There are plenty of contemporary Montenegrin writers whose work deserves to be explored. But that will be for the future. At the moment, I just want to signal some interesting connections:

1. Anon or not?

"Montenegro has a strong literary tradition dating back nearly a thousand years. The oldest literary work, Kingdom of the Slavs, was written in Bar in the 12th century by an anonymous Benedictine priest."

Bar. That's where we are.

But "anonymous"? Opinions are divided.

I have absolutely no expertise to bring to bear on this question, and my main source is a machine translation of this page... It describes Grgur Barski (Gregory of Bar) as a Croatian bishop and writer who was born in the first half of the 12th century, and died towards its end: "Today, most historians agree that he is the author of the chronicle Sclavorum Regnum or the Croatian Chronicle, later erroneously called the Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja. The main reason for writing the chronicle was Grgur's effort to restore the bishopric in Bar." Actually, I'm not sure all historians do agree about that... But, as I said, I'm incompetent to judge.


2. Petar II Petrovic Njegos (1813-51), revered today "as Montenegro's most illustrious son and the greatest poet in Serbian literature"

A member of an influential Montenegro family, he inherited his uncle's title as head of both state and church in 1830.

As a writer, his magnum opus is The Mountain Wreath (1847). But it's far from uncontroversial. According to Srdja Pavlovic, "regardless of their political agendas, ideological preferences or religious persuasions, every new generation of South Slav historians and politicians appropriates Njegos’s work hoping to find enough quotations to validate their own views." He cautions against reading it "outside the context of the time of its inception".




3. Lord Byron once more...

This is a funny one. Krivokapic and Diamond have done an interesting study on depictions of Montenegro in Western film and literature. (There have been plenty such: Franz Lehar's The Merry Widow is based on the court in Cetinje; Alphonse Daudet's Tartarin de Tarascon involves a Montenegrin con-artist; and of course there's James Bond and Casino Royale, part of whose storyline was set in Montenegro, even though no filming was done there.)

But what about Byron?

Montenegrin tourist websites like to quote the poet as declaiming, "At the moment of the creation of our planet, the most beautiful merging of land and sea occurred at the Montenegrin seaside... When the pearls of nature were sworn, an abundance of them were strewn all over this area." One publicity-oriented headline reads: "Jewel that thrilled Byron and Bond."

But it's all baloney... Byron didn't come to Montenegro any more than Bond did. The explanation for the quote? Well, Donald B. Pram surmises "that Byron was whimsically looking at Montenegro, where he used to have a lover, but it must have been the one in Leghorn, Italy".

No Byron, then...

(Starts to make me wonder whether he actually went to Dubrovnik either... I can't find incontrovertible evidence. What's not in doubt, however, is his influence on Croatian writers.)


4. Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-92)

Another strange story.

In 1877, Tennyson dedicated a sonnet to Montenegro. According to Vesna Goldsworthy, it was one of his favourite pieces, and it was written in direct response to William Gladstone's call for someone to take on the mantle of "Montenegro's Byron". Gladstone's goal was to rouse support for a wave of uprisings against the Ottoman empire (and the poem's first publication was accompanied by a 20-page outline of Montenegrin history, written by Gladstone himself). Goldsworthy concludes: "The publicity given to the Montenegrin cause by Tennyson and Gladstone's writings is hard to overestimate," and of course, the intervention was much appreciated in Montenegro: "After 1877, British visitors to the Montenegrin capital [which in those days was Cetinje] tended to find themselves engaged in conversation about Tennyson in the city's drinking places and its royal palace."

Goldsworthy observes, however, that Nikola I's tribute to the British ("On the call of their great men British people rose up in quickest manner, to help and to protect Montenegro") is not quite accurate: "The British continued to do their best to prevent or, at least, delay the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire... Tennyson's own support for the Montenegrin struggle waned as soon as Russian joined the conflict. Nonetheless, the fact that he accepted the invitation to become 'Montenegro's Byron' with Romanticist fervour, lending his name to Gladstone's campaign at a crucial stage, had considerable impact both in raising awareness of the intricacies of the Balkan situation at home and in boosting the morale of the insurgents in the region itself."

5. Finally, you can't go very far without encountering Pierre Loti...

It turns out that two of his stories are inspired by Montenegro. In 1880, his naval duties took him to the Kotor inlets, and his ship anchored off the village of Baosici on 5 October (we passed through it, or near it, on the bus from Dubrovnik, I think). The rest of the story you can probably guess:

"At a loose end on board his ship, Loti regularly goes ashore, where he meets a local orphan to whom he will give the name Pasquala Ivanovitch. He forms a sentimental relationship with this nineteen-year-old girl. Dazzled by her beauty, which he compared to the statues of ancient Greece, he spoke of her with great passion in a story that bears his name, published in the collection The Flowers of Ennui in 1882."

This guy is just so predictable... I have no idea why they would put up a plaque to him in Baosici...


Ramifications... I love ramifications...