On the occasion of the 110th anniversary of the birth of the great writer, we present the essay of academician Branko Popović "Development line of Mihail Lalić's novel" published in Belgrade's Književni novine in January 1972, and then in his study "Mihail Lalić's novelistic art" (1974).
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Looking at all six of Lalić's novels (the text was written in 1972, before the publication of Lalić's later novels), we come to a paradoxical knowledge: the artist left only his first novels unedited: The wedding i Evil spring. Of course, we ignore the minor (most often stylistic) interventions in the later editions of these two novels. Does this mean that those two novels have a privileged place in the writer's internal value scale, or is the author less sensitive to possible omissions in novels with such a thematic basis and such an artistic treatment of that subject? Or, simply, he did not have time to process them? It should be said right away that in that creative phase, the artist's attitude towards the revolution, the dominant theme of all his novels, is the least critical. In that artistic phase, there were neither aesthetic nor ideological reasons to grapple with contradictions within one's own (revolutionary) movement.
Wedding was created in the phase of romantic enthusiasm for the revolution. It was a literary echo of the unfinished celebration of her triumphant victory, an outgrowth of an ecstatic climate: the romantic love of a young revolutionary art and a young revolution. The artistic evocation of the revolution is sincerely understood as an integral part of the artist's revolutionary activity. That is why there was no separation between ideological and aesthetic motivation even in the creator himself.
Wedding is an expression of almost complete agreement between the author's poetics and the general spiritual climate. This is how the lively work was created: with the cheerfulness of the time from which it was created, it irradiated the gloomy aspects of the story's time. He spoke in Weddings with the eruptive power of an unborn talent, the accumulated artistic and life experience was released. And through the traditional form and uncultivated expressive technique, the power of artistic immediacy, originality and vitality radiated; the poetic depth beneath the simplicity of the "naive" form was revealed. The author did not have to overcome - neither in himself nor in the material - other types of resistance than aesthetic ones.
In proportion to his previous artistic experience, he realized his artistic idea almost "without any residue". That's why there was never a dispute between the author and his first-born that was strong enough to lead to a radical reworking of the novel. Such a novel-debut can honorably occupy the starting place in an extraordinarily significant novelist's opus, which in terms of artistic perfection far surpasses The wedding.
Evil spring represents an important turning point. From him begins - let's call it that - Lalić's great school of novel art. If it is Wedding affirmed Lalić's extraordinary giftedness, Evil spring has become a brilliant testimony of education and giftedness, a confirmation of the success of a hard work to master the skill of Romanesque art. It opened the way to a perfect narrative form.
After an epic, almost ten-year knighthood Wedding, noisy optimism, cheerfulness even in the most tragic circumstances, Evil spring brings the muted peace of a lyrical set. The rhetoric and immediacy of the open scene are replaced by chamber tones of disciplined poetry of memory, evocation of childhood and evocation of love. It appears to be The wedding written by a warrior, uniforms and weapons, a Evil spring (only) an artist injured by the war. The theme of war and revolution Evil spring grips from the beginning, with the undisguised ambition that this novel will be (mimo Wedding) the beginning of a unique thematic opus, which, following from novel to novel several striking characters - will cover the entire (obsessive for the novelist) wartime.
Just by returning to the past, Evil spring provides a theme from the reality of a more certain way of being. That is why, from that relatively decent distance, the author follows a social commotion, which is no less problematic in itself, but his sensitivity and resistance to freer novelistic interventions is reduced. At that distance, factual details lose their relief, so, for the artist who has to reshape or bypass them, they also lose the force of binding fixed outlines.
On the other hand, in Evil spring there were conditions for freer novelistic approaches, because the topic is still far from the time of the crisis of the liberation movement, and especially far from the hesitancy of the participants of that movement, created for the so-called "ebb and flow of the revolution", which is the thematic center of all three following, reworked novels: Breaking up, The Lele Mountains i Chases. On that sensitive internal conflict (of revolutionaries and the revolutionary movement) in Evil spring are not based on the development courses of the novel, as is partly the case in the other mentioned novels by Lalić.
In this novel, there were no significant events from the area of this internal conflict line, nor the risk of subjectivity in their treatment, nor the dilemma regarding their nature and the meaning and scope of their inclusion in the novel. Because, seen from the perspective of other versions Raskida, Lelejske gora i Chases, it seems that at the time of writing the first versions of those novels, not all the knowledge about this phenomenon had matured in the author, nor was the social climate conducive to a more objective (and for the novelist, freer) presentation of it. That creative anxiety had to have a negative impact, both on the degree of reaching the essence and their expressive fullness, as well as on the overall artistic success of the novel. That is why the author reworked them.
Evil spring, however, - created in a happy combination of more mature artistic experience, firmly drawn and clearly seen thematic basis and unrestrained artistic process - immediately received a satisfactory degree of artistic perfection, and that is why it has preserved its initial form to this day. Thus, with the first two novels, Lalić showed enough qualities necessary for great artistic achievements: unusual giftedness, exceptional creative energy and relative mastery of the novelist's skill.
First versions Breaking up i The Lele Mountains they narrow the thematic field around the main character, they concentrate on a much shorter time and a narrower circle of problems around the dominant character, so they almost turn into personality novels. From the external, close-up and visible plans, here it abruptly turns to the perception of the internal, to the artistic "recording" of the complex psychological states of the hero. Just as the main characters of these novels are in many respects complementary personalities, so they are Breaking up i Lelejska Gora two complementary novels, so their histories are similar in key points.
As if she is the first Lelejska Gora arose from the need to show another variant, and another, more "perspective" way out of similar initial circumstances, and to be a direct supplement They break up, to shed more light on the insufficiently shown traumas of solitude, which lead the abandoned hero to his downfall: Tajović is the opposite double of Doselić. Both of them were conceived as revolutionaries, who, at the beginning of the crisis of loneliness and abandonment, are moral and ideological purists. Both of them strive to maintain the moral image of revolutionaries even in the most difficult circumstances of the "ebb and flow of the revolution", even though they are torn by suspicions that they are hopelessly isolated, due to the carelessness or mistake of the leaders of the movement. However, the battle for the simultaneous preservation of both moral and life existence in such adversities had to be lost.
More practical and mentally elastic, Tajović realizes this in time. He accepts the motto: "Do evil if you defend yourself from evil, there is no crime." Some of his initial moral aura suffers - but he survives. The revolutionary Doselić, a moral prisoner of the saintly soul, could not accept such a path and became a prey to the enemy.
First versions Breaking up i The Lele Mountains - through two oppositely oriented revolutionaries - give an artistic vision of two extremely painful experiences of solitude, and two characteristic choices of the way out of the labyrinth of wartime hardships of lonely fighters of the revolution. On a broader level, two concepts of human movement are given: towards the revolutionary change of the world and two visions of the understanding of humanistic behavior on that path. Both ambitious and very modernly conceived novels did not fully satisfy the author in the first versions: Breaking up it was not well received by any part of the critics.
The author was under the influence of a strong subjective attachment to that still fresh topic. That, in some layers of the novel, the almost visible biographical coupling of the author and the hero fed the novelist with authentic life juices, but also restrained the creative scope and objectivity of the writer, who (as shown by other versions of his novels) achieves a great artistic range precisely in the shaping of imaginative and temporal remote poetic structures. Likewise, the microanalytical turn in the literary procedure had to leave the marks of its experimental phase. We saw how it is in the first one They break up vacillation in the treatment of the subject led to vacillation in the effort to maintain the structural unity of the novel, which is particularly reflected in the changes in the narrator's position. Lelejska Gora is, however, a significant novel even in its original form, and through a new creative feat (reworking) it has been enriched so much that it has grown into a novel of European importance.
It should be emphasized - because it has been little emphasized so far - that Lalić is a great critic of society. However, in an honest citizen's intention not to act covertly, and in an effort not to damage the truth by covering it with a glaze of artistic means, he is in that criticism (especially in the first Lelejska gora) was too direct, so the critical passion could not even hide its subjective bile. In other versions Breaking up i The Lele Mountains the critical orientation does not lose its strength, nor is it, in essence, oriented differently. It is cultivated by transposition, it descends from the "surface" into a more indirect, literary form of manifestation, and in addition, through some new accents, it is also actualized.
In this change of the author's critical and aesthetic attitude towards the reality of earlier novels, and the emphasized actualization of criticism in other versions of the novel, sociological criticism would see signs of disagreement of the writer-revolutionary with the contemporary development trends of the revolution. The author's break with the earlier structural solutions of the novel would be considered, in part, as a consequence of the loosening of the harmonious ties between the novelist and the socio-political structures of the reality that surrounds him. For the sake of completeness, it should be added that the novelist, especially the engaged artist of Lalić's type, is in eternal conflict with the imperfections of everything that exists, including the imperfections of the world of artistic forms that he himself creates. It is understandable that it is there (in that own, created world) that he reacts first and most effectively.
First versions Breaking up i The Lele Mountains they represent a research phase in the modernization of Lalić's novelistic process, a phase dominated by the desire to master a complex expressive technique, to capture the depths of the inner world of the hero, the micro-world of their subtle psychological overflows.
They were works (including an unpublished version Chases) transitional creative phase, already in the process of creation affected by a crisis of belief in their own and previous artistic solutions, a very productive crisis of self-critical re-examination, search and positive creative reorientation.
The chase it comes as sublimation and the crown of that reorientation. In it, the new tendencies of graying reach maturity and perfection. There, in a happy synthesis, all artistic knowledge from previous research experience is realized. The renewed creative process itself, as an internal method of artistic work at work, represents a discovery for the author.
In the renewed literary process, the hitherto latent riches of the rational, critical component of his creative gift are activated in the author. With the advantage of distance and mature artistic experience, that component achieves a complementary harmony with a strong imaginative component, which also flourishes in the subsequent process, but with a calmer, more disciplined gait. The proven fruitfulness of the renewal of the creative process in Hajki and the advantages of interventions of critical creative consciousness in the subsequent process, they did Hajku a more significant turning point in Lalić's development as a novelist than the one it brought Evil spring. Her My hair a new, most significant phase begins, the stage of other versions of Lalić's novels, in which his novelist's art reaches its peak.
The chase is Lalić's compositionally most complex work. In it, almost at the same level of importance, about twenty heroes from four separate camps are followed, who - even when they are classified only in two opposing sides (pursuers and persecuted) - come closer only to a distance from which they can liquidate each other. They are associated with exclusivity!
To restrain such a diffuse narrative structure and subject it to the discipline of a unique novelistic will, while avoiding shallow detective stories, i.e. not to get entangled in the rough recording of her changing frames, oversaturated with a mass of actors and situations - but to discover the junctions and show them with a "moving camera", a very variable angle of vision, through microplanes of fine psychological and existential flickers, - that meant inventively conquering an untouched artistic area literary procedure. When everything is pulled by the large and external, and everything is adjusted by artistic transposition to radiate through the subtleties of the smallest, inner mental reactions, to be, therefore, the speech and expression of the very essences of being - this means that art has mastered even the most complex expressive technique.
If - as we have already said - in Evil spring Lalić started his great school of novel art, that school in Hajci completed brilliantly. None of Lalić's work taken separately, not even an excellent one Lelejska Gora, does not contain such a wealth of expressive forms. And although he reaches his creative peak in the work that comes immediately after Chases, in another version The Lele Mountains, - by the very fact that he is in creative spasms Chases (written in two versions!) won everything that characterizes Lalić's new creative orientation in the most essential qualities - The chase represents the most significant step in the development line of the art of Lalić's novel.
Second Lelejska Gora brings the otherwise well-conceived project of the first version of the novel almost to perfection. Already in that first project, as we have seen, a breakthrough into the hero's confused state of consciousness and into the so-called the second half of reality, which significantly expanded the field of literary important factors.
Although the approach "from the other side" found a linguistically untrodden whole, that first-class creative move, less gems than could have been brought from that "dark vilayet", because in the first Lelejska gora restrained by the inexperience of artistic research and the fear of rushing too far towards "modernism".
Only when the entire literary criticism welcomed this "broadening" of the boundaries of reality as a very original novelty in the literary process and, especially, when in the creative practice Chases such a procedure was strongly confirmed artistically, and freed from the initial shunning, it gained the security, naturalness and rank of a naturally based act - only then, along this line, did the creative freedom of the other The Lele Mountains could get - both full scale and full result. That's how innovations are in the literary process Chases pointed to previously unsuspected possibilities for change, extension and development of some structural solutions in the first Lelejska gora.
Mastering a more perfect narrative technique, the second Lelejska Gora along with the visible, it reveals the invisible, it can present every phenomenon with the shadow and through the shadow
The path to poetry, which in Hajci they bring ingenious psychological analyzes of the hero's nightmarish near-death states. It's as if Lalić discovered in them structural models suitable to be used in another Lelejska gora even deeper and wider they establish some of the most sensitive psychological parts of Tajović's character. Mastering a more perfect narrative technique, the second Lelejska Gora along with the visible, it reveals the invisible, it can present every phenomenon with the shadow and through the shadow. That's how love and wood get shadows. Their "relief", just shaded - is complete. The sky of man's being is also incomplete without the eclipsed constellations of his subconscious.
For the artist who "narrowed" the path of his poetry, connecting it to history as a witness, - this possibility of "astrological" penetration into the dark half of the human being, and this contrasting reflection of phenomena through his own negatives, as well as through his imaginative additions, - means a useful expansion of the perceptual the fields of poetry, an exit into a world of supplementary color, into uninhabited metaphysical spaces, where the existing and the "non-existent" intersect and equal in importance. In such a novelistic world, man is determined as much by the sum of his qualities as by the countless absent qualities. The tragedy of his fate is magnified by the desperation of poverty precisely because of the qualities he is deprived of. The second one Lelejska Gora captures the abundance of poetry from the state of those Tajović's illusive contacts with the "non-existent" and from the desperate return to the cruel facts of the existing, returning to the world his smallness and loneliness.
We have talked enough about the many other artistic qualities of the nova The Lele Mountains. Here we highlight only what is its specific feature, we emphasize the uniqueness of the path through which its totality was revealed through the layered depths of Tajović's being.
How are you? Lelejska Gora i The chase, as Lalić's artistic peaks are now taken as the starting point for the art of his newer works, the new versions Breaking up i A strand of darkness they could not even shine with extraordinary light, although they bring original poetry and represent significant achievements, especially if we appreciate them according to the works from which they originated. In them, therefore, there are no more radical innovations in the literary process; except, of course, the poetic refreshments brought by each original poetic image and each happily found expression, - which Lalić has in abundance, as it were, in every section.
With peculiarities, about which there was enough to say, in the second They break up i The source is dark a new orientation in the novelist's process is being extended, now more and more routinely, on an artistic level, which means a new creative affirmation of Lalić's art. With the versions of these two novels, Lalić has standardized his entire novelistic oeuvre: a number of his novels now constitute, without exception, very significant artistic achievements.
By rewriting already published works, Lalić succeeded in what only the great can do: he updated and modernized his novelistic art, while remaining an original and strong artist, one of the best in our entire literary art.
(Književne novine, Belgrade, 1972)
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