Literary Papers (Knjizevne Novine)
Belgrade, Serbia
September 1 and 15, 1996
Number 935/936
Page 17
by Sojan Djordjic
In the Labyrinth of the Plot
At the beginning of the novel "Broken Journey", which is about "a very prudent and powerful man", the president of a powerful
country, Mihajlo Kazic says that he deliberately omitted names of the characters in the novel and the name of the country
"so that the story would be protected from the readers who seek that what has not been written". His commitment to the poetics
of full independence of the story, Kazic announces openly and remains consistent till the end of the novel by removing from
the text all other reasons that could lead a reader into arbitrary and unnecessary readings and "connecting" the story with
the real life. It seems that this warning to an undisciplined reader is needless - for such reader there is nothing to look
for in the story since everything in it happens within the limits of the imaginary world of the story.
This imaginary world was created consistently according to the rules and conventions applied in creating certain literary
form: the adventure story. Its dominant element is the plot: almost all dimensions and complications in the story are in the
function of the plot. For example, the novel deals with cultural differences among people, however these are used mostly for
the sake of the plot and its branching. Events that he writes about Kazic neither depicts linearly nor comprehensively, but
fragmentarily revealing the whole story in series of more or less connected episodes.
The outline of the plot in "Broken Journey" is the story about the search for a secret and important object that is passed
from a hand to a hand causing death and new events. The writer pays attention only to the plot that gets more complicated
so that, when the time comes, he would recapitulate it and continue in winding and intersected way bringing in elements of
related genres such as criminal novel or spy novel. Giving his whole hope to the plot, Kazic considers mostly the logic of
the adventure story where the only thing that matters is the search for the secret object. Everything else slows down or hinders
the search.
Kazic is familiar with this selected model so that it can be said that the novel "Broken Journey" is one of distinctive creations
in the domain of this genre, which is beginning to take its place in the Serbian contemporary literature.
However, to this assessment it should be added that Kazic is trying and succeeding to bring in this preferably adventure prose
about the search for precious and secret object also some statements of somewhat more complex meaning. Thus, the reader will
come across certain ideas such as the one about incompletion of human insight into the reality. Even the most clairvoyant
and the brightest people cannot know or imagine all the circumstances that make life. Therefore, rushing after events and
leading the reader through the labyrinth of plot, Kazic has time to articulate a particular universal statement in this novel:
"People will never understand fully what happens around them even if they themselves take part in these events". In the adventure
story this statement sounds more than true. Each character has only a partial insight into events, only a piece of truth is
available to them, and only the reader may reach the whole truth by careful reading of that what the writer has to say.
Kazic made a step further, at the very end of the novel he built in the explicit message that strengthens the thoughtful dimension
of this novel. A deep voice from the fire told the most informed characters to continue the search, saying one sentence of
general meaning: "The myth of conquered is stronger than the truth of the conqueror", the sentence that suggests more than
adventurous framework of this story implying more active approach of the reader than the writer allows in the beginning.
By such expressions Kazic get out of the framework of the genre, not aggravating it, and points to his predispositions for
another forms and models of narration. Certainly, these mean many other prerequisites and only in subsequent creations of
this writer we shall get the answer to the question in which direction he is going to continue his search for the precious
and secret object: by artistic form and act
