The old olive tree in Bar is clearly deteriorating. Over two thousand years it has witnessed everything, and here it is now, the land, they say it is nearing its end. Experts point out that we have too much water, concrete, construction, and not enough knowledge, care and commitment. That picture is sad, very sad. The old olive tree is a symbol, just like the flag and the national anthem, perhaps even stronger, more significant.
Radovan Zogović is one of the best poets, and he left behind a terrible poem, which should be remembered. It's called Instruction to olives. It should be read again and again, because it corresponds to the moment, it is always current, both for people and for the olive tree.
Tends to stone! For the gray, Podlovčen stone, wicked/at the very junction of the uphills and the upside down hills./Twink the battered, hardened roots and bury them,/snap your fingers, split them and lock them like cats./Into the stone itself! Into native, sea-salted hot barks/with a root drill, a thousand and one working veins!/And cut each one into pliers, sharpen and sharpen like a drill,/extend, second by second, a barely visible living awl!
Intertwined words and letters are felt as concepts and symbols. Everything in that song is tight, it holds strong, it doesn't let go. Perseverance is the theme, perseverance is the secret and that is the famous instruction to the olive tree. He must not give in, surrender, give in, or give up by chance. She has to hold on, endure everything, survive with superhuman efforts, even though everything has come at her.
On the website Miljenko Jergović www.jergović.com one can easily find a long but extremely important text by Radovan Zogović entitled unpretentiously "Notes on Andrić". As Jergović himself states, "the memoir-autobiographical text of Radovan Zogović has a double value and durability: apart from being a highly plastic self-portrait of a fascinating personality in literature, it is one of the most important testimonies about Yugoslav political and cultural everyday life, especially the first period after the Second World War."
The text is dry gold, among other things because Zogović opens up. The descriptions of how he walks in the park and the streets, alone, and his friends of yesterday pretend not to know him, despise him or walk around him with a light step, are phenomenal and terrible. He described this bypassing like a great poet, so that you can feel every step by which his friends move further and further away from him. At that time, Zogović was walking like in a minefield, because he was labeled as dangerous, his every step was followed and everyone avoided him.
That's why Instruction to olives can be read in multiple ways. In that text, many people uploaded what they wanted, those who cannot read literature and poetry. But it is a song that motivates, which really resembles an olive in its form and sonority, with its intertwined roots and duration.
You stiffen, you strain, twist into a mortal spasm/and sweat with oil, sweat from the veins to the pistil./It's worth it - for one night, a night of anticipation, when, behind the hill,/the lighthouse, playing, sometimes it reports and sometimes it squats.
Today, nobody has anything more meaningful to say to Stara maslini in Bar than Radovan Zogović's song. We have no words, no advice, no solutions. Since Zogović already wrote the Instruction to the Olive Tree, it is only time to remember that poem, to read it as a prayer for the healing of the Old Olive Tree and to hope for the best.
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