Quoted by young Vinka... My sister told me to quote me... King Nikola when tired also quotes Tagore... On Lovćen Njegoš sleeps, he quotes it like an ant...
Good morning, what did Bishop Rade say. What did Sula Radov say? Etc…
The whole of Montenegro is one (para)quotation cartel. On that top list, domestic authors convincingly lead (Njegoš, King Nikola, Sula Radov), but foreign countries are also represented (Napoleon, before all; everything you attribute to Njegoš and King Nikola, you can also attribute to him, everything is ok, no one will be angry.)
What nonsense, systematically and thoroughly, what unworthy clichés, what abominations, we attribute to those wonderful people. And no one is uncomfortable.
There is another phenomenon that deserves attention, and it surely says something about us as well. Everyone quotes The Mountain Wreath, but few people read it. How that? Everywhere in the world the path of literature went from the oral to the text, only here the path was reversed.
In any case, to think about it - maybe the government should form a Commission for daily citation. To bring some order to that area as well...
When you look more closely, it is fair that the peaks of scientific citation should be reached in our small and proud Montenegro. And that is exactly what is happening, right before our eyes, and it is hard not to feel the excitement of being a contemporary of such scientific and international breakthroughs.
A new chapter in the Montenegrin passion for citation was written in recent years by a professor Dusko Bjelica, especially in its multidisciplinary wrestling with the key question of modern sports - how do balls bounce... One would think that the question lightweight, but don't worry... The professor must have gone into the metaphysical layers of this question (from Parmenides to this day), as soon as he is quoted so much, from Tierra del Fuego to Greenland. And he must have been quoted somewhere on the Easter Islands. Yes, if not there. Just let it bounce, our professor would add.
It seems that the main scientific instruction of a distinguished university professor to students was to quote him frantically. And then from somewhere came the rulebook on rewarding the most cited, and, well, a combination of the beautiful and the useful.
All this would be - sad or just bizarre, the measure of our sinking, after all - if there was not one more interesting moment. Namely, at one time Professor Bjelica knew how to draw in confrontations with dissidents - the fact that, he believes, he is more quoted than all of them combined. And from Njegoš and Djilas, he came. Doesn't it sound, in his performance, like a curse - No matter who quotes you...
What is it? Thanks to the fact that modern science in all its forms has long since entered the zone of incomprehensibility, i.e., it is so branched that it is impossible to follow everything with "classical means", so prudent minds tried to use such methods (following citations in academic databases) to make things clearer, more transparent and generally more accessible. Of course, when such an active mode comes into the hands of "our" man, you can be sure that there will be a spectacle.
The professor from Podgorica, who figured out the mysterious and hard-to-fathom paths of bouncing balls, is here a perfect illustration of that Hamvashev term - "meanness". You probably remember, it has been quoted several times in this place: "The whole world functions in the dichotomy of cultures - barbarism." Only in the Balkans there is a third model - "meanness", he takes from both as much as he needs".
And you get - Einstein in the world of bouncing balls. And instead of Montenegro being happy, they find flaws in it. And the whole world - quotes him. In Romania, they certainly call it the "Carpathians of citations" and the "Danube of footnotes".
"The ball can never bounce the same twice", he used to say Heraclitus. "Quote yourself," he said Sokrat.
It's time for me to finally add a scientific dimension to this writing, quoting Professor Bjelica: Stay healthy...
Bonus video:
