MACEDONIA - TRADITION AND CONT
MACEDONIA - TRADITION AND CONTEMPORANEITYNumerous books have been written about Macedonia. Collected together in an imaginary world library, they would occupy a space which would be awe-striking in its vastness and one could easily lose one's way strolling among the shelves, through the dark corridors of this labyrinth. Macedonian history has been interpreted in multitudinous different ways, from different aspects and viewpoints. It has been usurped, falsified, supplemented and altered. Frequently written by others, it has been adjusted to their interests. Mysterious cartographers and geographers have broadened and narrowed its borders, counted and recounted, wiped off and added place-names, measured and remeasured its mountains and rivers... The individuality of Macedonian culture has been disputed, the Macedonia word has been banned, and in the years of silence and oblivion things were given different names, difficult to pronounce and yet more difficult to remember. Statues of kings and gods have been demolished, old temples have been ruined, church walls have been smeared with thick layers of mortar and new saints have been painted on them. Old manuscripts have been burnt, the records and inscriptions on graves have bee
The question is whether in a world without god, without its own metaphysical dimension, at a time when we have pronounced the death of Art and Philosophy, we can regain the vanished values. The awareness that the sum of the values this people created and has preserved from destruction and oblivion is their cultural heritage - folk customs, orally transmitted data in place of a birth certificate and as a negation of falsified identity papers, issued by the captors, which conceal what we are - determines and directs the process of the constitution of the nation which has already begun. Fire-red roses blossom and auriferous rivers run. The image of the world has been split into numberless reflections and again we are standing in front of the open sky full of twinkling stars. There are still unsolved secrets. Modern tendencies, the programmes of which are directed against aestheticism, give art back its ontological status. MILLENNIA UNDER EUROPE'S STARRY SKY Surrounded by high, almost impassable mountains, Macedonia is a closed geographical entity in the heart of the Balkan Peninsula. New discoveries will expand the knowledge of our past. At the same time it is a place of permanent encounter between the past and the present. Its past resembles horrifying, spine-chilling night-time stories in which the reflections from the fire flicker and dark shadows of horsemen gallop. As never before, contemporary humanity is exposed to innumerable equally plausible and acceptable interpretations. Insofar as geography has no significance without man, one thing is certain: Macedonian geography, due precisely to the pervasiveness and the identification of man with the land, has turned into a holy thing" (Ante Poposki). There is almost no nation towards which destiny has been less favourably disposed than it has been towards the Macedonian. Bourgeois art was soon to fade away into romantic sunsets but already, with the appearance of Macedonian modernism in the 20's of this century, the process of linking up with contemporary movements in European art had begun.
Common topics in this essay:
Roman Slavonic,
Crnorizec Hrabar,
European Asian,
Macedonia Collected,
Middle Ages,
Macedonia Macedonian,
Kukulian Cycle,
Art Philosophy,
Ante Poposki,
Gligor Cemerski,
macedonian culture,
macedonian artists,
cultural layers,
creative achievements,
churches monasteries,
cultural heritage,
european art,
collective memory,
churches monasteries built,
contemporary myth,
attitude towards,
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Acceptance Essays
