TIME IN THE NOVELS OF MILOS CRNJANSKI - Nottingham eTheses

CHAPTER TWO
intuitive. As Milan Bo~danovi6
commented in one of his
early defences of post-war modernism "novi pesnici
delaju po intuiciji" ("the new poets act accordin~
to
intuition" 10).
Crnjanski continued to use the word "Sumatra", and
from that coined the terms "sumatraist" and
"sumatraism". They occur in.his first novel Dnevnik 0
Carnojevi6u. II. &64"4~1ier proclaims. "ja sam
sumatraista" ("I am a'sumatraist" 11), while the diarist
thinks that he m~ be drunk.
The term "Sumatra" is
Ne. nije vile znao Ita je dobro. a Ita je
zlo, niti je znao za~to covor. toliko 0
!ivotu. nije se me~ao u prepirke. i nije
vi~e verovao ni u ~ta. do u neke plave
obale na Bumatri. Tamo je bila njecova
sudbina. Ose6ao je da je njecov !ivot
samo rumene jedne biljke radi na Sumatri
(12) •
No. he no lon~er knew what was ~ood. and
what was bad, nor did he know why they
spoke so much about life. he did not
interfere in their squabbles. and he no
loncer believed in an~thinc. exoept for
the blue shores of Sumatra. There was
his fate. He felt that his life was for
the sake of just one ros~
plant on
Sumatra.
-rl et.4/'C.c.f-fH'"
,ne ~ ~ t,. J , is a seaman. and the reference appears. on
the one hand, to be to the distant island in the Indian
Ocean.
However. the text as a whole is narrated in the
dreamv atmosphere of the diarist's memories. followin~
associative lines of thou~ht.
Events are narrated out
of their tempor~l
sequence, leavinc words. incidents,
and ima~es to tric~er off associations hoverin~ just
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