Prologue

SUMMER NOTEBOOKS, OLD AND NEW
Real World around Us

It is summer. We used to look forward to it more and in a different way than now, and his, unfortunately, is not the matter of generation or age. We were looking forward to school break, long and carefree. We throbbed, burnt in some beautiful fires, traveled, gathered, were in ecstasy. Sun would make us tanned and attractive, not burdening us with fear of wounds and horrible diseases. And none of this essentially depended on money. How many times we had wonderful summer vacation almost without spending a cent! Money was not decisive, it was even bad taste to emphasize it. If you had money, your buddies had it too. It went without saying. It was not used to measure one’s personality. We could hale organized everything ourselves, in imaginative way, with joy, we did not need merchants and entertainment industry for that.
Even today, of course, people travel and gather, go to summer vacations and ”read on a carpet below an apple tree”. However, some disturbance happened deep inside us and in the world around us. We all know or feel this, only not everybody is ready to stop and wonder about this phenomenon.
Before us is the new edition of National Review. In creating it, we had in mind the words of Ernest Renan: ”People should always write only about things they love. Oblivion and silence are the punishment we impose on everything that is unworthy and ordinary in this walk through life.” This led us to Kosovo, to the Holy Land, to one unusual wedding in Resava. It made us join a humanitarian action of providing assistance to one family in the vicinity of Loznica. It brought to our minds Serbian bridges and Andrić’s words about these remarkable buildings. That is why we wrote about Radmila Marinković and Bo Vongar, Konuzin and Suhecki, ”Kolo” and ”Kolibri”.
That is why we are here again, after all. In your hands.