Šopov sat: mjerni instrument vremenitosti i bezvremenosti
Šop’s Clock: the Measuring Instrument of Temporality and Timelessness

Summary/Abstract: Important and ground-laying discussions have been written on the complex concept of the category of ‘time’ in Nikola Šop’s work, particularly in his cosmic phase. This paper researches Šop’s prose preceding his cosmic phase, aiming to reconstruct the development that led the poet in question to distance himself from “worldly time” and to found “cosmic time”. The clock as a concrete measuring instrument, so ever-present as a discreet protagonist in Šop’s work, is the guiding threat of this analysis. It is the “worldly clock” that the poet, upon his arrival to the universe, wishes to be freed from not knowing what to do with it: “(…) nekome u džepu skriven kuca zemaljski sat. / Netko ga krije. / Netko još mjeri po starinski. / Tko je, da je, što će mu ta sprava” (… hidden in someone’s pocket the worldly clock ticks. / Someone hides it. / Someone still measures the old-fashioned way. / Whosoever this is and what does he want with this device, Kućice u svemiru / Little Houses in the Universe). From his very first prose poems this clock loses the attributes of a common object and is endowed with metaphysical properties.

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