They will erect a memorial bust to Old Man Milija

The memorial bust of Old Man Milija Kolašinac will be installed in the center of Kolašin by the end of the month.

In this way, as unofficially told to "Vijesta" in the Kolašin local government, they intend to remind the importance, but also to pay tribute to the work of the authors of the songs "Marriage of Maksim Crnojević", "Banović Strahinja", "Sister of the Leka Captain", "Gavran Harambaša" and Limo" and "Marriage of Milić the flag bearer".

The memorial bust is the work of the renowned Montenegrin sculptor Miodrag Šćepanović, and the location where it will be placed in the municipality has not yet been decided.

"A more magnificent poet than Starac Milija was never born on the territory of our language. Despite this, in our country, until recently, little was known and little was said about him. Almost 200 years ago, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Gerhard Gezeman knew about the works of Staco Milija. That oral poet-singer has yet to gain domestic fame", are the messages from one of the literary evenings dedicated to that poet.

Connoisseurs of Staco Milija's works have repeatedly pointed out that a state literary award should be established with the name of that oral poet-singer. The proposal for erecting the monument came from one of the literary evenings.

It is known that his poem about Maksim Crnojević was translated into German in 1825, the one about the captain's sister Leka in 1826, a year later and "Banović Strahinja", which attracted Goethe's attention.

Old man Milija is credited with "great importance for the multi-ethics and multi-faith of Montenegro"...

"Freedom, which he used to deconstruct folk traditions, sets him apart from the Bronze Age. He didn't try to leave us a picture of his or someone else's past. He didn't consider the past to be important. Not much fun either. Not even recognizable. Although epically oriented, like all men, he deconstructed the historical record and erased time from the real flow of things. He spoke from personal experience, but it was not the past," wrote writer and literary historian Gojko Čelebić about Starac Milija.