MEŠTROVIĆ'S SIGNIFICANCE IN
THE FORMATION OF YUGOSLAVIA IN 1918
BOGDAN RADITSA
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Journal of Croatian Studies, XXIV,
1983, – Annual Review of the Croatian Academy of America, Inc. New York, N.Y.,
Electronic edition by Studia Croatica, by permission. All rights
reserved by the Croatian Academy of America.
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At the outset of this century the
World of the South Slays was stirred by national and ideological
transformation. Ever since the decline of the Ottoman Empire the Balkans had aspired
to the formations of their own national states, of which Serbia was also a
pivot. In the declining Austro-Hungarian Empire this idea had a far greater
impact on the Serbian and Croatian revolutionary intelligentsia than on the
larger strata of the people. To this process the static, almost paralytic
condition of political life in Austria and Hungary proper contributed even more
than the disillusionment of the intelligentsia in Bohemia, Slovakia and,
particularly, Croatia and Dalmatia. I recall listening to epic ballads about
the Balkans rising from their restless slumber to see the light of the sun from
the East, announcing a Pan-Slav resurrection led by faraway Russia. I again
stress that these were visions of one fragment of the educated elite, ignored
and not shared by the majority of the population.
Folk epic poetry, the Bible and
Adriatic rocky mountains inspired Meštrović, this son of peasants living
in the barren Dalmatian mountains. He gave to his own people a new
epic-determined vision of themselves. His intuitive sense was that Michelangelo
had read Dante and the Bible, so he also drew his inspiration from the Bible
and the national poetry of his people — he told me again and again. The Bible
and the folk poetry gave his creative work the epic dimension.
As a child guarding sheep in the
Dalmatian mountain Meštrović cut figures in stone and wood. Rustic
protoromanic Croatian sculptures of religious figures and early Croatian heroes
and kings impressed the young shepherd on his journeys from his native
mountains to the Croatian towns and cities on the Adriatic. The Sibenik
cathedral inspired him most of all — with its figures by Giovanni il Dalmata,
the Brothers Lauranas and many other native Croatian sculptors. Still a boy
Meštrović went to Diocletian's Split to learn stone cutting in the
workshop of Pavo Bilinić. From Split he went to study at the Vienna
Academy which turned him into an accomplished craftsman. His work was shown in
the Salon of the Secession, a modernist movement then in vogue, with which his
monumental style and vision was in some contrast. Journeys to Florence, Rome
and Paris complete his education. In Paris Rodin befriended him. The old French
master, as the saying goes, was to concede that his former pupil had a talent
nearing his own, and there was no need for him to continue as his instructor.
In a cultural process suspended
between East and West Meštrović transformed the vision of ourselves,
through his own inspiration and self-expression which he carried on a direct
dialogue with the people of his native land and foretold the beginning of our
national and spiritual maturity. He always pointed out that the highest value
of every people lies in its contribution to the improvement of the cultural
community of brotherhood among nations. Indeed, in the period of the decline of
the West, Meštrović' s art stood for a regeneration of moral values. Not
only in the religious art which he pursued in the final years of his existence,
but also in the epic art of his early years when he created such popular
figures as Kraljević Marko, Srgja Zlopogledja and Domagoj with his
archers, the pessimus dux Croatorum, as the Venetians called him. These figures
became more alive than in folk poetry.
His art gave people at home and
abroad a more impressive and graphic vision than the written word, could have
ever done, even if lovely and poetic. As the outside world knew nothing or very
little except for the few translations like those published by Goethe in his
anthology of Folk poetry and Fortis' Viaggio in Dalmazia, Meštrović world
of stones opened up new insight into our tragic existentialism.
And, here we reach the decisive
period of our national drama and that of Ivan Meštrović himself which took
place in 1911 when an international exhibition was held in Rome. In protest
Meštrović and his Croatian colleagues refused the invitation to exhibit
their works in the Austro-Hungarian pavilion and asked Serbia for space to host
the Croatian artists. It was there that Meštrović presented the major heroes
of the Kosovo cycle such as Jug Bogdan, the Mother of the Jugovićs, the
lovely Kosovo Maiden who suffered so deeply that as the folk poetry says
"if she would touch a green tree it would wither away", the Croat
Strahinjić Ban and many others. The exhibition ushered a new chapter in
modern European art. I shall not quote what the most illustrious European
writers and art critics of that time, Giovanni Papini, Ugo Ojetti, James Bone
and many others wrote. Instead I shall relate the following story:
In 1927 I visited Maxim Gorki at
his villa in Sorrento, in Southern Italy between Naples and Capri. He had lived
there for many years and was about to return to Russia to die. Gorki, old and
sick, rose waving his hands first asked me: "Was Meštrović's Kosovo
temple ever built? "No," I answered. "Shame," Gorki
shouted, "shame! " Meštrović is the greatest sculptor the Slays
have ever had, he and Tolstoy are the greatest creative artists Slavdom has
ever had! Gorki after sixteen years still remembered his visit with the Russian
writer Amphiteatrov to the Rome exhibition.
Meštrović wanted the Kosovo
Temple to commemorate the brotherhood of all peoples who fought at Kosovo,
"Field of the Blackbirds," and in other battles in the defense of Christianity
against the Turks. He wanted to resurrect the memory of a great defeat at
Kosovo when invading Turkish armies slaughtered Serbian and other Christian
armies on Saint Vitus Day — Vidovdan — in the fourteenth century. His vision
was that the Kosovo defeat would unite all the peoples in the area
irrespectively of religion: the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Moslem; all
Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians, Greeks, Albanians and even the remaining Turks
themselves. Serbian politicians rejected the project for the Kosovo Temple.
Although the idea was never realised, some parts of it were integrated in the
monument to the Uknown Soldier on the Avala Mountain, where he used his famous
Caryathides representing women from all parts of the land.
Meštrović knew the epic cycle
of Kosovo by heart and used to recite it to us in his last years. He also knew
the epic story of the great figure, the Albanian Skenderbeg, that he discovered
in his youth in the book of Father Kačić Miošić Pleasant
discourse about the Slavic people. He often recited those verses to us, his
younger friends.
The further development of
Yugoslavia's internal divisions and conflicts between Serbs and Croats with the
aggressive Great Serbian hegemony, the assasination of the Croatian Peasant
Party leader Stephen Radić and later of King Alexander persuaded
Meštrović to focus on the destiny of Croatia. In the trying times of
Serbian oppression Meštrović came out with the statue personifying the
Croatian Woman or Mother who holds in her hand a large volume on which is
inscribed "History of Croatia," this is what he wanted to defend and
perpetuate. The book contains the collection of Laws which made up Pravica —
Justice, which Meštrović believed were basic. It was his impressive and
convincing protest against the Serbian threat to Croatia's national identity.
Meštrović continued with
great power to create the monuments for the cities of Split, and Zagreb. There
was great figure of Marko Marulić, the poet of the first Croatian literary
poem "Judith"; the figure of Luka Botić, the romantic poet of
the love and brotherhood between the Croat Catholic girl and a Moslem boy also
a Croat; the monument to Bishop Grgur Ninski who demanded the Croatian language
in the Catholic liturgy; and the great monument to the liberal Bishop Josip
Juraj Strossmayer, a founder of the Yugoslav Academy and the Gallery of Arts in
Zagreb; and many historical monuments for the medieval cities of Dubrovnik and
Trogir, and again for Belgrade. All these creative achievements were meant to
fill a great cultural void: to overcome cultural retardation and to preach
brotherhood, love, tolerance and understanding in a country torn deeply apart.
In the last period of his creative
life Meštrović concentrated on the relations between God and Man. This was
his "religious" phase dating from his exile in Rome and continued in
the United States first at Syracuse University and then at Notre Dame, the
Catholic University which was sufficiently foresighted to build him a new
studio. It was in Rome where he carved in stone the majestic Pietŕ which
Milovan Djilas representing the Yugoslav government wanted to acquire in 1950
and bring back to Yugoslavia. Pietŕ which is at Notre Dame and, a copy of it at
the Museum of Modern Religious Art at the Vatican, impress visitors by its
dignity, courage and hope in resistance to tragic death and its promise of
resurrection.
Meštrović died in South Bend,
Indiana, two and a half year after his last visit to his native Croatia. He
couldn't avoid meeting Tito, but on condition that he must visit first
Archbishop Cardinal Stepinac. Though pressed to return to his homeland, he
continually refused to live in a country where others could not enjoy the
privileges, comforts and freedom the regime promised to him.
The legacy that Meštrović
left to his people may be summed up as follows: a small people finds meaning
and a place in the human community only if it enriches mankind with the
spiritual and intellectual values which it has itself created. Force and power
do not possess the strength which mankind needs to survive. He helped to
establish Yugoslavia in the years 1914-18 but suffered deeply from its failure
to establish an equal partnership among all its nations, mainly because of the
hegemony of one ethnic group upon all others. Meštrović was shattered by
his inability to prevent the inevitable civil war which raged between Croats
and Serbs in the midst of World War Two. Some of us who were associated with
Meštrović in the last years here in the United States and listened to his
remembrances of the past were impressed by his decent and firm stand in exile.
He left behind him all property, homes and buildings, in Zagreb and Split and
preferred to live as a free man, in a one family house, in America. He was not
disappointed that his art was not better represented in various New York's
modern art collections. Upon arrival in New York however, he had the
unprecedented honour of being the first living sculptor whose work was
exhibited in the great hall of the Metropolitan Museum. His firm belief was
that every true expressive creation would survive the changing modes, tastes
and styles of its own times and eventually find its lasting place in art
history.
As for the future of Yugoslavia
that was the dream of his early years, although he had lived and suffered
through this country's many tragedies, he never lost faith in the people, and
placed the blames of failure on politicians. He was profoundly disillusioned
with Serbian leadership, and came to believe that it was unable to organize a
multinational state for it stubbornly insisted on a hegemony which ultimately
lead to its disaster. 'Whatever the ultimate unraveling of the Yugoslav drama
would be, he believed that, any alternative even separation, would be better
than perpetual civil war which ultimately would consume and destroy both the
oppressor and the oppressed.
He died convinced that the
Croatian nation had reached a level of political maturity which was necessary
for entrance into a community of independed states and that she would in fact
achieve political and national independence and statehood. Meštrović's
Croatia has found its noblest expression in the insistence on the principle of
Pravica — the Justice. The Croatians have always fought and suffered for Justice.
The Centennial celebration of Meštrović's birth should equally offer to
those in Croatia as those dispersed all over the world, in diaspora, the
opportunity to express their commitments to Justice and Freedom.