In many polemics about the national disintegration of Montenegro, the Montenegrin side often cited the problem of the local Serbian cultural identity being mixed with anti-modernity as one of the key causes for such a situation. This qualification mostly caused indignation in Serbian intellectual circles, and lately we have witnessed frequent attempts to refute it with arguments. It is a fact that anti-modernity is often felt by local Serbs who, thanks to their national over-awareness, have become involved in some other anti-modernity, but it is also evident that a similar opinion is also present in a significant part of the intellectual public whose involvement does not recognize any national sign. It is quite reasonable to expect a question from that part of the public: how much is the mentioned indignation at the place if you take into account the fact that the all-holders of Serbian culture in Montenegro persistently showed odium towards everything that did not belong to the corpus of traditionalist, national-romantic and clerical Serbian heritage?
So, let's be precise, no one pushed the Serbs in Montenegro into anti-modernity, but their proclaimed and self-proclaimed representatives persistently showed an ignorant attitude towards most of what essentially belongs to Serbian modernism through their cultural activities. Their conviction that in every process of national consolidation (that is to say - even in the one that is not conditioned by some extraordinary circumstances) culture is primarily assigned the task of affirming traditional values, resulted in a reduced cultural model that was unacceptable from the beginning for the experiences of the Serbian interwar avant-garde, as well as for a large part of her modernist and overall postmodernist heritage. It is not an exaggeration to say that in the circles of Serbian intellectuals and artists in Montenegro, the mentioned legacies are mostly perceived as disturbing phenomena according to what, in their opinion, is a desirable cultural model for local Serbs.
How much damage such selectivity caused to local Serbs can be seen precisely in the cultural model that emerged from it, narrowing the possibility for those same Serbs to identify with those achievements of Serbian culture that opened it up to the world and thanks to which it became the most aesthetically and ideologically diverse in the area of European southeast. Because of that deeply conservative and profoundly non-dialectical approach of the creators of the local Serbian cultural canon, it was turned into a petrified structure that dominantly determines the field of action of the current culture of Montenegrin Serbs, a culture that persists in its national and ideological tasks. Particularly problematic is the advocacy of those who, from the position of the enlightened, would arbitrate in that space, taking into account that their view of the Serbian modernist heritage rests on the thesis that it developed with a clear national intention. As this thesis figures only in one part of Serbian modernism, these enlightened people usually apply two methods for its refinement, so that this heritage fits into a slightly more comfortable cultural mold than the one shaped by rigid traditionalists, and these methods could conditionally be defined as more radical and more sensitive.
In the first case, only those authors of Serbian modernism and the interwar avant-garde who made their poetic and ideological convictions nationally aware over time are selected. Hence the frequent and passionate grasping Crnjanski. His transition from the early expressionist phase to a more conventional and conservative aesthetic worldview, which by the nature of things is more comfortable for any national ideologeme, is used as the crowning proof of the thesis about the unquestionability of the expressed national feeling of Serbian modernists. It is true that such modifications were common among actors of Serbian interwar literature and art, but this does not prove that these conversions are some Serbian modernist inevitability, and especially does not prove that Serbian culture benefited from it, because, apart from Crnjanski, almost all other converts experienced artistic regression or even fell into oblivion.
It is particularly problematic that the enlightened nationally conscious canonizers persistently insist on classifying in modernism the entire works of those authors who, giving up their expressionist and avant-garde poetics, over time became part of the literary milieu whose creativity was mainly in the function of reaffirming national and traditional values. The violence of this classification is revealed in the fact that shows us that the initial poetics of such authors, which truly belonged to the mentioned directions, had to be modified or even rejected when they wanted to sing in praise of the genus. Simply, it required other means and other convictions, because it was precisely the individualistic, non-national, and often anti-patriotic feelings of many artists from the generations that grew up immediately before, during and after World War I that were at the foundation of modernism, especially expressionism, and the avant-garde.
The proof of the unsustainability of modernism devoid of expressionist and avant-garde substance is revealed in the consequences of that reduction, more precisely in the creation of some pacified modernism, and it has turned out in Serbian culture, as he writes Radomir Konstantinović in his text Being irreconcilable with the world as "degradation of the rebellion of expressionism to neo-romantic ravings and whispers, a kind of 'harmonization' of rebellious-disharmonic expressionism, its melodic-sound taming". It should be noted that Konstantinović is not someone, although he is often credited with this, who excludes the possibility of creating works of high artistic value in such poetic transfers: "I am not saying that this domestication did not also result in authentic poetic works: Stražilovo Miloš Crnjanski's it is indisputable, just as it is indisputable his Diary about Čarnojević.” That's why it should be emphasized that the impossibility of defining the modernist departure from what precedes modernism, if we exclude its rebellious motives, is pointed out here. Because that departure was precisely motivated by a rebellion against an atrophied culture whose axiological and ideological capacities proved to be insufficient for something more than the reproduction of romantic and realist patterns, i.e. that as such they could only produce art that would constantly oscillate between rapture and didacticism. That is why any insistence on closing the story of Serbian modernism into a purely aesthetic framework is an attempt to pacify it, i.e. to rule out the possibility of ideological problematization of its genesis, and thus the possibility of clearly recognizing modernist subversiveness towards the great story of the nation.
Proponents of a more sensitive method among the creators of the Serbian cultural model in Montenegro did not renounce the great names of inter-war and post-war Serbian modernism, on the contrary - they adopted them very much, but this does not speak in favor of the aesthetic and ideological flexibility of the creators, because they included those authors in the canon cleaned of everything that could question their national consciousness. So, for example, Momcilo Nastasijevic he is almost always glorified as a linguistic magician who opened a new register of native melody to his and future times, and not because of his distinctly modernist linguistic and versification innovation. In the same way, almost all post-war Serbian modernism was read by the creators of the local Serbian cultural identity in a national key, with a mantric citation of Nastasijević: "...the peaks touch each other with their atmospheres, but only those whose roots penetrate deep into their native soil." That violent national unification knew how to capture the so-called poets of culture - from Queen bee, across Hristic do Ristović - according to the system, nationally conscious Serbs all and everywhere. By combining non-national, cosmopolitan and avant-garde segments from the modernist oeuvre, with the aim of integrating them into some cultural canon of Montenegrin Serbia, that Serbia was offered a modernism that was deprived of precisely those ideological and aesthetic characteristics that define it. Which means that in these more sensitive interventions, selectivity was not applied to authors, but to parts of their works.
Such selections are the product of an opinion that considers unnecessary, even harmful to the cultural and national consolidation of the local Serbs, any phenomenon in Serbian culture that cannot be connected in some way with its more ideologically conservative and aesthetically conventional heritage. These are the criteria used to narrow down the influence of content whose deviation from the expected aesthetic and ideological norms could, in such a modernized cultural model, initiate the process of reconstruction and make it open for refinement and re-examination. Those who manage the "maintenance of hygiene" of the Serbian cultural identity in these areas firmly believe that precisely thanks to its uniformity and staticness, it persists in the turbulent and fluid history of Montenegro. The most problematic consequence of that misconception is precisely that involvement in anti-modernity, which the enlightened nationally conscious Serbs in Montenegro see as a violent classification to which they are exposed. The fact that in the cultural activities of Montenegrin Serbs certain consistent modernists would have a break in the series of fiddler evenings or symposia on Orthodoxy and the Kosovo Covenant means little, not so much because of that "little minute" but because of the interpretive approaches behind which the reduced and molded works of the aforementioned , more precisely - arranged in such a way as to please Serbian patriotism. One can, of course, not only load national consciousness into those consistent modernist poetics, but also read them from them, but if this is the dominant, and often the only, type of interpretation, then those pauses are not pauses at all, but the continuity of polishing a cultural monolith stuck in time.
What is important for the broader social context, and what, among other things, shows the importance of culture in defining the socio-political framework of an ethnic community, are the ideological implications that the cultural model created in this way had on the political matrix that can be recognized in Montenegrin for three decades. Serbia. Namely, a cultural model that was deprived of its essential modernist heritage was easy to deprive of all its ideological equivalents, above all the "left", civil, globalist and liberal ones. Put simply, a conservative, right-wing, traditionalist and clericalist culture created the same kind of politics. Which is to say, Serbs in Montenegro were not only deprived of the possibility of identification with a complete Serbian cultural tradition, but also with a complete Serbian political tradition. Her enviable left-wing heritage is a kind of taboo in the political and cultural circles of local Serbs, where in the past thirty years no one has been able to present the achievements of that heritage to their people, if for no other reason than to point out the ideological and political disunity of Serbian history, and that should be something that every true Serb should be proud of, regardless of their political beliefs. Which is why, for example, a serious Serbian right-winger would not appreciate what he is Svetozar Markovic in a rural despotism so convincingly founded the criticism of all exploitation and all discrimination and thus made the socio-political life of an almost feudal community resemble the socio-political life of developed European states.
Which is why we wouldn't all be equally proud of the facts that testify to our significant role Dimitrija Tucović in the II International and the respect shown to him by some historical figures. Shouldn't we all appreciate the sacrifices? Pelagic and numerous lesser-known socialists whose lives ended in wretched obscurity just because they wanted to create a society in which the ordinary Serbian man would not be oppressed, in which the ordinary Serbian woman would not be treated only as a birthing machine, and in which the ordinary Serbian child would not be send them to the servants, but to school. Those who we classify in the Serbian leftist tradition of the second half of the XNUMXth and the first decades of the XNUMXth century burned for this, while the right and the church at that time were pleasing the dehumanized monarchy and helping it to be more despotic. Which is to say, we should definitely draw a line and see which ideological side worked for the dignity of Serbs as human beings, and which side worked for deceptive and so often expensively paid, and often charged for, abstract achievements. And it would not be bad to look back on the experience of those peoples who, at one historical moment, were convinced that the progress of the entire nation cannot depend on the goodwill of the elite, i.e. that the general progress of the nation can only be achieved in an environment in which every individual, regardless of his class affiliation, is provided with the conditions for a dignified life and work.
No matter how we feel about this two-year political confusion in which Montenegro found itself after August 30, 2020, the key benefits that this change brought, which are first of all the experience of a peaceful change of government and the creation of conditions in which no political monopoly can be realized, they are still an unthreatened capital on which Montenegrin society, if it is clever, can be built as truly democratic and truly civil. Those who believe that the basic prerequisite for this achievement is internal political stability, which is now severely damaged, are only partially right. Internal political stability does not have to be any guarantee for the democratic and institutional organization of society, because it can exist in autocratic regimes, or rather, it is immanent in them. North Korea has enjoyed internal political stability for seven decades. What is most necessary for Montenegrin society is overcoming its decades-long national and ideological disunity (which, by the way, is the basis of the political instability here), and much can be done in the sphere of culture, in which, to begin with, both sides should are relaxing from the persistent involvement of their cultural environment according to dominantly patriotic criteria, which at that level of emphasis, by the nature of things, must be conservative or anti-modern. In the local Serbian cultural model, and it is the subject of this text, because its author believes that for this level of national disunity that prevails in today's Montenegro, it is necessary to first point out the problems in the culture of one's nation, the mentioned relaxation will not happen as long as what is reputed to be the Serbian mind in Montenegro does not get out of its national trenches, i.e. until generations appear who, among other things, will understand that the development of Serbian culture and thought is equally due to Svetozar Marković and Slobodan Jovanovic, Jovan Skerlic i Todor Manojlović, Miloš Crnjanski and Marko Ristic, Zoran Mišić i Radomir Konstantinović. To begin with, it would be good if those who design and organize literary and cultural activities in Serbian houses revoke the status of non-memorials for some of the aforementioned and ensure that these cultural and educational gatherings are not reduced to talking about national greatness. Because, without polemical eros, conflict of opinion and, above all, disagreement - there is no living culture, a culture that will not be "tamed" and that will not be reduced to national self-affirmation in some kind of ceremonial vanity.
Bonus video:
