The always current Njegoš: "I used to descend on your rope..."

First Fr Caregiver on the picture (talbotypy, rad Anastas Jovanović.

This is the only preserved photograph on which the portrait of Njegoš is immortalized. Around the camera, we were given the opportunity to observe an authentic facial expression, a significant and penetrating gaze of Njegoš, a secular suit with an advantage over the official, spiritual one. Logically, the full portrait is in his work.

Almost all subsequent portraits of Njegoš were painted on the basis of this photograph. Even though it was beautiful, painters beautified it unnecessarily and thus, unintentionally, softened the expression of its inner strength.

The Njegoš dani event will certainly encourage, among other things, new works on the interpretation of Njegoš poets and rulers. It increases the large library about Njegoš, so the need was created to finally form a suitable institute, and through it the publication of the Njegoš Encyclopedia, like the example with great European writers, Shakespeare, Goethe, Pushkin... Njegoš's work deserves it because Montenegrin art and culture has stepped out into Europe (currently speaking, the EU) and the world for the first time.

Today, instead of discussing the essence of the works of poets and philosophers, Montenegro is arguing about less important issues. About language. About the nation. About the "reconciliation of the quarrelsome". The restoration of the old chapel on Lovćen. All in a deafening tone. Currently, for political reasons, the story about the removal of the Mausoleum is not being repeated. The symbol through which two giants met on the highest peak of Montenegro.

Instead of political-linguistic superimposition

For the current, heated story about Serbia and Montenegro, I turned to the text of the greatest negosologist, Mr. Slobodan Tomović, which is in the book Comments on over 500 pages, wrote studies on three of Njegos's most important works: Luča Mikrokosma, Gorski vijenac i The false emperor Šćepan Mali. Here are just a few quotes, current for our times. Academician, writer, philosopher... (he's also a Serb by nationality, if that's important to anyone) Slobodan Tomović, among other things, says:

"...In certain historical periods, "Serbia" here could also mean Christianity as a whole, but also adherence to the Slavic ideological matrix...", or,

"...In the long-standing Montenegrin folk tradition, there was a complete identification of Serbianness and Orthodoxy, as well as in some other regions, as he points out S. Matavulj. From time immemorial, even on the coast, a Serb was only Orthodox, Serbia meant Orthodoxy, as it still means in these parts (in the east) today...".

However, instead of political-linguistic exaggeration, isn't the following message from Njegoš about language the most healing: "Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful and beautiful, whatever, white, white and white - the petals of one flower, one drifted into the bud".

Slobodan Tomović, in a TV show, said, among other things, that Njegoš had answers to all the questions and dilemmas that life imposes on a person in his verses.

Because of everything he created, Njegoš is celebrated not only in Montenegro. But he was also ashamed when he was pasted on posters and crucified on war banners. The association with such a thing led to the verses, current even today:

"I used to descend on your rope, The rope almost broke; Since then, we've been higher friends, I've got a brain in my head."

In clear language, a message to those who, instead of guarding, destroy the foundations of their house.

PS

There is no space for extensive elaboration, only a note: If we accept the evidence of historians that there was no investigation from Gorski vienci (such as, for example, the investigation-genocide against the Muslim population in the Vraneška valley on the twenty-fourth), but the poet "threatened" an investigation with the Montenegrins who were increasingly converting to Islam and endangering the very substance of the Montenegrin people, Njegoš would be accepted today with far fewer reservations. And, on a psychological level, the grief of those who feel the suffering of their ancestors would be removed...

(The author is a prominent TV creator and publicist)