The Slav Nations

by Srdan Tucic

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It has been the fate of the Southern Slavs to fulfil a mission in European history; Serbia and the Serbo-Croat race constituted a bulwark for Europe and Christianity against the invasion of Turkish barbarians and Islam. The martyrdom of the Southern Slavs lasted for centuries; it was a most humiliating thraldom to the barbarous Mongolism of the Ottoman Turks, and a hard, incessant fight for the dignity of humanity. It was a period of indescribable suffering from the barbarities of a lower race, one of the hardest struggles for existence the world has known. It was impossible to continue or to realize the plans of the great Nemanjić rulers. All attempts at union between the peoples of Croatia and Bosnia were fruitless: never in the history of Europe has a nation lived for so many centuries in such terrible political impotence and disunion as the Serbo-Croat and Slovene nation. Italy at the time of the Renaissance, and Germany before the liberation, were, in comparison with the Southern Slavs, in a well-organized and healthy condition.

Thus it has come about that we have no Serbian history of art, only various provincial histories—Old Serbian, Macedonian, Dalmatian, Bosnian, History of Serbian art in Hungary, Slovene and New Serbian.

The bitter enmity of Austria-Hungary towards Serbia, which deepened steadily, and finally became the direct cause of the European War, began with the Russophile and Southern Slav trend of Serbian policy after the series of Southern Slav Congresses, which took place in Belgrade at the time of the coronation of King Peter in 1904. Serbia’s new policy, after the suicidal and humiliating pro-Austrian policy of the Obrenović dynasty had been abolished, was a racial policy, pro-Russian, pro-Bulgarian and democratic, which restored the stability and order of the State, and led to the foundation of the Balkan Alliance in 1912. Serbia regenerated, sought to consolidate a scattered, provincial culture into one great culture of a Greater Serbia, or of all the Southern Slavs. For this reason it has only quite recently become possible to speak of the united cultural efforts of the Serbo-Croats.

The consolidation of Southern Slav history and culture are only now beginning, and the appearance of the artist-prophet Ivan Meštrović, a Dalmatian Catholic, is the central event in Southern Slav history of art. He is the prophet of the third, or Southern Slav Balkan, State, who proclaims that it is the historical task of Serbia to free the Southern Slavs and unite them, not only in a political, but in a spiritual, sense; and he has symbolized this ideal in his great art, which is the living soul of the architecture and sculpture of the Temple of Kossovo, and of all the Southern Slavs. When the Balkans are freed from Ottoman Islam and the Turks, when a strong and progressive Federation of Southern Slavs, including Bulgaria, Roumania, Greece and even Albania, is established, then we may see the triumphant rise of a mature and typically Southern Slav culture. When all nations shall receive their due, when they are allowed to develop freely, then and only then, the blood-drenched Peninsula will be at peace. A strong and prosperous Yougoslavia will interest the world both politically and economically; the opinion that the Southern Slavs are an uncivilized race will cease, and the great services rendered to art and letters by the Serbo-Croats and Slovenes will be recognized and appreciated at their true value. If we include Meštrović’s Temple of Kossovo among these achievements, we may fairly claim to have contributed to the greatest possessions of human culture for all time.

The life-work of the Serbian Monarchs of the Nemanjić dynasty, who aimed at the inclusion of Serbia within the zone of the then-civilized nations of Europe, failed of its fulfilment, owing to the fall of the Serbian Empire before the Turks. The Serbo-Byzantine architecture of the convents and churches which abound in Macedonia and Serbia, affords admirable proof of the results of this work, the most important examples being Studenitza (1198), Dečani (1331), and Gračanica (1341). A few years later culture made great strides in Dalmatia, but it was not a spontaneous, national growth, but rather the offspring of Slavicized Latin culture, and savoured more of Venice and the Renaissance than of Dalmatia and the Southern Slavs. Furthermore, the artists, scientists, philosophers and writers of Dalmatia went to Italy and were lost to their nation. The poor, down-trodden, uncivilized Southern Slav countries could not provide their artists with a livelihood. The celebrated mathematician, philosopher and astronomer, Roger Bošković, went to Rome, Paris, and London; Nikolo Tomasso, a Serbian from Sevenico, founded the Italian literary language. Julije Lovranić (Laurana), an eminent architect of his time, was a Serbian from Dalmatia, and at one time the teacher of Bramante; and Franjo Laurana, of Palermo, a kinsman of Julije, earned a high place in the history of art through his sculpture; he was especially celebrated for his beautiful female portrait busts. In like manner many Serbians found their way to other countries. For instance, Peter Križanić, a Croatian, was the first Pan-Slavist; he was exiled to Siberia for his schemes of reform and European propaganda in Russia. To this day the Dalmatian ships’ captains are not the only representatives of that country all the world over, but great scientists and inventors like Pupin and Nikola Tesla.

Whenever a part of Serbian territory became independent, or even for a short time found tolerable conditions, an intense creative culture grew up swiftly, even after the fall of the Empire and during the time of slavery. For generations the greater part of the Serbians have lived, and still live, in slavery. The Serbians under Turkish rule were liberated only two years ago, and the liberation of the Slavs of the Hapsburg Monarchy is only just beginning. In accordance with the changes in the political fate of the Southern Slavs, and as the material conditions of the people grew better or worse, the centres of Slav literature moved from place to place. This unfortunate disorganization and consequent impotence were the bane of Serbian or Southern Slav literature. Ragusan literature; the literature of the Dalmatian coast and its islands, with its original creations, and many fine translations of the Greek drama—Homer, Virgil and Horace, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Tasso, Ariosto—none of these counted in the later development of literature in Croatia, Serbian Hungary, Bosnia or Serbia. As things now stand, Slovenian literature bears no recognized relation to Serbo-Croat literature, which has to a certain extent become unified. The great Croatian poets, Peter Preradović, Ivan Mažuranić, and Silvije Kranjčević are scarcely read in Serbia, owing to bitter political disagreements and the Austrian divide-et-impera policy. For this reason, too, the Croatians scarcely know the greatest Southern Slav poets such as the Montenegrin Petar Petrović Njegoš, or the Serbian from Hungary, Lazar Kostić. The historian and philosopher Boža Knižević and the metaphysician Branislav Petronijević are scarcely known in Bosnia owing to their being Serbians from Serbia, that is to say, from anti-Austrian Serbia. Thus it is scarcely surprising that Southern Slav culture is unknown in Europe, when it is practically unknown even in Yougoslavia; when Meštrović, the immortal artist of Yougoslavia, the architect and sculptor of the Serbian Acropolis, is unknown to his own countrymen beyond the frontier.

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At present the nation is fighting for its very life. Inter arma silent musæ, and when a nation has to bear first the occupation and then the annexation of the heart of its territory; when it has to wage an incessant war, even in times of so-called peace, against an implacable neighbour like Austria-Hungary; when the strength of the nation is absorbed in the mere struggle for existence; then it is impossible to realize the possession of a great artist. The Serbian nation has waged three wars of life and death, and always against an enemy stronger than herself; first against Turkey, then against Bulgaria, and now against Austria—all within three years. At such a time it is impossible to create a great civilization, and still less possible not to appear to the world as a nation created solely for war. Diplomatic Europe is interested in Serbian politics—not from motives of humanity and justice. And to the Europe of civilization, philosophy, science, art and ethics the spirit of Yougoslavia is not even a name. Who knows that even apart from Meštrović—who, as the peer of Phidias and Michelangelo, cannot be compared with mere mortals—the finest architect of the present day is a Southern Slav—a Slovene—the son of a small nation of three million people? This great architect of modern Europe is Josip Plečnik; he was director of the Arts Academy in Prague, and a few months ago was promoted to the Vienna Academy. Downtrodden Dalmatia boasts such powerful writers, thinkers and scientists as Count Ivo Vojnović, Antun Tresić-Pavićić, the philosopher Petrić, and the historian Nodilo. At the time of Carducci and Swinburne Bosnia possessed a typical poet, Silvije Kranjčević, and at the present time Serbia has in Borislav Stankovi a novelist worthy to rank with Leonid Andreeff. In Yougoslavia there are to-day splendidly edited reviews, particularly good theatres and opera (as for instance the Opera at Zagreb), and good universities with distinguished professors and scientific men. Assuredly the Southern Slavs are not to blame if the whole world has seen this gifted and important nation through the spectacles of the Viennese Press, a nation which is worth more to the human race than the whole of the Hapsburg dynasty—or was, until the outbreak of the present war.... In all their poverty and slavery, and without the help even of Serbia, they undertook a campaign of enlightenment in the European Press, organized art exhibitions, and by concerts, lectures, and translations made known their art and literature to the world. English literature has greatly influenced Serbo-Croat literature; and not only Shakespeare, Dickens, Byron and Shelley are translated into Serbian, but Carlyle, Buckle, and Draper have also exercised great influence upon Serbian culture; and the most modern literature of Britain has found worthy translators and admirers. The poems of Rossetti, Browning, Keats, Swinburne and Walt Whitman, the novels of Wells, and the plays of Bernard Shaw have been translated into the beautiful tongue of the “Belgrade regicides.”

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