Montenegro's Phoenix

Few, if any, in our time have so resolutely-almost fatefully-bound their intellectual and literary path, their life's choice, to the destiny of their country as Milorad Popović has with Montenegro. Montenegro's Phoenix Essay Collection Lovćen's Phoenix is, in this regard, a powerfully and clearly articulated intellectual, ethical, and literary document. Yet there is one element whose significance and value cannot be overstated. Popović's argument for Montenegro - that "a lone straw tossing in the whirlwind," composed entirely of language, verse, and dream, and at the same time a great historical reality, now once again facing an uncertain political and identity fate-finds its source in an emotional bond (in what the author himself calls an initial "romantic fervor"). But he reflects on and grounds this argument in a deep and broadly based study of the "Montenegrin case," through persistent work, the acquisition of all relevant knowledge, and long maturation - fully aware of the destructive traps of uncritical thinking, lack of reflection, provincialism, rigid nationalism, and shallow patriotism (incidentally: typical of all small or slightly less small post-Yugoslav states and the peoples within them).

Montenegro's Phoenix is a beautiful and exalted poetic image. And what fate the blind satrap-history-will bestow upon or strike Montenegro and Montenegrin identity with, as one of the most wondrous anthropological formations in the long Balkan-Mediterranean history, we cannot know. But even now, we can bear reliable witness that this formation has been both insightfully and viscerally illuminated, reimagined, and permanently preserved in Montenegro's Phoenix and Popović's other books.

-Ivan Lovrenović