NATIVE AND FOREIGN VOICES IN THE POETRY OF MILOŠ CRNJANSKI
NATIVE AND FOREIGN VOICES IN THE POETRY OF MILOŠ CRNJANSKI

Summary/Abstract: Homeland does not just mean a place of birth and rearing, a family, a broad and narrow social environment, but also ancestral heritage, historical events and their local repercussions, customary and natural surroundings, the specifics of the local language, humour, form of communication, and also the unwritten, sometimes voiceless, assumptions about appropriate behaviour and the fundamental values of life, in short—the roots of the individual person within a certain community. Just as the root of a plant is the invisible source of life which is taken for granted so long as it doesn’t dry out, so the homeland is something which is itself only understood while it is within reach. However, when a person has lost it, or wanders afar hither and thither, it becomes a dramatic literary challenge. The interweaving of native consciousness with everything that exile implies and offers is actually an ancient feature of history, of the destiny of peoples, and of their imaginative resonance with the arts of all kinds, and it will also often suggest a deep permeation of the past and the future.

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