SERBIA - National review, No 70

Prologue

GALLERY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONTENTS 

Prologue
FIRST ROWS, LAST ACT
Dictatorship of Charlatanism

Vitrage
NUMBERS, EVENTS, INTERESTING THINGS

Album
REGARDING THE RECENT EXHIBITION IN THE TOWER IN GARDOŠ
The World across the River

Road Sign
THROUGH SRPSKA CRNJA, MARKING THE 140TH DEATH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FAMOUS SERBIAN PAINTER AND POET
In the Coat of Arms of Đura’s Town
Life was not kind to him, nor was he kind to life. Fiery character and words, deep gentleness and pure picture, go with a price. He paid it with a smile, never bargaining with fate. The memory of him, his work and wounds, still lives in his hometown. A board at the entrance of Srpska Crnja states that it is his town. Everything in it, even the agricultural cooperative, is named after him. We have been there to remind: this year, the entire Serbian culture should express due gratitude to him

Text and Photo: Miodrag Grubački

Pilgrimages
SIX HUNDRED YEARS OF THE KAMENAC MONASTERY
In the Light of Centuries
A few kilometers from Gruža, near the village of Čestin, this shrine still testifies about the great and glorious times of the Despotate, the wondrous rise before the final extinguishing of the Serbian golden medieval age. From mid-XV century, it was destroyed and renewed several times. The present appearance of the monastery church, dedicated to the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, originates from the XIX century. Fresco paintings and the iconostasis are work of Dimitrije Posniković from 1870. Legends state that this church was built from the remains of material transported for building the Kalenić monastery. Thus, stone by stone, Kamenas was erected. In Gruža and in time

Text and Photo: Miodrag Radomirović

Notebook
ENCLOSURES FOR THE HISTORY OF THE MOST FAMOUS SERBIAN BOHEMIAN QUARTER
The Geography of Skadarlija
Perhaps it really is ”the most bohemian street in the world”, as its chronicle writers and narrators claim. In any case, it now includes twenty-eight different kafana challenges in only about two hundred meters of its length. Some of its famous visitors are Margaret Thatcher, King Juan Carlos, George Bush Senior. Josip Broz celebrated his 71st birthday there. (…) However, Skadarlija was made attractive and famous by local poets, not foreign politicians. Without poets and the irresistible Belgrade spirit, it would remain a gully and gypsy settlement, and today become a prey for ”investors”

By: Miloš Lazić

Traces
THE VELJKOVIĆ FAMILY AND ITS IMPRINTS IN THE HISTORY OF RESURRECTED SERBIA
From Deep Roots
They came from Kosovo in the XVII century, first to Sokobanja Rujevica, then Paraćin and finally to Belgrade. For generations, they dedicated their lives, fruitful and creative, to their homeland and nation. They had PhDs from the Sorbonne and Heidelberg, university professors, constitution writers, ministers, extraordinary financial experts, benefactors, great art connoisseurs. In the yard of their family house in Birčaninova Street, they raised a special-purpose Pavilion and opened the first private museum in the Balkans, with a big collection of valuable paintings and sculptures. In the first years of communism, all traces of that treasure, as well as of entire Serbia, were lost

By: Kristina Vlahović

Memorial
DEFENDING MEMORY: ŽIVOJIN TOVAROVIĆ, ONE OF THE 1.300 CORPORALS
Great Lessons of Teacher Žika
Born in Bukor, in the foot of Cer, he had no other way but up. Such were times, such temptations, such generations. The vortex of the world war pulled him from the teacher training school to the front. Together with others, he went through the Albanian golgotha and resurrected, stood on both sides of the line between life and death, was commander to Milunka Savić, carried Karađorđe in his heart and his star on his chest. Tihomir Arsić plays Živojin in the play ”Salonika Fighters Speak”, while he himself speaks in the book ”Charge to the Enslaved Homeland”

By: Gordana Simeunović

Homage
”SERBIAN EPOPEE 1914–1918”, SELECTED WORKS OF ANTONIJE ĐURIĆ, PUBLISHING ENDEAVOR OF ”PRINCIP PRESS”
Guardian of Memory
”I won’t let a single tear be pulled out of my memory and pushed into oblivion. Or pain, a cry, a sigh, a drop of spilt blood, a letter written in blood. Or shooting into the forehead after midnight. Or digging your own grave. Or killing people with a hammer in the forehead. Or the cruel hanging of a woman in labor, from whose stomach a baby is emerging. I won’t let the urination into the cresset fall into oblivion. Or the torn pages from the Holy Bible, profaned, or stepping on the face of the Mother of God, or the revolver bullet into the forehead of the Pantocrator. Nothing can be forgotten”

By: Mišo Vujović

Marks
THE CAPITAL MONOGRAPH ”SERBIAN SANCTUARIES IN ROMANIA”, BY STANKO KOSTIĆ, PHOTOGRAPHY MASTER
Heritage in the Lens
It is frightening and accusatory how little the wider public in post-communist Serbia knows about the Serbian national and sacral heritage in Romania. About the millennium-long presence of Serbs in that area and their great contribution to the local cultural and civilizational achievements. About Bazjaš and Zlatica monasteries from the XIII, Kusić and St. George from the XV, Bezdin from the XVI century. About 27 churches in the Timisoara County, 16 in the Arad, 13 in Socol. About the Eparchial Court and treasury in Timisoara. About why only 18.000 Serbs officially live there now… We now have all this before us, in hard cover. Someone reminded us of the fears of our oblivion. What the state and church, institutions of science and culture, paid protectors hadn’t done, one man, a devotee, did. All alone

By: Aleksa Komet

Pen
LABUD DRAGIĆ, WRITER, POET OF RAGES OF THE MOUNTAIN, HISTORY AND SOUL
No One Else Writes That Way
Already as a young man, he realized that Beckett and Faulkner reside in the magical reality of our world. He arrived from the linguistic volcano of Upper Morača, where his ancestors settled from Gacko, Herzegovina a few centuries ago, with a rosary of names and legends, warrior souls and philosophy of memory. He researched modernity, absurd, irony, games with literary procedures. With a manifold easiness, he succeeded in what the stars of Serbian prose at the time achieved only with effort. It seems that that’s why a much steeper and shadowed path awaited him. He irrevocably arrived to the right and deserved place in 2016, through the Serbian Literary Cooperative ”Kolo”. He is one of the rare writers whose sentences you will always recognize

By: Dragan Lakićević

Life, Novels
IVAN JOVIĆ, FILM DIRECTOR AND WRITER, ABOUT LIFE, ART AND THE IMPORTANCE OF THE FEELING THAT YOU’RE NOT ALONE
Incessant magic of realism
It is easy to be a genius, it’s difficult to be normal. The ego makes us irrevocably stupid and steals all our talents. Contemporary man is a devourer. He first devoured God, then his own spiritual substance, while now he’s devouring the nature around him. Our big problem is the lack of knowledge of our own culture and valuable answers it offers us. Thus we are unable to offer our distinctiveness to the world; we are not interesting because we’re not surprising. Orthodox Christianity teaches us to raise children with our own example, our entire life, not lecturing. From the spiritual vertical aspect, Kosovo is too big to be skipped or squeezed into an excel table of Brussels’ politics. From the realistic social horizontal, Kosovo is an aggrieved territory, where everyone except the colonial masters and their servants are underprivileged

By: Branislav Matić

Arena
ANJA CREVAR, THE MOST TALENTED SERBIAN SWIMMER
Announcing the Biography of a Champion
Already as a junior, this young lady from Pančevo broke senior records. At the very beginning, she realized that she must request a lot from herself. She understood who is truly able to follow her in her path. The price of rising to the top is not small, but she pays it calmly, every day. She sees the weaknesses of the sports system, improvisation and holes, short-sighted selfishness, feels sad because of it and warns of long-term consequences, but doesn’t look for an excuse in it. She knows that victories are her fate. She will be carrying the Serbian flag at the opening of the Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires. And the flag will be carrying her

By: Dejan Bulajić

Reminder
FAMOUS WOMEN IN THE HISTORY OF RUMA (1)
The Sublimity of Patriotism
As a developed economic and commercial town with a strong middle class, girls were educated in Ruma already in the late XIX century. Some of the women of Ruma left a significant trace in Serbian history of the time, especially in education, science and art. Observing a hundred years of the unification of Srem, Banat, Bačka and Baranja with Serbia, we will remind of some of those great ladies

Action
ENTIRE VRNJAČKA BANJA EXERCISED WITH ”MERKUR’S” PHYSIOTHERAPISTS
Moving towards Health
Observing the World Physical Therapy Day with a series of programs, ”Merkur” once again drew attention to the importance of physical activity for preserving health, preventing diseases, and a bright and good life in general. It was useful, joyful and entertaining