Monuments

A clinic for psychiatry was opened in Podgorica, and that should be a significant day for the life of any serious European city.

Not so long ago, Podgorica was the only European capital where you could not finish philosophy and end up in a psychiatric clinic. And that is not a naive diagnosis.

Especially if you remember how it used to look here until recently - with the park around the former Gallery of the Unaligned where exhibits were mixed with psychiatric patients. Which was interesting if you experience it as an art performance, but quite disturbing, or at least unusual, if you experience it as a classical reality.

If one should find an example of a real, valid one monument, and bearing in mind the root of the word (to mention), it is fair that whenever we name a newly opened clinic for psychiatry, we will mention the name Dr. Dušan Kosović, one of the most exceptional Montenegrin medical workers and intellectuals of the second half of the 20th century. He was a pioneer of science that provoked resistance from the ossified communist consciousness, but also quixoticly devoted to his windmills and his journey towards understanding... His New York practice was for decades an informal Montenegrin embassy in the capital of the world. Out of Montenegrin misunderstanding, he went out into the world, but his every return to Montenegro was also a breath of normality in that world, so necessary for his homeland. To which, here, he returned in the most beautiful way possible.

But this is not the usual fate of the greats here. In other words, like any unfinished society, we are not very lucky with monuments.

And I guess that's logical. Because awareness of monuments implies a clear picture of what a society is, what it wants and where it is going... And this society rarely acts as a community that has answers to such questions.

The communist era brought a clear canon of monuments - leaders and heroes at every step, and from the earlier past only confirmed values. (When we Njegosha primacy in the Party?)

Then came the time when the reasons for the monuments became part of some other games. Some transitional details are the most illustrative here: since memorial gifts were not looked in the teeth, we are condemned to socialist realism and dubious "investment" art. Well, that's what happened to us Pushkin (with verification of elementary ignorance, where the poem he translated is attributed to him), but also Vysotsky i Glasses when the Russians and Greeks bought important companies.

A society executed and without any value orientations will witness bizarre, fringe political cases like the monument to the murderer from the parliament Puniša Račić.

And with the echoes of Belgrade's announcements about a monument to a quisling, the current story is about the monument to the Metropolitan of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro. Amphilochia in Berane.

The government's behavior is part of pre-election gymnastics, but also a clear reminder of who sets the tone for the current government. (Even if it seems quite cynical yes Vučićeva political poodles lead this kind of story.)

There is no doubt that Amfilohije has weight (religious or political) with a significant number of Montenegrins, but that is still not enough for a monument. A monument is the strongest when it rests on the spirit of social consensus, and this is certainly not the case here.

He used his mission above all to push this society in the direction of single-mindedness, only with the opposite sign in relation to the single-mindedness he strongly criticized - the communist one. His attitude towards the so-called it was also problematic for the minorities, and the way in which it offended the Montenegrin national feeling testified to a huge degree of frustration and hatred. There he even called the Devil for help, as an explanation but also as an authorial instance...

The Metropolitan's language was too pagan. At least for one high priest. And for marble.

Nevertheless, I am afraid that today's Montenegro, as it is, divided and outraged, executed and deceived, is the truest monument to Amfilochius. Admittedly, and not only to him.