Ритмички, композицијски и значењски изазови поеме „Ламент над Београдом” Милоша Црњанског
Rhythmic, compositional and semantic challenges of the poem "Lament over Belgrade" by Miloš Crnjanski

Summary/Abstract: With his third poem, „Lament nad Beogradom”, Miloš Crnjanski completed his poetic opus and established his triad of poems: „Stražilovo” (Fiesole, 1921), „Serbia” (Corfu, 1925), and „Lament nad Beogradom” (Cooden Beach, 1956). The information about the place and time of their creation suggests the context and is relevant for understanding and interpreting the poem. „Lament” was composed in exile, at the onset of old age, when and where the great Serbian poet felt like no one and nothing. The poem is written in six antithetical semantic strophic pairs, that is, in twelve decimas. The odd stanzas are the poet’s lament over his fate, nihilistically emotional and thematically oriented, while the even stanzas elevate and glorify Belgrade as the desired city of the Absolute. All stanzas are rhymed, but the rhyme scheme differs between the odd and even stanzas. The work notes phonetic correspondences and repetitions (repetition of sound groups, phonemes, even entire words, rhymes, and „rhymes in the depth of the verses”). The entire poem can be compared to a fugue in two movements, in which the antithetical rhythmic-semantic theme is varied six times. For the rhythm of the poem, „strophic isosyllabism” is of exceptional importance: although the verses in the odd stanzas vary from five to fifteen syllables, and in the even stanzas from twelve to fifteen syllables, the number of syllables is equal in each verse of the corresponding ordinal number of the odd or even stanza. Crnjanski weaves foreign words into the final three verses of the odd stanzas, intensifying the poet’s sense of despair in exile with words from seven languages. The odd stanzas are marked by apparitions that transform into ominous monsters, while the even stanzas are marked by astral and solar light, and by the yearning for death in the city of the Absolute. The poem is masterfully arranged and composed both rhythmically and semantically.

• Details
• Contents