TIME IN THE NOVELS OF MILOS CRNJANSKI - Nottingham eTheses

CHAPTER TWO
Crnjanski ~ocuses on his loss o~ ~ear. which he
equates with a loss o~
contact with his immediate
surroundincs:
Iz&ubio sam strah od smrti. Veze za
okolinu. Kao u nekoj ludoj halucinaciji.
dizao sam se u te bezmerne. jutarnje
macle. da ispru!im ruku i pomilujem
daleki Ural, mora indijska. kud je otilla
rumen i sa moe lica.
I lost my ~ear o~ death. Contacts with
my surroundincs. As in a mad
hallucination. I li~ted mysel~ up into
the immeasurable, mornin& mists, to put
out my hand and caress the distant Ura~s,
the Indian seas. where the rosv
complexion ~ell ~rom my ~ace too.
The poem. and its title. expresses a mood in which
spatial and temporal ~inks become insi&ni~icant in the
poet's contact with a universal f'low.
Thus. sumatraism
comes to represent a view o~
the world in which all
experience and a~l phenomena exist simultaneous~v in a
bond o~ association more compe~lin& than the subject's
association with 'the immediate surroundincs.
In his
poem and essav there are manV ref'erences to ceoaraphical
~ea'tures;
'the Urals.·a stream. 'the sea. coral. homeland.
moon, and mountains..
These imaces function in the poem
as 1maces Of' inner f'ee~ina
amidst the dense texture
whiCh thev create. Bv takincas the 'title o~ his poem
the name of' an iSland in the Sou'th Seas. Crnjan8ki has
reinf'ot"cea the·· opinion of' some critics that hi.
sumatrai.t views are .cl08elV allied to spatial ra'ther
than temporal orientation.
However. an analvsis of' his
two e •• ava and the oricin of' the title sheas licht on