Patrick Condliffe
Through a Wongar, Darkly
Dis-Located Readings – ASAL Mini-Conference Monash Feb 21-22, 2013.
B. Wongar, formerly known as Sreten Božić, is, in a manner of speak-
ing, doubly damned. On the one hand, he has received strong criticism
from the like of Indigenous critics such as Jackie Huggins who would
prefer that he ‘let [Aboriginal people] have a look at [the manuscript]
before it goes to print.’(Huggins, 1995)(89) Yet, white reviewers such as
Adams et al feel that they ‘found it difficult to believe in [his] book’s
authenticity [and] needed to counter the strong attack on white people,
and to do this… needed to think about [Wongar’s] motives … He
demands that you respond, demands that you react, because he’s as-
suming that he has the right to speak for Aborigines.’ (Adams, Kohut,
Webber, & Noyce, 1991)(8) To both parties, either affronted Aborigin-
als or incensed whites, Wongar has transgressed. This transgression
is steeped in the belief that the outsider to a culture has no position
speaking of or for another culture. Yet, the former complaint does not
completely take into account the importance of intended audience,
while the latter criticism is a direct result of it. Wongar, arguably, writes
for two audiences, both white, one is local the other international. If
Wongar’s novels could be said to have a hermeneutics, they one would
be to inform from a unique position on the repeated mistreatment of
aboriginals and the destruction of their, and our, environment and the
other, implicitly, is to shame. I argue that this can be explained as a
direct result of how Bakhtin’s notions of “outsidedness” and vzhivanie,
or “live-entering”, function within his texts, which are examples of
minority literature.
But first, a brief background of Wongar. Wongar arrived in Aus-
tralia from Serbia in 1960; he had travelled by way of Paris and Italy
after encountering difficulties under Tito’s regime. The nature of the
difficulties is somewhat vague, and, so, unfortunately unresolved as
of yet. After a fraught trip across the Tanami by way of camel Božić
began work on the Ord River Dam. Here he made some close
Aboriginal acquaintances; subsequently he spent much of his free
time travelling with his new friends, or spending time at Delisaville.
About this time Wongar met and married an Aboriginal woman,
Djumala, in a tribal ceremony. Sometime in 1970, Wongar claims to
have received a baptism of sorts. Travelling with some Indigenous
mates in Arnhem Land, in the forbidden zone, the group were
approached by a ranger. Wongar feigned extreme illness, face down
in the dirt, while his friend pretended to be a tribal healer chanting
over him. When questioned by the Ranger as to who the man lying in
the dust was, the men replied that he was ‘Wongar’, meaning amongst
other things “outsider”. The title stuck. (Wongar, 1999)(173) Wongar’s
first collection of short stories, The Sinners: Stories of Vietnam (1971),
disappeared into bargain bins as soon as it was published. His se-
cond, The Track to Bralgu (1978) shot to international acclaim cour-
tesy of Thomas Keneally’s review in the New York Times Review of
Books, in which Keneally praised Wongar as having a ‘fine voice’
and writing ‘arresting chants’, in reference to the poetics with his
work. (Keneally, 1978) It was at this point that Wongar’s ethnicity was
called into question. Little Brown had intimated that Wongar was in
fact an Aboriginal, Keneally reviewed it as such and Wongar did not
refute it; choosing, unfortunately, instead to play along. In 1981 Robert
Drew published the sensationally titled article ‘Solved! The Great B.
Wongar Mystery’ in the Bulletin magazine (Drewe, 1981). While a
friendly article with a not so politically correct cartoon, it prompted a
sea of invective. Wongar, however, continued to write under the same
name – producing seven more volumes of dystopian fiction set in the
Australian outback; winning among others the 1996 P.E.N Award for
his Nuclear Cycle of novels. He is still an active writer.
It is the notion of Wongar as the outsider that I wish to pursue today,
with the argument that engaging with his texts through the theory of
Bakhtinian “outsidedness” avoids and calls into question some of the
more tricky post-colonial critiques of his work, and the ad-hominem
attacks on himself as an author. The concept of “Outsidedness” is
elucidated in Bakhtin’s earlier essays Towards a Philosophy of the Act
(1993) and Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity (1990). Outsidedness,
or “exotopy”, defines the relationship between author and protagonist
and author and culture. Michael Holquist states that ‘the term [“out-
sidededness”], as always in dialogism, is not only spatial, but temporal:
it is only from the position outside something that it can be perceived
in categories that complete it in time and fix it in space.’ (Holquist,
1990) (30) In other words, to gain a true understanding of an event
or person, it must be witnessed from outside. What occurs cannot be
truly witnessed from within. The protagonist can only be properly
shaped from without, just as the event can only truly be witnessed.
Insomuch as this relates to Wongar it puts him in an oddly unique
position. Wongar, or at this point in time, the young
Božić grew up during the Second World War and enjoyed his teen-
age years during the turmoil that befell Yugoslavia before Marshall
Tito came to power. He witnessed ethnic cleansing first hand in his
village, and was only too aware of the kinds of wholesale slaughter
that occurred at Jasenovac – the Nazi concentration camp colloquially
known as the Balkan Holocaust. Located just inside the border of
(what is now known as) Croatia it was an independently operated camp,
supervised by Nazis. It functioned on a scale comparable to Belsen and
Lublin, and “processed” mainly ethnic Serbs, Jews and Roma at the
behest of the Ustaše. I think it can be safely argued that Wongar had
an education in the appearance and experience of genocide, through
the various unpleasant experiences of his childhood. This informs
the dialogism that he brings to his writing and also to his position
as an outsider. Wongar’s temporal position begins as past-historical
observer and segues into current observer.
This context marries well with Holquist’s interpretation of Bakhtin,
where ‘dialogisms primary thrust is always in the direction of the
historical and social specificity.’ (Holquist, 1990)(31) Wongar’s position
as witness and author then is unique, seeing from outside the historical
actions of White Australia upon Aboriginal Australia and drawing
his own natural correlation between one set of historical events and
another more contemporary, and continuing, issue found within the
treatment of Aboriginals in Australia.
Bakhtin utilises the foundations of “outsidedness,” to build what
would eventually become his theory of dialogue and dialogism, the
concept of vzhivanie. Gary Morson and Caryl Emerson translate
vzhivanie as “live entering” or “living into”; for my and everybody else’s
comfort I shall refer to it “live entering” from here and spare us all the
trauma of my attempts at Russian. It is an idea not far removed from
empathy, the concept is such that one person actively considers and
enters into another’s understanding and perception of the world.
Yet, during this process the individual never loses sight of their own
individuality and history. Thereby translating one set of individual’s
experiences to another. This is the foundation of the relationship
between an author and his/her protagonist, as well as the foundation
for understanding the other as basis for the aesthetic act – in this case
writing. Bakhtin defines the process of “live-entering” in terms of inter-
personal phenomological relations. Such that, when ‘I contemplate a
whole human being who is situated outside and over against me, our
concrete, actually experienced horizons do not coincide… I shall
always see and know something that he, from his place outside and
over against me, cannot see himself; parts of the body that are ina-
ccessible to his own gaze.’ (Bakhtin, 1990)(23) In other words, it is
only from the position of “outsidedness” that one can truly develop a
complete picture of an event, or person. In this instance being “outside”
is a privileged position that allows the unembedded observer to see
events in their entirety. Bakhtin continues that ‘[a]s we gaze at each
other, two different worlds are reflected in the pupils of our eyes. It is
possible, upon assuming a different position, to reduce this difference
completely, it would be necessary to merge into one, to become one
and the same person’. (Bakhtin, 1990) (23) While it is impossible to
completely assimilate with another, that is precisely not Bakhtin’s
intention; rather the ‘I’ must remain intact, returning to itself after
‘living-into’. Bakhtin realises the impossibility of truly investing a
‘pure projection’ of oneself ‘involving the loss of [one’s] own unique
place outside the other’; and that even if it were possible it would be
‘fruitless and senseless.’ (26) The point of live entering is to experience
the suffering or emotional vacillations of the other, to completely enter
the Other would render impossible the reconciliation with one’s own
context, and from an authorial standpoint, dialogism.
The aesthetic moment for Bakhtin begins at the point of return
from “live-entering”. Upon return two sets of experience are reconciled
Dušan Puvačić
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
____________________
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