TIME IN THE NOVELS OF MILOS CRNJANSKI - Nottingham eTheses

CHAPTER FIVE
a necessarv counter to the transience of his life in
London.
He feels that he has lost control over his own
identitV. and that his sense of 'self is constantlv bein~
made and unmade for him bv others:
Nje~ovo o~or~enje imalo je za uzrok
osecaj: da je sudbina i~ra, i, da ljudi,
pa i ~ene, svaki ~as. pretvaraju, nje~a,
u neko~ dru~o~a, u neko~, koji nije bioI
niti je ~eleo da bude (89).
His bitterness had as its cause the
feelin~ that fate is a ~ame. and that
men, and women too. each moment transform
him into someone else, into someone who
he was not, nor did he want to be.
Rjepnin is trapped in time.
He desires to return to the
identitv that he has of himself in memorv, but is aware
that the past is irrecoverable. He reco~nises this
tension durin~ his tri~ to Cornwall, when he is at his
most calm and collected. Durin~ the journevhe reflects
once more on the meanin~
of the past in his life,
reco~nisin~
that what was in the past'and what remains
in memorv are not the same, "Ima neke stra~ne
razlike
izme&u te pro~losti. i pro~losti, sad. kakvaje u
njihovom secanju" ("There are some terrible differences
between the past, and the past now, as it is in their
memorv" 90).
While in Cornwall he visits a place where
there is a disused railw&v station. and sees the past as
somethin~
that was real but is now irrecoverable:
Zar nije varljivo, bedno, neshvatljivo. i
pomisliti, da je sve to,' pre eto ~odina.
zaista, bilo novo, i. kao ne~to novo i
lepo, postojal09 Sad, on to posmatra sa
nevericom. a ipak zna da su, tuda.
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