To resume, it is not surprising that Western Europeans do not know Southern Slav civilization, when many rich fields of this culture still remain “buried treasures” to the Southern Slavs themselves. The Serbo-Croat and Slovene poets, such as Gundulić, Ranjina, Palmotić and Gjorgjić from Ragusa and Dalmatia, compare favourably with the exponents of Western literature, and among modern Serbo-Croat poets Petar Petrović Njegoš, Lazar Kostić and Silvije Kranjčević are great, even when compared with the greatest. Yet it is not so much the artists and their individual works, but the nation, and the collective artistic worth of the national spirit that is of priceless value. The music of the Southern Slavs, more especially the music of Old Serbia and Bosnia, possesses great melodic beauty and emotional depth, and when it finds its modern exponent it will take its proper place in the history of music. This great art of the Serbian nation however, is not only absolutely unknown to Europe and the rest of the world, but even in Serbia, although universally known, it is cultivated little or not at all. The Serbian State, which since its re-birth under Karagjorgje Petrović has waged continual war for the liberty and union of the Southern Slavs, could not devote itself to music, art and beauty; and that part of the nation which remains under the yoke of the Ottoman Turks and the Hapsburgs felt still less inclined to do so. The priceless treasures of popular song have not yet been artistically exploited. Thus their own creation is a buried treasure to the Southern Slavs; in a sense, one may even say, that there is no Serbian music. Europeans cannot value this beautiful and noble music because they do not know it; neither can they value the national textile art of Old Serbia, Dalmatia and Croatia, since it is equally unknown. For three consecutive years the Serbian Government has had to arm the State, and has had neither time nor money to turn the Southern Slav textile art into a modern industry.
What the Serbo-Croats and Slovenes, and even the Bulgarians, do cultivate, and are proud of, is the Southern-Slav or Serbian national poetry, the ballads and legends which the people have invented and sung during centuries of slavery. Goethe, the great “citizen of the universe,” and the first to predict the foundation of a modern universal literature, assigned Serbian national poetry a very high place among the literatures of the world, and many of the poems have already been translated into different languages.[18]
To understand Ivan Meštrović, the creator of the Temple of Kossovo, one must feel Serbian music and appreciate Serbian textile art; and above all one must learn to know this noble nation of Christians and Slavs through their national poetry. It is not arrogance on our part to call Meštrović and the Temple of Kossovo the eternal art of the present generation. Every divinely-inspired artist creates not only beauty, but life,—for the mind is the life—and this great regenerator of European art is the son of a small nation of the blood-stained Balkans, and also the son of the great race which has produced Dostoievski.
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Europe and mankind in general must accord justice to the Southern Slav spirit, and the historic merit and achievements of the Serbian nation. The knowledge of Serbian music and especially of Serbian poetry can only be a gain to the Europe of the future. For this Serbian art is a truly Slav art, wonderful and deep, equal to that of ancient Egypt and India. It was not because Miczkiewicz, the great Polish poet, was himself a Slav, that he sang the praises of this beauty so enthusiastically, but because he understood the moral of this beauty. This poetry has been for centuries a life-force of the Southern Slav nation, because morality and life are one, and because the spirit of Serbian beauty—barbaric and god-like—is a religion in poetry and a moral in art. Without fear we may say that Serbian ethics are the most wonderful in the history of humanity. If it may be said of any nation that it is great and noble, it may be said of the Southern Slavs. Europe does not realize the monstrous injustice she has done these “barbarous” peoples. They are rather a heroic and mythical than a barbaric people. It is only Austria-Hungary who regards them as a nation of anarchists and regicides.
What is the Serbian spirit? It has been twice manifested. Once through a man, Ivan Meštrović, the prophet of the Slav Balkans, and again through the whole nation, in the thousands of legends, fairy-tales, ballads and songs which have been collected by Vuk Stefanović-Karadžić.[19] The occupation of Bosnia, then the national catastrophe of the annexation of Bosnia, and finally the Balkan War have already become the subjects of poetry, and our own time will see the latest and greatest war of the Southern Slavs sung in all its heroic reality.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The reason for this “cultural” ostracism of Russia is both racial and geographical. There has never been any desire in England to belittle the Slavs, least of all Russia. On the contrary, a long succession of traditions, as far back as the Viking Age, binds the extreme West to the extreme East of Europe, and has now reached a great ethical and practical expression in the Triple Entente. But between Western Europe and the Slavs lies Imperial Germany, who has acted not only as a barrier, but also as a distorting glass, through which the western and eastern races of Europe were compelled to look at each other. (Footnote by the translator F.S.C.)
[2] History has recently cast a doubt on Rurik’s Norse origin, but tradition is quite positive on the subject. Certainly the name Rurik—recalling the Norse-Scottish Roderick-Rory—is in its favour, and it is interesting that the Scandinavian origin of Rurik, and even the Russian origin of Scandinavians has been championed by some Scottish writers—perhaps to explain the undoubted Scottish sympathy with the Russian people.[3] (See Piazzi Smyth’s “Three Cities in Russia.”)—F.S.C.