Actors of the new Montenegrin literary scene implemented one of their actions in the late nineties in the project A new reading of Njegoš. This magazine topic The tide he showed that the work Petar II Petrović still represents an inevitable starting point for the problematization of the relationship between tradition and modernity in Montenegrin literature. The fact that those whose sensibilities belonged to postmodernism fell to the task of conducting a polemic not with hypertrophied modernism, but with the national-romantic classic from the first half of the XNUMXth century, speaks either of the decades-long lack of subversive potential of local literature, or of the strength of works whose literary and cultural indisputability last for two centuries. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Because, as long as we did not have vanguardists who would throw Njegoš off the steamship of modernity, nor a more serious modernist decoding of his status in literature and collective consciousness, that work itself proved to be so powerful, occupying a central place not only in the literary canon but also in the culture and ethos of this area .
Regardless of the loose conception and the arbitrary application of interpretive methods, the mentioned project represented an intriguing starting point for re-examining the opus that reveals Montenegrin literary traditions and culture in general. One such polemic, which was absent, was necessary at the time the anthology was created, especially since it was the end of a period marked, among other things, by the very problematic actualization of Njegoš's work. It could be said that the quotes from are primarily Gorski vienci passed too easily into the war discourse of the nineties, precisely because of the long-term dogmatic approach in reading practices, from those in psychology to those in essay writing. Although the aforementioned anthology does not represent a great hermeneutic achievement, its diversity, which ranged from serious polemical texts to parody and persiflage, represents a small but intriguing contribution in the attempt to unravel above all Gorski vienci i They shine, both from national-romantic shackles and from the frowning seriousness of learned interpreters.
A review of the XNUMXth century treatment of Njegoš's work shows that few of the interpreters adhered to the proven condition according to which nothing protects a literary classic from misuse as intensive and varied critical review. However, Montenegrin literary criticism and essay writing rarely deviated from the beaten path of traditional and courtly reading, which greatly contributed to the sacralization of Njegoš's work. Because of this excess of piety, almost any more eccentric way of reading these works was perceived, by far, as a blasphemous act. It should be pointed out that the traditionalist experience of Njegoš's literary work often includes a kind of practical application of this work, first of all as support for a moral and educational model conceived forever. This is precisely why traditionalists perceive any interpretive innovation as a hindrance to that use, and are particularly sensitive to attempts to introduce a more plastic meaning into the rigid representation of Njegoš's ethics.
In recent decades, Njegoš's work has mostly been approached by nationally conscious authors and interpreters, who have proven to be the most consistent guardians of this literary work from the heresies of interpretive innovations. That is why today it is necessary to The Mountain Wreath i Lucha microcosm more intensively subjected to new and not always certified interpretive methods, in order to reach those areas in those influential texts that insufficiently equipped traditional criticism neither could nor wanted to conquer. Nevertheless, the majority of contemporary interpreters of Njegoš's work still seem to have not come to terms with the changes that occurred at the moment when literary criticism devoted itself more confidently to the context, whereby literary texts began to emanate much broader cultural meanings. On the other hand, younger critics do not show particular interest in this literature - for them it is either too traditional or too folkloric. Because of such a relationship, Njegoš is still left at the mercy of institutions of spirit and knowledge to support their literary and post-literary projects with him, whenever they need it.
It should be pointed out, perhaps as a curiosity, that during the last two decades some of the most inventive "readings" of Njegoš came from non-literary artistic spaces. A special mention should be made of the project Law Lazar Bodroža, realized in the multimedia group Cosmonauts, which in the last few years is certainly the most interesting attempt to visually revive ideological intrigues in Mountain wreath. In this formally diverse project (comic book, poster, video game and experimental film), Bodroža does not relativize the epic aspect of Njegoš's work, on the contrary, he sharpens it, revealing to us one constant of the warrior's agon built upon the warrior experiences of the new age. Over most of the works in to the Law as if the message is there - you can run away from Njegoš, but he, in all probability, will not run away from you. In this context, Bodroža's artistic research corresponds with a similar reactualization The Iliads, initiated by an Italian writer Aleksandar Bariko in his multi-day public reading project of this Homer's well. Namely, Bariko based his reading of the famous epic on that delicate assumption according to which the sentiment of the warrior's agony, no matter how much it is perceived as a civilization bug, always smolders in the soul of man, reminding him of the possibility of turning his ordinary life into a spectacle. To a great extent, he warns us about this not at all pleasant fact, which, according to Barik, pacifism carelessly archived Law into whose modern forms epic warrior motifs move in completely without conflict. In all likelihood, this agonizing and destructive "beauty" will not lose its place in the soul of man until we prove, as Bariko says, "that we are capable of breaking down the grayness of everyday life, without resorting to the flames of war", that is, until we give "strong meaning things without having to shine upon them the blinding glare of death.”
Since during the last three decades the attitude towards Njegoš's work, to which Yugoslavism in some way guaranteed its safety, has changed, it is necessary to pass that literary opus through a wider hermeneutic network, woven from phenomenological criticism all the way to the latest literary-critical methods. In this process, exhibitionist or narcissistic approaches should not be rejected either, because their provocativeness often leads to inaccessible zones of a literary text, whose interpretation, should we remind you, has not relied only on the author's intention for a long time.
In order to problematize the relationship between Njegoš's work and the literature of the generation that questioned it, not only with his polemical anthology but also with his prose and poetry, it is necessary first of all to sharpen the critical vision ideologically. In that comparison, one would first have to define what we could call the mythologizing strategy that can be recognized in a good part of Peter II's oeuvre, and then start searching for the mechanisms of demystification of those mythologems which, regardless of the intentions of the writers of the new Montenegrin prose, and how function in their works. Until Njegoš, there was no literary author in this region who had such a well-conceived mytho-ideological strategy, the results of which would take deep root and last for a long time. One, one might say, genre incident in Mountain wreath represents an inspiring starting point for the problematization of some characteristics of that strategy. Namely, a realistic character Gorski vienci it is unusually disturbed in the scene of collective dreaming of the same dream by a larger group of heroes before going to the decisive showdown with the converts to the Muslim faith. Let's remember, forty of them have the same dream - Obilić flying over the Cetinje field on a white hat. In this episode, Njegoš took a leap from the realistic flow of the story and committed a kind of genre violence, because he was obviously aware that a single experience with the mentioned dream would not bring any special intrigue, necessary for the creation of a mythological concept. It should be mentioned that this surreal dreaming is overseen by Abbot Stefan (the only one awake, stringing the rosary through his fingers and a prayer over his lips), after a very intriguing initiation into the story, by literally emerging from two emblematic events - an earthquake and the appearance of a bloodied moon. Someone who performs like this and who mantrically supervises the hero's dreaming looks anything but a harmless saintly recluse, just as such an episode is clearly something much more than literature. It is part of a theogony that is established for ethics devoid of dilemmas and compromises, monolithic and fatalistic, in one word - epic. In it, Vladica's doubts and dilemmas will no longer be at the top of the value system, but Obilić's determination, where the goal, like Murat's tent, is reached regardless of the cost of the journey. The character of Obilić in the tradition shows an important paradox embodied in something that could be defined in sports jargon as a small minute with a big effect. Little is known about this hero, almost nothing other than the historically dubious story that Obilić managed to get to the Turkish sultan and kill him. Although this episode contains nothing but bare action, it has found itself in the public's mind at that high position that is usually occupied by motives that are symbolically much more complex and meaningful in meaning. It is precisely in this flash and characterological simplicity that the quality that allows Obilić to be easily transformed into a clean, compact and very usable symbol is hidden. There are no nuances, no dilemmas, no, in the end, no scraps of life that would ground this hero. And the dreamers see him in the sky scenery, he flies over the Cetinje field in their collective dream. Njegoš was obviously aware that he was establishing an extremely pure and active deity at the top of the value system, a paradigm for a time without compromises and dilemmas. It would be very interesting to problematize the frequency of mention of Obilić in Njegoš's work against the background of that remark by the French Slavist Michele Auben, which states that Christ is mentioned only twice in Njegoš's entire oeuvre. With this deification of Obilić, the Christian sanctity of life is subordinated to the epic sanctity of the act of heroic death, and it is in this revaluation that the untying of the key hub will begin. Gorski vienci, which was entangled by the Christianized and unfallen Bishop. The beginning of the unraveling of that knot will begin over the ghostly fire around which the flying Obilić is surrounded by forty warriors and, thus winged, he will be raised to a much higher level than the level of an epic hero.
The intense symbolic strategy implemented by Njegoš in the divinization of the hero, about whom, it should be emphasized once again, little is known from the legacy, sometimes seems overstrained and often resembles Iguman's recoding of spiritual and ethical standards. It could be said that both the author and his intriguing hero often adapt symbolic meanings to their strategies without caring much about the rules: the author - for formal-genre rules, the character - for canonical ones. It should be emphasized that the Abbot's non-canonical activity is also indicated by some conventional interpretations of Njegoš's work - Jovan Deretic u The composition of the Mountain wreath says that the Iguman reminds of a pagan priest, who "performs his actions in an open space and not in the church as required by the regulations." In order to carry out the accelerated and somewhat violent process of mythologizing, Njegoš obviously had to give up the genre canon, just as the Iguman for the accelerated the hero's motivation for the conflict with the "little girls" must be abandoned by the religious canon.
With this oneiric motif, Njegoš showed us in a way that every mythologizing is a kind of symbolic intervention in the "sleeping" consciousness. In such processes, one always reaches for symbolic material from those depths where history and myth mix, with the intention of subordinating the historical to the mythical. The already mentioned verses from the Abbot's great monologue, in which he says that he is more in the realm of spirits and compares his soul to a flame in an underground cave, can cast doubt on the chthonic source of the Abbot's work, on some primordial darkness as its origin. In the structure of that monologue, a very precise gradation can be recognized that leads to the establishment of a fully mythologized value system. After the initial seductive-mystical intonation, Abbot's narration, which is listened to by forty heroes who are getting closer to the dream, acquires a factual character - the old man lists the holy places he visited. When he has verified his competence in matters of faith and spirituality with a fascinating list (Jerusalem, the Cave of Bethlehem, the Garden of Gethsemane), the abbot will move on to the problem that should be solved: "We see in the fertile fields/where thorny thorns have grown,/the temple of Omar has risen /on the sacred foundation of Solomon,/where Sophia serves as a stable lady." He will continue with the complete delegitimization of the worldly: "The properties of our Earth are ridiculous -/it is full of the craziest changes.", "Earthly time and human destiny - two faces of the greatest madness,/the unordered deepest science." Since in this lullaby he compromises the earthly order, the Abbot will move on to the magical seduction of the somnabolic heroes, offering them a formula for redemption from those earthly diversions: "The suffering of the cross is a benefactor;", followed by the real reward: "A generation created for song,/ fairies will rush into the ages/to trip up your worthy wreaths/your example will teach the singer/how to speak with immortality!” The end of this monologue, seasoned with selected opiate lexicon, will grow into a real crescendo: "You are destined to carry the cross/terrible struggles with your own and others!/A heavy wreath, but the fruit is sweet!/There is no resurrection without death./But you they see under a shining shroud,/honoured, the nation that has resurrected/and the altar facing the east,/where pure incense smokes in it./Die gloriously, when you must die!" It is no wonder that after this Abbot's all-night vigil, forty awakened heroes will tell the same dream in which Obilić flies over the Cetinje field on a winged horse, as it is also expected that, guided by that dream, they will finally embark on what Obilić's galvanized symbolic status calls for - pure action , more precisely - the investigation of the Islamized part of the population.
This mitogenesis of Obilić is one of the more important procedures by which Njegoš Mountain wreath reinforced the epic character, which, taking into account his sensibility and role models, was certainly his goal. Likewise, only in that expression could his work be acceptable to the people of which he was the spiritual and secular leader. Njegoš's merits in the glorification of the epic value system among Montenegrins are great, if not decisive, and that value system will last a long time in this region, among other things, because it was codified by a convincing literary opus that went beyond the limits of literature and became a social and ideological benchmark. The incompatibility of that epicness with the socio-cultural and literary changes of the second half of the XNUMXth and the beginning of the XNUMXth century will lead to the fact that on the map of Europe - in which the processes of undermining great stories, the growth of skepticism, the accelerated change of artistic and philosophical directions are starting - Montenegro acts as a kind of surreal space. located above the clouds, like some Machu Picchu that defies time with its monolithic epicness. The eddies of European politics and culture will rarely reach the frozen epic serenity of the forgotten hills. From those heights, in the air of which there were few spiritual and intellectual fluctuations, the environment will be seen for a long time as a troubled, almost fallen world. Just such a situation was illustrated at the beginning Gorski vienci in the scene of the carrying of the cross to the Church. Looking from that emblematic position, Serdar Radonja, one of the leaders who performed the mentioned ritual, will say: "everything is a cloud of equal pressure, / echoes and thunder are heard everywhere, / lightning flashes everywhere below us, / and only the sun warms us. ” In those heights remained a world in pristine epic purity, fully masculinized and dedicated only to warfare. The scene of the carrying of the cross to the Church is preceded by a monologue of the purest epic hero Gorski vienci Vuk Mićunović. He, responding to the bishop's lament full of dark forebodings and almost requiem tone, which persistently disturbs the sense of pride of the proud tribe, will remind the dejected bishop that they gathered at the festival and that he had the opportunity to see the splendor of men's strength and skill. His language brings a real onslaught of hot machismo: "And without that, this is our glory, / on which excellent boys buy / their abilities to taste, / the strength of their muscles and the speed of their legs; /by shooting to surpass each other... to swell the chest with chivalry./It is sacred incense to heroes,/it iron hearts in guys!" Vladika is the only character who realizes how incomplete that montage bucolicism is, filled with outplaying guys with "more fiery chests" and ruled by an extremely simplified agony logic. Trying to deprive Vladik of his dilemmas and doubts, Mićunović once again reminds him of the simple beauty and predestination of their organic world: "you see these five hundred teams,/what a miracle of strength and lightness/we see in them here today?... Just as the wolves for their mother ,/while playing, they sharpen their terrible teeth/already under the throat; Mićunović has no qualms, he believes to the end in his essentialist attitude towards the world. Because the fact that play and death intertwine in the agony, for Mićunović, it was a given from somewhere forever: "All this is some kind of science!" That science will rule the karst mountains for a long time, where it will seem to everyone, like Serdar Vukota staring at the foot of the mountain, that "only the sun warms us."
A lot of time will pass before the first serious literary insights into the dark side of that apotheosized warrior heroism. After the early works Miodrag Bulatović, a good part Lalić's opus i of the Djilas novel, a clearly conceived demystifying and subversive attitude towards the epic feeling will appear only in the prose of the new Montenegrin literature from the beginning of this millennium. In that literary wave, the petrified surface of polished epicness will be scratched hard, behind which a generation of young sleepless writers will, among other things, discover the pandemonium side of a mythologized world.
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