ON OUR “GOLDEN WRECKAGES”
ON OUR “GOLDEN WRECKAGES”

Summary/Abstract: In the dining room of Žiča Monastery at the Feast of the Transfiguration in 2007, Đorđo Sladoje told us that he had “burst into both life and literature from Klinja near Ulog”.1 Not only that the poet felt that he “burst” into literature from some godforsaken place, but some of us, his listeners, asked ourselves, not without much wondering, where the place called Klinja was, and Ulog too. This wondering showed that perhaps we are not always aware of the importance of the regional points of departure as some of the hallmarks of the entire history of Serbian culture. Isn’t it right to say that regional points of departure mark, for instance, the enterprises of Vuk Karadžić and his poetic voices and (gusle) singers, as well as many of our greatest writers from Njegoš to Andrić and Crnjanski, from Jovan Dučić to Matija Bećković, Rajko Petrov Nogo and others? The regional hallmarks of Serbian culture are, by all means, closely connected to the favourable and less favourable turns that Serbian history took in the past. Dominant values were often fostered on the margins of foreign rule, and among those values there is what can be described, in Ranko Popović’s words, as “a quivering sensibility to the present time and tradition alike”,2 which is what Ranko Popović noticed about Đorđo Sladoje’s poetic work. This two-fold sensibility to contemporaneity and tradition as the broadest characteristic of Serbian culture could be seen in the zealous revolt on 27 March 1941, in the same way it can be seen in our strong reactions to the loss of Kosovo or the exodus of the Serbs from Krajina.

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