(Continuation from the last issue of Art)
You, Lord, if not today, but certainly tomorrow, will be placed in the place in history that belongs to You in everything, both in terms of virtues and errors; along with the place, you will probably also get a street in Cetinje, and some kind of cultural institution in the capital of Montenegro, which was once, after your father, also called Mirkova Varoš, will bear your name. We owe, Lord, a decent and thoughtful monument to You, and to the Grand Duke Mirko, and to Peter the First, and to Prince Danilo the Longest, and, by God, to some of Your heroes and military leaders.
Every nation, even the Montenegrin one, strives to find and redeem the bones of its heroes, rulers, saints and poets, martyrs and national ascetics, to build them into the pantheon of its existence of martyrdom, into the ossuary of national rectification and sacrifice. The bones of Zeta king Vladimir are in Elbasan, Jelena Balšić on an island in Lake Skadar, Đurađ Crnojević somewhere in Venice, Bishop Vasilija in front of the church of Alexander Nevsky in Leningrad, the bones of Duke Božidar Vuković Podgoricanin also on an island in Lake Skadar, Šćepan Malog - in front of the ruined church in Brčeli in Crmnica.
Don't be angry, Lord, Šćepan Mali was also our Lord and Ruler, among the best and the best, even though he ended the rule of the Petrović dynasty for seven full years. There is no more memory or tradition about the bones of the Archon Peter of Dukljan, the kings and queens of Dukljan, the Vojislavs and the Bodins, the bones of Balšić and Crnojević, they have sunk and disappeared in the thick darkness of our Dukljan-Zeta destiny.
Bones can disappear from folk memory and tradition, they can petrify and be the most beautiful nameless stones in our lake-coastal necropolises, which remind us from Prečista Krajinska to the city of Šas and Ulcinj that our traces and origins are somewhere, that they are visible and on petrified bones and dehumanized stones.
Historical figures and their work disappear over time, when the destructive intensity of the barbaric and vandal eras subsides or subsides, disappearing from the mists of the past, the dust and ashes of time; from the age-old darkness and historical subconscious they enter our consciousness about ourselves, about the space and time that shaped us into what we are, or what we think we are. This, it seems, is the increasingly necessary identification of modern man with the possible roots of his historical and national being.
Today, Lord, we are closer to Prince Vojislav, the holy King Vladimir, King Bodin, Duklja and the people of Duklja than we were during Your life, reign and era, when You, for practical and dynastic interests, obscured everything our views backwards, into history and the Middle Ages, into the roots of Montenegrin, into the often enslaved and vassal Zeta, into Duklja, which has long been Duklja! You shortened and obscured all those historical probes and vistas that went through Nemanjići lavers and endowments, fiefs and estates, baptisms and christenings, titular and apprentice principalities and principalities - and reached those pre-Nemanjići and Dukljan foundations and roots of national, cultural and historical. You remembered late and called Ban Baoša, Prince Vojislav, and Saint Vladimir, and King Bodin, as well as Đurđ, Stefanica and Ivan Crnojević to help! By cutting the roots of your national tree and being, you cut them off for yourself and your dynasty, Lord! You suffered for that mistake the longest and paid the most tragically!
You, Lord, with all your not-so-small flaws and those big and historical mistakes, were nevertheless a man of virtues, perhaps the last among the European rulers of that time with virtues similar to those of the ancients. You remained the prince of several wars won and one lost, the military leader of one brilliantly won battle, Vučedol and two barely won and poorly conducted battles - Bar and Skadar! The king of the land that you introduced to Europe, he created with one imperial, two royal and one princely court, Lord of the people that you did not rule in the Balkan sense; you listened to and appreciated each other - like it used to be in ancient times in Ithaca, Pylos, Ephesus, Tiryns, Athens and Troy! You were and remain a poet of a melodious and easy-to-remember eight, with poetry you reconciled, and sometimes even quarreled, the Montenegrins; you gave each tribe a hymn - kolo, so that Montenegro was a unique country in the world - there was almost no brotherhood or house in it that you did not include in your songs or chants, for better or for worse.
Every Montenegrin of that time, if he was allowed to choose - either to enter your songbooks by mistake, or to end up at the shooting range, would have chosen the shooting range much sooner! It must be admitted, Lord, that you instilled in the Montenegrins some cultural awe towards poetry, which in their consciousness jumped far above legal, customary and religious norms and codes - became a measure of moral and all other values. Your virtues, Master, were in many respects ancient, and your faults, mostly, mental, with an admixture of perfectly dosed Byzantine cunning. That's why they are larger and indispensable for history Your flaws, apparently, from that black, gold-encrusted, Byzantine ruler's chest.
You were, my Lord, a prince, king and master of military, moral and spiritual virtues, but also a prince, king and master of those many fatal flaws, the most fatal for a country like Your Montenegro, especially from the beginning of the twentieth century - by all accounts similar to You, Lord, and civilizationally, politically and militarily completely unprepared for the age she has entered. How you have aged, Lord, your Montenegro has aged with you! The XNUMXth century, Lord, was too heavy a burden both for Your state and for its epically burdened and depleted state back.
Faced with this new and misunderstood burden - burdened with archaic, archetypal models of living and behavior, warfare and chivalry, Montenegro, which had stood upright for centuries, had to finally fall to its knees, so that from its own ashes and tragedy, so unhappy and three occupations, it would be reborn as a modern state, the Republic, admittedly with a lot of relapses and unbroken links with its archaic-mentality, retrograde, conservative and so controversial past! It is not possible, Lord, what kind of country Montenegro is, that it can still have insulting, perhaps difficult, and perhaps even tragic misunderstandings with itself and its being that was tragically torn apart in 1918!
Macte virtute esto, Master!
(In Titograd, March 15, 1989; From the book "Leaders, leaders, generals, Zagreb, 1990)
Bonus video:
