National Romanticism: The Formation of National Movements

Petar II Petrović Njegoš: The mountain wreath

PETAR II PETROVIĆ NJEGOŠ: THE MOUNTAIN WREATH Title: Gorski vijenac (The mountain wreath) Originally published: Vienna, 1847 Language: Serbian Modern edition: P. P. Njegoš, Gorski vijenac (Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, 1947). The excerpts selected are from p. 50 and pp. 128–131 of the English edition : James W. Wiles, trans., The Mountain Wreath (London, Allen & Unwin, 1930). About the author Petar II Petrović Njegoš [1813, Njeguši (Montenegro) – 1851, Cetinje (Montenegro )]: prince-bishop and poet. He was born into the Njegoši clan, the ruling family of Montenegro, in whose hands were united the spiritual and political leadership of the principality. After the death of his uncle, Petar I Petrović, in 1830, he became princebishop and ruler of Montenegro, under the name Petar II Petrović Njegoš. He was educated by Sima Milutinović Sarajlija, a learned Serb from the Habsburg Empire and an adherent of romantic aesthetics. As ruler Njegoš tried to undermine the tribal structure of authority in the principality and create the basis of a modern centralized state mainly by introducing the rudiments of an educational and communication infrastructure . He eliminated the office of the civil governor traditionally elected from the rival Radonjić clan and established a council consisting of twelve local chieftains to perform the executive and judicial as well as legislative functions of government. After visiting Russia, the staunchest and most influential political ally of Montenegro at the time, he brought back equipment for the first printing house, which was opened in 1834 in Cetinje. During his reign the first Serbian-language school in the country was founded, also in Cetinje. Njegoš personally knew Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, whom he had met in Vienna in 1833 and whose work on language reform he strongly supported. Although he was autodidact in matters of literature and the arts, he created lyrics and poems of extraordinary strength and influence. Inspired by patriotic enthusiasm and the spirit of folk culture, he wrote about the ‘heroic past’ in a way that brought it to the fore and related it to the present. His philosophically grounded epic poems have shaped Montenegrin and Serbian collective memories. Main works: Luča mikrokozma [The ray of the Microcosm] (1845); Gorski vijenac [The mountain wreath] (1847); Lažni car Šćepan Mali [The False Tsar Stephen the Little] (1851). PETAR II PETROVIĆ NJEGOŠ: THE MOUNTAIN WREATH 429 Context Gorski vijenac was published in 1847, in the same year as the second edition of the Srpski rječnik (Serbian Dictionary) of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, the important language and cultural reformer, and Rat za srpski jezik i pravopis (The struggle for the Serbian language and spelling) by Đura Daničić. What was significant about these three books was the fact that all were written in the vernacular language (narodni jezik). This differed significantly from the more elitist Slavo-Serbian idiom, a late eighteenth-century ‘literary language’ combining Church Slavonic, the popular idiom and many borrowings from Russian, coined by the emigrant Serbian clergy in the Habsburg lands in the second half of the eighteenth century. The simultaneous appearance of these three crucial works signaled the triumph of Vuk Karadžić’s language reform and at the same time the formation of an alternative literary and political program. The change in language paradigms ended a conflict that had existed for decades between the Church literary culture and the emerging Serbian cultural revival, resolving it in favor of the latter. Since its appearance in the mid-nineteenth century, Gorski vijenac has served as an inspiration for the national projects of both the Serbs and Montenegrins , as well as in the construction of Yugoslav cultural unity and common identity. The question of whose identity is at issue has been raised and disputed in various contexts. While at the time when Petar II Petrović Njegoš wrote his celebrated poem the ethnonyms Serbian and Montenegrin were used practically interchangeably, this had not been the case throughout history , nor does it apply to the current cultural and political debates that surround the issue of the national identity of the Serbs and the Montenegrins. The ambiguity of the ‘national message’ of the poem is due to the complexity of its cultural references. The verses of Gorski vijenac are inspired by the legends of the Battle of Kosovo (1389), the single most significant symbol in Serbian history and mythology. Therefore, Gorski vijenac transcends the centuries of historical “non-being”, between the loss of national existence on the field of Kosovo and its subsequent resurrection, and connects the ‘mythical forefathers...