Religious heritage in Serbian literature [I]

https://teologija.net/versko-nasledje-u-srpskoj-knjizevnosti-i/ (5.01.2010)
Milan Radulović

Faith is the formative force of culture. At the base or in the background of all known
civilizations so far, some religion is found. Religious energies as constitutive contents of
culture are clearly expressed in literature. In every civilization, great literature, like religion, is
a mirror of the particular life and cultural choices of one people and one time, but at the same
time it is a sublimation of the universal spiritual aspirations of humanity. In other words, faith
and great literature are both the sublimation of the essential cultural energies in one historical
period, and transcending every cultural pattern formed in history, the transcendence of culture
as a historical reality, and the affirmation of the Spirit (Logos, Light) - which allows only the
existence of the world and encourages all human (cultural) creation in it (in nature); therefore,
cultural creativity is man's basic theurgy. In short, religion is itself a transcultural and trans-
historical phenomenon. It manifests itself and acts in history and culture, and is at the same
time beyond history and above any and all cultures because it is turned to Eternity-eschaton,
the time to come, not to the time that passes (that is, to the history in which they originate;
certain cultural patterns disappear).

Christian theological thought views every single culture realized in history from the perspective
of a transcultural, or transcultural, cosmic spiritual space, from an eschaton rather than from a
historical time. "The eschatological orientation does not allow the Christian to fully identify
his life with the world of culture, because we have no permanent cities here, but we seek the
one who will come. A Christian can live and work in this world, but the earthly activity must
not completely take hold of him. The Church reminds the cultural disciples that their mission
is to nurture human souls, including their own, by restoring the sinful image of God within
them in sin. ”(Basics of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church, Novi Sad, Beseda,
2007, 181)

In Serbian literature, dynamic relationships have been established between faith as an

expression of the human ontological situation in the cosmos, on the one hand, and the particular
culture in which human existence occurs in history, on the other. Within the historical horizon
of the Serbian people, within the specific cultural patterns that have been built and replaced
throughout history, they encounter, intertwine, collide and exclude heterogeneous religious
teachings. On the spiritual vertical raised in Serbian literature by the Orthodox faith, these
heterogeneous religious teachings emanate their own originality and uniqueness, and do not
blend in with any hybrid religion or blend into a separate aesthetic reality.

What are the relationships between different religious systems embedded in Serbian literature?

Orthodoxy. The Orthodox variant of Christian teaching is the basic and strongest life-giving
energy that builds the Serbian state-forming consciousness, shapes the existential and cultural
self-consciousness of the people, establishes the identity of the Serbian nation and the
independence of the Serbian cultural pattern. It is natural then that this energy, in various forms
and manifestations, flows through Serbian literature, from its beginnings to the present.

The first Serbian written literature was all in the sign and service of the Christian faith. At the
beginning of Serbian literature and literature are translations of basic Christian works - the
Scriptures, worship books, and later the works of the Holy Fathers. When the original,
distinctive Serbian literature began to be created within the Byzantine cultural horizon in the
12th century, it remained true to its beginnings, that is, the tradition of translated religious
literature that had been developing in Serbia for two centuries. Life, services to the Saints,
prayers, religious sermons, as the basic genres of Church literature, have been written not only
in Greek but in Serbian language since the 12th century. These works were in the service of
spreading and strengthening the Orthodox Christian faith, not in the service of indigenous
artistic spirituality. The notion that literature has a more significant role and a deeper meaning
than art itself, inherited from Church culture, was then embedded in the Serbian literary
tradition from its beginnings to the present. This understanding of the relationship between the
Orthodox faith, on the one hand, and art, on the other, ie. the realization that art is not self-
explanatory but is at the service of some of the most important realities and values (God,
existence, people, history) flows as a difficult to see thread throughout Serbian literature,
providing that literature with spiritual continuity, which is maintained despite the apparent
discontinuities in its development. , that is, despite the dramatic break-up of new literature with
the Church.
It will briefly outline what relation the Orthodox variant of Christian teaching in Serbian
literature has to other religious conceptions and other cultural patterns.

Catholicism. The schism that began in the Christian Church two centuries before the origin of
Serbian original literature is hardly visible and effective in the lives of Serbian saints. The
founder of the independent and strong Serbian state, Stefan Nemanja, was baptized in the
Orthodox and Catholic Church, and the first Serbian king of the noble lineage of Nemanjic,
Stefan the Firstborn, was crowned by the Pope and then by the dedication of St. Sava, and by
the Patriarch of Constantinople. These facts do not add life to the writers of life or dramatize
them. They simply state them as contents of the life of the Saints in a particular historical time.
The definition of the Eastern Church is not written by the writers of life for the merits and
virtues that make their heroes holy; these commitments are not presented as the deeper
temptations of life that every saint undergoes in this earthly existence. In short, although the
Serbian Church has opted for Eastern Christianity, there is almost no polemical and denialistic
attitude towards the Western Church in the lives of the first Serbian saints. The Eastern Church
is regarded by Serbian church writers as universal, Catholic, complete, true and one. In our
lives, therefore, we do not have a more pronounced awareness that the Church is divided, that
the Western Church is in competition with or threatening the Eastern Church. Here is, for
example, how Stefan the First-born describes the birth and baptisms of Stefan Nemanja:

“And by the will of God and the purgatory of their Mothers, this holy child is also born, who
by the thought of God will be the collector of the fallen lands of his fatherhood, the shepherd
and the teacher, and, moreover, the restorer of that which has fallen, in a place called Ribnica.
And since there are Latin heretics in the land, it is sufficient by the will of God to receive (in)
the Latin baptism in that temple. And when his father returned to the seat of the table, he was
again worthy of receiving the second baptism from the hands of saints and bishops in the midst
of the Serbian land, in the temple of the holy and all-glorious and supreme apostles Peter and
Paul, following the bishop with his shepherd Christ, as Scripture says : You suckled milk from
both breasts, ie. is the executor of the Old and New Testaments ... "

In Domentian's life of Saint Sava we find testimony that the Holy Trinity reconciles and
connects not only the two churches but also the conflicting peoples belonging to those
churches. Describing the historical and patriotic feats of Saint Sava in his time, Domentian
recounts how Sava dissuaded the Hungarian king from a prepared attack on Serbia. It was
repulsed only by a short sermon on the Holy Trinity, a discreet and gentle call to be guided by
the love and peace revealed to humanity by the Son of God, not by the historical, state and
material interests of his people or by his own ruler's vanity and vanity. Upon receiving this
instruction, the Hungarian king did not convert to Orthodoxy, but did become a true Christian,
so he gave up his hostile attitude and plan toward the Orthodox.

To the 13th and 14th century Serbian writers, the Holy, Assembled, Apostolic Church is the
basic and unchanging spiritual horizon in which the historical and patriotic efforts of Serbian
rulers and saints take place. Such a sense of the Church as the true space in which the earthly
existence of man and nation takes place overcomes every possible exclusivity, opposition and
irreconcilability of the Eastern and Western churches. The only opponent of the Church in the
testimonies of Serbian writers are dissident movements and heretical teachings within the
Church itself. The lives of Saint Simeon (Stefan Nemanja) and Holy King Stefan Dečanski are
of great importance, and their decisive struggle against the Bogomil heresy (Nemanja) and the
blasphemous manifestation of Varlaam's teaching (Stefan Decanski) are of considerable merit.
This is how Stefan the First-born describes Nemanja's justly combative attitude towards the
Bogomil heresy:

"And the Holy One, having brought this before your congregation, assembled against this
cunning heresy, distorted their heresies, and consulted with his saint Jephthim and with the
venerable black men, and with his nobles, and, by no means least, sent an army armed with
them. of my glorious men, saying, I have been jealous of the Lord God the witness, being
jealous.
Like once the prophet Elijah, who rose up on the shameless heresies, and he distorted their
wickedness, and fell upon them with various punishments, the third drove them out of their
country, and their houses, and all the possessions, and the poor and the poor. Their tongue is
cut in the throat of the teacher and the principal, which does not confess Christ the son of God.
"

In Byzantine civilization, to which non-Germanic Serbia belongs, the prevailing view is that
the state must protect the right, not every religion; moreover, if heresy threatens true faith, the
state is obliged to eradicate it because it possesses power that the Church does not have and
does not want to have. The realization that there can be only one true religion in one state, that
the state is obliged to preserve that faith, because, in fact, the state is in the service of religion
and not faith in the service of the real social and political interests of the state - this
understanding seems alien to modern culture , but it is deeply rooted in the older strata of the
Christian tradition, and therefore represents a common heritage of all Christian cultures and
states. In early Christianity, and even later, throughout its history, the struggle against heretical
teachings, that is, the forgery of true faith in the Christian cultural circle itself, was more
prevalent than the struggle against other religions. Here, for example, is how the Holy King
Stefan Decanski gives a theological interpretation of the dilemmas facing the Byzantine
emperor facing Vaarlam's teachings, and how he simply resolves all the emperor's doubts about
whether peace for the country should be reconciled with the erroneous religious teachings he
has. a considerable number of supporters among citizens, or obliged to eradicate heresy. The
quotation from Zhyti is cited here because it presents the original theological conception of
religious freedom, which differs significantly from the Enlightenment and rationalist
conceptions.

"And Stefan said: It is reported (in Scripture), about the emperor, when the shepherd overlooks
the entrance of the wolf into the flock, and does not cast this away, so is this beast (Varlaam),
even if it bears the name of the shepherd. For they do not receive names of reverence for works,
but works glorify names. And the one who can leave the ominous and not drive them away, is
considered by those who think well that he is ominous. It is not fair or proper, O most holy one
among the emperors, that you who are distinguished by the imperial throne, and who are
appointed by Christ to be a shepherd to such a flock, to keep his enemies in the city; but you
have to cast them out as wolves that destroy souls, and go with David: I hate, O Lord, those
who hate you, and have melted away because of your enemies, with perfect hatred I have hated
them, and they have become my enemies. Do not leave these areas in the areas of God-given
gift to you. If you do this, you will calm the church divisions and give the deep peace to the
Orthodox, you will magnify the scepter of the empire and you will be a true emperor to the true
Christians, and as a true shepherd you will receive a reward from the general Bishop, the
imperishable local empire… the husband ... and immediately commanded that they bring him
Vaarlam bound, and that his like-minded men be driven out of the city, and not be received by
the cities and villages of his country. "

As in the Serbian ecclesiastical literature of the 13th and 14th centuries, so is the awareness of
the opposition of the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches in the epic folk songs that sing
that period. In the consciousness of the folk singer, the differences between the indigenous
Orthodox world and the modern Western world are primarily civilizational, cultural and ethical
rather than religious. The western world is embodied in Latin consciousness by Latinos. The
folk singer says nothing about their faith, but does say about their customs and behavior
towards the Orthodox. In the culture of everyday life, Latins are prone to nurturing illusions,
displaying material power and luxury, inventing empty games and new parties that are neither
in the spirit of ecclesiastical nor in the spirit of patriarchal customs, and in behavior they are
unreliable, hypocritical, prone to fraud because they lack a chivalric faith in the task a word, a
lack of respect for another human person, and an excess of desire to pursue one's goals and
interests, without much regard for others and others. Such performances are found, for
example, in the great epic poem "The Marriage of Dusan", as well as in the poems "Milos in
Latin", "The Marriage of Djurdja Smederevac" and more.

A concise but comprehensive account of the civilizational differences between Serbian

Christian-patriarchal culture and modern Western, Latin civilization most poetically shaped
Njegoš in the Mountain Wreath.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, dogmatic controversies and debates with Catholic teachings,
that is, with the Vatican's pretensions to overcome differences between churches by uniting the
Orthodox Church in union with Rome, intensified in Serbian theological literature. In fiction,
these theological disputes do not, however, have a deeper creative echo. The Serbian writers
of the time, like a folk singer, do not thematize the dogmatic and historical juxtapositions of
the Orthodox and Catholic faiths, but see the differences of the two worlds primarily in
civilizational, cultural as well as national and historical terms. Church circles feel that the desire
of Serbs to integrate into modern Central European culture can be used by the Roman Catholic
Church to offer or impose a union with the Vatican, and by accepting a union, Serbs should
forget their historical aspirations to rebuild an independent nation-state. Therefore, the
Orthodox Church circles perceive the civilizational aspirations of their believers, the
aspirations of a small civilian population to integrate into the Austrian political and cultural
system, not only as a change and betray the Orthodox religious traditions, but also as a
departure from the authentic and legitimate historical goals of the Serbian people. But, as we
said, these ideological views are expressed more in Serbian theological and political journalism
than in fiction, in which efforts are made to affirm Serbian nationality in the spirit of
sentimental and romantic understandings of history and nation as nurtured in Central European
culture. .
In the 19th century Serbian literature, religious traditions are effective in the poetics of realism,
but they are not in the foreground, nor is the Orthodox faith confronting them with Catholic
and Protestant spiritual aspirations. Orthodox and patriarchal-folkloric realism of the 19th
century evoke different faiths as vivid, sometimes exotic, sometimes idyllic, and always vivid
customs. In this respect, the work of Sime Matavul, whose characters belong to both the
Orthodox and Catholic religious circles, and who sees both from the same moral and spiritual
position, with equal sympathy and from the same distance established by benign and warm
humor, is characteristic in this respect. Admittedly, in some stories from Dalmatia, Matavulj
portrayed how an Orthodox man defiantly, simply, naturally and life-wise defends his religion
in a dominant and aggressive Catholic environment ("Pilipenda").

More than in other Christian confessions, Serbian Orthodox writers feel the danger of their
religion in modern ideologies, that is, in the utopian social programs enacted by educated
Orthodox themselves, and which the people begin to believe. Laza Lazarevic's "School Icon"
speaks precisely about this, the dramatic juxtaposition of traditional Orthodoxy with utopian
social and cultural ideologies.

Protestantism. Serbian New Literature completely assimilated Protestant religious teaching.

Protestant, reformed Christianity is that spiritual energy that, from the 18th century to the
present, has decisively influenced the constitution of the new political-economic system and
the modern cultural horizon. We will briefly elaborate on this hypothesis with no effort to prove
it because it seems self-explanatory.

Protestant spirituality penetrated the Serbian patriarchal-Christian culture through rationalist

and Enlightenment ideologies. Dositej Obradovic and his followers played a key role in
building a new cultural pattern in the Serbian people. This pattern is based on faith in man, in
nature, in progress, in common sense. God is present as much in nature as in His own
Revelation… Man is understood as a free, socialized and emancipated individual, and no more
as a spiritual personality who communes with God, with surrender, with Truth. The truth is
now revealed by the man himself. He has the right, in accordance with his natural reason, to
interpret freely and independently the Word of God expressed in Scripture. The truth is not
one, but there are as many people as it is, so it is not the Absolute but completely personal and
relative… One can initiate endless scientific and technical progress by his natural forces, at the
end of which is a paradise embodied in a perfect, just and functional society. By working,
creating, and acquiring material goods, one actually glorifies God and gives him the prayers he
most fully receives ... Every day by his own effort and goodwill one must do good to one's
neighbor, not only oneself and God ... Tradition, Church tradition and folk customs are rejected
in the Enlightenment as a superstition ... These simplified principles of Protestant ethics
through Enlightenment and rationalism have become guiding principles in the construction of
new states and the regulation of modern societies; they have become the basis not only of
European but of modern world civilization, they are embedded in the state framework and
social horizon in which modern man lives. Of course, these principles are also in force in
Serbian modern history, from the 18th century to the present.

Protestant ideas also permeated Serbian new literature. In Serbian patriarchal-Christian culture,
literature was inspired by mysticism, it was an expression of an epiphany, it was a form of
religious cognition and a religious experience of existence. In the new literature, religion and
mysticism are replaced by aestheticism, intellectualism, psychologism, historicism, moralism,
patriotism, humanism… Anthropocentric instead of Christocentric humanism; awareness of
history and belief in historical progress instead of faith in Eternity; the desire to create a
possible perfect society on Earth and to distort the imperfections of real social relations instead
of believing in the Kingdom of Heaven; the observation of man's inner world in psychological
and ethical rather than ontological perspective - it is a coordinating system in which new
literature develops, from the Enlightenment to the present. This coordinate system itself
establishes literature as an autonomous reality, separated from immediate existence and
potential God-indicated transcendence.

In the 20th century, modernists (in poetry perhaps more than in prose) tried to return literature
to its mystical sources, but these attempts were more nostalgic for mysticism than true
epiphany, that is, an indigenous mystical experience. Therefore, both artists and literary
thinkers in that century have tried to portray literature itself as an indigenous form of spiritual
experience, as that spiritual experience that is inherent in human nature in all time and space
and which in itself is an indisputable, if not supreme, truth. Are Truth and Meaning forged in
such understandings? Can literature in modern civilization emerge from a state in which it
simulates Truth and Meaning without entering into a state of self-destruction, as in
postmodernism, but attaching itself to sources of authentic religious and mystical experience?
For now, that seems impossible. Namely, in church culture, literature is only one of the contents
of religious consciousness and religious rites; it is the means by which religion communicates
the ultimate Truth. In modern culture, however, from the Renaissance to the present, religion
is not wider and more inclusive than literature, nor is it the highest content of literature, but one
of the more possible contents, but not obligatory. In modern culture, literature does not crave
the ultimate Truth but the aesthetic harmonization of many relative truths. However, in modern
civilization - built primarily by the energies of natural reason and instincts, and less by the
energies of intuition, soul and spirit, and in which time of human existence is narrowed down
to human history and earthly duration, and the space of existence is limited to a particular
society and certain cultural the formation in which man lives - and in such a civilized
civilization, art and in its auspices literature is still at odds with cosmic time and cosmic space,
with the Spirit as the cosmic energy and the origin of all being. In short, though it seeks to be
self-made and self-created, independent of religion, art and in modern civilization draws its
existential dignity and spiritual identity from the very sphere it seeks to suppress and replace -
from faith. This is so because faith is the fullest sublimation of the spiritual foundations of
existence and therefore the foundation of every culture. "Culture begins where spiritual content
seeks its true and perfect form. (Ivan Ilyin, Fundamentals of Christian Culture, Belgrade,
Otachnik, 2014, p. 19) The "true and perfect form" of the spiritual dimensions and spiritual
contents of human existence for Ilyin is represented by the Orthodox faith. Art, he believes, is
also a form of in-depth spirituality of existence, and it also strives to be perfect. If there is no
desire for perfection in art, then it is a corrupted rather than an authentic form of spiritual
experience. Does that craving feel in modern art; does modern art in secular civilization arise
out of a craving for perfection, such as the emergence of religious art within the auspices of
classical Christian civilization, or does it merely satisfy itself to be original and unique?

Judaism. As the oldest monotheistic religious pattern, Judaism is predominantly present in

Serbian literature through some Old Testament motifs. The motives and spirit of the Old
Testament discreetly permeate Church literature; although indirectly, in folk literature, these
motives are a powerful formative and semantic energy; Old Testament spirituality was also
transposed into works of modern literature.

Living with the Serbs for almost half a millennium, the Jews kept their own language, customs
and old oral literature in their community, but did not write new works in their own language
and in the spirit of their religious and folk traditions. Admittedly, Isaac Samokovlija wrote
stories about the life of Sarajevo Jews, but in the spirit of folklore and regional realism as a
generally accepted and powerful poetic system in 19th and 20th century Serbian literature, not
in the spirit of Jewish religious and folk tradition. Writers of Jewish descent generally acted as
"Serbs of the Law of Moses" in literature, that is, they accepted the poetic paradigms that were
currently current in Serbian and European literature. Stanislav Vinaver, for example, was not
only a follower but also a high priest of Serbian expressionism; Oskar Davicho was a prominent
and creative participant in the surrealist movement between the two world wars, as well as an
original advocate of neo-modern poetics in the second half of the 20th century (see: Predrag
Palavestra, Jewish Writers in Serbian Literature, Belgrade, Institute for Literature and Art,
1998).

Islam. Apart from the orthodox and general Christian religious pattern in Serbian literature, it
is the strongest Islamic religious heritage.

In Serbian non-Germanic church literature, Islam, logically, has no say. In the post-Kosovo
period, in the chronicles and chronicles written by the monks, Islam was presented as a
temptation to Christian existence and spirituality, as an aggressive and hostile religion against
which a judgmental, defensive or ignorant attitude was taken; Such anti-Christian faith should
be guarded and removed as far away as possible, and it should by no means be known, since it
is dangerous not only to the spiritual identity but also to the physical existence of the Christian
man.

In folk epic poetry, Islam, that is, Islamic customs and understandings, Turkish mentality and
violent rule, constitute a separate thematic circle. In relation to the Islamic religious pattern,
embodied in the Turks, the mythological cultural subconscious of the Serbian people is
reactivated: Turks often lose in their poem any anthropological qualities, and acquire the
qualities of evil and powerful mythological beings that a person must master with wisdom,
cunning and heroism. In this context, Vuk Karadzic's note with the mythological epic poem
"Sekula has turned into a snake" is very interesting, more precisely with the poem "Again, but
different". In the first version, the main character is the historical figure of Janko Sibinjan, a
Christian warlord against the Turks. Beside him, in the second version, the song was introduced
by Serbian despot Đurađ Branković; it is he who decisively influences the outcome of the
event, that is, he chooses between the serpent, into which Sekula Banovic transformed in order
to capture the Turkish emperor and bring him to slavery, and the falcon, into which the Turkish
emperor was transformed and captured and enslaved by flying snakes. Although he knows that
the Christian hero has been transformed into a snake and the Turkish emperor into a falcon,
Djurajd advises the Janka Sibinjan to shoot the snake, not the falcon or the Turk. ("Al tells ban-
despote Djuro: / Don't you know, from Sibinj Janko, / That we are nests of hawks, / And Turks
are nests of hawks? / Whack thugs, don't hit hawks.") The wolf gave the following note with
the song:

"It is narrated (as it is sung) that ban-despot Djuro (Djurdj Smederevac) had previously asked
Janko:" May God give you, Duke of Sibenik! / Get an Emperor in Kosovo, / How would your
faith leave us? " he replied, that they would leave them a beautiful Hungarian faith: to build
masses and to trust Rome-Pope. Then ban-despot Djuro sent messengers to the Turkish
Emperor and asked him what kind of faith he would leave them if he broke the Hungarians;
and the Turkish emperor replied: "I will make a church and a mosque, / Both side by side: /
Whoever worships an id in a mosque, / Whoever baptizes, let him go to a church." And they
say that ban-despot Djuro deceived Janko. . "

But he did not find the song in which the Wolf is said in this way, either whole or in pieces; all
that was left was the memory that it used to be sung. Not at all, except for the song "Djurdjev
Jerin" - in which Jerina does not listen to the advice of Maxim's grandson to give his daughter
as a Hungarian or Moscow king, that is, to a Christian who will respect Serbian state
independence, but gives it to a Turk who takes "land and cities" from Serbs. - there are no
poems in folk epic poetry in which the Serbs are in a dilemma whether to adhere to Catholicism
or to fall under Turkish rule and Islamic culture, when they can no longer preserve their
independence; instead of that dilemma, Lazar's choice between the earthly empire and the
kingdom of heaven was accepted as the full historical truth and as the highest, eschatological
meaning of Serbian existence in history. And in the verses the Wolf quoted in the note, as parts
of a forgotten and lost poem, the Serbian despot chooses to preserve faith and not the state, that
is, to accept that alien authority that guarantees him the preservation of faith, not one that offers
him the preservation of the state at a cost to renounce faith.

In the popular consciousness, the Orthodox faith, as the source and refuge of internal, spiritual
freedom, is more important than the state as the protector of external independence; to assert
and preserve national identity requires more faith than an independent state; a state is worth to
the people only if and as long as it is grounded in Christian spiritual values, when it preserves
faith.
In late Romanticism and folklore realism in Serbian literature, Islamic civilization has a
different value status than in folk and ecclesiastical literature. In late Romanticism, Serbian
writers thematize the East, which is largely Islamic culture. Serbian writers in Vojvodina
(Jovan Jovanovic Zmaj, Jakov Ignjatovic, Laza Kostic, Djura Jaksic) established an indirect
relationship with the Orient, through German literature, in which in the epoch of Romanticism
there was a revival of interest in Eastern cultures and in motives and forms in Oriental
literatures. Writers in Serbia, however, had a direct contact with the Islamic culture brought to
the Balkans by the Turks. The Christian and Islamic cultural patterns collided, mutually
exclusive, ignored, but also coexisted and intertwined.

"It [Islamic culture] soon ceased to be a conquering culture, and to this extent joined the
indigenous streams, that in the territory of Serbia and elsewhere, symbiotic cultures, especially
in cities that have remained under Turkish rule for a long time government (Niš, Vranje), "notes
Ivan Shop in an important literary and cultural study East in Serbian Literature. (Belgrade,
Institute for Literature and Art, 1982, 21) This symbiotic cultural pattern represents a specific
cultural tradition in Serbian literature, a tradition that arises under the auspices of Islamic
civilization and is nurtured not only by Turks and the indigenous Islamized population, but also
partly by the subjugated Orthodox people. And not only in literature but in other forms of
culture, the spirit of Islamic civilization was felt:

“The Oriental spirit was felt in every way: in language, in folklore, in construction, in beliefs
and superstitions, in lifestyle… The centuries-old history of the Serbian people was connected
with the East, and the Eastern influence was inevitable in legends and legends, in jokes and
dossiers. In a word, oriental influence, easternness, received through mediators - the Turks,
permeated every activity and activity. The life of a Serb of that time, regardless of his class and
class structure, was carried out in a single order that was not much different from Eastern adetis.
From music to even, for example, clothing and cuisine, the proximity of the Orient could not
be denied, nor could a certain Oriental spirit and style be avoided. ”(Ibid, 25)

Thus, in parallel to the Christian-patriarchal cultural pattern, which is the most effective and
essential in Serbian national history, a hybrid, symbiotic cultural pattern emerged in the Serbian
people, formed by the interweaving of Islamic and Christian faith in patriarchal culture. "The
relation to the Orient is one of the features that expresses the identity of the being of Serbian
literature, its autonomy in relation to the currents of European literature." (SHOP) But this
hybrid model was not originally religious but originally secular, secularized. It expressed the
aspirations of a civic and patriarchal-secular culture, in which both the original Christian and
Islamic religious teachings were distorted, that is, adapted to real and practical life under alien
rule, so vitalized, but left without religious and cultural idealism. , deprived of stronger spiritual
and religious energy in themselves that would allow them to transfer to modern culture.
Classical patriarchal-Christian Serbian culture, on the contrary, carried and preserved the
potential for modernization.

The hybrid, secular patriarchal culture was antimodern and anti-European, and in the new age
it virtually subsided and remained only as a memory of a romantic rebellion against the
historical course that inspired modern spirituality. It is in this hybrid cultural pattern that has
waned on the historical horizon that some Serbian romantics sought spiritual refuge. In the
disappearing spiritual world, some romanticists perceive as old, patriarchal, national-
aristocratic, orderly, warm existential space, now threatened by new customs, new social forms,
new morals and a different way of life. In the romantic nostalgia of the old days, Islamic culture
was resurrected, in a new, idealized form.

Jovan Ilic is a "bard of Easternness" in Serbian literature; his cultural ideology found resonance
in the works of his sons Dragutin and Vojislav, as well as in the narratives of Branislav Nušić's
Ramadan Evening. Writers who develop the poetics of folklore realism also recognize the
Muslim community as an exotic environment, but also as a haven for old morality, pure, naive
spirituality, and as an oasis in which Islamic life philosophy is preserved at a time when the
dominant modern European culture is taking over the primacy of the Serbian people. a new
cultural pattern that suppresses patriarchal culture and which seems to be deaf to either Islam
or the original Christian religious tradition. Although they do not belong to this hybrid cultural
model but to the traditional Orthodox-patriarchal as well as emerging modern cultural pattern,
Svetozar Corovic, Stevan Sremac, Borisav Stankovic and some other realists and early
modernists feel Islam as a good folk religion of their countrymen, write with sympathy and
spiritual empathy about that faith and its members, sympathize with the dignified, tragic and
futile efforts of members of that culture to preserve their philosophy of life and to keep
themselves ignorant-stoic from the strong penetration of ev opskog cultural pattern of the
former Islamic civilization. The symbiotic, hybrid Islamic-Christian culture was nurtured
mainly by the townships, while in the mountainous areas, throughout the Turkish rule, the
original Serbian Christian-patriarchal culture was preserved and defended. The Islamized Serbs
themselves preserved some of the old customs, life logic and general spirit of Serbian
patriarchal culture.

In the new age, Muslim writers adapted their religious heritage to Serbian and European
cultural and literary patterns. However, despite all these transformations of Islamic spirituality
in the Serbo-Christian and European cultural horizons, Islamic spirituality retained its
specificity and distinctiveness in Serbian folk and artistic literature. (see: Stanisa Tutnjevic,
National Consciousness and Literature of Muslims, Belgrade, Narodna knjiga - Institute for
Literature and Art, 2004).

* The second part of the text will be published on 2.11.2018.

Source: Milan Radulović, Cultural Patterns in Serbian Literature, PBF Sv. Vasily Ostroski -
Institute for Art and Literature, Foca - Belgrade, p. 203-236.