(Continued from last Saturday's issue)
In the identity narrative, mostly mythical cognitive schemes are activated, so in the discourse of Sveti Sava, the Kosovar myth has a special function, which contains deposits of ancient semantic power, which provides it with great symbolic potential, as well as very significant cultural and canonical functions. Over the centuries, the accumulated meaning and incorporation of the phylogenetic experience into the Kosovo myth was organized over time into a solid, petrified scheme of a mythical sign that very successfully formed the athetypes of human behavior, and from there the ready-made and highly automated patterns of the traitor - Vuk Branković, the hero - Miloš Obilić and the great martyr are taken over. - Tsar Lazar. Since these cognitive schemes are also known to the recipients, they are activated in the interpretation, sometimes, unfortunately, without any awareness of the mythical and artistic dimension of the "truths" included in the identity narrative, always aimed at establishing the maxim of quality, that is, truthfulness as a key conversational maxim - which was raised to the level of a cult in the nationalist discourse:
We know - countless roads lead to untruth, only one to the truth. The one who chooses the truth has chosen the path of martyrdom, and the one who chooses the path of martyrdom has chosen salvation (Jovanović 2005: 9).
Axioms are truths that do not need to be proven. Proving that Montenegrins are Serbs and their language is Serbian makes no sense, it is so clear and obvious, there are countless proofs, if needed (Zonjić, 2003: 11).
The cult of truth, ancestors, martyrdom and ethical principle is common to both Serbian and Montenegrin patriots:
We must remember that the truth protects the honor and dignity of every human being. Since there is a constant struggle for truth among people, it is our duty to always remain people of true soul... We must not allow ourselves to lose the battle for truth, and through it, freedom. Untruth leads us into unfreedom, slavery. The one who created us teaches us not to accept lies or any form of slavery. In all of this, we recognize the ineffable value of Christ's teaching. And its faithful interpreter in this area of ours is the autocephalous Montenegrin Orthodox Church, which today, as it did to our ancestors centuries before us, gives us faith in the one, true, living God...
For its true Christian spiritual suffering mission, for all that it tirelessly did for the Montenegrin people and the Montenegrin state, the Montenegrin Orthodox Church deserves that Orthodox believers, righteous, honest and moral people return to it as an authentic Montenegrin institution, and that they consistently follow it on to her path of truth, light and life (Đurović 2006: 44).
Who owns the truth? Serbian or Montenegrin nationalists? As a rule, the identity narrative is built from a large number of constructs, which are often very loosely connected to the maxim of truthfulness and much more grounded in a strong process of mythologizing, a key mechanism for the production of sanctuaries and cults, the sacredness of which is incorporated into the semiotic base of every identity model. At the same time, religious codes are imposed as the most reliable generators of "truth", and in accordance with their veristic mission, they also act as powerful regulators of identity. The sharp conflict between Kosovo and Dukljan mythology and their sanctuaries marks the semiosis of identity in Montenegro, which brings a significant dose of tension and aggressiveness into it, which is manifested in the heightened emotionality of the identity narrative.
In nationalist ideology, the concept of time plays a very important role, because the manipulation of collective memory is the basis of patriotic ideologues, which leads to the establishment of the cult of ancestors and the proliferation of primordial myths. In texts saturated with cultural information, temporal units appear as carriers of supplementary meaning because, in the opinion of anthropologists, time, like space, speaks (Hall 1976), whereby there is an increased semiotization of temporal units that go beyond their basic function of instruments for measuring time. In the Serbian identity narrative, the spatio-temporal unit of Kosovo is additionally semioticized, whereby Christian mysticism opens a supra-historical dimension of time, where the Kosovo battle functions as a great sign, a manifestation of God's will, which caused the establishment of the cult of the Kosovo covenant in the complex semiotic system of Serbia. The Serbian Orthodox Church defines the Kosovo Covenant in the text There is no better faith than the Christian one, broadcast in 2005, which clearly confirms the Covenant's canonical status:
What is the Kosovo Covenant?
In the battle in Kosovo against the Turks (1389), the great martyr Emperor Lazar, together with his Christ-loving army, opted for the Kingdom of Heaven, instead of the temporary earthly kingdom. "Let us die with Christ, in order to live forever," he tells his soldiers. Because, "earthly is for a small kingdom, and heavenly always and forever". That Kosovo decision and that Covenant, that is the covenant that the Serbian people made with God - and sealed it with the blood of martyrs. In Kosovo, the Serbian people voted with their souls for the Kingdom of Heaven, and that was and remains their only real choice. Since then, all Serbs faithful to that Covenant become the people of God - Christ's New Testament people, heavenly Serbia, an integral part of the New Israel of God (Bishop Danilo, Bishop Amfilohije 2005: 78–79).
Thus, the Kosovo covenant functions as a metaphysical shield over the Serbian people, which intertextually motivates their suffering by connecting it to the biblical myth of the chosen people, based on the powerful cult of martyrdom. On the basis of quoted contact with the holy biblical text and Christian martyrdom, Emperor Lazar becomes an exemplary model and bearer of martyr codes of conduct. Mythological, folklore and not historical truth is taken, which is visible in the titling of Lazarus as an emperor and not as a prince, as well as in the religious motivation that transforms historical figures into mythological characters guided by metaphysical, not empirical logic. Emperor Lazar is modeled in Kosovo mythology as a key bearer of (New) Testament martyrdom, which will be semioticized especially in the folklore text. The semioticization of codes of behavior in Kosovo mythology leads to the establishment of three regulatory models: heroic (Miloš Obilić), treacherous (Vuk Branković) and great martyr (Czar Lazar). Heroic and martyr specimens carry information about resistance to Turkish colonization, because they function as symbolic signs and activate the entire axiological and symbolic order of epic Balkan culture, whose key ideology is resistance to Islam.
The strength of the Serbian identity narrative primarily rests on the Kosovo mythology, which has been built for centuries and is deeply rooted in the collective memory as the greatest trauma, with precise space-time coordinates, which contributes to its more impressive effect in terms of social semiotics because it is based on historical "truth". Namely, in the Balkan, and especially in the Serbian culture, there is an emphasized semioticization of Kosovo, whereby this chronotope is transformed into a spatial and identity symbol by artistic strategies. Additional semioticization of Kosovo was started in oral codes, and in further intertextual turmoil an extremely complex symbolic sign was formed, deeply engraved in the phylogenetic memory:
Geography turns into symbolism extremely easily. This is especially noticeable when this or that geographical point becomes a place of constant war operations or national or religious conflicts or is evaluated differently in conflicting national traditions. (Lotman 2004: 270).
Unlike Kosovo, whose semioticization is based on a temporal signal - the year 1389, there is no significant historical event that launches Duklja and Lovćen into the semiotic space as additionally marked geographical units. Despite this, their sacralization occurs in the Montenegrin semiosphere, which increases the role of these chronotopes in cultural memory. At the same time, the mythological energy of the spatial information they emit is particularly functional in the construction of an identity narrative, so the Lovcen and Dukla chronotopes have the most complex identity functions in Montenegrin literature and culture. The sacred semantics of Lovcen is included in the mythologizing of the Petrović Njegoš dynasty, and since that process is interactive, the members of the dynasty, especially Njegoš, participate in the mythologizing of Lovćen, whose semantic field, precisely thanks to Njegoš's poetry, brings a significant dose of sacredness. Since spatial memory is extremely persistent, it permeates culture vertically, transferring from epoch to epoch supplementary non-spatial information, and therefore the spatial image of the world represents one of the most stable elements of the cultural continuum, and spatial codes function as powerful guardians of collective, phylogenetic memory and therefore have a very significant role in identity semiosis.
Poets who are important in terms of social semiotics, especially self-identification processes, that is, the establishment of identity models, impose themselves on the national literary canon and semiotic space as centers around whose texts solid identity structures are formed. The work of Jevrem Brković functions as the foundation of the Montenegrin identity narrative, with the Dukla identity model as a basis, which is increasingly suppressing the model with Serbianness as the basis of the Montenegrin national being. Layers of memory that were erased under the influence of the cult of Nemanjići and Dušan's empire, as well as later Kosovo mythology, Brković brings into the collective memory of his nation. However, the collective memory is largely in the hands of the ruling ideologies, which shape it according to their needs, so supporting the Montenegrin or Serbian narrative, spreading the Dukla or Kosovo mythology is politically very profitable. Memory is easy to manipulate, so this or that narrative is broadcast from the centers of power, according to needs and clearly defined political goals, and in this way the nation is directed towards the "right" referendum answer. Jevrem Brković managed to initiate processes that led to a strong semioticization of the Dukla chronotope in culture, which neutralized the influence of Serbianness in the Montenegrin identity narrative. At the same time, the memory of the social community was fundamentally rearranged and the Dukla chronotope was introduced as an identity foundation, which does not exist in Njegoš's poetry.
Religious cognitive schemes, based on the axiomatic principle, decisively influence the shaping of the identity narrative, and due to their foundation in dogma, they are exclusive and inflexible. The establishment of absolute truth in religious epistemology also conditions all other cognitive and semiotic processes, which can be fatal in terms of social semiotics. Namely, these cognitive schemas are primarily intended for the interpretation of the other side, the interpretation and realization of transcendence, so they are acceptable in that area, however, transferred to the real chronotope, with all their rigidity and exclusivity, they are very dangerous in the interpretation of social phenomena, especially identity models . Therefore, churches as the key bearers of the identity narrative rely on the enormous semiotic potential of the divine instance, which they put at the service of maxims of quality, that is, truthfulness. Behind the "truths" broadcast by the churches is the indisputable divine power and the rigidity of the church dogma, which is why the discourse of the priest is extremely sensitive in its pragmatic aspect, because the possibilities of manipulation increase in the case of feeding the discourse with transcendental energy:
Language either gives life or kills, heals or poisons. Poisoned hearts are at the same time hearts closed to the truth in general, even to the truth of the real language. God-fearing language, as a rule, is also man-killing, man-killing language. Babylonian confusion, confusion and mixture of languages has always existed, so even today it is a consequence of man's and people's estrangement from God as the unique root of people and nations as well as the root of their languages... Solipsism, self-infatuation, even language, is an escape into the demonic darkness of alienation from God and alienation from man .
As a rule, in times of great violence against people and nations, there is also violence against language. A fake language creates a fake people and vice versa (Dr. Amfilohije Radović, Metropolitan of Montenegrin-Primorski 2003: 5).
Language and colonized cultures
Christians in the Balkans preserved their language and culture thanks to the process of auto-communication, which is crucial in preserving the identity of colonized cultures: At the same time, two types of auto-communication should be distinguished: with a mnemonic function and without it (Lotman 2004: 39).
Therefore, in an endangered culture, as one of its defense strategies, intensive communication is developed on the I-I channel with an emphasized mnemonic function, whereby a temporal boundary is formed in the identity narrative that separates two substructures, governed by different cultural codes - the domicile culture before and after colonization and creolization, because such a sharp and aggressive intrusion of other people's cultural codes and cognitive schemes leads to serious changes in culture and to the modification of identity patterns. That process in the Balkans started right after the Kosovo battle, a special spatio-temporal unit from which time is measured to those before and after, which led to the additional semioticization of that geographical term in both artistic and non-artistic texts.
Serbian is the oldest language, God created it
The formation of national identity is mostly influenced by religious and ideological codes, but aesthetic codes also play a significant role, the most important of which in this process are literary ones, so the South Slavic interpretative communities read their identity from their canonical texts, the foundation of which is oral literature.
Oral codes are key custodians of identity because they reconstruct phylogenetic memory, that is, memory of the species, so they are activated in texts with emphasized identity functions. Therefore, the depth of time captured in the text is extremely important, because the more developed the collective memory, the deeper it reaches into the past, the stronger the identity model. This is precisely why in the Serbian identity narrative, the language is associated with Sanskrit, and in highly mythologized conceptions, God appears in the role of Godfather, who has baptized the language of the majority of South Slavs, that is, the Štokavian dialect, into Serbian for centuries:
"As for the meaning of our national name, SRB or SRBIN means warrior, fighter, strong man. In Sanskrit there is a form corresponding to our expression SRBENDA, which means the same as SRB or SRBIN. Olga Luković-Pjanović concludes: "The original language of the world was Sanskrit, from which all other languages developed, and Sanskrit, which is logical, was spoken by the oldest and most powerful nation... And which nation is that?" The answer is simple: the one whose language even today comes closest to Sanskrit, and that is, beyond any doubt, the Serbian language, which, according to our still imprecise calculation, preserves at least 3 words that have not changed a single bit from the time of the Rg-Veda until today. in form or meaning (Šarić 000: 2003).
Because we were created, mixed and leavened, from the Serbian word, on graves that are carved. Then, immediately after birth, at that time, my tongue was also baptized, and God was the godfather (Jovanović 2003: 25).
(End in the next issue of "Arta" on February 6)
Bonus video:
