Serbian Fantastic Prose
Miloš Crnjanski (1893—1977)
Miloš Crnjanski was born in Čongrad, October 26, 1893. He was a poet, novelist, story-teller, dramatist, essayist and travel-writer. After completing gymnasium (high school) in Temišvar (Romania) at a Catholic school, he attended art history and philosophy institutes in Vienna in 1913. After his participation in the World War I and after receiving his degree in Arts & Science in Belgrade in 1922, he worked as a journalist and a gymnasium instructor (1923—1928) before joining the cultural section of Yugoslav embassies in Berlin, Rome, Lisbon and London (1928—1945). After the war, he lived unhappily as an emigrant-journalist in London. He returned to Yugoslavia in 1965.
Crnjanski belongs to the postwar generation of Serbian modernist writers. He began his writing career with his collection of lyrics, Lirika Itake (Lyrics of Ithaca), which expressed eclectic and varied elements of the protest against the war and the martial myths which gave raise to it, and universal and romantic concepts of ecstasy. As a prose writer he is perhaps best known for his long novel Seobe (Migrations) in three volumes; the first volume appearing in 1929 and the third one in 1962. It is a historical novel of the life of Serbs in Austria-Hungary in the 18th century, vividly portraying in the person of Pavle Isaković, the historic and social circumstances of Serbian immigrants from the Ottoman Empire in Austria-Hungary. The first volume of Migrations is considered to be the best of Crnjanski’s works. Crnjanski’s protest against the war is expressed in his short novel Dnevnik o Čarnojeviću (The Diary About Čarnojević, 1921). His travelogues which include Ljubav u Toskani (Love in Tuscany, 1930), and Knjiga o Nemačkoj (The Book about Germany, 1931), are also significant achievements.
In his most recent novel Roman o Londonu (A Novel about London, 1972), Crnjanski returns to the theme of the futility and emptiness of life in exile. This seems to be an autobiographical novel in which the experiences of the two Russian protagonists of this work, a couple, displaced by the Russian Revolution, desperately trying to retain their status in London after World War I, reflect the experiences of the author. This work, however, is not equal in scope and depth to Seobe.
Crnjanski’s “A Garden of Blessed Women” can be considered the cornerstone of Serbian fantastic literature. Crnjanski treats a profane subject with the lyrical language of a poet who understands poetry and the destiny of poets.
A GARDEN OF BLESSED WOMEN
On that day when the miracle began, the sky was a flock of little white clouds, restless and small like butterflies on their green gown, dismal as a field before the evening. The west was rosy and full of smiles, but that smile and that rosiness were not clear and happy as in the summer, but full of faded and scattered violets. Clouds did not rush happily to the east as they used to on spring mornings. They tiredly tangled and disentangled, wandering through a heavenly infinity which neither smelled of roses as on spring afternoons nor shone with purity as it used to do on wintry, snowy evenings. It spread now, opaque above the garden, like an old haystack, faded from sun and wind, embroidered with gold, silk and silver.
At the end of the garden slept ornate palace. Its windows were flushed and rosy with laziness, nude cherubs with their little shirts shamelessly torn by rococo, rode on them, and yellow curtains folded to guard white stoves so that they would not see those nude, smiling rascals and blush with shame.
The fountains skipped below. They whispered, tired and breathless. Their plump green sphinxes, wet under a water shower, smiled mockingly, their faces full of designs, tassels and cracks, their smiles as tangled up as words, leaves, branches and clouds.
It was late fall, and yet the garden was in full bloom. Little children in white socks chased each other on the grass. Old grandmothers sat on branches. Above their bent heads enormous bronze clocks resounded heavily from misty, black towers which were grounded in the earth like spears of heroes who died somewhere, not far away.
Fall arrived and dragged herself dirty and ragged along broad dark streets, through which yellow streetcars ran back and forth. They chattered, giggled, squealed, roared, bent and turned as if they were crazy. Smoke twisted around the roofs and made dirty all walls and bright windows; from time to time dirty, wet snow would blow in; while in the garden not far from all this, sphinxes, white nymphs and boarded fauns pinched and embraced one another, rode on each other and grinned. Silver Dianas were stretching bows and walking with a step supple, fast and refines as an arrow. Their look was directed to the sky, which was green and turbid like an old faded haystack, but the garden stood in full bloom.
Children and grandmothers played and sang on benches and grass. From the harbor, the chains of awesomely heavy galleys were thundering and falling into the sea with a horrible scream. It was quiet and warm in the garden. The sun was setting. Camellias, oleanders, orchids, and lilacs bloomed. Garden-keepers took them out from their dusty little glass houses.
Then, one evening, a grandmother clapped her hands with wonder and began to shout and cheer. She noticed violets in the grass.
Motley-colored guards, wearing on their chests shiny numbered crescents, came running and a tumult arose. Grandmothers threw away tied-up socks and began to shake their arms in a trance, to turn around, clapping their hands. They noticed that there was something uncanny about a garden in bloom at the end of December. The old woman who had first started clapping her hands jumped and shook her head and then ran away screaming. A chase began among the shrubs and underbrush. Old men and police hurried in and the news spread around town that the royal garden had become insane, that it was blooming while other gardens in town had withered long ago. The whole town became excited as if there were a fire nearby. Dark roofs could hardly be seen in the smoke and fog, faraway blue lights shone on masts, and ramparts wet and bright reflected on the oily pavement, but the garden stood in full bloom. People stopped, asked, grinned, smiled, pushed, and crowded around.
All this soon passed away. There was talk about this miracle in the theaters and taverns, but soon they switched the conversation to the subject of kings.
Women became talkative; the newspapers announced a collection for a monument to a general, and they spoke of socialism which would save the world and about the army which was ready to die.
But, the next day, the whole garden was still in bloom and the people started stopping again in the middle of the town. The first to come was Doctor Meoyk, the director of the botanical garden, with his students all dressed in black. They brought with them countless pots, laboratory glassware, long binoculars and small instruments full of lightning. They walked under trees, crawled in the shrubbery, scattered around, and began to look closely at the grass and leaves, shouted to each other, and jotted down words and numbers. People laughed in the beginning. Before the evening, when there was less work to be done they crowded iron fences, smelled the camellias and stretched out their necks to the green and mighty fir trees which were rustling. The trees, pruned and cropped, began to extend their branches to the ground. The town laughed happily at the crazy garden. First lovers began to gather there. They would sneak in at dusk and sighs of delight could be heard in the shrubbery at night. There was no place left on the grass in the darkness for the couples who kept coming. Some black butterflies started multiplying, until then unknown around there, and insolent mosquitoes tormented the especially old, plump women. In the garden at night there would be some whispering, some growling and arguing, and at other times lyrical poems recited.
In the morning the poor old gardeners would be staggering on the grass, swearing furiously and beating trampled flowers with sticks in their despair. The garden paths were full of women’s torn linen, dirty rags, motley-colored paper, sweets and bread, all kinds of ointments, bottles and glasses, bits of candles and thousands of crushed matches, hairpins and golden rings, forgotten umbrellas and vests, swords and watches lost in the grass.
The town laughed, but it became worse. People started committing suicide in the garden. Often, at night, it seemed to the gardeners (who were afraid of going under dark branches) that they heard cries and screams. One of them claimed to hear every night a voice, beautiful, young and loving, calling, “Oh, moonlight mother of mine. Oh moonlight, mother of mine.”
In the beginning they were young men. They would find them on the grass, soft-haired, foreheads covered with droplets of dew and sweat, with bloody chests on which weapons and camellias were lying, or violets and white roses. Most often there would be an image of some woman’s face smiling with puckered lips, whose face and eyes were directed toward the sky like a little angel’s.
Later it became even worse. Old men hanging from the tree branches were frequently seen, and nobody could say why they killed themselves. All of them were happy, rich and merry men, but in the morning they would find them hung like dirty, discarded tramps. Some newspapers attacked the garden, demanding that it should be closed, mentioning Smith and Emerson. They criticized the lack of morality in our country and predicted a new and better generation, the motivation of honor and work, happiness in a wonderful state, for whose sake many should sacrifice themselves.
But even worse things started happening. Thieves loitered near the garden and in the heart of the town. They hid in little bushes near the marble nude Venus, Agamemnon and Achilles. Then something horrible happened.
One morning, they found three little girls, three little countesses, on the grass. They had silk on their little legs, dancing slippers, and in their hands some sweets and grass. They were covered in blood and their bellies were cut through, while above them stood fir trees, slim and green, slimmer and greener than in the spring. The blue eyes stared with horror, but on their mouths lingered smiles of pleasure and desire. Only then did the newspapers bray in commotion and the town became excited as if a fire were nearby. There was talk everywhere about the garden which did not want to fade away and everybody suggested that it should be destroyed. Nobody dared to suggest forgiveness. Snow fell and winter fogs were frequent, while in the heart of the town a miracle bloomed, with rosy flowers shining through the fence and poplars smelling far away. Bishops and priests held sermons in churches and venomously attacked nonbelievers who, according to them, were responsible for everything. Their house, which they have built near the observatory, in the middle of the town, had an inscription written with golden letters “per ruinas homo ad astra.”*
There was an assembly in a magnificent building. Meoyk, the great botanist, suspected some new structure in the leaves which retained the heat from the sun for an especially long time. He also suspected geological conflagration under the garden. He talked in a confusing way and, as a layman, biologists laughed at him. Even medical associations and their council became involved in this argument. A journalist wrote about honesty. A famous actor demanded that the garden be used for Shakespeare’s plays. A great poet, the pride of the entire people, whom the king liked to invite for dinner and who wrote hymns to patriotism, convened a ladies’ charity organization and in front of them made a majestic speech in which he began to praise Dante. He finished his speech with something like this: “Who knows why these flowers found the desire to attempt immortality? Botany is in vain; it cannot explain this occurrence. Perhaps the life of plants and gardens is above ours, and knows the delights and depths which ours lacks. Let them bloom. Leave them; let them try the bitter cup of immortality, ladies. We are too weak for that; we lost the legacies and the blessings of our mother earth, and let me tell you frankly, we are disappointed in immortality, are we not?”
The ladies applauded with enthusiasm and their delegation gave him a bouquet of flowers from that accursed garden. Everything would have ended well were it not for the lawyers’ association, which also became involved. They decided to submit a memorandum to His Majesty and to ask that the garden be destroyed and closed. Parliament found out about it one day. It was unbearable, really. The Secretary of Defense was suffering from stomach cramps on that day; he seldom responded to socialists. That morning, he mentioned the army ten times, which was ready to die and looking for glory. A fleet was enclosed before the town and there was a reprisal there. Two sailors were hanged whom the court had proved without a shadow of a doubt to be the cutthroats of those noble girls. The next day, however, it turned out that the murderer was a genius painter. There were horrible arguments in the parliament. People ran to see that funny garden in even greater numbers. Strangers began arriving to the town, and children played truant from school. Crowds kept standing for days on end before the locked iron gates; before them stood thoughtful guards, serious and gloomy. The army surrounded the town-walls and occupied the roads, while scientists, professors and astronomers with sextants kept coming in and out. All of these visitors were bald and wore glasses.
Then something horrible happened. The court accepted, God only knows why, the suggestion of a famous admiral. He suggested that the garden be destroyed with guns. Some anarchists were entrenched there. Nobody had ever seen them, but everybody felt that they must be there because murders, church arsons and bombs had become so frequent in front of the royal palace.
The admiral was a famous hero—his right arm was cut off in a war. He had big guns which shot so accurately that the street cars could travel nearby without a worry. “Not an inch of the city beyond the garden would feel their shells.” Before evening, the first bullets began falling on the opposite side, into the courtyard of the royal palace. Boats full of generals rushed there and the committee came in a ship. What went wrong? The admiral killed himself in despair. They sat up a court and hanged more than one hundred sailors until one day the matter was cleared up. The admiral himself used to assign a target for the guns. He would just stretch his left arm and thumb, and in such a way, without help, he would issue a command about the coordinates of a target. The vice-admiral would recalculate, taking into account some small differences between measuring with the admiral’s left hand and his right. On that day, the admiral did it himself, the confusion about the target arose, and women and children were killed.
People swarmed on the streets; there was laughter and screams, the mingling of weeping and swearing. Fires broke out around the town and some people started moving from the town. The garden, however, bloomed on and on. Some long-haired men began climbing on walls. They shouted and incited people to rebellion. Two fast trains jumped from their tracks and crashed from a bridge into water. Days passed and the streets were covered more and more with people who stood all day long near the garden.
A secret fear spread around the town. Then, one day, the women’s charitable organizations tried to save everything.
They greeted great poet before evening, when he got up from his bed which he had described so wonderfully in his poems that all the town-dwellers knew about it, although nobody ever saw it. They dragged him to the garden and forced him to make a speech. They felt sorry for all this evil, for children who ran dirty and hungry in the streets, for workers who fought each other, and for soldiers who secretly killed each other. The poet climbed on the wall. Long hair fell on his shoulders, his white hands waived in the air, while thick lace covered his chest. For this speech he dressed quite the same as Dante did once, and he really resembled him. He had tremendous forehead and eyebrows, a strong nose, the same smile on his mouth, a powerful voice, cultivated and marvelous. When he was recognized, chaos ensued and women were shouting. He was short-sighted and he stood restlessly at this height. When he was young, he had tied his eyes with black silk and went around like this day and night. He wanted to hear the sound of stars, but his eyes became afflicted. He waved his hand and a horrible uproar arose. Some shouted: “Down with the poet!” “Down with the prostitute!” “Flirt!” “Clown!” “Idiot!” “President of the Academy of Sciences!” “Ox!” “Horse!” “Jackass!” “He-goat!” “Homosexual!”
Others shouted, “Long live!” “Genius!” “Apollo!” “Our blue sea!” “Our star!” “My heart!” shouted a lady; the crowd pushed, shoved, and having seized him, tore all his cloths. The mob ran unrestrained to the gates, women and their jewelry fell on the ground, children were trampled and the gates shook under a shower of stones. The guards dressed in white, looked around sadly once more, fell with blood all over their bodies, and died without uttering a word. The gates, however, were powerful. They stormed the ramparts and the walls, but the walls were sturdy. Guns kept a steady fire on them; streets were full of dead people, of wailing and weeping, but the tumult and the noise continued. New faces appeared, unknown and foreign, as well as children and girls. Everything became dark in the fog, and very gradually they became quiet. The streets were full of blood and dead people, and all over the town there was crying and howling. Fires broke out through the night, and frightful and awful moans could be heard. When dawn came, the streets could be seen devastated and bloody, burnt and full of smoke. His majesty stood by a window, surrounded by cabinet ministers and advisers. He was pale and frightened, his fingers trembled, and his eyes were full of tears. His favorite bay horse had burnt that night in the stable. Suddenly he came to his senses, looked up and pointed with his finger to the streets on the other side of the royal palace. There in the garden on the hill, the trees were fading. Crowds which, stood there before the gates, began scattering suddenly. Dead were buried in the town, hungry bare-footed children ran in the alleys, while the newspapers were full of news about complications in Africa. The fleet sailed away to die for the glory of the fatherland, soldiers were cheered on in the streets and treated with tobacco, while Parliament praised their coolness, In the hills, some new disease broke out and the garden was quickly forgotten. The crowds stood a few days longer to look at the branches and paths full of faded leaves. Then a storm blew in, frost became fierce, houses disappeared in the fog, the sea was tormented in a terrible hurricane, and the harbor was collapsing in the wind. Days were passing by and a heavy snow was falling. The garden had been long forgotten. One day, a long time afterwards, a white, opaque light appeared in the sky. Soon, the snow began to melt and some little birds flew in. The howl from the sea was no longer heard at night and the street noises stopped; white cats appeared on the roofs. The sun hid in the fog and its light, pale yellow and soft silk, spread around the houses.
The sky glowed softly, clearly, and bells began tolling long and sadly. The snow did not melt sadly; however, it sang, giggled, and dripped on one’s neck. It revealed a little bit of ground to the small birds. They would fly in happily, but they would not find anything; they would perch, hop a couple of times and then fly away without coming back. Only the fir trees longed for the snow. They lost their white feathers with which they fluttered in the moonlight. They became yellow, dry, wrinkled, and they lost their innocence. Winter was departing, stars became darker and nights were not so frosty, resonant and bright, but quieter and full of some sad charm.
Spring was coming. Trees took on leaves, branches blossomed, and squirrels wandered from forests and ran over school yards. Long red shadows fell on the streets, and the young sky embraced the roofs, tired from the rustling of the grass. All the gardens began to shine, turn green, and rustle.
The old women came out, bringing the children, who chased each other in their white socks, white as hyacinths and quiet like lambs playing on grass.
Whispers began around the town about the garden which did not want to fade and now, it seems, did not want to put on leaves. These whispers were quiet and hidden first. People stood, asked questions, grinned and looked flabbergasted. When all around all gardens bloomed, that garden remained wizened, dead and dry. Talk about it began in the theaters and taverns. The newspapers announced a collection of money for a monument to a bishop who preached world peace, and they featured many articles about socialism which would save the world and about the army which was ready to die. When? Where? June passed. Then, one day Doctor Meoy K, the director of the botanical garden, appeared with his students all dressed in black. They brought countless pots, a lot of glasses, long binoculars and small instruments full of lightnings, crawled in the shrubbery and scattered in the underbrush, calling each other and jotting down some words and numbers. Before the evening, when there would be less work, they crowded before the gates. They soon disappeared. In their place, some hunchbacks and cripples would come every day to help the gardeners tie up the branches. They would haul water from a river for the flower beds and trees, they would bring heavy stones and pound the earth, and not until dusk would they leave hungry and thirsty, looking back sadly. The garden, however, neither became green nor put on leaves. They would appear in vain the next day to lift the branches, tie them up, support and water them. All gardens had blossomed long ago, but this one did not have even leaves. Nobody talked about it in the city. A rich widow gave much money so that the garden could be put in order, cleaned and dug over, but everything was in vain. His Majesty stood every morning at the window and looked at the garden, but nobody knew anything new about it and nobody cared.
His cabinet ministers deceived him and said that the garden had been donated to a hospital. They talked reluctantly about the garden. His Majesty was surprised and sad, but afterwards he liked the idea that the garden was donated to a maternity hospital for poor women, and said that he would visit it as soon as he found time. The cabinet minister paled, left without a word and, as soon as he arrived home, fainted. It was necessary to do something. He pursued his friends fast. The next day, the garden and the royal palace were donated to the maternity hospital for poor women. In a week, the palace was emptied and whitewashed. Red pillows and wooden beds were set up; cars arrived full of pregnant women, heavy and clumsy, who went slowly down the stairs. The newspapers wrote articles about royal generosity and about socialism, which would save the world. The king stood every morning at the window and looked in the direction of the garden. It seemed as if he were waiting to see the first green leaf somewhere. But the garden was parched and empty, the stairs were crumbling and the trees were cracking dead and dry. Then, one day His Majesty visited the garden which had not wanted to fade away and now did not want to put on leaves. Mothers-to-be were dressed in white and stood, heavy and sluggish, all in a row. The king was escorted everywhere and shown everything. He smiled and nodded his head. His silver spurs clinked quietly, and around him everyone walked quietly and talked in whispers. It seemed as if His Majesty’s eyes were looking for something, and indeed his glance wandered restlessly along the flower-beds where, once, among the flowers, stood the Nymphs and Dianas. He looked down the path where there had been very beautiful orchids; he remembered how in his childhood he used to walk this path and his eyes became misty with something troubling, and desperate. The cabinet ministers did not know what his bitter thoughts were about and they began to show him the places where that horrible bloody struggle had roared. It seemed as though His Majesty did not hear. He looked at the garden, the palace, the tree-lined paths and towers with some frightful expression in his eyes, as if he remembered something, as if he searched for something. In the tree-lined paths stood heavy, sluggish, pregnant women, all in a row. His Majesty noticed them; the doctors and his escorts quickened their pace and also lined up. A gentleman in black approached and prepared to speak. A pregnant woman with a bouquet of flowers came out.
All of a sudden, His Majesty stared strangely at the garden, whispered something and began to laugh. Nobody recognized this laughter and everybody was astounded. He turned and went back. The cabinet ministers, generals and escorts stopped immediately, looking at each other dumbfounded, and then followed him. At the gates, His Majesty again turned and looked at the garden. Below, next to the flower bed, stood the frightened, white, sluggish, heavy women. Behind them there was nothing but dry trees and dark sky. His Majesty laughed again and his laughter resounded like a broken crown or a copper kettle, reverberating in the garden which had not wanted to fade and now did not want to blossom. Cabinet ministers, generals, councilors, soldiers, and servants all stood flabbergasted and frightened. This shameful, horrible and evil guffaw broke out once again, and they felt that either they or His Majesty or the women or the garden became insane.
And they bowed low before His Majesty.
Translated by Dragan Milivojević
* Through the ruins man advances to the stars.
Art & Poetry 