The activist attitude towards the world and life is one of the most important features of Montenegrin poetry. Undoubtedly, this was influenced by the fate of Montenegro, a country always in the way of conquerors, and eternally insubordinate in the fight for the defense of freedom. Montenegrin poetry thus naturally suffered, assimilated and reflected the influence of that particular socio-historical ethical situation and tradition. For a long time, this limited and narrowed her subject matter, but also fundamentally determined her involvement. Always irreconcilably faced with reality, the Montenegrin people spoke with resistance through their poetry, advocating for life and struggle "that will have no end", determined to endure even if it is a Sisyphean climb, even with the secret of "what is a man" - but with the exclusive request, - "that one must be human"! In this sense, humanly strongly and deeply sublimating, and poetically highly expressing the spiritual values of the Montenegrin national being - Petar II Petrović Njegoš left a rich legacy to future generations of poets in Montenegro.
There is no great work without great sacrifices. Montenegrin poetry had to pay for the appearance of the genius Njegoš. Too close to its harbor and fire, the poets of the second half of the XNUMXth century seemed to have burned in it. Paradoxical but true: Njegoš's work, capable of inspiring others, drew on the poetic sources of those closest to him - Montenegrin poets. Only the poets who stepped into Montenegrin poetry after the First World War will find the strength to break with the fiddlers' singing of concrete events and lay the foundations for modern Montenegrin poetry. Risto Ratković, Mirko Banjević, Radovan Zogović, Stefan Mitrović, Janko Đonović and others - because of their political engagement for social and national liberation, for man and his rights - conditionally called social - have greatly enriched Montenegrin literature with poetry and content. Wanting to change society, they also changed poetry. Establishing a connection with a healthy tradition (the one in Eliot's sense), with the original folk lexicon and metaphors, with their time, they created works with a specific language-layered structure and lasting value.
The post-war period of reconstruction obliged the continuation of war themes and literature. And yet, it is also a time of renewal in Montenegrin poetry, the true maturation of the already mentioned poets, but also the poetic confirmation of new ones: Dušan Kostić, Radonja Vešović, Aleksandar Ivanović and others...
Poets in Montenegro have had a prominent place in society since ancient times and are constantly consolidating it. The people always appreciated them and for a reason, trusted them, remembered their messages, accepted them. Because poets in Montenegro were always with the people or in front of them, sang, lived and fought deeply aware of their role and duty. With their humane, progressive and libertarian engagement, and above all with their poetic work, they did honor to the people and poetry. Therefore, being a poet in Montenegro has always meant an obligation to live, speak and speak in a human upright, courageous and dignified way, as Jevrem Brković also says:
"To be in front of the sun, when everything is beeping, even the brambles, when judgment is hooray for everyone, stand up and walk".
Jevrem Brković is the most significant and prolific contemporary Montenegrin writer. He wrote over ninety books of poetry, novels, plays, polemics, short stories, and essays. He constantly aroused and increased the interest of readers and critics around himself and his work. It was especially successful in Montenegro, where it grew into a real institution. Due to his ethical-ideological commitment and influence, Brković attracted controversial assessments and judgments, but it never occurred to any of his fiercest opponents to challenge his literary work in any way, which is the best confirmation of its importance and value. Whether it was the dense, metaphorical prose of Monigren, the Krležian sharp messages of the Glossary, Njegošev's questioning of the fate of man and the people of Brđanska zemlja and Duklja, pamphlets or essays, Brković's work, and especially poetry, evoked the greatest attention and curiosity.
Nevertheless, although it was rarely written about anyone like him, hundreds of pages were written (as evidenced by the two collections of criticism "The Discovery of Montenegrin Atlantis" and "Drama of Dukljansk space"), with the exception of two studies - by Ivan Salečić and Duško Arežina - these are critical representations, impressions, texts or notes, newspaper articles, essays in magazines and literary publications - without, as the organizer of the Drama of Dukljansk space Blagota Drašković points out, involvement "into the essence of the literary work, into its motivic and aesthetic structurality, into the writer's procedure and essential psychoanalytical literary polyvalence". The fact that Brković's oeuvre and individual works "escaped" adequate and studious analysis, evaluation, treatment, round tables and symposiums is their "fault and credit". Because you need knowledge, strength, education and courage to enter and exit Brković's alchemical labyrinth and poetic laboratory. His work will (apparently) have to wait for that. Until then, as before and after, Brković will remain the most widely read Montenegrin poet. It is, like his Duklja to which they are "Underground squares and basilicas/Above the ground only name, glory and curse". There are many archaeological layers, agoras to be discovered, temples, secrets, palimpsests, inscriptions and traces in stone, in memory, and myths.
"To me the word is everything and everything is in my word"
Although with each book he expanded the thematic circles of his poetry and brought something new, Brković constantly confirmed that he is a poet of Brđanska zemlje, Montenegro, or Duklje. Almost every one of his books is a poem to Montenegro, a poetic metaphor for the Hills and the Hill Country, real and possible, mythical and historical, eternal, recognizable in consciousness and imagination, in space and time.
"I'm from the stony, mythical land..." - says Brković.
In that mythical, as much as real land of Brđa, the Brković family Kamenštaki live in accordance with the teachings of Home education. Turning to the past, they also go to death "with the future under his head". They live in such a way that they would even after death "had their own mountain and hill", "shining hills" and which, with their toponymy, grow into symbols, into permanent markers of the continuity of life. With their mysterious melody, they remain in the ear forever, are experienced by the senses and carry the enigmatic breath of legends and ancient beliefs. In Brđa land, "only the dead will live," says the poet, revealing with that simple verse all the drama, fate and conspiracies, evil times, accidents, deaths, divisions and sufferings of Montenegro.
In it, there are only the dead without wounds, only they are peaceful, superior and secure, freed from everything that makes us small and weak... Enriched by centuries of experience and the lives of our predecessors - they are the only eternal ones. Such and similar verses and poems, often interwoven with subtle irony, deny our first (and wrong) impression that the poet's attitude towards the Brđa region, Montenegro, Duklja, is imbued with idealism and romanticism. His focus on the past is conditioned by the life of Kamenštak, it is necessary for him to compare the present with it, to express his poetic rebellion against the growing alienation of today's man, his moral decline, selfishness, narrow-mindedness, cowardice. Addressing her as the Great Example of life, the poet simultaneously destroys her. In fact - it is the future that is the only one that the poet addresses as Njegošev's sieve that will clean all accounts and reduce them to the right measures! And the past, the entire history of the Hills, Montenegro and Duklja is here to testify to him - that only those values that deserved it, that had the strength to withstand all the challenges of time and storms, as well as those personalities who, aware of:
"That they have nothing of their own on earth / except that grave and a handful of bones in it" - do everything to be an Example. Brković's poem "Srećne rane" can also serve as an example, or how it becomes an Example, which is also suitable for pointing out his "poetic process". Woven into a rich background of mourning, this song, with an unexpected twist, becomes an inspired apotheosis of life in Montenegro.
The poet, the people and the song became one. With strong, rich and succinct language, deeply rooted in the tissue, veins and being of the people, from the echo and lexicon of lamentation and centuries - the poet extracts messages of hope, resistance and faith, showing the magical, expressive and emotional possibilities of language as well as the indestructibility of the people.
"In his poetic search, Jevrem Brković realized one of the rare privileges of poets - that they themselves create their predecessors..." wrote Pavle Goranović.
Like the nameless, epic, all-time folk rhapsody, Brković also knows and sees everything, understands, is in agreement with earth and water, ticks and snakes, dead and alive. Montenegro and its people are the main motive of this poetry.
"Don't swear at the children and Montenegro, even a single straw can spill over it, Death crept in there and filled every dawn with curses, moans, strangles...
From her life is plucked only by naked spite, Love is not allowed, satire is like a plague, You get sick from her, she does not acknowledge pain, Death is the only merit in that country..."
In the Brđanska land, in Montenegro, everything takes on the meaning of a metaphor. The Hills and Towers themselves become luminous symbols over time. From them you can see far - into the past and the future. Thanks to the poet's imagination and the inspiration with which he turns everything he touches into a poem, even his native Đurđevo brdo enters poetry and life overwhelmingly:
"Every day we went out to the hill to see what our people were doing around the world..."
Homeland obliges to live and survive uprightly and proudly in every place and on every occasion. In the world - especially! There are always more names in the homeland than hills. If you want your name on a hill, burn, lie or water - you have to earn it! And one must return to one's homeland, often, and once, in the end and - forever. Returning to the homeland is returning to oneself, to undisturbed springs, Dukljan traditions, hard and white Towers, stone and steel, but also brick bones of ancestors and descendants, always open to friends, guests and those in need, full of children, life and death, under whose helmet one is born and mre, but he is never alone. The homeland must be protected and defended with words, because:
"If you don't say it, it will remain unsaid. Those words, the color of ripe fruit and the sky, will never be in poetry again. You see, dangerous poets without a homeland are growing up."
Although an extremely prolific creator, Brković chooses the topics he sings about; he gives himself to each poem as if it were his will, as if he would write no more after it. That's why many of his poems, even though they represent a link in the poem about Montenegro and Dukla, radiate exceptional artistic achievement. Belief in the power of poetry, characteristic of Montenegrin poets, is most pronounced in Jevrem Brković. He will show this with the song "Forgive Dubrovnik" and other songs created as a rebellion and resistance to the murderous and looting raids on Konavle, for the first time in its history the involvement of Montenegro in a shameful and shameful war - for which "bearded destroyers and arsonists sentenced to death, which was approved by their leaders. He avoided a trap (and later an assassination), illegally crossed the Albanian border and spent the next seven years in exile.
And although he experienced that in "At sixty, the exiled poet wakes up / What else can only be done here in the Balkans"; to be violently and heartlessly separated from his own, from home and property, Brković did not forget who he was and where he came from.
"What lasts is always what is renewed" - Gaston Bašlar.
"Brković - states Arežina - "is the first Montenegrin poet who dared to go into the beginnings of his national existence, into the roots of Dukla, into Dukla as a true Montenegrin foundation. He made Duklja, Dukljanism - history and fiction about history - a major theme of Montenegrin literature. To him are Duklja and Duklja, the dead and forgotten cities of Prapratna and Lontodokla, great figures of Duklja history: Archon Petar, Saint Vladimir of Duklja and his Kosara, Prince Vojislav, Kings Mihailo and Bodin, Queen Jaquinta and her fate, the Duklja sea, sea and coast, continuous wars and fatal family conflicts, the evil Raš current, Good Hope Husbands, Lelestva and the Dukljan Svetopis hidden in Lovcen, the individual and collective destinies of the Dukljans - so seized and bewitched, entered his bloodstream and made him the first Dukljan writer in Montenegrin literature, in fact the great Detainee of Duklja and Duklje."
"All that I had to say I have said Now I can calmly Down the wormwood field in the fog".
Returning to Montenegro, he was first welcomed as befits a great man, a poetic bard, Brković found the safest refuge in his poetry because "Montenegrins only love exiled and dead poets". It will result in new books. Unfortunately, among them are songs dedicated to his wife, Kaća, who passed away suddenly and prematurely. If there is any consolation in that, then it is in the fact that with the cycle "I am all in your death", Brković wrote his most lyrical, most intimate and best songs.
"You, in some metaphysical delusion, You know where you're going, But I, my dear, I don't know where I'm returning from your grave!" "What will I do with this much silence in me and around me, With this much solitude?"
Addressing her, trying to calm his emotions and not acknowledge her absence - he establishes an almost religious relationship with her, confessing to her - he brings her back to life and song. . . . Open to man and time, to the essential questions of human existence, sincere, deeply experienced and relived, Brković's poetry easily finds readers and admirers, but also raises many questions to which we seek answers within ourselves.
And when he is rebellious and defiant, and when he is wistful and nostalgic, upset or insulted, and when he suffers and when he remembers, he is himself, authentic, a dreamer and reader of darkness, a witness and interpreter of the Dukljan drama that he is living, and when is convinced of his apostolic, cultural and social role - and even more - self-confident in the supremacy, supremacy and omnipotence of his artistic work, he is a Montenegrin, a lover and prisoner of the Brđan land, thanks to which he is also a poet, her, Monigren, the most Montenegrin.
"This is the land where the dead live longest"
The hills are the poet's and our "first universe", the homeland with its human and ethical principles, demands and values based on the centuries-old struggle of the Montenegrin people to defend freedom and the free man. The hills and the Brđanska zemlja have their own measurements and heights that must never be betrayed - if you want to live and sing, to remember, to die, if you want, and you have to - be a man!
"This is the land where the dead live the longest" - says the poet, aware that it must be earned by an upright life, by bravely facing all the temptations that life imposes on us. It is the first lesson from Home Education in Brđanska land. Building his attitude and view of the world on the examples of the hills and Brđanska zemlja, Brković forms his poetics in the spirit of the Montenegrin tradition.
The narrative texture of the verse, its ancient melody and rhythm, a certain pathos inherent in the man of the hills, which the poet also carried in his genes - flow into a modern metaphor that surprises with the richness and layering of associations. History is there as a poetic reminiscence, while the songs are deliberately emphasized with an epic intonation and message - to indicate longevity, omnipresence in time and consciousness, in the people.
Belief in the power and role of song
The generation of poets who appeared after the XNUMXs made a big turn towards more subtle, content-rich, thought-provoking and modern poetic currents. In that period, the influence of modern poetry of other European nations is visible, which helps to establish a different relationship with traditional poetics. Among the poets of this generation (Sreten Perović, Blažo Šćepanović, Žarko Đurović, Milo Kralj, Vojislav Vulanović, Branko Banjević), a special place belongs to Jevrem Brković, a creator whose work sublimates and reflects the essential features of Montenegrin poetry, "poetic elements" which, in addition to similarities with poetry of other Yugoslav peoples, make it specific, authentic and unique.
In addition to activism and engagement, there is also a deep-rooted, organic attachment to the word, to the most responsible attitude towards it, towards what one wants to express. The word here is an aesthetic as well as an ethical category - says Milorad Stojović. This unity of aesthetics and ethics gave birth to a certain "masculinity" of Montenegrin poetry. What many have noticed and highlighted as a special feature of Montenegrin poetry is certainly the language, the rich vocabulary, concise and fresh expression, and especially the deep belief in the power and role of poetry. It's no accident.
Bonus video:
