A comparative reading of Đilas and Kafka: At the Door of the Law

Intertextuality is one of the paradigmatic features of modernism, the theoretical aspects of which were set and elaborated by structuralists and poststructuralists as an important instance in the study of literature

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Đilas, Photo: Printscreen/YouTube/TV Vijesti
Đilas, Photo: Printscreen/YouTube/TV Vijesti
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

How to interpret the intertextual relationship between works that are spatially-temporally and poetically distant, between the novel of absurdity "Proces", published in 1933, and the novel of existentialist provenance "The Stranger", published in 1942, with the novel "Crna Gora", the harbinger of Montenegrin modernist literature, published, first, in New York in 1962, then in Belgrade in 1989, and in Montenegro only in 1994?

Intertextuality is one of the paradigmatic features of modernism, whose theoretical aspects were established and developed by structuralists and poststructuralists as an important instance in the study of literature. Information about the controversial life odyssey of the author of the novel "Montenegro" also contributes to the secrecy of intertextual relations in an unusual way.

Mlovan Đilas was born in 1911 in Podbišće, near Mojkovac in Montenegro, and died in 1995 in Belgrade. He was a prominent actor of the social literature movement and an activist of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. During World War II (1941-1945), and after liberation, he was a member of the closest Yugoslav leadership, including the president of the Federal Assembly of Yugoslavia (1953). However, in January 1954, due to an ideological conflict with the politics of the party to which he belonged until then, he was deprived of all state functions and civil rights. Since even after that he did not agree to compromises with the authorities and publicly criticized them by publishing articles and works abroad, he spent nine years in its prisons. Milovan Đilas' break with the ideology he belonged to and which he affirmed was a completely isolated case in the middle of the last century in the countries of the socialist bloc. Former leader of the revolution and leading protagonist of Yugoslav socialism, he became its uncompromising critic, and thus the first European dissident.

The composition of the novel "Montenegro" consists of three narrative units. In the first "Battle" the resistance of the Montenegrin volunteer army to the Austro-Hungarian army on the Orthodox Christmas in 1916 is described.

"Where there is power, there is also resistance (...) resistance, however, is never in an external position - against the power relationship. Resistances do not arise from some heterogeneous principles - they are not bait or necessarily a broken promise. They are the second member in power relations; they are written into them as an irreducible opposing party" (M. Foucault, Knowledge and power).

In the second part of the novel - "The Gallows" - the consequences of the battle and the occupation of the country are shown. And in this unit, resistance is the dominant theme in which Đilas expressed one of the dominant themes of modernist poetics. With the fictional portrayal of the character - the student Miloš Milošević, convicted without guilt, Đilas expressed the universal meanings of the power-resistance relationship, but also the ethical dimension (typical of the Montenegrin mentality), identifying the character with the laws of tradition, but also the existentialist trait - the right to personal choice.

Resistance is a synonym of Montenegro, one of the leading ideas in "Mountain Wreath" and a leitmotif in the novel "Montenegro", repeated in many forms through the consciousness and actions of its characters, and it is also immanent to their creator - M. Đilas - throughout all periods of his life. . The riddle of the existence of intertextuality between the mentioned novels is difficult to unravel.

As the term itself suggests, intertextuality is the relationship between two or more texts. The text, in addition to other theoretical schools, was the subject of research by structuralists who pointed out its interaction with language and speech, its ability to produce and the "constitutive movement of the text to pass through the"(Roland Barthes ...through a work or several of them, which is a sign of intertextuality). The term comes from the word text, which is fluid and unbounded. Therefore, in various forms, one can move from one to another or a third work and establish a dialogue between them.

However, the text only produces meanings when it meets the recipient, and this is one of the forms of the great dialogue called literature.

In the narrative unit "Gallows" in the novel "Montenegro" Đilas achieved a synthesis of concrete and fictional, local - national and universal. Facing death and life, betrayal and patriotism, violence and resistance, unscrupulousness and moral laws, are not only the motifs and themes of the novelist tradition, but also the very core, the essence of modern prose.

Polarized worlds: darkness and light, metaphorically speaking, the author expressed with modernist models: internal monologue, experienced speech, parallelism, stage presentation, as well as the original use of temporal figures, narrative models characteristic of the narrative in the novels "The Process" and "The Stranger".

With the narrative unit "Gallows", the novel "Montenegro" is intertextually connected with two cult modernist novels because it contains two of their paradigmatic features: the absurdity of law and life ("Proces") and the trauma and drama of a character - condemned to death ("Stranger").

Thus, the thematic, motivic, structural, psychological and stylistic connections between these novels are multiple. They appear as intertextuality in Đilas's novel, but also as narrative influence and ambient - psychological identity.

Jozef K, the hero of the novel "The Process", became synonymous with victim in the network of bureaucracy. His tragedy was not only in the fact that an innocent person was killed, but also in the fact that, despite all his efforts, he failed to learn any reason for his guilt and the process that was conducted against him.

However, the real tragedy of Jozef K is that he did not realize that the reason for the process is not in him or in connection with him, but in the mechanism of the system, the meaninglessness of which is apostrophized by the narrator: "Stay calm even if it is against common sense! It should be understood that this great judicial organism to a certain extent floats forever and that a person, if he tries to change something on his own, takes away the ground from under his feet and collapses..."

The story of guilt and the door of the law is like that - as it is, it exists just as there is the cathedral in which it was told and Ka "cannot change the story", which can be understood allegorically that he cannot influence his fate. The mystery of the fictional work was joined by the mystery of its interpretation.

If there is no answer - there is a tragic epilogue: a peasant died at the door of the law, and Jozefa Ka, in her search for answers, was interrupted by death.

In the novel "Montenegro", as a whole "Gallows", instead of Kafka's priest, the psychosis of imprisoned representatives of three Montenegrin generations is narrated by an authorial and personal narrator. However, Đilas does not give an answer to the question where the doors of the law are located: in Montenegro or the Austro-Hungarian monarchy?

In the novel "Proces", Jozef Ka was arrested without being found guilty, put on trial, and finally executed. In the novel "Montenegro", as a whole "The Gallows", a student was arrested also without being found guilty, interrogated and sentenced to death by hanging according to the precise mechanism of the bureaucratic authorities. When the student has come to terms with his fate, there is a big twist, atypical for a bureaucratic government, which offers the student a stay of execution in exchange for cooperation...

The focus of all characters is concentrated on the door of the law, constantly ajar, through which Kafka's "peasant" could not pass, and through which Đilas's "student" did not want to exit.

The question arises - is reconciliation with fate the "key" to the door of the law?

Instead of being hanged, the student found himself at the door of the law. The dialogue between the student and the Austrian interrogator is similar, in terms of the foundation and strength of the arguments and counter-arguments, to the dialogue between Jozef K and the priest.

Just as in Kafka's story about the peasant and the door of the law, in Đilas's story about the Montenegrin understanding of life and honor, the student and the interrogator did not understand each other - nor did they agree. Some moral scales and understandings in man are immutable, regardless of concrete transitory needs and demands of life. As the priest says, the story about the door of the law is unchanging, just like the unchanging core of the student's being, which we illustrate and confirm with an autobiographical note from another work by Đilas: "I could not submit, and I could not repent - without destroying all the components which make up my personality, my opinion and my character" (Authority and Rebellion).

The intertextuality of the novel "Montenegro" with cult works of modernism is a confirmation of Đilas' pioneering role in accepting and applying the postulates of modernist poetics in Montenegrin prose.

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