Abstract
Two events have left their indelible mark on the collective consciousness of the Balkan peoples: the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 and the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. The former has been seen as an unmitigated catastrophe by all Orthodox believers and in particular the Greeks; the latter has been regarded as their greatest tragedy but also the source and foundation of their modern history by the Serbs and Montenegrins. This chapter deals with how the battle that took place on the Field of the Blackbirds (Kosovo) in 1389 assumed the form of a powerful myth, which includes “the Turks” as the Other and which became the most important reason and/or justification for the Balkan Christians’ peculiarly intense hatred for those South Slavs (Bosnian Muslims in particular) whose ancestors converted to Islam and, to use the local widespread expression, “become like the Turks” (poturice).1 The myth took its final shape in the epic work by Peter II Petrović Njegoš (1813–1851), prince-bishop (vladika) of Montenegro—Crna Gora, or “black mountain”—(1830–1851) and one of the greatest epic poets of the South Slavs.2
The past is never dead; it is not even past.
—William Faulkner
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Notes
Edit Petrovic, “Ethnonationalism and the Dissolution of Yugoslavia,” in Neighbors at War: Anthropological Perspectives on Yugoslav Ethnicity, Culture and History, ed. Joel M. Halpern and David A. Kideckel (University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 174. “The powerful effect of the Kosovo epic and others in the revival of Serbian ethnic identity, and in the process of national imagining, is key to understanding the conflicts in which the Serbs have been engaged.” This chapter argues that it is the key.
For additional information on Montenegro and Njegos, the interested reader should consult Zdenko Zlatar, Njegoš’s Montenegro (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005) and The Poetics of Slavdom, 2 vols. (New York: Peter Lang, 2007); the second volume focuses on Njegos.
Thomas E. Emmert, Serbian Golgotha: Kosovo, 1389 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 43.
quoting from George P. Majeska, Russian Travelers to Constantinople in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1984), 88–91.
Đorđe Sp. Radojićić, “Savremene vesti o Kosovskoj bitci kod ruskog putopisca dja-kona Ignjatija,” Starinar 12 (1937): 52. Ignatius’s travel account was singled out already by Franjo Racki, “Pokret na slavenskom jugu koncem XIV i pocetkom XV stoljeća,” Rad [Jugoslavenska akademija znanosti i umjet-nosti] 3 (1868): 92n3. Unless otherwise identified, all quotations relating to the early sources concerning the Battle of Kosovo are taken from Emmert and his translations.
Emmert, Serbian Golgotha, 45, quoting from Maximilian Braun, “Kosovo”: Die Schlacht auf dem Amselfelde in geschichtlicher und epischer Überlieferung (Leipzig: Markert & Petters, 1937), 9–10.
Franjo Rački, “Boj na Kosovu: Uzroci i posljedice,” Rad [Jugoslavenska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti] 97 (1889): 34.
Rački, “Boj na Kosovu,” 46, quoting from Vikentii Vasil’ evich Makushev, “Prilozi k srpskoj istoriji XIV i XV veka,” Glasnik srpskog uäenog društva 32 (Belgrade, 1871): 173–77.
Ibid., 58, quoting from Mihailo Dinić, “Dva savremenika o boju na Kosovu,” Glas Srpske kraljevske akademije 182 (Belgrade, 1940): 146–47.
Rački, “Boj na Kosovu,” 59, quoting from I. I. Sreznevskii, “Rui Gonzales’ de Klaviho: Dnevnik’ puteshestviia ko dvoru Timura v Samarkand v 1403–1406 gg.,” Sbornik otedeieniia russkogo iaz’ika i slove-snosti imperatorskoi akademii nauk 28, no. 1 (1881): 147–48.
Clavijo’s work was published as Vida y hazanas del Gran Tamorian con la description de las Tierras de su Imperio y senorio escripa por Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo (Seville, 1582); English translation by Clements R. Markham, Narrative of the Embassy of Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo to the Court oj Titnour at Samarcand, A.D. 1403–6 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1859).
Laonicus Chalcocondyles, De rebus turcicis, ed. Immanuel Bekkerus (Bonn, 1843), 53–54.
Emmert, Serbian Golgotha, 94, quoting Harry J. Magoulias, trans., Decline and Fall of Byzantium to the Ottoman Turks by Doukas (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1975), 60–62.
Mihailo Dinic, “Dukin prevodilac o boju na Kosovu,” Zbornik radova Vizantološkog instituta 8 (Belgrade, 1964): 53; Braun, Die Schlacht, 20–21.
George P. Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind, vol. 1, Kievan Christianity: The 10th to the 13th Centuries (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1946), 94–131.
Mateja Matejič and Dragan Milivojevič, trans., An Anthology oj Medieval Serbian Literature in English (Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1978), 96–97.
Ibid., 65, quoting A. Vukomanovič, “O knezu Lazaru,” Glasnik društva srbske slovesnosti 11 (Belgrade, 1859): 110–11.
Ibid., 196n13, quoting Rade Mihaljčić, Lazar Hrebeljanovié: Istorija, kult, predanje (Belgrade: Nolit, 1984), 343.
Emmert, Serbian Golgotha, 105–7; Emmert’s translation is from Zdravko Šundrica’s Serbo-Croatian translation of Orbini’s Il regno: Mavro Orbin, Kraljevstvo Slovena (Belgrade: Srpska književna zadruga, 1968), 96–102.
M. Oben [Michel Aubin], Njegoš istorija u pesnikovom delu, trans. Živojin Živojinović (Belgrade: Književne novine, 1989), 108: “Svobodijada: opisu bitaka prethodi vizija istorije Srba od Kosova do doba vladike Danila.”
Petar II Petrović Njegoš, Celokupna dela, vol. 2, Svobodijada (Belgrade: Prosveta, 1984), 10–12, 11. 77–80 and 91–98 (translation mine).
P. P. Njegos, The Mountain Wreath, trans. and ed. Vasa D. Mihailovich (Irvine, CA: C. Schlacks, Jr., 1986), 12–13, ll. 258–69 [henceforth abbreviated as MW].
In The Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed., see the entries “Dar al-Harb” (1965), 2:126, “Dar al-Islam” (1965), 2:127–28, and “Kharadj” (1978), 4:1030–56, particularly 1053–55 on the Ottoman Empire; on khalifah, see Gordon D. Newby, A Concise Encyclopedia of Islam (Oxford: Oneworld, 2002), 34.
On this point, there is a broad scholarly consensus. See, for instance, Slobodan Tomović, Komentar Gorskog vijenca (Nikšić, Montenegro: NIO “Univerzitetska riječ, 1986), 55–56.
Muhsin Rizvic, Kroz “Gorski vijenac”: Interpretacija i tekstualno-komparativna studija o strukturi (Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1985 [1989]), 137.
Slobodan Tomović, Njegoševa Luča: Studija (Titograd, Montenegro: “Grafič ki zavod”—“Industrijaimport,” 1971), 231.
Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, Srpske narodne pjesme, vol. 2, Pjesme junačke najstarije (Vienna, 1845; repr. Beograd, Serbia: Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti, Odeljenje jezika i književnosti, 1973–1974), 195–96.
Howard F. Stein, “Culture and Ethnicity as Group-Fantasies: A Psychohistoric Paradigm of Group Identity,” in From Metaphor to Meaning: Papers in Psychoanalytic Anthropology, Howard F. Stein and Maurice Apprey (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1987), 124.
Petar II Petrovic Njegos, Celokupna delà, vol. 3, Pisma, no. 482, October 10, 1847, (Belgrade: Prosveta, 1951), 355–56.
James C. Davis, ed., Pursuit oj Power: Venetian Ambassadors’ Reports on Spain, Turkey, and France in the Age of Philip II (1560–1600) (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), 139.
Alexandre Kojève, Introduction à la lecture de Hegel, ed. Raymond Queneau (Paris: Gallimard, 1947; repr. 1968).
For schema L, see Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. A. Sheridan (New York: Norton, 1981).
and the brilliant commentary by Roberto Harari, Los Cuatro conceptos fundamentales del psicoanâlisi, de Lacan: una introductión (Buenos Aires: Nueva Vision, 1987).
Translated by Judith File as Lacan’s Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis: An Introduction (New York: Other Press, 2004).
Jacques Lacan, The Language of the Self: The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis, trans. Anthony Wilden (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), 307.
Dylan Evans, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (New York: Routledge, 1997), 49.
Jacques Lacan, Écrits: A Selection, trans. A. Sheridan (New York: Norton, 1977), 311.
Ibid., 95, quoting Jacques Lacan, The Seminar: Book II: The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique oj Psychoanalysis, 1954–1955, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Sylvana Tomaselli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 223.
Elizabeth Roberts, Realm oj the Black Mountain: A History oj Montenegro (London: Hurst and Company, 2007), 133.
“But however great its literary impact in the Slav world, Njegoš’s magnum opus, written almost a century and a half after the events it purports to describe, can scarcely be said to constitute decisive proof of the massacre’s historicity. Nor indeed do the various ballads and songs on which The Mountain Wreath was based.” She points out correctly that “no contemporary record of such a massacre survives and historians differ over what happened and even whether it actually took place” (132). She mentions the two schools, the believers and the skeptics, and in p. 133n4 cites Ilarion Ruvarac’s Montenegrina, 2nd ed. (Zemun, Serbia: Jev. Puljo, 1899), in which he not only rejected the authenticity of a document purporting to describe such a massacre but rejected the articulus stands and cadentis of Montenegro’s history, namely, that it never formed a part of the Ottoman Empire.
The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova/Anna Akhmatova: Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii, trans. Judith Hemschemeyer, ed. Robert Reeder, 2 vols. (Sommerville, MA: Zephyr Press, 1990), 2:94–95.
Simić, “Nationalism as a Folk Ideology,” 113, citing Christopher Boehm, Blood Revenge: The Anthropology of Feuding in Montenegro and Other Feudal Societies (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1984), 60.
See also Zdenko Zlatar, Njegoš’s Montenegro: Epic Poetry, Blood Feud and Warfare in a Tribal Zone 1830–1851 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 2005).
See especially Milovan Đilas, Land Without Justice, trans. William Jovanovich (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1958), 107.
Milovan Dilas, Parts of a Lifetime, ed. Michael and Deborah Milenkovitch (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), 33.
quoting from Milovan Dilas, Njegoš: Poet, Prince, Bishop, trans. Michael B. Petrovich (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966).
See Zdenko Zlatar, The Poetics of Slavdom: The Mythopoeic Foundations of Yugoslavia (Peter Lang, New York, 2007), 2:845–51; Petar II Petrovic Njegoš, Sabrana djela—kritičko izdanje, vol. 2, Gorski vijenac, priredio Aleksandar Mladenovic (Podgorica, Serbia: Crnogorska akademija nauka i umjetnosti, 2005), “Prilog bibliografiji izdanja Gorskog vijenca,” 325–50.
Milorad Ekmecic, “Profiles of Societies in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century,” in History of Yugoslavia, M. Ekmecic et al. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974), 372. Note that Ekmecic made that statement during Tito’s Yugoslavia, almost twenty years before the conflict in Bosnia started.
David Ross Fryer, The Intervention oj the Other: Ethical Subjectivity in Levinas and Lacan (New York: Other Press, 2004), 210.
William Hardy McNeill, “The Care and Repair of Public Myth,” in Mythistory and Other Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 23–24.
Fryer, Intervention, 207, quoting Jacques Lacan, The Seminar: Book VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, trans. Dennis Porter (New York: Norton, 1992), 12–13.
Stein and Apprey, From Metaphor to Meaning, 124, quoting Weston La Barre, The Ghost Dance: The Origins of Religion (New York: Dell, 1972), xv.
H. T. Norris, Islam in the Balkans: Religion and Society between Europe and the Arab World (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993), 297–98.
V. S. Naipaul, India: A Wounded Civilization (London: Deutsch, 1977), 174.
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© 2011 Jerold C. Frakes
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Zlatar, Z. (2011). From Medieval to Modern: The Myth of Kosovo, “The Turks,” and Montenegro (A Lacanian Interpretation). In: Frakes, J.C. (eds) Contextualizing the Muslim Other in Medieval Christian Discourse. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230370517_7
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