Exile and Loneliness in A Novel About London by Miloš Crnjanski

The theme of loneliness is more clearly and expressively presented
in the first part of Roman o Londonu than in the second. Gradually it
flows into another leitmotif, that of suicide. Ryepnin's suicide is first
mentioned as a thought occurring to Nadya.48 ) she knows that this idea
dominates her husband and tries to avoid it. For this reason she agrees
to go to her aunt in America, where she will be more or less secure.
Though at first he opposes the idea, Ryepnin gradually comes to see
it as an important factor in his suicidal plan; once she is secure, then
nothing stands in the way of killing himself. Nadya reasons differently.
if she is secure, he will no longer have a reason for killing himself.
Both he and she are motivated in their behavior by the idea of mutual
sacrifice; once more ironic significance in their fate.
Behind Ryepnin's idea of suicide stands 'a strange, mad desire to
sacrifice himself for the woman whom he loved and who loved him'49)
as also a passionate inner need 'to save her from poverty, humiliation,
old age in London and from beggary.'50) Ryepnin first directly links his
isolation with the idea of suicide while returning from one of his vain
visits to the Ministry of Labor where he had gone to seek employment.
As, in desperation, he travels home, he reminds himself that he is
awaited by his wife whom he loves and by his books, his only friends
in his isolation, but friends that tell him it is not difficult to die. When,
finally, Nadya leaves for America, Ryepnin feels a joyous peace and
a calming relief. Although his divided personality conducts endless
dialogues on the subject of death, he feels no regrets regarding himself
and his fate. The certainty that nothing can change his life strengthens
his fatalistic determination.51) Yet, still, in the last days of life, there
appears a certain resistance to death. The roots of such resistance do
not rest in cowardice, nor in the desire to continue living, but in a
sense of shame that he leaves his wife on he own and in fear lest his
suicide might not lead to her voluntary departure into earth. Thus,
Ryepnin dies only for himself. For others he merely 'disappears'.52) He
goes to death, as if to a party; his only sign of stress are hands moist
from excitement. Even the writer does not accompany him on this
journey to final and absolute loneliness. He simply disappears 'into
the green, in the darkness'.53) What the final act of his drama was like
one may conclude only on the basis of discrete hints which Crnjanski
masterfully concludes his novel.54)
An important, though not absolute reason for Ryepnin's suicidal
decisions was the sense of the inevitable and inexorable approach
of old age. The first thought of aging comes to him as one of those
lightening side questions that one puts to oneself, seeking to find that
causes of one's states of gloom. Later the idea would impinge more and
more upon his consciousness. For Ryepnin the onset of old age is 'one
of the most dreadful experiences in the life of every man.'55) This feeling
which came upon him 'stealthily, like an unexpected visit',56) becomes
one of his most unbearable obsessions. At first he conceals it as a great
secret, a massive pain, but, with time, he grows accustomed to it, with-
out ceasing to feel a resistance. It is the type of resistance that in suicide
sees a cure for the weakening of vital energies.
Ryepnin is condemned to the fate of a victim not only because he
is a poverty-stricken emigrant, but also because he is a proud heretic.
His heresy is of a noble kind, for it is nurtured by a love for fatherland,
which, for him, is stronger than his own fortune and émigré complex.
Although he meets his fellow countrymen with whom he shares the
same fate of an emigrant, Ryepnin leaves their organization and refu-
ses to return to it at any price. He is aware that to return to the old flock
would improve his material position, but his entire being revolts against
such a return. Such a step would be a two-fold betrayal. Firstly, the
betrayal of his own moral codex and the besmirching of his aristocratic
dignity. Then, a betrayal of his love for Russia, of the Russia which is a
reality and not a fiction. Ryepnin does not hide the fact that he belongs
to the 'white' Russians, but neither does he conceal that he loves the
Russia of the present. He replaces hatred with forgiveness, the sense of
defeat with reconciliation. Bitter émigré experience strengthens him
in the certainty that 'to live in one's own country is logical, no matter
what life may be. To live in a foreign land, never.'57) Though he knows
that a return to the fatherland is an 'empty phantom, a hallucination,
a fever of the mind, beside a sea of reminiscences',58) he cannot free
himself of the thought and even in death sees the possibility of return
there where a return in life is impossible: 'thus will all return there'.59)
His heretical patriotic philosophy is compressed in the thought that
'no one has the right to treason' and to the service of the foreigner, and
that injustice, which has ever been on the earth, can be no justification
for treachery.60)
The confusion and crisis of Ryepnin's being Crnjanski portrays
not merely with descriptive means, with penetration into his psyche
and his own commentary on his faith. He does it also by means of
some suggestive pictures which, in the course of the novel, occur with
an irregular frequency. It is clear that he author, from the beginning,
insists on Ryepnin's' underground' nature. The reader encounters him
often in a compartment of the underground railway madly thundering
on its way. The escalator carries him into 'the underground that, as
a fast stream, bears away a wreckage'61) and one emerges from that
underground 'as from the grave'.62) When he gets the job of book-keeper
in a fashionable shoe-makers, Ryepnin sits in a cellar which reminds
him of the catacombs.63) Even his work in the bookshop is linked with
being underground.64)
The significance of a clear symbol is given to the gutter. The pictu-
re of a drain that carries all who are defeated away into the filthy under-
ground appears whenever Ryepnin is gripped by grim forebodings.
His suicidal determination is no more than a decision to avoid the fate
of a man who ends in the gutter.
Ryepnin's essential absence from real living is emphasized by the
constant employment of theatrical terminology. The central hero not
only regards himself as a character in a senseless theatrical production,
but also the people he meets he sees as though they were playing roles
imposed upon them. He feels himself humiliated by life because he
becomes aware that fate is a game in which he is ever turned into some-
body he not even desired to be.65) Even in suicide, he sees the possibility
'simply to vanish from the stage'.66) Sometimes he sees himself as a wax
doll.67) All this enriches the basic picture of Ryepnin, created in the first
chapters of the novel.
As a counter-balance to the negative values of life in Roman o
Londonu, at various times, there appear 'points of brightness' which
give moments of joy and repose to the main hero. Ryepnin's last days,
devoted to work, bring him 'complete happiness'.68) Once decided that
he will re-decorate the flat lent him for a short time, he gives himself
passionately to the work. The feeling of great satisfaction which gripp-
ed him had its roots in the knowing that at last he was doing something
'that had meaning'.69) Otherwise, throughout the novel, Ryepnin attri-
butes his failure to the fact that, among other things, he is not a 'useful'
person. Although he knew that, as soon as he had completed the work,
death was waiting, still he felt that 'around him, his life, his intention
to kill himself, there, on the walls, was being created – created by him
– a world of his thought, a world of peace, of consolation, of the plat
of the intellect and of a brief rest from life'.70) In this he saw 'an intro-
duction into some better life and some better world'.71) He had a similar
experience during his holiday when he saw the old gardener calmly
pursuing his work 'as though there were nothing else on earth.'72) 'That
strong old man seemed to him a picture of rationality pursuing some-
thing useful and satisfying.'73)
The better to set Ryepnin's psychological profile in this context, one
must recall yet another scene from the holiday. This is the picture of
the volunteer life-saver who defy the storm to aid a boat in trouble.
These people 'driven by a strange instinct to care for others'74) and 'a
certain deep desire in people to help others'75) become for the desperate
and disappointed Ryepnin 'the root of all things'.76) At first it may seem
surprising that Ryepnin who receives help from others, should marvel
at people being ready to help others in trouble. Yet, from him, this is a
'point of brightness', for in their unselfishness he sees an instinct and
not an interest, a hand sincerely extended and not humiliating support,
brotherly aid and not morally doubtful Samaritans. Has there been
more of such 'points of brightness', even Ryepnin's fate might have
been different.
Over all Ryepnin's fate as an emigrant there hovers, as an ever pre-
sent experience, the bitter disappointment of a man who in the colli-
sion with the realities of life experiences the harsh destruction of his
youthful illusions. Ryepnin's father had been an anglophile. In his hou-
se they drank only English tea. He, like an Englishman, first played
lawn-tennis. He was the first to import English boats for the rowing
club.77) Ryepnin too had inherited his father's devotion to all that was
English. But direct contacts with hat country and with that nation
quickly brought a bitter awakening. After seven years in England, his
feelings had completely changed. Love had been replaced by hatred.
This hatred he conceals by regarding everything English with a cyni-
cism and superior irony. In England his ideal of humanity becomes
the Russian muzhik, while the serpentine embrace of London for him
personifies the harsh indifference of an ungrateful England. 'I did not
know that people were like this, nor that there existed such a huge city
in which people greeted one another so nicely – and all told lies,'78 ) says
Ryepnin. He pays for his mistaken devotion just as painfully as does
Pavle Isakovič his.
Seobe, as is well known, remained an unfinished torso. That torso
is indirectly completed by Roman o Londonu. With the history of the
wanderings of the Russian prince Ryepnin that tale of the wanderings
of the Serb Pavle Isakovič is completed, with an identical parabola of
experience. Roman o Londonu finalizes the theme of migrations with
a sobering realization. 'There were migrations and there always will
be',79) but 'to live in one's country is logical, no matter what life may be.
To live in a foreign land is not.'80)
____________________
48 ) Ibid., p. 42.
49) Ibid., p. 282.
50) Ibid.
51) Roman o Londonu, Vol. 2, p. 347
52) Ibid., p. 382.
53) Ibid.
54) Ibid., pp. 382-3.
55) Roman o Londonu, Vol. 1, p. 124.
56) Ibid.
57) Ibid.,p. 78.
58 ) Ibid., p. 118.
59) Ibid., p. 379
60) Ibid., p. 318.
61) Ibid., p. 96
62) Ibid., p. 163.
63) Ibid., p. 157.
64) Roman o Londonu, Vol. 2, p. 168.
65) Ibid., p. 362.
66) Roman o Londonu, Vol. 1, p. 383.
67) Ibid., p. 145
68 ) Roman o Londonu, Vol. 2, p. 343.
69) Ibid., p. 342.
70) Ibid., p. 343.
71) Ibid., p. 344.
72) Roman o Londonu, Vol. 1, p. 366.
73) Ibid.
74) Ibid., p. 360.
75) Ibid.
76) Ibid.
77) Roman o Londonu, Vol. 2, p. 59.
78 ) Roman o Londonu, Vol. 1, p. 74.
79) Seobe i Druga Knjiga Seoba, p. 1074.
80) Roman o Londonu, Vol. 2, p. 78.