photo: wikipedia.orgThe French poet Prosper Merime published Serbian folk songs as if they were authentic, Vladislav Jovanović Marambo defended his doctorate on them, and what does Luka Mesečina have to do with all this?
In German this title would read A noble lie, in Russian Благородная ложь, in French A noble lie, in Serbian A noble lie, and in Latin, the language of science and philosophy, Noble man lies (perhaps it would be more appropriate to add noble ide simulator, which would mean Noble liar). This ancient Greek phrase was uttered by the philosopher Plato in writing no less Country.
After this linguistic approach, let's move on to the topic.
A few months ago, the historian Siniša Vulić commented in this weekly on the attempt of one of our contemporary writers to, based on the recently hidden diary of the war adjutant Aleksandar Karađorđević, the future king, shed light on the deep thoughts and feelings that led him to a magnificent goal - the unification of the three Balkan Slavic nations. The author of those diary entries is Luka Jovanović, allegedly known in the military circles of the Serbian leadership during the First World War by the nickname Luka Mesečina.
Strangely enough, no one had ever heard of that Luka, not even those chroniclers who raised the most insignificant Serbian horsemen on a pedestal of patriotic glory, who were no better than Vasić's drummer Resimić. Yes, what a strange oversight: through the thick net of the shotgun that historians threw around in war and post-war times, such a large fish as Luka Mesečina missed!
I read with pleasure two comments from the pen of CM Vinogradova (in the literary and public life of an unknown person, which perhaps gives someone the right to doubt her existence) which are in Time full of jokes and jokes about the king's inspiration Luke Mesecini followed.
The procedure of our modern librarian in the international UDC (Universal Decimal Classification) is called mystification and has a specific nomenclature number.
Can that action cause harm to someone? Once upon a time, the author himself would be the first to die.
Imagine that the Librarian asked the question why Josip Broz asked for a marshal's uniform to be prepared for him during the landing on Drvar, because something like that is written in the diary of his non-existent adjutant. Or what he thought and ate before a certain Avnoj. The head goes to the writer and the non-existent adjutant! The non-existent adjutant would be brought before the superior court first.
What was President Milosevic thinking when they put the black hood on his head? What were the last words of the brutally murdered Prime Minister Djindjic?
Fictional adjutants can become uneducated and begin to drag History down a path it has not taken before. Along the way, they can push her into a ditch and commit violence against her.
The fate of the writer and adjutant is in principle uncertain. It is not possible to reliably predict general consequences, for example, what the Nation, Europe, the World will say! The dilemma is vividly expressed by a humorous and somewhat rude story about a sparrow who froze to death, but was saved by a cow in an unexpected way. Ergo, you never know!
At school, the professor asks: "What is the most famous mystification related to our literature?" The student answers: "A collection of fake Serbian folk songs published by the French poet Prosper Merime under the name The fiddle". If the student is of the geek variety, he will add: "It was 1827 at the time when romanticism took hold in Europe as a whole."
Prosper Merime traveled through the land of Morlak (that was the name of the area of Lika and Dalmatian Zagora in his time, as well as Herzegovina and Montenegro, where the predominantly Orthodox but also Catholic population lived), read the books of his predecessors-travel writers, Abbot Albert Fortis and Ivan Lovrić and, following the words of Vuk Karadžić ("Whoever hears two or three songs and stories can compose one himself"), he sang 35 songs in the folk spirit of Morlač. That fictional famous fiddler from whom he allegedly heard the songs was called Hiacint Maglanović.
Hyacinth – his name comes from the Latin name for hyacinth – Merime even drew, in pencil, realistically. Like if in modern times someone would publish a photo of the mother of an unknown hero. And he sang a funeral song in his name; in French the beginning reads: Farewell, farewell, have a nice trip! By the way, in ancient mythology Hyacinth was a prominent discus thrower and lover of the god Apollo. In the collection, of all the songs, there were only authentic ones Hasanaginica and one song by Andrija Kačić-Miosić. Merime also added several detailed texts about Morlacan vampires and werewolves, about the drunkenness of the natives, etc.
All in all, an ugly move, isn't it?
The fiddle (La Guzla, ou choix de Poésies Illiriques) were read by Goethe, Mickiewicz, Pushkin and many other famous writers of the time. Pushkin translated the poems into Russian (Песни западиних славян) and added two or three that he himself sang in the same spirit. The Morlaci were talked about throughout Europe. The work delighted Europeans, lovers of unknown, wild lands.
Nice, isn't it?
Prosper Mérimée became envious. We assume that he was saying: "What, is that Russian, who, they say, had an ancestor of the black race, reaping fame from the songs that I sang!"
I guess some of that got to Pushkin, so he asked his friend, publicist and aphorist Sergei Sobolevsky, to ask Merime in a letter what was true about the rumors coming from Paris about To the violin as a literary mystification.
In 1835, on January 18, a letter arrives, and the following year another one with similar content (both are kept in Pushkin's archive) in which Merime explains in detail how and why he came up with a collection of fake Morlach (Illyrian) folk songs.
"A friend of mine and I", says Merime, "we decided in 1827 to go on a journey through Italy, so we drew a route on the map with a pencil. That's how we arrived in Venice, Trieste and Ragusa. To cover the costs, we started writing travelogues to sell to a publisher. After returning, I got up at ten, had breakfast at noon, smoked a cigarette or two, and then I would start writing ballads according to various models. And why did I do that? I wanted to make fun of the ruling 'domestic taste'”.
This is roughly how Merime wrote with a touch of irony. From all articles related to To the violin it turns out that he wanted to make fun of the folk creativity, which at that time was the right craze.
Whatever Merime wanted, something else came out. The sparrow and the cow did what their fate had determined. Authentic Serbian folk songs were printed in various languages, Serbian vibrancy and heroic spirit were celebrated. Creepy stories were told about Sava Savanović and other werewolves who spend the night in mill pits.
All of them were printed in repeated editions in Russia Songs of the Western Slavs, because, in the opinion of the widest audience, they had a high artistic value, whether they were renditions of authentic songs, or falsified ones, or originated from the pen of the Russian poet himself. A letter from Prosper Mérimée was also published with them, regardless of the visible caustic tone.
Now a new personality appears on the scene: Vladislav Jovanović Marambo, a high-ranking Serbian diplomatic official. In 1910, he defended his doctoral dissertation on the Mérimées in Grenoble To the violin and published it at his own expense. At that time, there was an academic requirement that every dissertation be printed and thus exposed to the judgment of the intellectual public. The work received an award from the French Academy of Sciences. Once again in Europe, people began to talk about Serbian folk art. The sparrow and the cow continued to go their separate ways.
The First World War broke out. Marambo spent the war years at the front as a military censor. He seems to have sharpened his powers of observation by writing about Mérimée's mystification.
After the Second World War, he started searching for the archives stolen by the Nazis in Serbia. A book was written about his work The search for stolen history. At the same time, he began to investigate the false folk creativity that had swelled up after the war. He investigated the origin of various supposedly folk commemoratives, loyals and courtiers (I don't know if these words exist, but their meaning is clear). Many adjutants appeared and testified how this or that song was created in praise of the beloved leader.
The European popularity of Morlak, which Merime expanded with his own To the violin, the editor of the Zagreb Encyclopedia, Miroslav Krleža, considered it harmful to the peoples who were covered by that ethnicity. In his opinion, Merime gave "a picture of a backward, archaic, peasant environment that recedes to the present day".
Krleža fought mainly from cultural-political (communist) views against stereotypes about semi-civilized, ignorant and chauvinistic Yugoslav peoples, incapable of revolutionary class struggle.
The signatory of these lines had the opportunity, deserved by who knows what, to take a look at his unpublished manuscript entitled Collection of fake Serbo-Croatian folk poetry forgeries, plagiarize, mystifications, which he wrote in 1950. Then and in the following decades, meritorious personalities from the sphere of politics and culture believed that the publication of that manuscript would hinder the process of spontaneous folk creativity. Several other unpublished manuscripts of his named are related to that topic Fake Serbian folk songs in the Soviet Union, Milorad Panić's plagiarisms Surepa, Fabrication of Serbian folk songs by Novica Šaulić i About the falsifiers of our folk poetry.
In Marambo's legate, in display cases, as in glass xenotaphs, he will now rest, along with Hijacinto Maglanović and other non-existent witnesses, adjutants and fiddlers, as the newest member, Luka Mesečina. Whether for the general good or for the bad - it is not known. The sparrow and the cow are still on their way.
But this is not the end! We should go back to Plato and A noble lie or on A noble lie.
In Plato's States (III, 389) Socrates engages in his usual maieutics and says: "If, therefore, it behooves anyone to lie at all, then it belongs to the rulers and only for the benefit of the state, either for external opponents or for the citizens of the country." No one else is allowed to lie…”
In Plato we will also find a place where he says that gods and demons do not lie. They only speak the truth, because they don't need a lie: they have no reason to lie!
What reasons can there be for a lie, even for a so-called noble one? Saving your life or someone else's? Politeness? Overall benefit? Encouraging an individual, group or nation to move harder and faster towards a glorious goal?
A lie out of ignorance? Because of the relativization of truth? Out of self-interest?
We are swimming in an ocean of truths that no one has proven. Is there a society without religious myths? Is it true that the righteous go to Paradise and that those who live for their country live happily?
Why do we nurture myths about the nation?
Is it true that our first concern is children? That work created man.
He who works is not afraid of hunger. We will create a society of equality. To each according to his merit. To each according to need.
Societies survive on myths (lies). There is no society without myths.
A writer is either a god or a demon in his book. There he is the undisputed ruler. The truth of the book is not verified by the facts of life. Only when digging a ditch or a grave should you follow the rules. In literature, Hyacinths and Moonlights can be born to your heart's content.
Let me not forget: Diogenes Laertius, historian of philosophy from late antiquity, says (III/I, 52-53) that with Plato, in addition to famous faces, several "nameless fictional" persons participate in the conversation and help to get closer to the truth through oppositions.
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