Speaking generally, the Southern Slavs are divided into Slovenes, Serbo-Croats, and Bulgarians, but of these three branches only the Slovenes and Serbo-Croats are racially identical. In speaking of a political Southern Slav State, a state which would in the future dominate the whole of the Balkan Peninsula, it would be wrong not to include the Bulgarian nation. However, the Serbo-Croats form the principal cultural “unit” among the Southern Slavs, and after them come the Slovenes. The nucleus, the life-giving element of the Southern Slav family and its culture, is formed by the Southern Slavs of Serbia, Old Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Hercegovina, Croatia, Dalmatia and Serbian Hungary, or, to give them their collective name, by the Serbo-Croats. The Serbo-Croats, and more especially the Serbians proper (Serbians of Old Serbia and Serbia), have always led the vanguard of Serbo-Croatian political life; the two greatest cultural achievements of the Southern Slav race, to wit,179 the national poetry and the individual architecture and sculpture of Ivan MeŠtrovic, have always been associated with the Serbians of Serbia. The fall of the Serbian Empire forms the chief theme of MeŠtrovic’s art, no less than of Southern Slav national poetry—and thus it has become usual, if not strictly correct, to speak of all Southern Slav poetry as Serbian national poetry, and of the great Southern Slav artist as the great Serbian artist.

We speak of the Southern Slav poetry and of Ivan MeŠtrovic, our Southern Slav Michelangelo, as “buried treasures.” In a sense, all Slav civilization may be called a buried treasure. Russian and Slav literature as a whole, is far greater than its reputation in Western Europe. Ottokar Brezina, the celebrated Csech poet, is translated and read in Slavophobe Germany, but not in allied France and England; because in these days nations are more often brought into contact by war and travel than by civilization and our common humanity.

Western Europe has been even less just to the Southern Slavs than to any other Slav nation; and they who have paid so dearly in blood and suffering for their freedom are less known and recognized than any other European nation, in spite of the great historic merit of the Serbians, and the importance of their culture;—the consideration shown by Europe to a dynasty has been greater than her justice to a portion of mankind. A universal conflagration and a breaking-up of the old order of things was necessary, ere Europe learned to value millions of human beings more highly than the principle of a bygone generation, or the pathos of old age. In the future we may hope to see a just Europe which will not look upon the Serbians as a nation of regicides, but as a people revolting against secret treaties with the Hapsburgs, and upon the Southern Slavs, not as traitors, but as a democratic people refusing to be destroyed. When the Slovenes of Istria, Carniola, Styria, and Carinthia, together with the Serbo-Croats, form a strong, prosperous and free, though small State, their culture will be developed to the full, crowning and unifying Southern Slav life.

This growing civilization of Greater Serbia, which may be called Yougoslavia, will gather up the scattered threads of the history of Serbian art in the past. We shall then no longer speak of “Slovene painting,” “Croatian drama,” “Old Serbian tapestry,” “Serbian folk-lore.” The literature of one and the same people will cease to be broken up into “Literature in Ragusa,” “Dalmatian Island and Coast Literature,” “Bosnian,” “Croatian,” and “Serbian” literature. All this, together with the national life to the State, will form the totality of the Southern Slav nation. The two zones of culture: the Western European zone of the Croats and Slovenes, and the Eastern-Byzantine zone of the Serbians; the three religions: Orthodox, Catholic and Mussulman; the two forms of script: the Latin of the Croats, and the Cyrillic of the Serbians; all these, as well as a few differences of speech, will only add to the wealth and originality of Southern Slav culture. When this Greater Serbia or Yougoslavia shall stand for the third great civilization of the Balkans (the first was Hellenic, the second Byzantine), the Southern Slavs will become a new factor in European civilization and politics, and the great art of Serbian national poetry, and the work of the Yougoslav artist, MeŠtrovic, will no longer be buried treasures. Serbian music, literature and science, although they have existed and still exist, will only then be known and recognized.

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It has been the fate of the Southern Slavs to fulfil a mission in European history; Serbia and the Serbo-Croat race constituted a bulwark for Europe and Christianity against the invasion of Turkish barbarians and Islam. The martyrdom of the Southern Slavs lasted for centuries; it was a most humiliating thraldom to the barbarous Mongolism of the Ottoman Turks, and a hard, incessant fight for the dignity of humanity. It was a period of indescribable suffering from the barbarities of a lower race, one of the hardest struggles for existence the world has known. It was impossible to continue or to realize the plans of the great Nemanjic rulers. All attempts at union between the peoples of Croatia and Bosnia were fruitless: never in the history of Europe has a nation lived for so many centuries in such terrible political impotence and disunion as the Serbo-Croat and Slovene nation. Italy at the time of the Renaissance, and Germany before the liberation, were, in comparison with the Southern Slavs, in a well-organized and healthy condition.

Thus it has come about that we have no Serbian history of art, only various provincial histories—Old Serbian, Macedonian, Dalmatian, Bosnian, History of Serbian art in Hungary, Slovene and New Serbian.

The bitter enmity of Austria-Hungary towards Serbia, which deepened steadily, and finally became the direct cause of the European War, began with the Russophile and Southern Slav trend of Serbian policy after the series of Southern Slav Congresses, which took place in Belgrade at the time of the coronation of King Peter in 1904. Serbia’s new policy, after the suicidal and humiliating pro-Austrian policy of the Obrenovic dynasty had been abolished, was a racial policy, pro-Russian, pro-Bulgarian and democratic, which restored the stability and order of the State, and led to the foundation of the Balkan Alliance in 1912. Serbia regenerated, sought to consolidate a scattered, provincial culture into one great culture of a Greater Serbia, or of all the Southern Slavs. For this reason it has only quite recently become possible to speak of the united cultural efforts of the Serbo-Croats.

The consolidation of Southern Slav history and culture are only now beginning, and the appearance of the artist-prophet Ivan MeŠtrovic, a Dalmatian Catholic, is the central event in Southern Slav history of art. He is the prophet of the third, or Southern Slav Balkan, State, who proclaims that it is the historical task of Serbia to free the Southern Slavs and unite them, not only in a political, but in a spiritual, sense; and he has symbolized this ideal in his great art, which is the living soul of the architecture and sculpture of the Temple of Kossovo, and of all the Southern Slavs. When the Balkans are freed from Ottoman Islam and the Turks, when a strong and progressive Federation of Southern Slavs, including Bulgaria, Roumania, Greece and even Albania, is established, then we may see the triumphant rise of a mature and typically Southern Slav culture. When all nations shall receive their due, when they are allowed to develop freely, then and only then, the blood-drenched Peninsula will be at peace. A strong and prosperous Yougoslavia will interest the world both politically and economically; the opinion that the Southern Slavs are an uncivilized race will cease, and the great services rendered to art and letters by the Serbo-Croats and Slovenes will be recognized and appreciated at their true value. If we include MeŠtrovic’s Temple of Kossovo among these achievements, we may fairly claim to have contributed to the greatest possessions of human culture for all time.

The life-work of the Serbian Monarchs of the Nemanjic dynasty, who aimed at the inclusion of Serbia within the zone of the then-civilized nations of Europe, failed of its fulfilment, owing to the fall of the Serbian Empire before the Turks. The Serbo-Byzantine architecture of the convents and churches which abound in Macedonia and Serbia, affords admirable proof of the results of this work, the most important examples being Studenitza (1198), Decani (1331), and Gracanica (1341). A few years later culture made great strides in Dalmatia, but it was not a spontaneous, national growth, but rather the offspring of Slavicized Latin culture, and savoured more of Venice and the Renaissance than of Dalmatia and the Southern Slavs. Furthermore, the artists, scientists, philosophers and writers of Dalmatia went to Italy and were lost to their nation. The poor, down-trodden, uncivilized Southern Slav countries could not provide their artists with a livelihood. The celebrated mathematician, philosopher and astronomer, Roger BoŠkovic, went to Rome, Paris, and London; Nikolo Tomasso, a Serbian from Sevenico, founded the Italian literary language. Julije Lovranic (Laurana), an eminent architect of his time, was a Serbian from Dalmatia, and at one time the teacher of Bramante; and Franjo Laurana, of Palermo, a kinsman of Julije, earned a high place in the history of art through his sculpture; he was especially celebrated for his beautiful female portrait busts. In like manner many Serbians found their way to other countries. For instance, Peter Krianic, a Croatian, was the first Pan-Slavist; he was exiled to Siberia for his schemes of reform and European propaganda in Russia. To this day the Dalmatian ships’ captains are not the only representatives of that country all the world over, but great scientists and inventors like Pupin and Nikola Tesla.

Whenever a part of Serbian territory became independent, or even for a short time found tolerable conditions, an intense creative culture grew up swiftly, even after the fall of the Empire and during the time of slavery. For generations the greater part of the Serbians have lived, and still live, in slavery. The Serbians under Turkish rule were liberated only two years ago, and the liberation of the Slavs of the Hapsburg Monarchy is only just beginning. In accordance with the changes in the political fate of the Southern Slavs, and as the material conditions of the people grew better or worse, the centres of Slav literature moved from place to place. This unfortunate disorganization and consequent impotence were the bane of Serbian or Southern Slav literature. Ragusan literature; the literature of the Dalmatian coast and its islands, with its original creations, and many fine translations of the Greek drama—Homer, Virgil and Horace, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Tasso, Ariosto—none of these counted in the later development of literature in Croatia, Serbian Hungary, Bosnia or Serbia. As things now stand, Slovenian literature bears no recognized relation to Serbo-Croat literature, which has to a certain extent become unified. The great Croatian poets, Peter Preradovic, Ivan Mauranic, and Silvije Kranjcevic are scarcely read in Serbia, owing to bitter political disagreements and the Austrian divide-et-impera policy. For this reason, too, the Croatians scarcely know the greatest Southern Slav poets such as the Montenegrin Petar Petrovic NjegoŠ, or the Serbian from Hungary, Lazar Kostic. The historian and philosopher Boa Knievic and the metaphysician Branislav Petronijevic are scarcely known in Bosnia owing to their being Serbians from Serbia, that is to say, from anti-Austrian Serbia. Thus it is scarcely surprising that Southern Slav culture is unknown in Europe, when it is practically unknown even in Yougoslavia; when MeŠtrovic, the immortal artist of Yougoslavia, the architect and sculptor of the Serbian Acropolis, is unknown to his own countrymen beyond the frontier.

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At present the nation is fighting for its very life. Inter arma silent musÆ, and when a nation has to bear first the occupation and then the annexation of the heart of its territory; when it has to wage an incessant war, even in times of so-called peace, against an implacable neighbour like Austria-Hungary; when the strength of the nation is absorbed in the mere struggle for existence; then it is impossible to realize the possession of a great artist. The Serbian nation has waged three wars of life and death, and always against an enemy stronger than herself; first against Turkey, then against Bulgaria, and now against Austria—all within three years. At such a time it is impossible to create a great civilization, and still less possible not to appear to the world as a nation created solely for war. Diplomatic Europe is interested in Serbian politics—not from motives of humanity and justice. And to the Europe of civilization, philosophy, science, art and ethics the spirit of Yougoslavia is not even a name. Who knows that even apart from MeŠtrovic—who, as the peer of Phidias and Michelangelo, cannot be compared with mere mortals—the finest architect of the present day is a Southern Slav—a Slovene—the son of a small nation of three million people? This great architect of modern Europe is Josip Plecnik; he was director of the Arts Academy in Prague, and a few months ago was promoted to the Vienna Academy. Downtrodden Dalmatia boasts such powerful writers, thinkers and scientists as Count Ivo Vojnovic, Antun Tresic-Pavicic, the philosopher Petric, and the historian Nodilo. At the time of Carducci and Swinburne Bosnia possessed a typical poet, Silvije Kranjcevic, and at the present time Serbia has in Borislav Stankovi a novelist worthy to rank with Leonid Andreeff. In Yougoslavia there are to-day splendidly edited reviews, particularly good theatres and opera (as for instance the Opera at Zagreb), and good universities with distinguished professors and scientific men. Assuredly the Southern Slavs are not to blame if the whole world has seen this gifted and important nation through the spectacles of the Viennese Press, a nation which is worth more to the human race than the whole of the Hapsburg dynasty—or was, until the outbreak of the present war.... In all their poverty and slavery, and without the help even of Serbia, they undertook a campaign of enlightenment in the European Press, organized art exhibitions, and by concerts, lectures, and translations made known their art and literature to the world. English literature has greatly influenced Serbo-Croat literature; and not only Shakespeare, Dickens, Byron and Shelley are translated into Serbian, but Carlyle, Buckle, and Draper have also exercised great influence upon Serbian culture; and the most modern literature of Britain has found worthy translators and admirers. The poems of Rossetti, Browning, Keats, Swinburne and Walt Whitman, the novels of Wells, and the plays of Bernard Shaw have been translated into the beautiful tongue of the “Belgrade regicides.”

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To resume, it is not surprising that Western Europeans do not know Southern Slav civilization, when many rich fields of this culture still remain “buried treasures” to the Southern Slavs themselves. The Serbo-Croat and Slovene poets, such as Gundulic, Ranjina, Palmotic and Gjorgjic from Ragusa and Dalmatia, compare favourably with the exponents of Western literature, and among modern Serbo-Croat poets Petar Petrovic NjegoŠ, Lazar Kostic and Silvije Kranjcevic are great, even when compared with the greatest. Yet it is not so much the artists and their individual works, but the nation, and the collective artistic worth of the national spirit that is of priceless value. The music of the Southern Slavs, more especially the music of Old Serbia and Bosnia, possesses great melodic beauty and emotional depth, and when it finds its modern exponent it will take its proper place in the history of music. This great art of the Serbian nation however, is not only absolutely unknown to Europe and the rest of the world, but even in Serbia, although universally known, it is cultivated little or not at all. The Serbian State, which since its re-birth under Karagjorgje Petrovic has waged continual war for the liberty and union of the Southern Slavs, could not devote itself to music, art and beauty; and that part of the nation which remains under the yoke of the Ottoman Turks and the Hapsburgs felt still less inclined to do so. The priceless treasures of popular song have not yet been artistically exploited. Thus their own creation is a buried treasure to the Southern Slavs; in a sense, one may even say, that there is no Serbian music. Europeans cannot value this beautiful and noble music because they do not know it; neither can they value the national textile art of Old Serbia, Dalmatia and Croatia, since it is equally unknown. For three consecutive years the Serbian Government has had to arm the State, and has had neither time nor money to turn the Southern Slav textile art into a modern industry.

What the Serbo-Croats and Slovenes, and even the Bulgarians, do cultivate, and are proud of, is the Southern-Slav or Serbian national poetry, the ballads and legends which the people have invented and sung during centuries of slavery. Goethe, the great “citizen of the universe,” and the first to predict the foundation of a modern universal literature, assigned Serbian national poetry a very high place among the literatures of the world, and many of the poems have already been translated into different languages.18

To understand Ivan MeŠtrovic, the creator of the Temple of Kossovo, one must feel Serbian music and appreciate Serbian textile art; and above all one must learn to know this noble nation of Christians and Slavs through their national poetry. It is not arrogance on our part to call MeŠtrovic and the Temple of Kossovo the eternal art of the present generation. Every divinely-inspired artist creates not only beauty, but life,—for the mind is the life—and this great regenerator of European art is the son of a small nation of the blood-stained Balkans, and also the son of the great race which has produced Dostoievski.

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Europe and mankind in general must accord justice to the Southern Slav spirit, and the historic merit and achievements of the Serbian nation. The knowledge of Serbian music and especially of Serbian poetry can only be a gain to the Europe of the future. For this Serbian art is a truly Slav art, wonderful and deep, equal to that of ancient Egypt and India. It was not because Miczkiewicz, the great Polish poet, was himself a Slav, that he sang the praises of this beauty so enthusiastically, but because he understood the moral of this beauty. This poetry has been for centuries a life-force of the Southern Slav nation, because morality and life are one, and because the spirit of Serbian beauty—barbaric and god-like—is a religion in poetry and a moral in art. Without fear we may say that Serbian ethics are the most wonderful in the history of humanity. If it may be said of any nation that it is great and noble, it may be said of the Southern Slavs. Europe does not realize the monstrous injustice she has done these “barbarous” peoples. They are rather a heroic and mythical than a barbaric people. It is only Austria-Hungary who regards them as a nation of anarchists and regicides.

What is the Serbian spirit? It has been twice manifested. Once through a man, Ivan MeŠtrovic, the prophet of the Slav Balkans, and again through the whole nation, in the thousands of legends, fairy-tales, ballads and songs which have been collected by Vuk Stefanovic-Karadic.19 The occupation of Bosnia, then the national catastrophe of the annexation of Bosnia, and finally the Balkan War have already become the subjects of poetry, and our own time will see the latest and greatest war of the Southern Slavs sung in all its heroic reality.