Prologue

NEW EDITIONS, OLD RIDDLES
The Roads in Us

”How are you?”
”I’ve been better. You?”
”Me too. I pretend I’m ok.”
Was it in Niš or in Šabac this May? An extract of a conversation, seemingly casual, stayed in the ear and the head. Perhaps because it repeats some sentences from these pages.
”Those out for our heads think that we have nothing in them, just air flowing.”
”He had a tiny soul, that’s why he became such a soul-crusher.”
People talk. It’s easier for them that way. They harness their sorrows, teach darkness to shine.
National Review doesn’t offer escapism this time. It never did. (After all, for a long time now, there is no way out.) It is not an escape, or an exercise bike. It’s a road into the center of our selves. As the poet of the Earth Erect would say, a road with a blossoming stick of our ancestors in our hands, with tomorrow’s children in our eye. Till the ultimate ring of the horizon, till the ultimate apple of the sun.
While preparing this issue, we brought our reader sketches of a Hamvasian characterology of Serbia. Miniatures about five climates, five types of Serbian genius loci, about the holy land, land-altar and land-cradle, where everything else Serbian is tested and baptized in fire.
We reminded about an unusual block in Belgrade, ”the smartest colony in the Balkans”. We visited the famous Serbian Old Church in Sarajevo. We remembered heroes (Starina Novak, Petar Bigga), talked with artists (Damjan Đakov, Ana Ristović) and champions (Igor Kokoškov). It was our pleasure to visit Bečej and Ruma again. All our old companions were with us, and many new ones cheered us up.
Not for a single moment did we forget our holy ancestor who ”travels without a road, with roads born after him”.