Last Sunday, there was enough arguing about whether Marko Miljanov's death or birth day should be celebrated. I don't have a clear position on that essentialist problem. But I think it is better to study the life of his granddaughter, Olgivana Lloyd Wright, a woman who was little more famous in the world than her mustachioed grandfather.
Olga...how? Who is your Olga-vana, asks the little-known Kuč, and I say that she was the wife of the head of architecture of the 31th century, Frank Lloyd Wright, the lady who made the great man's life and business so difficult that all he had to do was draw the Guggenheim, the House on the Waterfall and some other threes from the domain of world cultural heritage. And not only that, our Olgivana dressed her husband, 1940 years her senior, in a Montenegrin costume for a masquerade on Halloween in XNUMX, so we can proudly say that Njegoš is not the only genius to whom that costume suited him.
But why, for God's sake, does no one in this country have any idea who Olga Ivanova Lazović was, the daughter of Miličina, the one who in 1911 as a teenager went to Tbilisi, then to Constantinople, then via Paris - in the direction of New York.
First of all, almost no one has a clue about Olgivana, because in our country hardly anyone has a clue about anything, including her famous husband. The fact that Olgivana is perhaps the only Montenegrin whose obituary was published by the "New York Times" is not of much importance because the average Montenegrin values a well-worded obituary in "Dan" more. In America, however, the life of the famous couple did not fall into oblivion - two writers, one sociologist and one architect, decided to publish probably the hundredth book about the private life of Lloyd Wright, who was married three times.
In the book "The Fellowship", Roger Friedland and Harold Zelman do not claim that the circular line of the Guggenheim Museum imitates the shape of the Montenegrin hat, but they give a very important place to the Montenegrin bride. Ever since the book came out in 2006, a new light has been shed on the life of Olgivana, who through a series of scandals, as a married woman, got into a relationship with a married architect and changed his life.
In the middle of the twenties of the last century, life was lived to the fullest - what the biographers have unearthed will not please the tribal councils in Montenegro. But it would be a shame if Olgivana were to fall into oblivion because of a few tricky details.
Now get ready, Kuči brothers - the granddaughter of the honorable Marko Miljanov, the duke of Kuč and a hero from Fundina, not only did she most likely enjoy the embrace of a woman, but she led one of the first informal homosexual unions in America, at a time when it was very awkward, just like it would be on Medun today.
Let's go back to the first half of the last century, the years of the American boom, when a woman of magnificent stature, beauty, intellect, follower of the mystic Gurdjieff, composer, dancer and writer, our Olgivana, took the helm of the Taliesin architectural colony. It was a famous center in Wisconsin where young architects paid to learn from Frank Lloyd Wright. Taliesin was no ordinary school but a way of life, a self-sustaining temple of architecture built on the family estate. Biographers interviewed many participants and all of them were fascinated by the landlady Olgivana - some of them very negatively.
Not only did she manage the property, witnesses say, but in accordance with her spiritual teachings and advanced understanding of sexuality, she influenced the love life of male students, encouraging them in their "aspirations" to marry each other. Under Olgivanna's influence, Taliesin became an oasis of what Whitman called free love among comrades, as well as a center of learning for the guru Gurdjieff, who was Rasputin's own half-brother in penetrating insight.
Opponents of gayism and sects will probably wail over Duke Mark's fate. Olgivana's mother, Milica, was a real Amazon bitch - she wore a long coat and voluntarily fought in the Great War. Dočim Mark's granddaughter, as soon as she arrived in New York, she immediately entered the freest circles - in 1926, while committees were still hanging out in the woods in Montenegro, Olgivana, if you'll forgive me, was dating the editor of the famous magazine "The Little Review", Jane Hip, who wrote down the adventure in her diary.
Take it easy, brothers, Hipova was a servant from a good house, an important editor, the woman who, together with Ezra Pound and Margaret Anderson, was the first to publish the sequels to Joyce's "Ulysses".
It would be a mistake to think that Olga Ivanova's biography is some kind of sexual wandering and confusion, on the contrary, she was a woman in spiritual search for balance, which she found in marriage. She led her life with the aspiration of reconciling spirit and body, enamored by Nietzsche's concept of the superman even at a young age. Through dance, she tried to reach higher levels of existence following the dervish method of Gurdjieff. She was a woman of another system, as the poet would say. But there are also much more conservative stories, like the PBS documentary "A partner to genius" in which a strong figure of a wife and mother is seen; there are also photographs from her youth that preserve the beauty that Wright said was like a magnet.
Let's imagine for a moment what would have remained of that beauty if it had stayed in Kuči. Who would that magnet attract, what forces and events between the two wars. She would not be bowed down, surely, because she would be bowed down to because of her dead grandfather. Her spine would not snap like most of her peers born in 1897. She would probably chirp and manage a group of hillbillies, try to channel their anger, like a true grandpa's granddaughter. Maybe a street in Podgorica would be named after Olgivana.
Bonus video:
