Njegos: Poet, Prince, Bishop

by Milovan Djilas

Njegos, Bishop Rade of Montenegro, is the greatest poet the southern slavic language has known. This massive and scholarly critical biography is an international literary event. Written by a man who himself has become a historical figure.

Genres: History

498 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Milovan Đilas was a prolific political writer and former Yugoslav communist official remembered for his disillusionment with communism. Much of his work has been translated into English from Serbian. He was, above all, a literary artist. In several of his books, Djilas proclaimed himself a writer by vocation, and a politician only under the pressure of events.

Reviews

[Fred R · Rating 4 out of 5]

Njegos, Bishop Rade, Petar, the Metropolitan of Montenegro, rule over clannish, marginal Montenegro for several decades in the mid-19th century (although it may has well have been the 13th century, from the way Djilas depicts it). At the same time, he apparently found time to write the greatest poems in Serbian literature. That's an odd, attractive combination.

Milovan Djilas, Yugoslavian dissident and former communist, author of "The New Class", wrote this book while in prison for airing in public his democratic socialist doubts about the direction Tito's regime was headed, and it's impossible to read this book outside this context. It has the aphoristic, repetitive style of a man who's been talking to himself for a long time, turning over in his mind the same issues in isolation. When he describes 19th century Montenegro's difficult client-patron relationship with unreliable, absent-minded, selfish Russia, one immediately thinks of "Conversations with Stalin," and the Yugoslavian parties vexed relations with the Soviet Union. When this atheist writer enlarges upon the role Eastern Orthodox organizational structures played in state formation in Montenegro, there is, I imagine, in the back of his mind some sort of apology for his Communist youth.

The biography is somewhat haphazard (one wishes often for more political and social context), and themes, get picked up and lost too abruptly. It could also use an editor. That said it's a very charming book about a stark, brave, unhappy corner of history.