THE RESEMANTICISATION OF MICHELANGELO’S NIGHT IN THE JOURNAL OF ČARNOJEVIĆ BY MILOŠ CRNJANSKI

Abstract

The notion that the reference to Michelangelo’s Night (Medici Chapel, Florence) in The Journal of Čarnojević is indeed the reference to the verse fragment the artist had composed as an answer to Strozzi’s laudatory poem could be supported by the fact that Miloš Crnjanski first encountered the work of the renaissance artist by reading the fragment. It lingered in his imagination to the point of becoming a significant part of the intertextual system of his first published novel. Moreover, the way its renaissance neoplatonic implications have substantially contributed to the novel’s sumatraistic poetics is thoroughly
examined. The paper stresses the crucial relationship between Michelangelo’s text and the aesthetical features of Night and discusses the way that relationship has played an important part in forming the poetics of Crnjanski’s novel.