Crnjanski’s A Novel of London. My desire to read this novel was sparked after a friend, Velibor Petković, cited it as one of the ten most significant novels in our language. I realized I hadn’t read Crnjanski in a long time; I barely remembered Migrations, and from The Journal of Čarnojević, I mainly recalled the atmosphere (“autumn, and a life without meaning”). In truth, I knew the great writer’s poetry best—his Lyrics of Ithaca—because I read poetry daily, without order or plan.

Why A Novel of London? Why isn’t the title Life in London, Death in London, or something else that wouldn’t lead us to expect so much about the city itself? For we meet very few inhabitants of this metropolis; instead, we follow a married couple: the Russian emigrant Repnin and his wife Nadya (ten years his junior). Are they truly the right people to tell us the story of London? Perhaps we might have expected a story of Russia from them, while seeking the story of London from a native Englishman?

But let us start from the beginning. The couple arrived in London after wandering through other cities; they lived in Paris for a time. Some call Repnin a prince, others a count (graf). He is undoubtedly of noble origin, though he rejects the title “prince.” Naturally, like many Russian nobles, he had to flee to escape the “Reds.” He first saw Nadya sitting on a trunk at a pier, weeping, accompanied by her protector. Nadya also belongs to the upper class, being the daughter of a general. At the moment we meet these characters, Repnin is unemployed, and Nadya sews dolls, carrying them daily from the outskirts where they live into the city. This is how they survive. Sometimes they are helped by a friend, a countess to whom Nadya brings her evening gowns and other items from her “former” life, one by one. Repnin, whose name almost no one can pronounce, once worked at a riding school, but that too failed. He attempts to publish a book about hunting in the Caucasus, without success. Assistance that might come from emigrant or political refugee organizations never arrives because Repnin has soured his relations with everyone, resolving to accept nothing from them. The neighbors find his wife pleasant, but him proud and cynical, unpleasant and inaccessible; thus, any potential social intimacy with those around them is absent.

In the bureaus where a fifty-year-old man seeks employment, he is advised, above all, to change his name. This advice is heard multiple times in various places. The symbolism of this request is clear—he must forget his origins, his past life, customs, and education as soon as possible and start completely over. This would be possible with a little faith in the meaning of surrendering oneself to a new community founded on more humane grounds—a community where the importance of a personal name and identity ceases for the sake of an imaginary “we” that promises a better life and happiness. Such a system—with all those characteristics—sprang up in the place he fled (and which he cannot stop grieving). Perhaps there, despite the promise of a fairer life, not everything is organized by justice. But is it in London? We look at the city through Repnin’s eyes and see his cynicism and resistance to yielding to its currents. We could accuse the former nobleman of mere vanity and a difficult renunciation of the privileges he once held. But is that the real reason?

The author mixes the couple’s daily life with their memories, through which we gradually get to know the nature of the disappointed and rigid “count,” who struggles to reconcile with their situation. The small house they inhabit is substandard; things break down. The entire neighborhood is left without water. Firewood and food are running out. He goes into the city and accepts whatever jobs are offered—working in a cobbler’s shop, as a porter in a bookstore, as a stableman on the countess’s estate. Not once do we see his pride make him feel uneasy about doing such work or cause him to despise the people he shares it with. But we see his deep contempt for the system, for a city where life consists of toiling all day in basements and warehouses, of dragging oneself through buses, or—like his Nadya—wandering the city offering one’s own products from shop to shop just to barely survive, only for it all to end in cheap entertainment, inadequate marriages, and sexual games because “sex is the root of everything,” as a young woman in a park confided to him. (In several places, the author varies this thought, which Repnin loathes, though he naturally knows it is a force that can hardly be ignored. But a Russian, a true Russian, dies within himself and is torn apart, perishes or is elevated by entirely different ideas, perhaps wrong but deeper ideals, and every Russian feels these ideals within—from the poorest muzhik to the prince or count who had to flee his country.) Nadya is the complete opposite of all the women who appear in the book, all of whom want “only coitus,” whether married or single. Nadya and Repnin have a relationship full of love and respect, in which, even after so many years of marriage, they still address each other with the formal “you” (vi). What Nadya perhaps suffers from (though it is hardly spoken of) is the fact that they do not (yet) have children. She occasionally visits the doctor, explaining to him that it is “because of some women’s things.” He does not inquire too much; such is the great shame that exists between them, a part of the upbringing they brought from the land (culture) they originated from. Their relationship is both tender and carnal, not lacking any dimension, but the descriptions of their love, even physical, are such that they create a sharp contrast to the episodic love scenes of Repnin’s chance acquaintances, who have succumbed to the law—sex is the root of everything. Repnin is no puritan, nor is he someone whose reasoning one would laugh at as childish. Women flock to him wherever he appears, for his intriguing presence, his look so markedly different from the typical Londoner, and the voice that follows him provoke, at the very least, curiosity. Even the final attempts to change his economic situation through acquaintances met during a short holiday always end in failure, because the frivolity of the people he encounters, their greed, their political stances, the carnality of their wives—all of this repels him with full force; it is a London he cannot love or assimilate into.

Nadya and Repnin try to save each other. He tries to save her by forcing her to go to America to her relative and protector; she tries to save him by urging him to use his connections, and later—when she sees it won’t work—by removing herself from his path, believing she is only a hindrance. This separation is, in fact, their most mistaken move, because what kept them alive and gave that life nobility and meaning was precisely their relationship—an island in the senselessness.

Crnjanski himself had his London episode, and I believe the novel is full of the autobiographical (but I didn’t want to read about that, so the biography wouldn’t distract me—for an author’s thought is never merely to inform the reader of his life, but to use those elements to share certain ideas, beauty and pain, everything that has swelled within him and seeks to be shaped). His sentences are well-known to us (the difference from Migrations is the absence of an archaic tone, but the poeticism remains—a refrain-like quality achieved by occasional returns to what has already been said, a mastery in describing space without excessive ornamentation, and mental states without moralizing). He does not defend his hero; he does not tell us he isn’t proud, cynical, spoiled by noble life, or a loser who cannot adapt. On the contrary, he tells us how his “prince” misses numerous opportunities to improve the situation, opportunities someone else would have seized with both hands, thus letting his wife bring money into the house; he lets us form our own stance, to condemn him if necessary, to declare him incompetent. His hero yearns for Russia (not for his wealth) and is even ready to defend the Red Army (though an emigrant) while looking at a devastating truth—the world order after the wars, which is something other than what many imagined. Is this what they all fought for? He himself participated in the First World War, but like many fighters, like many exhausted people maddened by wandering the world, changing jobs, poverty, betrayed hopes, the hypocrisy of politics, and the frivolity of people—he falters. And the only one who was his strength and support (for he has no one else in London, or in the world), he sent far away from himself…

Someone recently said that this is the most depressing novel in our literature. Crnjanski is a precursor in many ways, and his novels do not follow but far precede subsequent trends (even globally). There may be many such novels today (thematically). Disappointed people in large cities discover, instead of brilliance, all the monstrosity and injustice, with no exit in sight. His Repnin is an educated man who speaks several languages, revealing his rich education through allusions and references. He cannot utilize his potential. What is humiliating about his jobs is not the low pay, but the total disregard for those potentials. Can one live in a society without ideals, without depth, without the possibility of putting one’s potential at the service of good, and ultimately, without love? Without friendship, without true warmth in relationships, without thinking about a tomorrow?

This is, without a doubt, a novel about London. And about the world, the modern world, the capitalist world, the legacy of bourgeois revolutions and world wars fought for money, power, and territorial distribution—for a future frivolous life, for a “brave new world” where “sex is the root of everything,” and everyone works in basements for a daily dose of crumbs and sex, except for those few, invisible ones, somewhere at the top of the iceberg, from whom we might only hear their inhuman, icy laughter…

Written by Jadranka Milenković, 

  A Novel of London, Jadranka Milenković, Literature, Miloš Crnjanski