Where to start? I wonder at the end. From the beginning - from youthful lyrical and poetic flickers. We knew each other since our high school days. Masho studied at the Bijelo Polje gymnasium, and I at the Ivangrad gymnasium. Back then, literary groups, meetings and gatherings were in fashion. It was a time of poems and poets. Many wrote, and some published. Mašo was one of those who stood out. Already in his gymnasium days, he wrote serious poems. Two literary groups met, their members met, fell in love, recited. The era of pure lyricism. Then, and it still seems to me today, words had wings. They flew between Bijelo Polje and Ivangrad. A feeling that lasts. Then, my feelings for a girl from Bijelo Polje revived, I wrote her letters... maybe poems too, I don't remember anymore... And then the paths took everyone to their own side, including me and Mašo, and many others. The paths of life forked in all directions, and youth flourished and bubbled through them. We occasionally met, when it came to Mašo's and my meetings. In recent decades, contacts have revived. Meetings and books have been happening that have brought us together. Love for Montenegro. Love for literature! Enough of that.
...we once friends/ then we no longer have hearts to show/with a satanic will to live, the poet would say Dragomir Brajković.
And after all, memory lives. And we live from memory, even though it is not a very reliable witness. But how could we, without memory, move towards the future? Anywhere! A burden that simultaneously oppresses and renews.
And now Poetry. Always with a capital P. It seemed to us that we could change the world with it. How it happens in youth! And a detail that cannot be overlooked. At that time, in high school, the Titograd magazine Creation was known throughout Yugoslavia, when it came to literary magazines. It was edited by Cedo Vuković, a writer of great literary achievements, a man of special breadth, humanity and openness, published Maš's and my poems, which was an event for us. I learned by heart the verses of the poem Devil's lies (I still know many of them today!), which will later appear under the same title as a separate book published by the Cetinje Perimeter. I was then haunted by the sounds of the Polim pipes, which I still hear now. More and more as the years pass. Although there have long been no pipes, no herds, no shepherds. The sounds last even when everything is over!
So much for youth, although it could be expanded upon. Memories and feelings all over again... But let's return to later times, which are important for different reasons. Serious affairs. Youth brings lyricism, maturity brings science.
Mašo turned to science and in that field made a significant contribution to the study of the history of Montenegro, the truths about it. He leafed through and read, learned and interpreted, the rich pages of the civilization textbook, delved through centuries and millennia. He read chronicles and records. He was and remained one of the few who knew the history of his homeland, but also more than history, the spirit that is sculpted by centuries, sculptors who work without rest, profiling the Spirit that is impossible to destroy.
History can be known, but Spirit cannot, that privilege is granted to the rare. Among those rare was my and our comrade and friend Mašo Miljić, a man of noble gaze, smile and nature. He was also a long-time collaborator of the Art supplement, which readers remember well. Sturdy and upright as a stone from Žabljak, and delicate as a flower from his native Luka. A man who had himself and his own attitude. He did not change, he stood as an irrefutable fact in the time in which he lived, in which he realized himself as a scientist, poet, polymath in the true sense of the word, a man who carried within himself the supremacy of humanity, the most characteristic vertical of Montenegrins, a virtue and a height that can be reached. He was among the rare, who in his being and character carried the qualities Montenegrins, disappeared long ago. He was a Montenegrin man, as he was called Gezeman experienced, and time has confirmed. What is essentially important, and disappeared, hopefully temporarily.
That's why we are where we are!
He worked devotedly and with love, with scientific precision, approaching everything he chose in a responsible manner, for the benefit of science and Montenegro. The most important thing to him was the truth. He believed that the truth shines even in the darkest of times. That it would win sooner or later and find a place that could not be taken from it. And we must help it - What is the most sacred human duty?! She cannot do without man! Truth has light, it can be darkened from the outside, not from the inside, it shines even in dark times, as she would say Hana ArenetEven when the darkness is thickest, there are lamps, often invisible, yet present with their own light that illuminates the paths.
What would we do without such lamps? Hana wondered! We wonder too.
My and our Mašo was such a lamp. Seemingly invisible, but burning with life and work. He wanted to illuminate everything he touched. Diving through the history of Montenegro, through its depth and destiny, he brought to light numerous works of inestimable value, a lot of space would be needed to list them: scientific works on various topics, monographs, edited books that we have forgotten about, but which we desperately need, documents intentionally or accidentally set aside, which testify to our existence and long duration... a lot of things, learned and studied, in the spirit and manner of the best polyhistor. The scope of his knowledge was great, and hence the diverse interests in topics and dilemmas from the past, which can burden the future or confirm it.
The meaning and goal of his life and work.
If I were to list some, I would be omitting others, and would be unfair to the entire work. I leave it to researchers to explore and travelers to travel its paths that will not heal.
We will always need examples. Montenegro and its freedom have been sustained by them. Thanks to them! And woe to a time without bright examples. Woe to a man in such a time. The one I am writing about is an example, a claim that time will prove right. They are shaped by the land they came from, the house in which they were born and raised, the tradition with which they grew up, which has unerringly shaped them.
That's why Mašo was what he was. And what he didn't want to be - he wasn't! He will remain in the memory of his friends, on the scientific scene, in poetry. He will shine on the other side. From where few shine.
He was useful during his life, and will be so in the future with his scientific work and the endeavors he followed and left to us. He lived at the right time for the right thing. A man builds a monument to himself with his life. Devil's lies i Time of vanity are the titles of his poetry books. He gave primacy to science, and in his last years to prose. If these stories were added together, it would be another book. Perhaps there is still a manuscript poem left, it should be seen in the drawers of his desk. And now, for the end, verses from another poetry book:
I am not carried by the winds of success.
I return to the silence of the grass
the smell of the clearing
in the early morning,
Giant black grouse
It blocks the sun with its crest.
.................................................. .....
When life passes, the word lives on. The song lives on, more lasting than life. And the smile, the one that adorned Maš's face! The sun cannot be hidden! There are no wings for it...
(Herceg Novi, January 2026)
Bonus video:
