Prologue

FIRST ROWS, LAST ACT
Dictatorship of Charlatanism

”I openly admit that I despise the mediocracy. It knows nothing of mastership, and therefore leads careless and stupid life.”
That is how the old Tomas Man (1875–1955) defended from the advance of mediocracy and charlatanism in his age. They started crawling out from the corners, grinning, armed with membership cards, and they asked him: ”Don’t you see that you are lonely and insignificant, only a keychain in the bunch of other people’s keys? Who needs your mastership?”
”I need it. It is the border you will never be able to cross, even when you soil everything else.”
The others saw it too. Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848–1907): ”All that the narrow-minded brains of the traders, preoccupied only with procrastination and money, had available was only politics, that vulgar pastime of mediocre spirits.” Uroš Predić (1857–1953): ”Lack of taste is a faithful image of this crazy and unbalanced time. It is reflected in arts and literature, in social life, let alone politics.”
It was, therefore, log before the present day metastases. The city squares and highways were not yet falling apart before the opening ceremonies, the cities were not yet degraded into warehouses, the hills were not yet falling on our heads, people were not yet dying for the purchased medical diplomas. It was still not possible to disguise the lack of knowledge and gift with the number of likes. Literacy was not yet proclaimed pettiness and exhibitionism. the first rows were not yet swollen from shallowness, vanity and lies like now. Culture was still based on values and their differentiation, it was not yet drowned in a muddle.
”If this dark age is destiny and if it is irrevocable, all I can do is preserve the purity of my”, wrote the great Béla Hamvas (1897–1968). ”If there is a way out, it only consists in invoking the purity of the world with one’s own purity.”