A few weeks ago, I came back from Serbia where I attended a variety of
promotional activities regarding the publication of my new book Prince Marko
and the Dragon (Marko Kraljević i zmaj), that has recently been released in
Serbia. The book includes 8 new epic poems about Prince Marko and 12 paintings,
and it is beautifully designed by Dragan Bibin. It's printed in Serbian language,
and we are now working on a Macedonian edition as well. There is no English
edition yet.
Below you can find an excerpt from the Preface (which I have translated
from Serbian for this occasion) that might
be interesting to read while you sip your morning coffee.
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| A few samples of Dragan Bibin's design |
PREFACE
This collection of new epic poems, titled “Prince Marko and the Dragon”, is
an attempt to bring back to life the most popular and the most important hero
from the Serbian epics, to the extent that is objectively possible at this
moment and in this particular case, and of course as far as the author's mental
and creative abilities permitted it.
The Hero, as a cultural and psychological phenomenon, is one of the most
important archetypes of the collective consciousness of mankind. In all
mythological traditions, the so-called adventure of the hero, occupies the main
place in the narrative opus. The myth, epic, legend, saga, fairy tale - all
these forms of narrative expression are largely based on the stories about the
adventures of heroic characters. Joseph Campbell, the famous American
mythologist, in his famous and influential book “The Hero with a thousand faces”,
talks about how the heroes from different cultures and time periods are
interconnected, and how the many stories about their deeds and achievements,
although often seemingly very different, essentially speak of one and the same
adventure, of one and the same archetypal hero, who changes only his
"mask" in accordance with the peculiarities of the culture and the
time in which he is created, while his essence and function in the society
remains unchanged.
It could therefore be said that this archetypal hero is in fact a kind of
guidance and a metaphor for the adventure that takes place in the human being -
an adventure that happens to every person simply by the very act of birth in
this world. So, the hero is in each of us, and his adventure essentially tells
about the path of self-discovery, the process of individuation and spiritual
enlightenment - that is, the path of discovering the true nature of man and the
existence. It is then up to each and every individual whether he will be able
to find enough motivation and courage in order to revive this hero in himself,
and to make from his own life an adventure of the mythical proportions. Because
every single birth, every life, is a cosmic event that confirms and
enables, over again, the process of realization and embodiment of the universal
Life Force. Is there something that is more important in this world than
that?
Even such a hero, no matter how great he is, or how widely or deeply
engaged, or engrossed in the field of the universal human experience, is always
bound and conditioned by a certain context. This context enables the hero to
exist, and at the same time determines the frame of the hero’s universe and
gives meaning and significance to his activities. When such a context loses its
relevance (because we exist in a world in which the phenomenon of transience is the only constant factor), that
is, when the context changes under, say, the influence of significant
historical and cultural events, and if the hero is not adequately adapted to
the new time spirit, such hero loses the vitality of a living symbol, and therefore inevitably becomes
irrelevant. One of the indications that
such process has taken place is an act of spontaneous mockery of the hero, when
he is turned into his own caricature. This is something that has already
happened to the character of Prince Marko.
In short, the historical context that gave birth to the character of the
epic hero Prince Marko (which in fact is based on a historical medieval king )
has changed - the people no longer suffer the oppression by the Ottoman Turks,
that lasted for more than 4 centuries. The archenemy has long disappeared from
the stage, leaving epic Prince Marko alone and idle. His tremendous strength,
his mighty mace and razor sharp saber - all that, without the Ottoman Turks as
the main opponent and oppressor, lost its meaning and turned into a comical
shadow of its former glory. We must add here that, generally speaking, the
occurrence of the death of the mythological Hero in our time has also been
stimulated by the process of secularization of society, especially during the
second half of the 20th century. This, along with the technological revolution,
has created a more dynamic, highly changeable world that, as it seems, favors
the material above the spiritual, the empirical above the intuitive, and the
restrictive above the freedom. The loss of the collective myth has "killed
God" and gave the contemporary human being a false impression that the
mythical hero is no longer needed, thus he tried to satisfy his deep-rooted
need for a role model and the inspirator by a surrogate in the form of popular
personalities, co-called celebrities.
For a long time, I was more or less a passive observer of this process,
until the moment when a significant change took place in me. Namely, in recent
years, during my very sporadic reading of the Serbian epic poetry, I have
noticed that the epic poems about Prince Marko, for some inexplicable reason,
have made a significant impact om me. This confused me because in my youth I
did not show any particular inclination toward the epic poetry, nor to the
poetry in general.
There followed a period of intense and passionate involvement with
mythology – in which, again, I was not particularly interested before that,
except to a certain degree in regard to its pictorial aspect . Later, with the
same enthusiasm the psychology was approached, since I learned that only the
psychology is able to provide us, contemporary people, with an appropriate
prism to decompose the mythological truth, that is, to interpret and understand
it and thus make it relevant again.
My interest in mythology, combined with psychology, helped me to understand
why the epic poems about Prince Mark have left such a deep impression on me. It
was in fact the universal, humanistic character of these poems, that is, the
archetypal hero in Prince Marko who essentially did not need the Ottoman Turks
to continue to exist as a vital, living symbol.
In time, it became clear to me what was needed to be done in order to bring
Prince Marko and his epic world to life again - this required a change of
context. In other words, Prince Marko's world had to be aligned with the spirit
of our time, it had to be updated.
…
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| Two paintings from the book currently on display in the Museum Mohlmann, the Netherlands. |
