher showed a picture of the Irish Gua~ds
to him
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