The fantastic in the works of Srečko Kosovel

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The fantastic in the works of Srečko Kosovel

The term “fantastic” Kosovel uses in the sense of “a manner of expression,” which enables the author greater subversiveness in his relation to the material world. This view is rather far from a traditional understanding of the fantastic3F in relation to both prose and poetry. Of the texts written at the time of the first, historical avant-garde, that is, in Kosovel’s time, the closest that comes to his definition of the fantastic is that of Evgeny Zamiatin, a Russian engineer and avant-garde writer. A hint of satire, the grotesque and the fantastic can be detected in Zamiatin’s narratives. “Serapionovists and constructivists considered him their teacher,” points out Drago Bajt in the preface to the Slovene translation of the novel Mi. Zamiatin discusses the fantastic in his essay On Synthetism, first published in 1922 4F as a foreword to the portfolio of paintings called Portraits. In his review of the painter, Yuriy Anenko, Zamiatin places the fantastic in third place, just as Kosovel did in his writing on the poet, Gruden. In Zamiatin’s text the order is as follows: realism, symbolism, the fantastic:
“Even space and time were torn out of the centre by Einstein. /…/ Following this geometric and philosophic earthquake, which was provoked by Einstein, time and space, conceived in the traditional manner, were finally destroyed /…/ In literary imagery there appear side by side: mammoths and residential councils from Pietroburg /…/ A shift in the levels of time and space took place.”
Art growing from a new, present-day reality, cannot be but fantastic, says Zamiatin. This is the fantastic, which lives and breathes in the same space, together with the most banal details:
“And yet houses, boots and cigarettes continue to exist; and by the ticket office for Mars there is a sausage shop. You can describe every detail; everything has its size, weight and odour; from everything comes juice, like from a ripe sour cherry. From the same stone, boot, cigarettes and sausages – phantasms and dreams.”
This is therefore the fantastic as a consequence, as the result of the awareness of the relativity of time and space. That which seems to us so much ours, so familiar, minute and insignificant – e.g., the skin and hairs on a human hand – suddenly, under a microscope, appears as mountains, caves and gigantic stalks of unfamiliar plants. This understanding of the fantastic is, in our mind, the closest to that of Kosovel. Kosovel’s dreams and phantasms as well stem primarily from his new, modern conception of time and space: “Time and space are only two relations in the relativity of cosmic space, which is a synthesis of time/space,” says our poet. The understanding of the modern fantastic, which we detect in Kosovel’s literature, refers primarily to the technique of writing, to the manner of organizing the poetic material. And this is conditioned by the great desire of the modern author to discover the interconnections and relativity of the real world, the relativity of time and space. The attempt to break through to the “other side” of the visible/apparent is subversive, parodical, satirical and always suspenseful: There is suspense between the commonplace, ordinary, “real” image and the one that exists somewhere “behind,” – inscrutable and for this reason also mythical.

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In his collection, Integrali, first published only in 1967, the fantastic is generalised, present from the very beginning to the end of the poem. Thus we do not only come across the fantastic atmosphere, fantastic events, events, movements, but also encounter general chaos. It is a topsy-turvy world of anguish where the supernatural intertwines with the natural, the commonplace with the extremely bizarre: My ink fountain is on a stroll. Wearing a tuxedo. Like fog. The entire land veiled, deaf. A melancholic cat lies on the hay. Squealing with his golden violin! Yes, yes, yes. A A A/ A A A.”
The poem Evacuation of the spirit describes the physical happening of the meaning of the expression: The poet’s spirit is sparkling. Towards the end also emerges the romantic thesis of the eternal struggle and incomprehension between the poet and his environment: a poet is misunderstood by the world and time to which he belongs. Already in the first volume of his collected works, from the early period, we learn that the poet was obsessed with light and blazing fire; there is blazing fire and twisting flames everywhere. But no poem matches the following in terms of light and fire:
A spirit in space.
A BLAZE of storms EMBLAZES darkness.
The spirit BURNS in space.
magically, LIGHT is IRRADIATED.
Green windows of the ILLUMINATED
express train on the overpass.
I myself BURN for my own LIGHTING;
the blind only feel electricity
my LIGHTS, do not see the DAWN.
But they shudder like me,
as if in a deathly stupor.
And do not know that it is a shudder
of the wings that want to unfold,
TO BLAZE like a GOLDEN FIRE into the night.
And they curse the policemen of the SUN,
who sleep at night
like the petty bourgeois.
And all people sleep at night,
and feel not the magic revelations,
which SHINE within me and from me.
People are the evacuation of the spirit.
The anomaly of psychology.
A poem of 22 verses contains 15 verbs and nouns suggesting light, fire, dawn, sun; A blaze emblazes, burns; light is irradiated – space is thus set ablaze. Through a burning fire speeds an illuminated express train. In the general illumination, the subject says: “I myself burn for my own lighting.” The poem not only features the poetic subject, but also those who should understand this light as euphoria. But the poet immediately adds: the blind only feel electricity my lights, do not see the dawn. Although the light is so bright that it “emblazes darkness,” people are blind and do not see it. And yet they desire light (“and they curse the policemen of the sun, who sleep at night, like petty bourgeois”), together with the poet “shudder as if in a deathly stupor and feel the electricity of my light”, thus they are excited, intimidated, yet blind and do not know that this electricity, that shudder of the poet’s winds is the consequence of some cosmic process, which the poet expresses in his imagery and says that his wings “ want to unfold, to blaze like a golden fire into the night.”
Kosovel sings about the old conflict of the poet with his environment by materialising, that is shaping into physical images, the figurative thought: the poet’s spirit is a light intended to shine for the people, but the people are incapable of seeing the light because they are empty; because they are spiritless; because the evacuation of the spirit has taken place. The poem illustrates on the one hand the general spirituality of space (which is light itself, emblazed, golden fire), and the sleepiness and blindness of the people and the evacuation of the spirit on the other. By weaving a poem with blazing imagery and by materialising a proverb, Kosovel presents the reader with a story which transcends mere allegory (when I say: “the poet’s spirit is bright,” it is an allegory and I understand it by thinking of all the things that this spirit is capable of creating; how many rhymes, rhythms, melodies; how many new images and meanings…). While Kosovel understands this image literally, presenting to the reader cascading rays of light, golden fires and blazing flames which move through space like an express train. From some general “truth,” which is so threadbare that no one can understand it literally, Kosovel returns to this literalness and with this retorsion builds the fantastic, the fantastic mood which shocks and shakes and disturbs the reader – and even that reader on whom he relies and with whom he communicates in the poem itself – so that he begins to shudder “in the deathly stupor.”

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3. This study is not a place for a detailed presentation of modern theories on the fantastic in literature. We may perhaps mention the studies by Roger Caillois Au coeur du fantastique, and draw attention to the following works which were used to support this paper: Tzvetan Todorov, Introduction a la Littérature Fantastique, Seul, Paris 1970; translated and published in Belgrade 1987; Radovan Vučković, “Oblici fantastične književnosti”. Izraz XXX/1986, Nos. 7-8; Srpska fantastika. Natprirodno i nestvarno u srpskoj književnosti. Ed. Predrag Palavestra. SANU, Belgrade 1989; Zoran Mišić 1821-1976. Zbornik. Ur. Sveta Lukić, Đorđije Vuković, Jovan Hristić. Beograd 1978. – Mišić had been dealing with the fantastic already in the 1950s and founded the collection “Orfej“ in Belgrade as early as 1954. The first work of the collection was Apuleius‘ “The Golden Ass”. – Sartre in his “Aminadab” or the fantastic as a way of expression also writes about the ubiquity of the fantastic and its subversive attitude to the real world. In the book: J.P.S. Izabrano delo, vol. VI. Nolit, Belgrade 1981, pp. 209-233; in the Slovene edition of Sartre’s collected works there is, unfortunately, no translation of his text on the fantastic of modern times and about the way it manaifests itself through language; this is also indicative of the lack of interest of the Slovene cultural circles in the fantastic of modern times.
4. This text was translated by A. Flaker and published in the Zagreb review Književna smotra

AuthorMarija Mitrović
2018-08-21T17:23:12+00:00 November 27th, 2006|Categories: Reviews, Literature, Blesok no. 51|0 Comments