Prologue

BETWEEN FAREWELL AND A WELCOME, WITH FINGER ON OUR FOREHEAD
In a Comparative Sequence

We leave 2013 behind us, in the way we would bid farewell to a guest whom we hosted only out of politeness. In some future chronicle of humiliation, which we have already been writing with our lives and our deaths, real and symbolical, this year will have its indispensable place. Its heroes, quite certainly, will not be our heroes. Very few of them we will be able to point out to our grandchildren without embarrassment.
We will forgive as much as we can, we will remember for as long as we are.
In such a year, not by accident, our cover pages were dominated by children and truly great people. Offspring and tops of a race. What our nation really needs the most in this era of shallowness and baseness. Anniversaries were occasions, but the reasons to remember are much deeper. Examples in life, just like comparisons in writing, have that power that is very much needed when one looses the way and orientation ahead.
We started with Constantine the Great, then there were Mihailo Pupin, Petar II Petrović Njegoš, now Miloš Crnjanski. Each one of them lived in the era difficult in its own right, but was reflected in the eyes of future generations. He did not choose those below himself as the units of comparison. He searched for ways, and not excuses. He was providing brave answers to eternal questions and taught darkness to shine, but without for a moment thinking that he was greater than the Homeland in the name of which he acted. For everybody, honor was more important than life, and life without honor was unacceptable. He knew what was necessary and what was inacceptable. What he wanted and what he could. (Dučić: ”It is a great misfortune when someone doesn’t know what he wants, and true disaster when someone doesn’t know what he is capable of.”)
Ok, let’s not grouch.
We are alive. True, it is not insignificant. But we all know well that we can do much, much more. Only, do we deserve it?
Happy New 2014.