SAVA DAMJANOV ABOUT JOHN DOE, novel by Nikola Kitanovic
Nikola Kitanovic, page of his novels. Nikola Kitanovic have published five novels.
Sava Damjanov wrote about John Doe, novel by Nikola Kitanovic:
OTHER-WORLDLY LABYRINTH OF NIKOLA KITANOVIC
Readers, who have followed past poetic and prose creative work of Nikola Kitanovic, but also the wider spiritual project of Raul Amon, will certainly not be surprised by his new, unusual novel NN (Nomen Nescio*) person. Although, I suspect, that exactly that novel will represent the surprise for Serbian contemporary prose in which works that are so unmistakably pointed towards the Other-worldly, Mystical and Inexpressible are not frequent, on the contrary! Because, even after the first reading what remains is (un)clear impression that it is primarily about special adventure of Soul and Spirit described in the most realistic language, or more precisely – about the special travels through the mysterious regions of the Other Reality (Other Realities), experienced as if it happened here, in so called reality. If I say that NN person is in essence the proclamation of inner cosmos (or at least some of its important dimensions), I will remind you that I used the same phrase – with reason!- for Autobiography of the outgoer of Dragutin Ilic, written almost a century earlier but challenging even today, to the contemporary reader, as one of the most unusual prose works in Serbian literary tradition.
If I furthermore say that the structure of new Kitanovic's novel is in fact picaresque, then I have to say what (post)modern picaresque is. Namely, it is not anymore based on fragmentary given external adventures of the main hero but his adventures are – as in case of NN person – of internal, immaterial and in broadest sense, spiritual character. Although NN person itself begins as special fantastic adventure novel, although it has inevitable allusions on (before all political) reality which can be recognized by contemporaries, the most exciting pages are certainly those in which mystic search for identity is given, or mystic metamorphoses of the hero's being. Of course, those pages tell about the nature of the author's talent, about those places where he the most authentically and the most powerfully expresses himself: "perhaps this is the way beasts think, perhaps gods, and to us humans it happens once or never in a lifetime". Why could this quotation be understood as one of the keys of the novel? Because it marks that fragment in which Nikola Kitanovic describes one of the states in which the main character finds himself, and that is immaterial state of incarnated, materialized word, the state in which one thinks and experiences by direct experience and not by some indirect one, characteristic for so called reality. Or to quote Kitanovic again: "Logos is material appearance, and we interpret it by writing or narration and that is perhaps a mistake. Logos is direct material experience and in it there are no mystics, especially symbolic and meaning…"
Naturally, the question that imposes itself after the above mentioned is: how then looks that "real" reality with which the main hero of the novel communicates (especially considering the fact that inexpressible areas of the Other Reality are obviously superior to it?)?! Although I have already mentioned that some of its fragments are familiar to contemporary reader, it seems that Nikola Kitanovic has in specific way – independently from postmodern relativism of terms of virtual (unreal, fantastic) and material (actual, real) world, that more and more marks new era and by doing that permanently ends three centuries long domination of rational spirit of Enlightenment – so, our writer has the similar inversion, and even permeating of these seemingly separated dimensions, presented in a sovereign way with this prose accomplishment. Because the novel that is now in front of the reader is more – like internet or digital discourse in general – determined with signs (i.e. Idea – sign, Picture – sign, Fragment – sign and similar) than with traditional topical-plot moments. And NN as the main character himself is not so much in quest for identity as he is in quest for his own features of being to which he comes back through permanent dialogue with the mother or unnamed telephone conversationalist. Or he returns to these features, these essences, first by internal dialogue than by himself alone – in fact, the basic procedure of Kitanovic's novel is special internal dialogue of questioned main hero. He will, indeed, at the end come to one of the rarely stable conclusions about himself – that the woman who besides him appears the most often as a character of the novel, is the most probably still his mother! So if even the author himself has in the introduction of the novel in auto poetic way considered the question of whether it is an adventure novel, and if this reader has all that experienced as specific internal picaresque, then how should the very end be understood?
Certainly, as betrayed reception expectation (which proves that Nikola Kitanovic is not at all naïve novelist!), but also as a page opened for continuation of this saga which is actually not saga, which is structured in such way that it does not seem final, i.e. finished…
Judging according to the style of NN person, which is outstandingly simple (and that is here a virtue, because the meaning complexity would be illegible if it was presented in the same style!), almost feuilleton lapidary style, an uninformed reader would hardly believe that this novel was written by a poet. However, all of us who have somewhere at the beginning of the eighties stepped on to the literary scene, remember well that Nikola Kitanovic has exactly with his first collections of poetry (Yarrow from 1981 and Chaste stories from 1983) turned the attention towards his great, authentic literary gift. And to remember right away (and "Orfeus" has with recent publishing of his chosen and new poems under the title Beast made an effort to facilitate that road for us): Kitanovic has even then, at the beginnings, nourished a kind of narrative poetics, without language experiments and baroque style, we could say – poetics of illusory simplicity, but truly reflexive, and also sensitive for secrecy and hidden sense in apparently clear, regular, sometimes also regular occurrences. That is why it should be emphasized that the path of development – from his first books of poetry (along The Teaching of the Fire, certainly) all the way to his newest novel – is coherent spiritually, stylistic, and even poetic (in the part that belongs to literature, and my opinion is that the trace of it exists also in those books of the author which have not been published under the literary genre subtitles poems or novel)…
Although I am certain that for understanding of the entire literary opus of Nikola Kitanovic the unusual triangle that determines him (poetry – the teaching of the Fire – prose) should be carefully examined, the novel NN person is the reason also for different reflections. For example, what is it that makes this novel, although permeated with ulterior, receptively modern? It is certainly NOT traces of reality we talked about, or obvious possibility of his autobiographical character (of course, if we do not understand autobiographical traditionally, as a story about the external events of someone's life). But, it IS certainly the intensive presence of different kinds of rituals of transition, one essential vision of macro and micro cosmos as poly dimensional phenomena (so, more complex and more spacious than the old understanding about the four dimensions!), and finally – sense of self-knowledge which is here obviously promoted. Someone will perhaps not agree that those are the characteristics of modern spirituality. But we should not forget that we are entering a new era, which necessarily follows the old one, turned towards the external progress (and faith in it), towards the exploring of material instead of spiritual world, towards the faith in collective values of civilization and history: said in the simplest way, such flow came to its extreme point (behind which begins entropy), no matter how we estimate its centuries old achievements. And the new epoch brings – and it will bring more and more – repeated turning towards internal on all relevant fields, and by that I predict that it would not be theo- centric or anthropocentric but, in certain way polycentric (which does not exclude neither theological nor anthropological or technological or any other aspects). In such era of a new synthesis reading selections like NN person will receive complexity… and by that I want to say more: for such reading selections and future reader it will not be important whether those are of literature, philosophical, religious or some other kind, because the spirituality of the 21st century goes exactly into that direction, the direction of a new synthesis…
Nikola Kitanovic responds and has responded in his own way to challenges I have mentioned. And even if that vision based on those challenges in future would not be fulfilled (although many people have thought about it for a long period and have written in different contexts!), the present reader will in NN person be able to accomplish that Bart's pleasure in the text (unusual, exciting, inspired), and that is not a little accomplishment. Because it is not difficult to write boring books; to write interesting books, however, represents rare skill – and we should congratulate Nikola Kitanovic sincerely on that. Or those congratulations should be perhaps referred to Raul Amon? Or to a really fluid, floating NN person?! Or…
*) Novel "NN Lice" can be translated as "Nomen Nescio", "Unknown Person", "John Doe"…
