Exile and Loneliness in A Novel About London by Miloš Crnjanski

The wanderings of the Russian Prince Nikolai Radinovich Ryepnin
end in suicide. The collision of two worlds and the collision between a
man and a mighty city1) ends in the only possible and logical outcome
– the triumph of the destructive forces of life over the despair of the
lonely man and over the bravery of the heretic.
Roman o Londonu (A Novel about London) is a work of simple
structure but of rich and original expression and of complex existential
significance. The living drama of Prince Ryepnin who, faced with po-
verty and age, finds a way out in voluntary death, goes beyond the
framework of an individual fate and individual tragedy. By this fate
through which is written 'yet another, disgusting tragi-comedy of a
Russian emigrant in London – who knows for how-manieth time'2) –
Crnjanski has achieved far more than this: he has given to Serbian
literature an engaging and suggestive story of the dread loneliness
of the human individual in the modern world and of his inability to
resist the destructive forces of civilization personified in the polyp-like
nature of a city of millions.
Around this central theme of the novel Crnjanski has portrayed a
luxurious, cosmopolitan fresco constructed of a multiplicity of human
fates which serve as a background on which unfolds the drama of a
man's lost being, of his resignation, alienation, disappointment, aging
and poverty in all their tragic complexity. Portraying the 'helplessness
in a foreign country'3) of the exile, Crnjanski has achieved a masterly
penetration of the inner life of the personality who, in the nightmares
between the past and present, in the insatiable longing for his native
land and limitless devotion to a beloved being, prepares for his
departure from the stage of life with the calm of dignified despair and
the icy peace of an honest person determined to preserve his moral
integrity. The narrative, the thought, the psychological and poetic
currents of Roman u Londonu come together in a many-layered, multi-
significant structure which not only ennobles the reader, but disturbs
and activates him intellectually – as does every good book.
In the very first pages of the novel Ryepnin is presented as a person
that, by its poetic subtext, suggests the internal complexity and defeat
of an individual lost in a cold, selfish and insensible world. 'Snow-flakes
lingered longer on that face than on those of others - as if on the face of
some frozen man.'4) This sentence, however, tells the reader something
more: namely that Ryepnin's internal frigidity that transfers to his face
is the cold of a man determined on death. Reconciled with death as
the sole way out, Ryepnin is indeed partly already dead. There remain
just some matters to settle which will make his death less painful –
for others. Here, then, is clearly hinted what will be later definitely
stated; that he thinks of his own death 'as if it referred to another man.'5)
Ryepnin's very face is presented as a map of his fate. There may be read
'a weariness of life'6) and the hovering expression 'of sadness and
despair.'7) Eyes fixed upon the endless and well-known wasteland of
the abyss, he looks about him 'as if the world were a dream and not
reality.'8 ) Ryepnin leaves this world as though believing that one dream
replaces another.
In the first chapter the writer, invisible, accompanies 'a human sha-
dow in a worn overcoat.'9) In 'the train that charged underground'10) that
living corpse 'cried out, dumbly'11) of equality and brotherhood, ironi-
cally completing the writer's initial thought of the world as a huge,
strange stage on which each plays his role, God knows why, and when-
ce he goes, God knows whither, and that only in this final parting 'do
all the kings and beggars come together.12) Ryepnin is a lost and imper-
ceptible particle of pride and suffering in 'the astronomical conglo-
merate'13) of London. He, 'no matter who,'14) is the desperate exile troubled
by the fear of the future on the burned embers of ruined illusions. 'That
very winter – the last winter of the war – England had shown him of
what she was capable, if she willed it.'15) He was past fifty, with a wife he
loved and for whom he could not ensure a normal and decent life since
he was unemployed and he saw only one way out that was acceptable to
his moral standards – and honorable and voluntary death.
Already in the introductory chapter, in which the writer presents
Ryepnin in a cluster of intertwined and whirling pictures, the thread
may be seen that will run through the entire novel as its basic leitmotif:
the fateful destructiveness of human loneliness. Ryepnin is alone and
mute in the roaring compartment of the underground railway, isolated
before the station deep in snow; not only is he without anyone to greet
him, but nobody notices him, his name is known to no one.16) Nobody
ever calls at the house where he and his wife live, not the milkman, not
the postman, not the newspaper deliverer, not even the dustman. 'For
a whole year no one had asked whether they were alive.' 17)
Although with this series of images he has prepared the reader for
a direct and closer encounter with the hero, the writer lays his cards
on the table and warns the reader that his book will posses several
layers of meaning.
This will be a book not only about this man in London and about
his wife, not only about their love, but also about the Russians who
had arrived in London, before them, many years ago. They all of
them were 'displaced' persons. On the other hand, it will not merely
be a tale about them, but also about that London world that, packed
like sardines, travels to London in the morning to work and in the
evening returns from London, with its back turned to it, and, most of
all, it will peak of that immense city whose embrace has proved fatal
to so many men and women, - and which watches all the dumbly, like
some massive sphinx, listening to passer-by after passer-by asking:
Where here is there happiness? Where, is the ingress and egress of
passer-by, in crowds and in isolation, -four, eight, fourteen million of
them, – is the sense?18 )
In Roman o Londonu, then, several thematic lines are interwoven.
They do not flow parallel nor rhythmically smoothly. Their appear-
ance and disappearance are governed by the moods and momentary
preoccupations of the central hero, whom the invisible writer, stubb-
ornly follows from the first page to the last, expressing himself only
occasionally with brief interventions and leaving him only at the
moment before death to make, without a single witness, the fateful
step into the brotherhood and equality of extinction. The thematic
lines appear with the regularity of leitmotif. At times they even have
a certain element of monotony. This monotony, however, has its pro-
found psychological justification. A man who is prepared to die, be-
ing convinced that there is no other way out of the misery in which
he finds himself, is apt to be preoccupied with several basic thoughts.
In his consciousness they succeed one another, follow on and cross
over in a nightmarish resolution and clarification of the dilemma.
We have seen that Ryepnin is clearly defined on the first pages
of the novel. His relation to the obsessive preoccupations of his own
consciousness will scarcely change even later, since his behaviors, his
attitudes and experiences and determined by clear and unambiguous
feelings. These feelings which, at times, turn into moral principles t
which he holds firmly, to some great extent, although not completely,
determine his fate. Ryepnin's life ends in suicide not merely because
he is unable to alter certain basic existential suppositions, but also
because he does not wish to change them at the price of moral com-
promise. Therefore he sees his life situation as being to such an extent
unchangeable and final that he sees in suicide the sole solution which
will guarantee Nadya, his beloved wife, security. By this act he would
liberate himself from moral compromise and from dependence on
the humiliating charity of others.
In the web of relationships that determine Ryepnin's inner life
and physical existence, several basic circles stand out in which his
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1) Miloš Crnjanski, Roman o Londonu, Vol. 1, Belgrade, 1971, p. 21.
2) Ibid., p. 236.
3) Ibid., 67.
4) Ibid., p. 37.
5) Ibid., p. 384.
6) Ibid., p. 39.
7) Ibid., p. 37.
8 ) Ibid., p. 36.
9) Ibid., p. 14.
10) Ibid., p. 10.
11) Ibid.
12) Ibid., p. 9.
13) Ibid., p. 16.
14) Ibid., p. 14.
15) Ibid., p. 12.
16) Ibid., p. 15.
17) Ibid., p. 18.
18 ) Ibid., p. 21