Whether the writer wants it or not, his work is a testimony of the times in which he lives. Even when he deals with the past, his attitude towards it, that past, is a kind of confirmation of what kind of attitude the writer has towards the moment in which he lives, how he understands the crucial problems of his time and what his point of view is in relation to some of the most important dilemmas with with which the community and society to which he belongs are carried.
Chess as a starting point
As the starting point of his novel, Brković chose the story of chess, more precisely, the story of chess served as a backbone on which several important processes rested, which can be summed up under one: it is the backbone around which the battle for modern Montenegrin society is fought. And it is conducted on several levels! Here, it may be useful to mention the fact that some other contemporary authors in Montenegro were preoccupied with chess as the theme of their novels. So, for example, Vladimir Vujović wrote the novel Silencio (2017), which, from an unusual, primarily psychological angle, sheds light on the great chess magician Bobby Fischer, who, in some historical, circumstances closer in time to the contemporary reader, found himself in Montenegro.
But let's return to Aurora and Brković's recognized intention to talk about the parallel course of two stories, the story of the arrival of chess as a game that first conquered the world, and only then came to our parts of Europe and the world, and about the institutionalization of that presence, as evidenced by Aurora itself, the first chess association in Montenegro, plus more stories about the emancipatory effect which, in Brković's opinion, was inseparable from the very promotion of this game in Montenegro. Especially since this game, which was, and we can safely say remains, largely determined by male dominance, through Aurora and its expansion to the female corps, or as they would say today, by adopting the female agenda, takes on a new meaning. The meaning that will determine the first female chess players who, at the same time as the promoters of this game in Montenegro, also became fighters for a new, more emancipated and fully aware Montenegrin society. Characters like the old Miluša, and the White Russian Vera Jefimova, then Đina Nestor and Judita Tijović, members of the social elite, and the young worker Jane are a representative sample of the women's section of the association and confirmation that chess has a deeper meaning than just being a game. Namely, it is an opportunity to affirm a more active female performance on the public stage of Podgorica and Montenegro through its affirmation.
Elements of historical context in the novel Aurora
The story of the so-called To the White Russians, their initial "Russomania", which entails endless drinking and listening to Russian classics for a long time, as well as passing through the stages of very hard-to-treat melancholy and longing for Russia, is one of the very important stories of this novel, since through it one can see a large part of the author's attitude towards the phenomenon of integration in general. It should not be emphasized that highlighting this problem is extremely important and that the authors who do so rightfully acquire the prefix of modern writers, considering the enormous importance that process has for the world in which we live. In Balša Brković's novel, the White Russians are presented as a kind of collateral damage, because they are the ones who first flew out of the great circle of history. The point that, when its movement accelerates here and there - and that's exactly what happened with the February and October revolutions in Russia - requires people to react quickly, at the very least to fasten another seat belt. And if he stumbles and falls, to find one of the life belts. And certainly to find the strength in oneself to find a new identity matrix, possibly enter the economic flows of the new environment, as, for example, the former major of the Russian Imperial Army Gennady Suhik does, who, in addition to organizing parties and large music sessions for the community male representatives of the White Russians, manages to develop an enviable economic activity and even become a Montenegrin son-in-law (p. 33). Brković also gives a lot of space to those White Russians who go through the process of rising more slowly, to those who postulate melancholy and longing for Russia as their modus vivendi. It seems to us that Brković's heroine Vera Jefimova, the owner of the only bookstore that brings together the community of White Russians, best defined that feeling of melancholy that they as a collective go through. “It's a gathering center of Russian illusions,” she says, summarizing and positioning her work around the gathering of this small but significant collectivity (p. 31).
In addition to everything else that stands as an opportunity to re-establish and establish a new basis for life, there is chess itself as an opportunity to anticipate their position and contribute to the development of Montenegrin society in the period between the two world wars. All the more so, since it is a game in which the White Russians have previous experience as representatives of a great chess nation. You really need to be inspired, as Brković is in this case, to tell all those interesting, somehow Tolstoyan, episodes that are related to the White Russians, and which completely pervade Aurora. Let's just mention the party at Major Suhik's house at the very beginning of the novel, and then the passionate music playing of Russian classics in his house, there is certainly the extraordinarily described funeral of the imperial colonel Leonid Yuryevich Simonov, not to mention the love story between the Kalmyk Abaša Davaškin and the beautiful Judita Tijović. daughter of the richest man from Podgorica.
Historical figures
In marking the important elements of the historical context, that is, the historical time that the novel covers, Brković does not leave alone the Montenegrin society in its totality. In the negative balance of that society, he puts so many things, slowness in changes, superficiality and a kind of social stubbornness in attachment to the patriarchal matrix. Another thing is that he does it drinkably and wrapped in a kind of refined humor and above all an effort to understand why his historical characters do what they do. Let's just look at Metropolitan Dožić, through whose personality Brković problematizes not only the relationship between the church on the one hand, and the state and society on the other. It is more than clear that Brković is pleading for church prelates of the type of Metropolitan Dožić. He asks them not only to be rooted in the people whose religious leaders they are, but also to responsibly administer their priestly and every other, especially human, duty. He actually has nothing against their presence in social flows, with the condition that they do it in moderation and in agreement with the continuous and necessary changes in society, which, in truth, do not call into question everything, especially not the totality of the social order, above all its stability as a condition survival. Brković, judging by the novel, does not even question the arbitral role of the church in situations that can escalate and go in a difficult to predict direction. Let's just remember the episode related to the slap that the young worker and member of the association Aurora Jana so boldly gave to the sexually unaware, or more precisely wrongly aware, brawler and rightist Spasoj Liletić, in which the metropolitan will be drawn as someone who will guarantee the agreement that revenge and aggression will not escalate (p. 284). Here, however, we must not forget that Brković does not give up so easily when it comes to the church itself and that there is certainly a place for his critical attitude. So, for example, one branch of the novel's not insignificant criminal story, related to the mysterious appearance of a woman's corpse near Podgorica, is constantly led in such a way that a certain suspicion when it comes to the perpetrator of the crime can be linked to the church, one way or another. Although, taking everything into account, Brković's position on this issue can be determined as moderate because the existence of religion and the church are not questioned. The condition is that the church, which otherwise legitimately administers everything related to people's religiosity and is part of the most important social institutions, responsibly performs its function in society. And especially that it is able to strengthen the moral and ethical vertical of an individual, and even society as a whole.
This novel also gives a kind of cross-section of the social structure of Montenegrin society in the time after the creation of the first Yugoslav state, everyone is there, the social elite represented through characters such as one Globarević, a high-ranking police official, and through the rich merchant Tijović, and there is the already mentioned Metropolitan Dožić as a representative churches, and the lower classes, peasants, then representatives of the growing working class, and there is also room for road robbers who, willy-nilly, were part of the socially stratified Montenegro of that era. Somehow, it is as if we are seeing Krleža's Kraljevo, in which the stratified Croatian society at a critical moment in its history is depicted through dramatic, and not prose means, as in Brković's case.
Conclusion
Thinking about what is "historical" in this novel, as our great historian Andrej Mitrović would say, who, among other things, problematized this combination of literary and historical in his essay Historical in the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, one could to summarize that Brković provides so much material for the problematization of this topic that for this opportunity we have to be satisfied with underlining only some, perhaps not even the most important aspects of the problem, since the analysis of both this and other literary pretensions with a historical basis in our contemporary literature will certainly follow. We will content ourselves with some kind of questions addressed to the reader. The first would be: how was it even possible for a fairly nice and washed-up, and even optimistic Montenegro, just a few years later compared to the time described in Aurora, to return to the abyss described, for example, by a writer of the format of Mihajlo Lalić with all those horrible dilemmas that confront his heroes (as, for example, in Lelejska Gora). The second question would be: Would you rather return to the time described by Brković, a time full of hope, civic honor and faith in every kind of progress, or would you accept the challenge of change, primarily the revolution that happened to us shortly after the past times described in to this novel. Summa summarum, it is a dilemma called: do we want continuous changes or a revolution. Brković himself, although he does not speak decisively about his particular Weltanschaung, or view regarding the meaning of history, does not hide which option he would choose. The very ending of the novel more than clearly indicates that his inclination to historical evolution is unquestionable. One New Year and its rich civil celebration with which this novel ends are confirmation of this attitude. In truth, Brković himself is aware that returning to calendarless, non-historical time is an impossible mission, that the mighty Chronos does not allow it. Admittedly, Brković does not convey this to us as something terrible, as some kind of fate that cannot be escaped. It is a somewhat euphemistic "calendar hysteria", as Eddie, one of the novel's protagonists, puts it at the very end (p. 382).
The article was originally published in the magazine "Eckermann".
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