Prologue

TIME AND RITES OF MEMORY
Anniversaries

They pass by us, big and round. Confused and exhausted, we notice only some of them through the smoke screen of this sad performance around us. As tightrope walkers who must not divert their gaze. Hypnotized by emptiness.
Only those more alert and better understand and experience this thing about anniversaries better. It is not about plastic wreaths, cameras and statements of those who would not stop talking anyway. It is about the rite of memory. Sacredness of memory has big power. Without it we are neither people not personalities. We are founded on it, we exist through it. A man made in the image of God, Adam Kadmon, is differentiated from the narrow and selfish economic animal. The “Man Above” from the “Man below”.
Anniversaries are an opportunity to remember together, deeply and far away. Through memory, from within, to keep reaffirming and rejuvenating the community. To relive our most difficult and most sublime moments. To mention the best among us, in all times; in this way, they will also mention us where this is the most important. To preserve, in ourselves, that little flame that will, whenever it is the most difficult and most important, illuminate everybody again.
Today, we all almost routinely remember that it is one hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the Great War. And how many of us truly remember that 210 years have passed from the First Serbian Uprising, 420 years from the burning of the relics of Saint Sava, 610 years from the day despot Stefan Lazarević took over Belgrade, 810 years from the day when Stefan Nemanja moved into eternity? Do we have in mind that Josif Pančić was born exactly 200 years ago, Branko Radičević 190, Mihailo Pupin 160, Milutin Milanković 135 years ago? That Vuk Karadžić died exactly 150 years ago, Vojislav Ilić 120, Zmaj 110, Mokranjac 100, Aleksa Šantić 90, Duško Radović and Branko Ćopić 30 years ago...?
Let’s get serious and remember.