Fantastic Metropolis

Ein Teil jener Kraft
Die stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft.
— J. W. Goethe, Faust (1335 f.)

Although it might sound incredible, no small number of literary theoreticians and other scholars have also written belletristic literature. Citing their names would take us far back to the time when philosophy — still containing all scientific disciplines — and literature overlapped, when one wrote about the nature of things. In place of a list, two rules may be given that function almost unerringly: the first is that literature, and particularly good literature, always appears where there is a strong field of intellectual radiation, where ideas whirl and twirl, which means that in a way it feels naturally at home in the spirit of scientism. Is the scientist still considered solely a dry rationalist, and the writer just a romantic dreamer? I hope not. Just as there is no science today without an intuitive and imaginative mind, there is also no writing without rational work on and around the text. The second rule states that the primary activity of the scientist-writer is always reflected in his writing. Zoran Živković, the author of Time-Gifts, is known primarily as an aficionado of science fiction literature, and so his second novel bears the forceful mark of his primary interest.

Zoran Živković’s book is an interesting text that inspires interpretation. It consists of four stories, four autonomous narrative wholes, with an interconnecting link that allows them to be read as an extremely fragmented novel. The link that connects them is not narrative, but results from several common motifs. They are repeated from story to story and thus take on the weight of symbols. The symbols then take on the weight of semantic strongholds of the novelistic whole: the title and main character of each story is a professional appellation, all names are biblical, the only character to appear everywhere is presented by describing not his features but objects that belong to him (his cape, cane, white gloves…), a watch, butterflies… In the last story these elements do not repeat as symbols; recollections of the previous stories join them together into a whole — if this term is not too strong for such a disjointed structure — and Time-Gifts merges into one story. Thus “wholeness” is achieved in a manner that is quite adequate to the narrative procedure, by activating fragments of the fragmentized novel.

The fourth story differs somewhat from the first three. The above-mentioned motifs do not appear in the form of symbols and there are also other deviations, so that in some respects it is a looking-glass story with respect to the first three; their negative, their explanation. The first three stories are organized around the visit of the same mysterious character, and in the fourth story this role is taken by the doctor. Our deluded expectations are further let down by an additional factor — this story takes place in an insane asylum, while the previous three take place in the world of the “sane,” which means that a certain alibi is needed to justify the “outcome,” or explanation. The last story continues with a return to some points in the previous stories and interprets them, which is followed by revealing the identity and fate of the mysterious character. He does not appear in the last story on the narrative level, rather is indirectly present, and his presence is such that it is not possible to completely ascertain whether he truly exists or is imaginary, fictitious. This can be applied to the entire novel; its final turnabout from the writer’s initial intention, typical of fantastic prose, is to convince the reader of the veracity of his unreal stories. Živković in a way goes against the conventions of science fiction literature and leaves us confused about their truthfulness. Time-Gifts ends as it raises the question of the book’s status, never divulged, regarding whether it is about reality or artistic fiction, about a story or an illusion.

Looking at the structure of this text, two levels of meaning can be perceived. The first reflects Liotard’s thesis concerning the weakening/loss of “big” stories that once defined man’s view of the world. They have been replaced by “small” stories. There is no longer a unifying, comprehensive view of the world. Each individual system is axiologically equal. Following the structure of Time-Gifts, this thesis is reflected in practical terms by the independence of the first three stories, which are complete, whole organisms, independent with regard to the framework of the last story (which in this case is not linked to the traditional story framework). The last story, in which the previous three are reflected, could not survive without them. The first three have their independent worth and can also be read as subsets of the weakly unifying fourth story. This means that the individuality of the “small” stories has completely subordinated the once subordinating “big” story to such an extent that it cannot exist without them. Živković therefore goes one step further from the initial thesis about losing the big, overall picture of the world and makes his own contribution to this concept. Instead of the earlier subordination of the parts to the all-encompassing whole, now the whole in terms of the parts becomes quite insignificant; it can exist, but can also be done without, while the parts take the central position. The first three stories would lose none of their value without the (weak) framework that wants to link them, just as they do not gain much by this link. They are the proving ground for the narrative level of the novel that is by no means insignificant, and provide intriguing storytelling, while the fourth opens up some other aspects of Time-Gifts. The “small” stories themselves, however, maintain their initial narrative integrity, which can no longer be endangered — at least the way things stand now, which is how they have always stood.

The second interesting line of interpretation that can be followed in the structural makeup of the novel has to do with its denouement in the last story (or rather chapter). It goes without saying that every literary work creates its own world that is independent from the real world, and the reality of this created world is never questioned. Magdalena thus explains to her doctor that the main characters of the first three stories are just that, main characters, as are the two of them. No matter how much the doctor thinks that they all exist in reality, their reality is fictional. They have been created by the storyteller. A new possibility opens up, however, connected to Magdalena’s painting in the fourth story. She is to paint the mysterious man who appears in the previous three stories and finally determine his fate. He does not appear in this story directly, but rather through the description of actions that he is known to have performed (combing Magdalena’s hair). In addition to the painting she is currently working on, are three completed canvases, just as there are three completed stories. The interpretation that arises on this level of the book suggests that the stories are not the result of the narrator’s storytelling, but of what Magdalena has painted, created, starting with herself, the narrator, and even the other three stories, their main characters and their fates. The initial thesis of fictional reality now deepens with the possibility that this is fiction within fiction, the doubling of narrative worlds, of existence that exists solely in the multiplied mirrors of all the fictional worlds created by art. Finally, connecting this to the theme of the independence of “small” stories, we can also speak of the autonomy of all sorts of fictional worlds independently from the (weak) “big” story, independently from the myth of art.

The implications of such interpretations are far-reaching and to a certain extent overshadow the development of the plot and the fate of the main characters, or the traditional interpretation of the narrative structure. And they are far from uninteresting. Zoran Živković has devised this “traditional” narrative level of the novel so that an interesting and profound picture of man’s fate is obtained by observing the world and people from a special perspective. How does man fare in Živković’s novel? The framework of Time-Gifts consists of two standards — the frequent science fiction motif of time travel and the Faustian motif. A mysterious Faustian character visits the protagonists at some critical/crucial moment in their lives and offers them the possibility of taking a new lease on life, offers them information about the success or failure of their lives. Time travel, the “living clock,” takes them through time where they can verify their lives. The unknown visitor asks for some sort of atonement in return for this information, of course, but it is such that it finally invalidates what has been gained. Thus, man always loses. Whatever he does, whatever happens, whatever gift he receives, some unexpected detail will always turn up that will rock the entire construction of his life to the foundation.

The most complex situation — both narrative and existential — is the first story, The Astronomer. Medieval scientist Lazarus makes an amazing discovery that, naturally, deviates from official Church dogma. The Faustian character sends him to the future where he can see for himself the fantastic development of astronomy on the path that he first charted. The credit he receives from future generations, however, depends not on his work, not on scientific truth, not even on the development of science and the advancement of mankind, but on his conduct before the Inquisition. Thus an ethical position that is unquestionable — that one should stand with one’s life behind scientific truth — is reduced to absurdity, to ideology and conceit. Scientific truth is not invalidated, but Lazarus’ work and he himself are reduced to the commonplace. His unusual life and remarkable scientific accomplishment are viewed from a different, quite inappropriate perspective in another time, and credit will be given to the one who is closest to it. Modern man’s skepticism destroys the myth of science, making room for one more dubious conclusion. Nothing is eternal — not the Church and its dogma, not Lazarus and the exceptional nature of his discovery, not even the recalcitrance of those who want to ideologically destroy him. Everything is subordinated to different perspectives, the value systems of new “small” and “big” stories that replace and destroy each other.

The story of The Paleolinguist goes one step further in developing the absurd. Eva, who has brilliantly reconstructed (or constructed) mankind’s primal language, is spending her last days before retirement in a miserable basement, forgotten and neglected, cherishing her little secret, her weakness for tea. The Faustian character takes her back into the past so she can confirm the validity of her life’s work. She takes the form of a ghost and goes to her own paradise forever, to the first living material world of the first men. The obvious punishment, that she cannot participate since she is a ghost, shows its absurd side. Although she does not have a human body, she still has human weaknesses. The story ends with a scene in which Eva-ghost presides at the ritual of preparing tea that she will never, for all eternity, be able to taste. The accuracy of her scholarly construction is no longer important, nothing else is important compared to the unexpected punishment that she has horribly received for the frustrations of her old age. Absurd? Preposterous? Corporeal paradise, a ghost-prisoner and punishment reduced to nonsense.

Joseph, the main character in The Watchmaker, is offered the possibility to start life over again (by rectifying the past). He has spent his life is terrible loneliness ever since his fiancQe Mary was killed in an accident by a runaway horse and carriage. He is put in a parallel time stream and prevents Mary from going out into the street. Lest we think that the rest of his life is happy and gay, we must remember the Faustian theme, the contract. Joseph’s punishment is knowledge; the awareness that the first time stream he left exists, and in it everything is progressing as before — pain, despair, loneliness, death. Regardless of what happens, misfortune cannot be avoided. It is man’s inevitable and eternal companion, if only in the form of the awareness that it exists, that its actions cannot be restrained. The story The Artist ends in a similar fashion. Magdalena, confined to an insane asylum, is given the knowledge of the time of her death, the moment she will leave the asylum. Regardless of the fact that this death is also liberation, regardless of what she gains with this knowledge, punishment awaits her in this life. She loses love. She loses the greatest value to be found in life, in the ordinary life of a man from the time of “small” stories. She loses it not by her own accord but by accepting the justification of such a defeat. Awareness, however, is not a big enough substitute. Pain is always greater than all else; this is how it has always been and always will be. The comprehensive view has gone that might offer consolation. There is nothing but the absurdity of pain, despair, loneliness and death.

Interpreting the layers of meaning of Time-Gifts does not end on this level. The novel’s paramount meaning, and also its greatest originality, is the poetic elucidation of the story The Artist, the poetic meaning of postmodernist science fiction. Magdelena reveals the identity of the Faustian character; he is not the devil but the writer. The entire narrative flow of Time-Gifts leads us to think that the Faustian theme should be interpreted literally — as a contract with the devil, and therefore the character who represents him can be no other than Satan. Our expectations are let down quite soundly, since the novel activates the overall tradition on which they are founded. Živković, nonetheless, keeps some of its elements, particularly in the relationship between good and evil which, evoking demonic powers, is a frequent background in science fiction literature. In Magdalena’s interpretation, the writer is the creator of an autonomous world of reality, and is therefore responsible for it. If he were not responsible, if he were to allow evil, he would truly be some type of Satan. But the writer does not want that. He feels that he has committed enough evil by creating these four human fates and now he wants to retreat, he wants the novel to end. But this is not enough; if he were to tolerate evil without relating to it, he would simply be a copy of God. And he is not, so he assigns himself atonement, suffering that will absolve him of the crimes he has committed in his storytelling. This is how Magdalena paints him. She thus accepts the loss of love — as an inevitable part of the writer’s redemption. The writer is neither the devil nor God, neither a criminal nor a silent observer, rather the real creator of the “small” stories, a man who pays for his truth with his life. With this the author once again goes one step further from current literary trends. It is not unusual for postmodern literature to give a poetic dimension to everything it touches, so there is nothing unusual about the author giving such a dimension to science fiction. What goes beyond the realm of expectation, however, is the ethical dimension of the poetic dimension, the ethical-poetic dimension of science fiction.

It is also customary in post-romantic literature not to expect an idyllic picture of beauty and harmony. If one wants to say something truly profound, it must be clothed in pain and evil, as though beauty, sensuality, hedonism and Dionysian celebration of the world have been thrown out of literature. The appearance of a differing opinion, its as yet timid challenge, can be represented in the views of the Russian poet Olga Sedakova: “New moralists have renewed the war against Apollo: creation comes from the ‘Devil,’ art can by no means go together with obedience, tranquility, etc. (…) Those who are more liberal allow that art, nonetheless, serves God as an ‘unknown God,’ not the God of revelation; that the artist inadvertently serves good, even if he consciously considers he is fighting with ethics in the name of aesthetics.” It seems that Zoran Živković belongs to this group of artists, to that Faustian force that can only work on the side of good. Art is indeed creating another reality, but that reality is not from the Devil rather it is part of a force that eternally wants evil and eternally does good, or at least part of a force that, before the certainty of evil, atones with its retreat.

This interpretation seems somewhat simplified. Constructed only on the surface of the narration, it does not bear in mind the other elements of Time-Gifts. One of them is the fact that all the characters in the book have biblical names, which means that it can be interpreted in terms of its relationship towards religion. Hence, if creativity is not from the “Devil,” it at least has an apocryphal nature (shown particularly by Eva’s paradise). Another possible way to interpret it is the fact that the reader does not know all the facts of the stories. The only fate that is completely shown is that of the watchmaker, Joseph. But the reader does not know Lazarus’ decision, whether Eva accurately reconstructed the primal language and how long Magdalena will live. Magdalena explains this by the fact that their lives are already so meaningless that from the viewpoint of the absurd these facts are no longer important. And this explanation is partially correct, or rather can be accepted as correct from the viewpoint of the narration, but not as sufficient from the poetic aspect. These “blank spots” of keeping silent raise the question of the reader’s status. Information is withheld from him, the same information that leads the story characters to accept the Faustian contract and meet their downfall. The reader does not participate in this game, he remains outside the reciprocity that requires atonement for forbidden information. He therefore remains outside the demonic circle, the demonic nature of the stories. In spite of the morality of the writer’s character, which is the book’s explicit poetics, can Time-Gifts be interpreted from the viewpoint of its implicit poetics that suggest that storytelling, that art as such, cannot exist without His involvement? If this were possible, the novel would contain two poetic flows, questioning each other. There would be collision, the novel would be undermined from within, but that would be part of its great charm. Finally, writing does not have to be interpreted with a demonological key. If the mysterious visitor is the devil, says the doctor in The Artist, he is quite an unusual devil. This can be understood in another way — as wonder, as (fictional) knowledge of a higher order, and finally as a deviation from the ruling order. Or, why not all of them together.

At the end, special emphasis should be given to the novel’s quality. The author avoids the mistakes of the beginner writer and the result is a truly good book. What is there to reproach Zoran Živković? The digression at the beginning of The Astronomer that is not functional from the viewpoint of developing the plot since it does not affect its outcome. And what remains unsaid: the very interesting idea that runs through the stories but is not developed, represented by the motif of the butterfly and explained as the “butterfly effect.” It has to do with the theory of chaos and the principle that nothing should be changed in the flow of time, in the past or in the future. Even the flutter of a butterfly’s wings, says the character of the writer, modifying with the tone of destruction Milos Crnjanski’s thesis about Sumatran connections, can have far-reaching consequences. Time is an established order that must not be disrupted, otherwise the whole progression is disturbed, otherwise chaos strikes, giving rise to catastrophe. And that is where Živković stops. He does not base any possibilities in his novel on this thesis that is so close to the spirit of our times, much more so than views about a monolithic flow. One possibility would be to connect the theory of chaos with the views of the demonic nature of writing. Developing some of these references would give Time-Gifts an additional depth of meaning.

Copyright © 1998 by Dušica Potić.