INTRODUCTION

Petar Petrovid Njegoš was a great poet, a prince by inheritance, and the Bishop of Montenegro in the first half of the nineteenth century. In fulfilling these roles on him he not built successfully imposed by circumstances, only ' for himself a pedestal among the immortals but also set his beloved Montene- gro on the road toward full self-realization. Today he is revered as Montene- gro's most illustiious son and the greatest poet in . Born November 1, 1813, in the village of Njegusi in Montenegro, Njegos was a member of a leading family which had produced state leaders for sever- al generations in that small mountainous country. He grew up among illiterate peasants and shepherds, whose main duty was to fight incessant battles with the invading Turks and to till their infertile land. He left home when he was eleven and entered the Cetinje monastery, at that time the only place of any culture and education in Montenegro. His schooling was meager and uncon- ventional : first in the monastery, then as tutored by the self-educated and ec- centric poet Sima Milutinovic Sarajlija. Milutinovic taught the young Njegos a few basic disciplines and instilled in him an appreciation for heroic folk po- ems, through which he called forth Njegos's own poetic inspirations. Njego§ was sent by his uncle, the state and spiritual leader of Montenegro, to a school near Hercegnovi, on the Adriatic coast, just beyond the Montenegrin border. His brief stay there was highly beneficial to Njegos because for the first time he was able to live in a more civilized environment. lt was at this time that he began to write poems in imitation of folk poetry, which was then the only kind of literature of which the people of Montenegro were aware. Though he had meager theological training, at the age of seventeen, in Oc- tober 1830, Njegos inherited his uncle's title as the head of both the state and the church. He remained in that capacity until his death. During his rule Nje- gos spent most of his energy in leading Montenegro out of the Middle Ages, while nonetheless finding time to write. He had to bring order among the Montenegrin tribes, which resisted his attempts to eradicate common crime and often conducted bloody wars against one another. He tried to convince his countrymen that they ought to pay taxes so that the country could be modernized. He also fought to establish the borders of Montenegro and played diplomatic games with the great powers - Turkey, Austria, and Russia - in order to achieve formal recognition of Montenegro as a sovereign state, vi

while at the same time organizing military campaigns against the Turks and their Montenegrin converts. He built schools and roads, very few of which had existed before him; organized a small governing body called the Senate, created the first organized police force in Montenegro to combat crime, col- lect taxes, and prevent tribal wars; imported a printing press and started pub- lishing books; and sent gifted youths abroad to provide for an enlightened future leadership for the country. All the while he was dreaming of the libera- tion of all from the Turks, placing his greatest hope in Russia as the pro- tector of the Slavs. In 1833 he went to Russia, where he was officially or- dained Bishop of Montenegro. While on his journey to Russia, in Vienna, he twice met Vuk Karad?ié, the great reformer of the Serbian written language and collector of Serbian folk literature. Njegos gave Vuk some of his writings to be published and, in turn, was encouraged by Vuk to write more. From Russia Njegoš brought many books, which represented his first real encounter with world literature. His second trip to Russia, in 1837, contributed even further to the recognition of Montenegro as a sovereign state and to the secur- of its borders. He remained a admirer of Russia all his life, even when ity loyal ' Russia had to make peace with his arch-enemy, Turkey. The next ten years were a period of lively literary activity in Njegos's life, during which he wrote his greatest works, The Ray of Microcosm and , while continuing his struggle for a strong and secure Mon- tenegro. The revolutions of 1848 in Europe strengthened his hopes that all Slavs, especially the South Slavs, would completely free themselves from for- eign domination, and that his beloved Montenegro would finally be left in peace. When the revolutions failed, Njego§ was bitterly disappointed. In addi- tion, strenuous work under unsavory conditions and the constant fighting which surrounded him undermined his health. He fell ill of tuberculosis and, after several trips to Italy and Austria in search of a cure, died on October 19, 1851, at his capital Cetinje, in his thirty-eighth year, too young to finish his two main missions - as a statesman and as a poet. He is buried at Lovcen, a mountain peak he had chosen himself. His mausoleum is now a national shrine for all Southern Slavs. Njegoš began to write poetry at a very early age, when he was only sixteen. His four books of poetry - Glas kamenštaka (The Voice of Mountaineers, 1833), Lijek jarosti turske (The Cure for Turkish Fury, 1834), Svobodijada (The Song of Freedom, 1835, published 1854), and Ogledalo srpsko (The Serbian Mirror, 1845) - attest to the fact that poetry was foremost on his mind and in his heart, even when he was preoccupied with other concerns. His early poems imitate the folk poetry with which he grew up and whose in- fluence stayed with him his entire life. As he matured, imitation gave way to his own renditions of the overriding theme of Serbian folk epic poetry - the struggle against the Turkish occupation or the threat thereof, and the eventual liberation from it. The freeing of all from the Turkish yoke was Njegoš's