FACTA UNIVERSITATIS
Series:Linguistics and Literature Vol. 13, No
1, 2015, pp. 29- 41
TOWARDS MONTENEGRO:
A LAND OF GIANTS AND PANTHERS
UDC 821-992(497.16)
Marija Krivokapić1
, Neil Diamond2
1
University of Montenegro, Montenegro,2
International University of Novi Pazar, Serbia
Abstract. This paper problematizes the caricatural presence of Montenegro on the
symbolic map of travellers from the contemporary Anglophone world. To depict the
contours of this paradoxical presence, we propose a brief look at the romantic image of
the country developed in the last two centuries. Then we provide a chronological overview
and stress details from the most recent depictions to conclude that the image of the place
has almost stayed frozen till the present day. While avoiding politicizing, essentializing,
and self-stigmatization, we conclude that the absence of the country as a real historical,
socio-political, and cultural complexity has been conditioned by its long and manifold
isolation. We provide examples from travel writing, tourist and media representations,
fiction, and film. Our analysis relies mostly on authorities on the travel-writing genre.
Key words: Montenegro, history, travel writing, fiction, tourism.
THE OLD MONTENEGRO
Until it was declared a kingdom in 1910 Montenegro was an isolated space
surrounded by the hostile Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires. It was only the rare
politicians and scientists, but usually actually spies, who visited it. As we learn from
Branko Momčilović, the first reports about Montenegro appeared in the eighteenth
century, two published in The Annual Register (1767-1768) focusing on Šćepan Mali, the
imposter king, and one by Eyles Irwin (1788) who claimed that ―the Natives of Montagna
Negro‖ are of Greek origin (1990: 10-11). Đukanović notes that the first official
encounter between Montenegro and Great Britain took place during the Napoleonic wars.
Although delighted with their Spartan bravery, the instructions sent to Admiral
Freemantle– not to field Montenegrins in the battle for Kotor because their lawlessness
might inflict animosity towards the British among the peaceful citizens of the Bay– speak
of the British attitude towards Montenegrins(2006: 375).In 1843 Charles Lambwrote that
there were few nations about whom one knew so little and that the name Montenegro
Submitted February9th
2015, accepted for publication April26th
, 2015
Corresponding author: Krivokapic Marija
University of Montenegro, Montenegro
E-mail: marija13a@gmail.com
30 M. KRIVOKAPIĆ, N. DIAMOND
could hardly be found on maps (Ibid). Barović‘s research (2014) confirms that the
intentions of the old cartographers are reflected through the neutralization of geographical
orientation markers and invalidation of Montenegrin territory and status.
Another obstacle barring Montenegro came in the form of a steep and winding goat
path as the only road at the time leading from the port of Kotor over the mountains to its
capital Cetinje. This terrifying path made even Edith Durham comment ironically in 1900
that despite the fact that its description is found in almost all of the foreigners‘ sketches,
she herself could not ignore this ―vast desolation of impassable rock, crag over crag, an
endless series of bare mountaintops, utterly arid and lonesome‖ (Hodgson, 1991: 10).This
gothic impression was deepened by Montenegrin features. National Geographic from
1918 describes Montenegrins as ―tall, large and erect [...] liberty-loving mountaineers
who have lived apart and distrust strangers‖ (Winchester,2009: 429).
MONTENEGRO IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
A wider frame to this isolation, as Preston discussed (2009: 11), came from the
absence of a Hellenist, Roman, and Renaissance heritage that determined the perception
of Montenegro as a culturally empty space. Like the Balkans in general, as Goldsworthy
elaborated in Inventing Ruritania: Imperialism of Imagination (1998), Montenegro
appeared especially suitable for the projection of Western fantasies. Preston argues that
Shakespeare‘s Twelfth Night (1601), set in Illyria, ―an imaginative realm, an evocative
but remote location, unvisitable and unverifiable,‖ (2009: 27) may be considered to have
pioneered this tradition. The nineteenth century‘s romantic imagination gave birth to the
sonnet ―Montenegro‖ (1877) by the British laureate Alfred Tennyson, which celebrated
the indomitable Montenegrin spirit (―They rose to where their sovereign eagle sails,/They
kept their faith, their freedom, on the height,/Chaste, frugal, savage, arm‘d by day and
night…‖). The sonnet promoted W.E. Gladstone‘s liberal politics. Gladstone‘s speech
was also published as ―Montenegro. A Sketch,‖ in May 1887 in The Nineteenth Century,
while neither of them ever visited Montenegro. Yet, despite the charged drama and
unconventionality, none of the great romantic rebels– Byron (who was in Albania and
Greece, that so powerfully lacked the choking restrictions of home), Shelley and Keats–
and not one of the modernist self-exiles, D.H. Lawrence and James Joyce, who were as
close as Italy and Croatia, ever saw Montenegro.
A few minor authors, but not lesser travellers, wrote about their sojourn in
Montenegro at the same time when these great British novelists, in their self-imposed
exiles, were crossing the meridians in search of constructive ways of being. Thus, Joyce
Cary arrived in 1912 during the Balkan Wars because, among other things, he was
anxious that ―there would be no more wars. And I had a certain romantic enthusiasm for
the cause of the Montenegrins; in short I was young and eager for any sort of adventure‖
(Qt. Goldsworthy, 2002: 30).The country, in his Memoir of the Bobotes was ―stones,
stones, stones‖ (Qt. Đorić-Francuski, 2009: 42).
In Two Vagabonds through Serbia and Montenegro (1916)Jan and Cora Gordon are
roused in Pljevlja by bronchitic roosters (1939: 50). From here theyride starved mulesto
Cetinje, via mount Durmitor that emits ―japanesiness […] equalled only by Japan itself‖
(65).From time to time they hear ―a faint ‗pop! pop!‘ as though far-away giants were
holding feast and opening great champagne bottles‖ (59).Further south the region reveals
Towards Montenegro: a Land of Giants and Panthers 31
itself as ―a weird sight reminiscent of some romantic Dutch painter‖ (78). When they
finally reach a ―polychromatic‖ village, situated in a great crater filled with mud and
Montenegrins, looking like ―a watchmaker‘s wife in her best silk dress,‖ (99) it was the
―cheerfully dreary‖ capital. A pink building calledBilliadohad the only billiard table in
the country, so that the narrators infer that ―billiard tables were rarer and more curious
than kings‖ (79-81) in Montenegro.Travelling to the coast in an Indian looking cart, the
architecture starts resembling Italy‘s. Apart from this unique international conglomeration,
Montenegro is also scenery with literary allusions, such as the one to W. M. Thackeray‘s
satirical novel The Rose and the Ring (1855), set in an imaginary state of a similarly
fantastic order. On their way back to Rijeka Crnojevića, in a boat rowed by four
Montenegrin women, the visitors experience a striking revelation of a dark otherness.
Namely, the women start their four-tone folk melody in nasal falsettos, sounding like ―a
great ox wagon drawn uphill by four bullocks and one of the wheels ungreased‖ (96).
Rebecca West travelled through the Balkans in the 1930s in an effort to understand
the persistence of the human will to death embodied in Serbian Prince Lazar‘s choice of a
heavenly over an earthly kingdom on the eve of the battle of Kosovo Field in 1389. In
Montenegro she finds a curious solution. As Preston notes, the most striking Montenegrin
characteristic for West was its ―chilling blankness‖ (2009: 23). Montenegrin architecture
reveals ―the terrible purity of Montenegrin good looks,‖ (24) i.e. a Montenegrin woman
in her prime has a face ―like a niche designed for a statue it does not hold‖ (25).West‘s,
being a more profound attempt to depict the spirit of a place so imbued with blood and
struggle, prompted a whole surge of interpretations and is a work of art to be discussed as
a whole in a separate paper.
MONTENEGRO AFTER WORLD WAR II
After World War Two, when the empires disintegrated and globalization erased the
exotic anomalies of the locations (Huggan, 2012: 6), depriving travellers and their hosts
from performing their traditional roles (Ivison,2003), travel writing as a genre faced a
major crisis. It felt as if the entire globe was mapped and there was nothing left to
discover. However, the footsteps genre of rediscovery was still handy. That is how R.E.
Gruber travelled in 1987 to investigate the 1954adventure of Rex Stout‘s Nero Wolfe, the
genius detective, who ―was a Montenegrin‖, which was ―part of his mystique‖ (1987).
Gruber notes that ―Yugoslavia has enjoyed a boom in tourism,‖ but that ―the stunning
Gulf of Kotor‖ is still ―the unspoiled entryway to the Black Mountain‖ (Ibid). Like Wolfe
in The Black Mountain, she arrives by boat and takes the zigzagging Lovćen pass to
Cetinje, where ―[e]verything is white, like frozen sea waves or gargantuan bleached
bones […] that you don‘t really expect to find civilization at the other end‖ (Ibid). From
Cetinje she goes into ―Wolfe country,‖ Rijeka Crnojevića -―the village where Wolfe […]
makes important contacts,‖ Ruth in forms, quoting the novel: ―all they had to do was
knock off chunks of rock, roll them down to the edge of the valley, stack them in
rectangles and top the rectangles with thatched roofs‖ (Ibid). Along the Cijevna Canyon,
she drives on a dirt road and hits the Albanian border where Wolfe was born and where
he legendarily solves a murder mystery. The Montenegro of this road was an unpleasant
experience, but the Montenegro of the novel, Wikipedia says, was ―one of the most
dangerous places on earth‖ (The Black Mountain).
32 M. KRIVOKAPIĆ, N. DIAMOND
Wolfe, weighing a ―seventh of a ton‖ would ―under no circumstances […] leave his
home or violate his routines in order to facilitate an investigation‖ (Wikipedia, Nero
Wolfe). Yet, in the novel he wants to avenge the death of an old friend, whose family is
involved in a dissident movement called ―the Spirit of the Black Mountain,‖ guerrillas for
Montenegrin independence. Wolfe is prompted to action by a dark-eyed Montenegrin
woman, who summons: ―you are of the race that fought back the savage Turks for five
hundred years‖ (Stout, 1954: Ch.3).When he learns from Italian sources that ―the man
[he] seek[s] is within sight of the mountain,‖ (Ch.5)Wolfe ventures where ―neither the
New York police nor the FBI could reach‖ (Ch.4).He knows he cannot enter legally, ―but
among those rocks and ravines,‖ he deems, ―what‘s the difference?‖ To this bold
statement his Italian contact warns that ―the rocks and ravines […] around that mountain,
are the lairs of the Tito cutthroats and the Albanian thugs from across the border who are
the tools of Russia‖ (Ch.5). Nevertheless, with only ―[a] hundred and ninety-four dollars
and twelve cents in petty, and thirty-eight hundred in emergency reserve,‖ (Ibid) Wolfe
flies off to Rome, then with a special charter to Bari, wherefrom he sails into Montenegro
past Tito‘s coastguards. Once on land, he heads up the mountains, steered only by the
stars. In the morning, he comes across a villager who must only be Montenegrin because
he is ―[s]ix feet tall, a jaw like a rock, an eagle‘s beak for a nose, a brow to take any
storm‖ (Ch.7).Entering Titograd (for Wolfe, the hateful socialist name for Podgorica), his
companion, Archie Goodwin narrates in the suave and sensitive style of Sherlock
Holmes‘ accomplice Dr. Watson: ―I decided that if and when I become a dictator I would
damn well clean a town up and widen some of its streets and have a little painting done
before I changed its name to Goodwingrad‖ (Ch.8). Travelling under an alias, Wolfe
learns that Montenegro‘s society is crawling with spies:―You may be Russian […] agents
of the World Bank […] foreign spies from God knows where [...] American friends of the
Spirit of the Black Mountain […] even […] sent from Room Nineteen in Belgrade, to test
the loyalty and vigilance of Montenegrins‖ (Ibid).Of course, Wolfe eludes the police
and– believing that ―man‘s sole responsibility is [not] to his ego‖ (Ch.13) – conveys the
murderer into American custody.
Although the Nero Wolfe novels were nominated for Best Mystery Series of the
Century at Bouchercon 2000, Stout never visited Montenegro, but learned everything
from the immigrant Louis Adamič‘s memoir The Native’s Return (1934). However, there
was a whole discussion about Wolfe‘s origin. Someone claims that he is the ―offspring of
an affair between Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler (a character from ‗A Scandal in
Bohemia‘),‖ who met in Montenegro in 1892 (Wikipedia, Nero_Wolfe). Some maintain
that ―physical and psychological resemblances‖ suggest that Holmes‘ brother Maycroft is
―a more likely father for Wolfe‖ (Ibid).There is also a suspicion that the French thief
Arsène Lupin may be Wolfe‘s father, because― in one story Lupin has an affair with the
queen of a Balkan principality, which may be Montenegro‖ (Ibid).Nevertheless, the
community ―Wolfe Pack‖ advertised a 2006 meeting in ―Bona Fides Garden for a
delicious traditional Montenegrin dinner […] served without any Albanian spies [sic],‖
where they welcomed – Montenegrin ambassador Nebojša Kaluđerović, who ―spoke […]
regarding one of Montenegro‘s national heros [sic], Nero Wolfe‖(Wolfe Pack, 2014).
One of Brad Pitt‘s first appearances on screen is in Božidar Nikolić‘s The Dark Side
of the Sun, described as ―pure drama […] the 1988 Yugoslavian tragedy.‖ Pitt‘s character
Rick suffers from a skin disease that ―has taken his family to the ends of the Earth to find
a cure‖ (Reardon, 2011). This exotic place is the Sv. Stefan Island, while we are offered
Towards Montenegro: a Land of Giants and Panthers 33
inescapable romanticism on Ulcinj‘s beach, a drive through the UNESCO protected
Perast, and a brawl in a Kotor bar. Alas, Pitt‘s 2010 revisit must have questioned his
purported nostalgia. The media reported that he and Angelina Jolie called for room
service twice after midnight while staying in the hotel Splendid.1
The chase that the
media conducted after the famous couple was described as comparable to Ocean 11
because Pitt was driving fast. In the end he was even ―insulting, ‖they complain (he
called them ―obnoxious‖), ―but did not throw anything at us.‖2
MONTENEGRO AFTER YUGOSLAVIA
The fall of the Berlin Wall and the opening of ―hidden‖ Europe enabled a new modus
of travelling called ―responsible tourism,‖ one significant part of which is ―tourism of
suffering‖ (Huggan,2012: 6).As Eastern Europe‘s disorders called many a traveller to
urgent social and political action (Hulme and Youngs, 2002: 93), the travellers insist on
the tragic notes of this world (Decker, 2009: 27),perceiving poverty stricken communities,
bad transport, dirty hotels, and newsstands abounding with pornographic magazines.
Established pilgrimages in the 1990s through the countries that made up Yugoslavia
mostly encompassed the sites of atrocities. As Goldsworthy notices,
some of the dullest backwaters […] have acquired a dubious romantic resonance over
the past ten years while reporters searched for the Balkan heart of darkness, in order to
return with tales of ―unspeakable‖ horror. The relative anonymity of those parts […] is
another indication of this particular fascination. (2003: 29)
It explains why during his Mediterranean tour Paul Theroux devotes only two pages of
The Pillars of Hercules (1993) to Venice, but over thirty to Albania. Montenegro, which
did not suffer serious calamities, held no interest for him even as an opportunity for a
quicker route from Dubrovnik to Albania. Bill Bryson, in Neither Here Nor There (1998),
and Tony White, in Another Fool in the Balkans: In the Footsteps of Rebecca West
(2006) fail even a mention of Montenegro. Even for R.D. Kaplan‘s Balkan Ghosts (1990)
– the book which allegedly influenced the U.S. policy towards the Balkan crisis (Lisle,
2006: 33) and in which, even more famously, its author claims that ―Nazism […] can
claim Balkan origin‖ and that it was from ―the southern Slavic world [that] Hitler learned
how to hate so infectiously‖ (2005: li) – Montenegro was not appealing.
It may be for this reason that the currently popular fantasy genre finds Montenegro a
friendly setting. Thus, set in the dark period between the Berlin Congress and World War
One, Lawrence Starling‘s novel Montenegro retains the country‘s fantastic contours. Its
hero, Auberon Harwell, an Oxford educated Briton, climbing the famous path from
Kotor, meets the typically gigantic and bearded ―mercurial Montenegrin‖ (1998: 62).
Harwell introduces himself as a botanist studying mountain herbs, whereas he is actually
a spy sent to investigate the possibility of British intervention in the complex
administrative politics of Sandžak, which was temporarily in the hands of AustroHungarians.
A road through the terrifying Morača canyon takes him to another ―heart of
darkness,‖ the mountain village of Kolašin near the border with Serbia. Here he lives
with Danilo Pekočević on a farm circled with Turkish heads impaled on pikes as a
1
Cf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MquqJ83bb7I (accessed 02.10.2014).
2
Cf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN5o9OWsDaU (accessed 02.10.2014).
34 M. KRIVOKAPIĆ, N. DIAMOND
symbol of triumph and a threat to his Muslim neighbours. Pekočević, who himself cut his
wounded leg in one of the numerous battles, lost two sons in the wars with the Turks, but
still teaches his only remaining Toma to continue his mad endeavours. In line with
generic expectations, Harwell develops a platonic relationship with Pekočević‘s wife,
Sofia, and fulfills her last wish to help Toma escape to the United States.
The same motive is exploited in Petar Antonijević‘s disturbing film Savior, 1998,
starring Dennis Quaid and Nastassja Kinski. Yet, while depicting the brutalities of the
1990s, to remind that ―human nature […] sometimes drags us down to our dog-eat-dog
beginnings,‖ (Ebert, 1998) the director obviously assumed that shooting the movie in
Rijeka Crnojevića and on Lake Skadar would effectively add to the drama.
During NATO‘s bombing of Serbia and Montenegro in 1999, Simon Winchester
visited Montenegro and reported in The Fracture Zone. He travelled with a 1918 book,
hence not surprisingly his expectations framed an impression of ―the wild and barren
hillsides‖ (2009: 492).Winchesters retells the local story that ―God had shaken out his last
bag of rocks at the conclusion of his seven days of world-creating genesis, and where
they fell, lo! there stood Montenegro,‖ (Ibid.)and remembers a drive up a ―cliff face via a
dizzying switchback of a track, called the Ladder of Cattaro, that is more suited to mules
than for the kind of passengers – diplomats, bureaucrats […]– that a capital city ordinarily
attracts‖ (Ibid).
However, he manages what Theroux did not even try, to enter the country near the
border of Croatia. There he faces the checkpoint staff ―surprised to see anyone venturing
into Montenegro.‖ While ―grin[ing] uneasily,‖ the concerned officer warned: ―Are you
sure […]? […] Dangerous people ahead‖ (237,0/429). Like in the movies, a black
Mercedes waits for Winchester‘s group on the other side of the border, ―with two tough
young Yugoslav women inside. […]they were known in the trade as fixers – members of
an elite corps of unsung heroes who operate in all distant wars, the local helpmeets
without whom almost no foreign correspondent could ever ply the craft‖ (240,8/429).
Winchester learns that Montenegro is ―a nervous country, living on a razor‘s edge,‖
(255,5/429)as it did not fully support Belgrade, but was unready to contradict it.
Therefore, it welcomed foreign reporters, but had to smuggle them in the special police
car through the checkpoints of the Yugoslav Army.
The idea was that we would drive in the Mercedes to the police station, we would
transfer to the police van and hide under blankets on the floor while the women
remained in the car, and then the two vehicles, with an extra police jeep for security
―in case things get rough,‖ would drive toward Podgorica. (Ibid.)
For Winchester, this was a proof of the mythical reputation of Montenegrins as ―fiercely
independent […] they are a people of the sea and the mountains and not the rivers and the
plains. They would never […] accept subjugation‖ (245,0/429). Their independence is
ensured by the employment of ―the simplest but most effective of guerrilla methods […]
that would be duplicated hundreds of years later, half a world away, by such strategists as
Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, and Mao Zedong in China‖ (Ibid).
Of the old capital, Cetinje, Winchester makes a series of overstatements. High in the
mountains, Cetinje was still ―remote and unreachable,‖ its isolation is ―curious and
glorious‖(266,0/429). What is more, ―there is a lunar bleakness to the place that makes
one wonder why anyone lives there.‖ And not only that, but ―[i]n every fold of rock […]
there are six kinds of snakes‖ (269,5/429). However, this is described as the ―Montenegrin sea
Towards Montenegro: a Land of Giants and Panthers 35
of tranquility,‖ in which Cetinje ―slumber[s] in the eternal sunshine‖ (Ibid). In this ―tiny
old city,‖ everything is miniature as if it were ―the capital of Toytown: You half expect
the figures – a mayor, a fireman, a constable […]– to be made of plastic, and move from
place to place only when the gigantic stubby fingers of a child reach down from the
skies‖ (Ibid). Finally, the fact that ―[e]veryone, the Russians included, had embassies
here‖ makes Winchester claim that Montenegro is ―a full-fledged if somewhat Ruritanian
kingdom‖(Ibid).
Facing the controversial canvas of Balkan politics, travel writers are eager to retain
credibility by complementing personal experiences with historical facts, cultural theories
and philosophical meditations. To balance this eclecticism, they often include academic
apparatuses, such as indices, bibliographies, maps, tables, lists of abbreviations.
However, the experience of travel is difficult to translate, not only because travellers
often rely on second-hand sources, but mostly because the journey always takes place in
the past in relation to the moment of narration. This secondary journey (Hulme and
Youngs, 2002: 32), therefore, means recollection and inevitably entails idiosyncrasy in
the form of chronological relocations of events and of their meanings. Recollections,
however, repeatedly lead to smaller or flagrant errors. In Through the Embers of Chaos
Dervla Murphy bicycles through the region and often stops to rest when she gets an
opportunity to observe nature. Thus, struggling up the Herzegovinian cliffs to Montenegro she
writes of an aesthetic appreciation of Montenegro‘s timeless and ―profound silence[…]
broken only by mewing falcons and croaking ravens. And theirs was the only movement
in all the expanse of harsh beauty‖ (2004:175). Entering Nikšić, the first city after the
border, Murphy notices an impossible eight-story building to her right. She pays an
overpriced 45 DM for a bed in the Onogošt hotel, in which, as was usual during this
journey, she does not find hot water. This is only an introduction to the reality of Nikšić,
―one of Yugoslavia‘s most violent and lawless towns.‖ Its deserted factories make it so
―dead‖ that she wonders ―if Nikšić was real – or was [she] having a nightmare about
being in this place of immeasurable destitution and gloom?‖ (176). One morning she
comes across something unimaginable to Montenegro (if only for the number of
unemployed loitering in the streets): an empty square, all shops closed, café life almost
non-existent. Even the waiters of the hotel refused her alcohol because she was a
foreigner. This notion of absentness gives her time to contemplate Nikšić‘s military
activities in Dubrovnik in the early 1990s, which, again, serve as an introduction to her
general impression that Montenegro is a Chetnik country. It is full of ―Chetnik-friendly
bars frequented by bearded intellectuals,‖ which to her is ―the source of the poison that
had killed Yugoslavia‖ (184). In Podgorica, the ―Montenegrins‘ symbol of all that is
modern and progressive,‖ (183) the caricature of Montenegro is complicated by the sight
of a series of new shiny cars parked on the sidewalks.
Many have no registration plates, all are untaxed and uninsured. […] approximately 80
per cent of cars in Montenegro, Kosovo, and Albania have been stolen in Western
Europe and are driven by untested and unlicensed men (never women). Having bought
your cut-price Mercedes off you go and if you happen to kill a cyclist or pedestrian so
what? This is equivalent to killing a dog or cat and in most cases there is no penalty,
beyond what the individual driver‘s conscience might impose. (183-184)
In an effort to emancipate their experience from the inheritance of their ―imperial
eyes,‖ (Pratt, 2002) some travellers reject authority over the place they describe and
36 M. KRIVOKAPIĆ, N. DIAMOND
instead offer entertainment. For its famous abandon, the Balkans has seen many a
traveller under the influence of alcohol. Frequently after discomforting scenes Murphy
has to drink glasses of rakija and sometimes gets ―perilously drunk, verging on
footlessness‖ (2004:10). The Guardian published recently that ―Montenegrin enthusiasm
for oenology can be dangerous, as they haven‘t really grasped the concept of a wine
tasting yet. You don‘t spit, just glug – and the wine is normally followed by a slug of
rakija‖ (Novakovich, 2014). Reviewing travelling trends through the Balkans, Antonia
Young (2014) suggests that it is reasonable to expect that authors will focus on their field
of interest while maintaining their readers‘ attention by embellishments and exaggerations.
However, with this reservation in mind, could we believe what we read?
MONTENEGRO AFTER SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO
With the acute awareness that the globalized world has obliterated the alluring
―otherness,‖ a new wave of travel writing appeared, called ―salvage travel writing,‖
(Carr, 2002: 82) with travellers resembling scavengers that pick up the leftovers of once
exotic beauty. In 2011 Lonely Planet placed Montenegro on the list of the countries – not
states – that did not exist twenty years earlier. Travellers now mainly delight in its
landscape – Montenegro has the largest lake, the highest peaks, the longest beach,
primeval forests, and the deepest canyon in Europe. After this drama, the capital,
Podgorica, despite its recent architectural revival, is ―a letdown,‖ (Tapon, 2012: 349)―the
unlovely socialist-realist city‖ (Winchester, 2009: 266,0/429). Travellers of this type
strive to get insights into the places hidden from tourists, while their naïve observations
paradoxically enable them authority over the truly ―authentic‖ (Bracewell, 2005: 88-115).
In her ―unconventional guide,‖ an Australian traveller realizes that the Montenegrin
―classic symphony of pure, mountainous splendor,‖ which one can see nowhere ―else on
the planet,‖ may help those looking for ―a change of life‖ (Bulatović, 2010).After such an
experience, another traveler:
crossed the most obvious border of the trip, the one between traveler and tourist.
Despite wandering through a place of such hardship, the trail had introduced me to a
rare part of Europe where the very idea of walking freely between worlds is still a gift
as sweet and momentous as your first soft drink. A whole new Europe, a gracious and
wild one, had presented itself, and to experience it I just needed to lace up my boots.
That all may one day disappear, too. (Neville, 2013)
At the end of her tour, Murphy reaches Dubrovnik and observes how ―[t]he contrast with
Montenegro was striking.‖ She fears that ―perhaps this is how Montenegro will soon be –
and Albania, and everywhere else awaiting conquest by ‗globalization‘. My granddaughters
will grow up deprived, in a monotonous world where prosperity is equated with TNCimposed
homogeneity‖ (2004: 326).
After independence in 2006, Montenegro went through a great ―discovery‖ in the
media. An article in The Guardian from December 8, 2006, titled ―Montenegro: essential
information,‖ advises travellers to use vaccines against ―tetanus, polio and hepatitis A
[…] Others may be recommended if you‘re planning to stay a while‖ (Anon, 2014). In
June 2007, The Observer concludes that Montenegro is ―refreshing untouristy,‖ but ―a
little quirky‖ (Dunford, 2007). Therefore, fantastic notes from pre-discovery logically
Towards Montenegro: a Land of Giants and Panthers 37
continue. ―Film director Peter Jackson could have shot his Lord of the Rings trilogy here;
at night the black pine-covered slopes of […] Durmitor […] are as foreboding as the
shadows of Tolkein‘s thunderous peaks‖ (Ibid). Entering Podgorica, one passes by ―a
series of anti-corruption billboards […] erected in an Orwellian gesture ‖(Samuels,
2010). On his way from to Cetinje, this reporter drives by ―shattered white boulders and
tenacious green foliage‖ that strike a chord of ―the Judean hills.‖ Besides, ―insect life was
so loud that […] it sounded as if you had suddenly tuned into a radio frequency from
another planet‖ (Ibid). But, as he approaches the coast the country becomes reminiscent
of ―a movie-set version of the South of France, except that most of the beaches are two
feet wide and covered in cement‖ (Ibid).
Although a great number of the jet set favour the coast – as ―the perfect short haul,
‖yachting under ―the rugged snow-capped mountains,‖ along the ―pristine beaches‖(I
montenegro, 2012)– it is now for the ―first time‖ that one can find ―decent‖ accommodation
in the mountains, The Observer argues in 2007, presenting the multi-million euro project,
the hotel Bianca in Kolašin, where, if one is rich, ―the strains of modern living feel a
lifetime away‖ (Imontenegro,2013).The Guardian then claimed that ―Montenegro has
only recently arrived on the tourist map […] So if you venture just a little off the beaten
track, you‘ll find few other tourists to disturb the peace‖ (Ingle, 2007).The author walks
through the national park Biogradska Gora and contemplates that if by chance he were in
Germany or England, ―there would be a small battalion of ruddy-cheeked walkers,
admiring, smiling, snapping away. But Montenegrins […] prefer to stick to the roads,
beep-beep-beeping loudly in their late 80s Golfs, oblivious to the beauty that surrounds
them‖ (Ibid).
As for Montenegrins, like their mountains, ―they are huge!‖ Ingle exclaims and warns:
―journeying around can feel like being Gulliver in Brobdingnag‖ (2007). Someone
notices that ―highlanders still treat visitors as honorary guests; their welcome (bone
crushing handshakes, carbohydrate-heavy dishes and copious pre-breakfast brandies)
enhanced by a carpe diem attitude‖ (Rafanelli, 2009). Here one always has to help
oneself with ―another mashed potato mountain‖ as not to offend the hostess, who is
always wearing ―a black dress‖ (Ibid). At the end, all one can do is to ―curl up in [one‘s]
wood-clad bedroom and fall as sound asleep as a bear that‘s gorged itself before
hibernation‖ (Ibid). In Cetinje, The New Yorker author visits the mayor, whose ―large
nose was matched by elephantine ears and big bags under his eyes, which combined to
give his face the mournful aspect of a Balkan Lyndon Johnson‖ (Samuels, 2010).
Meeting an ―extravagantly theatrical‖ Catholic priest, another traveller is reminded ―of
Anthony Blanche, or at least the Nickolas Grace version of him, in Brideshead
Revisited; I thought he might stutter and roll his eyes, and refer to the Serbs as ‗wuffians‘
or ‗hobbledehoys‘‖ (Winchester, 2009: 259,0/429).
Although someone claimed in 2005 that ―[i]f your tastes – culinary and otherwise,
extend to something a bit different and you‘ve a healthy sense of curiosity about an area
of which you‘ve heard much but know little, go and visit Montenegro while it‘s still
relatively undiscovered,‖ (Jones, 2005) the phrase ―relatively undiscovered‖ repeats in
2008 in ―Letter from Montenegro: See the Coast while You Can‖ (White, 2008).
Although in May 2013The Times reasoned that for the “steady inflow of high net worth
individuals […] it seems unlikely that Montenegro will stay hidden for long” (I
montenegro, 2013), one year later The Guardian still presents a tourist agency ―Undiscovered
Montenegro,‖ whose report opens quoting the Montenegrin Prime Minister who needed
38 M. KRIVOKAPIĆ, N. DIAMOND
to stress that ―Montenegro is not Moscow-on-Sea‖ (Novakovich, 2014). Homer‘s heroes,
Mercurian giants, Japanese mountains, Judean landscapes, Italian architecture, etc., are
now enriched with Russian traits. Still, it all remains so mysteriously hidden that in January
2014 someone still asserts that Montenegro is ―a place of mind, before a real place‖ (I
montenegro, 2014). Even Montenegrin TV ―Vijesti,‖ in October 2014, started a documentary
series titled ―Wonderful Montenegro.‖3
―FROM MONTENEGRO, WITH LOVE‖4
However, an indeed undiscoverable Montenegro appears in the James Bond movie
Casino Royale in 2006, which takes place in Montenegro but was shot in the Czech
Republic. Namely, another legendary spy is in a luxurious train passing through idyllic
countryside when the screen shows the credit ―Montenegro,‖ and Bond rushes to the
famous casino in the town covered with cupolas and roof peaks, supposedly Budva.
Nevertheless, in 2007The Observer recalls the days of Montenegro‘s fame, when Sophia
Loren, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor caroused by the Adriatic. It mentions that
Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones are thinking of buying property near Kotor,
where Ralf Schumacher owns land. But it still claims that the recognition of Montenegro
is significantly helped by Casino Royale in which James Bond plays poker in Budva
(McLaughlin, 2007).The article quotes the hotelier who believes ―that in 10 years,
[Montenegro] will be better than Monte Carlo‘‖ (Ibid).Montenegro, Preston elaborates
(2009: 29), sounds almost like Monte Carlo, it is exotic enough and would certainly be a
cheaper place to shoot the movie. Yet, the filmmaker did not come to Montenegro. More
unbelievable is an interpretation from June 2014, titled ―Budva, Montenegro,‖ which
says: ―It‘s all about sun, sand and James Bond in the Montenegrin resort town of
Petrovac[!], which was used as a filming location for Casino Royale‖ (Abbasi, 2014).
Wikipedia confirms this: ―In the 21st
James Bond film, Casino Royale, Petrovac was the
location of the eponymous casino.‖ What is more, it adds that ―a part of the movie
Brothers Bloom was filmed in Petrovac‖ (Petrovac_Budva). Although on the page
devoted to this movie, Wikipedia says that it was filmed in Ulcinj, Montenegro
(The_Brothers_Bloom). TheBrothers Bloom (2008) is a crime comedy about a group of con
artists operating in Prague, Mexico, and St. Petersburg, but hiding out in Montenegro.
Petrovac‘s Castello, built on a gothic rock protruding into the Adriatic, does appear twice in
the movie as an alluring background while two characters conspire by the beach.
When he ―discovered‖ Kotor, Francis Tap on dreams of buying a villa on a hill
overlooking the sea, together with shares in the newly opened casino ―Maximus‖: he will be
using the VIP entrance, dressed in Versace, enjoy free drinks, send drinks to ―the hottest
chicks‖ at the bar and take them later to his own Jacuzzi… (2012: 342). But, just as in the
movies, in front of this dream place in broad daylight he witnesses the murder of his
buddy Fritz, who was also a friend of the notorious drug dealer Mr. Sarić.
Apart from their phonetic similarity, and that they are both tiny geographical stretches,
with a climate favourable for tourism and a large number of casinos, Montenegro and
Monte Carlo share another feature. The New Yorker‘s 2010 article ―A tale of diamonds,
3
Cf. http://www.vijesti.me/tv/cudesna-crna-gora-predstavljamo-tradicionalnu-njegusku-trpezu-800617 (accessed 18.
10.2014).
4
A reference to the 1963 James Bond film From Russia, with Love.
Towards Montenegro: a Land of Giants and Panthers 39
thieves, and the Balkans‖ derives: ―Montenegro is a beautiful, forbidding country of six
hundred thousand people. It shares borders with Serbia, Albania, Croatia, and Bosnia and
Herzegovina, making it one of the leading centers for smuggling in the Balkans‖
(Samuels, 2010).The story is about a group that Interpol dubbed ―Pink Panthers,‖ after
Peter Seller‘s crime comedy The Pink Panther. The ―Pink Panthers‖ are a loosely
connected gang of over 200 jewel thieves allegedly led by Dragan Mikić of Cetinje.
Many of their heists around the world have been described as glamorous and even artistic
(Allen, 2009). As such they inspired a 2013 feature documentary Smash & Grab: The
Story of the Pink Panthers. After a brief montage of Hollywood-style robberies, world
landmarks and glittering shopping centres, Smash & Grab opens with the eponymous
landscape around Rijeka Crnojevića. Video clips, conversations with detectives and
reporters, animated interviews with the members of the gang – in a typical Montenegrin
bar on a beach, with the rolling sea and waves crashing on the pebbles – are interrupted
with excerpts from an American 1980s‘ tourist documentary about ―amazing
Yugoslavia.‖5
The filmmaker was intent on giving her work a socio-historical note by
rooting the Panthers‘ behaviour in Slobodan Milošević‘s destructive politics that
fragmented a thriving country into desperate conflicting zones. Thus, it can be easily
inferred that ordinary people mostly support the Panthers‘ actions. Samuels also reports that
Montenegro wholeheartedly harbours the notorious gang in the heart of its historical
darkness, Cetinje, in which its past and its present superbly meet. The first look at the
desperate town told Samuels enough – Montenegrins jokingly claim that Cetinje is the
only town King Nikola would recognize because so little has changed since 1918. Still
Samuels offers the hesitant mayor two more brandies so that the latter may tell his
amusing anecdote of how Gianni Versace once visited Cetinje, saw people dressed in the
stolen designs and nonchalantly commented: ―Let them wear it […] It‘s good
advertising‖ (Samuels, 2010). Samuels reasons that ―stealing from the West was so
ingrained in the local culture that it approached a form of patriotism‖(Ibid). In Smash &
Grab, therefore, the leading Interpol detective has to emphatically explain that the
Panthers are not a modern Robin Hood but the worst Balkan criminals, a manifestation of
the post-communist Balkan mob mentality.
All the interpretations in Smash & Grab are intertwined with images of eagles circling
above Montenegro‘s cliffs, the waves wildly beating into the naked shingles, and, of
course, casinos. Therefore, we cannot help but wonder if the Panthers will finally bring
about Montenegro‘s debut on the world stage, or should we wait for a recently announced
movie in which Leonardo Di Caprio portrays the leading Panther? (Anon, 2014)
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KA CRNOJ GORI, ZEMLJI DŽINOVA I PANTERA
U ovom radu problematizuje se karikaturalno prisustvo Crne Gore na simboličkoj mapi
putnika iz savremenog anglofonog svijeta. U namjeri da predstavimo konture ovog paradoksalnog
prisustva, rad otvaramo osvrtom na romantični lik zemlje razvijen u prethodna dva vijeka. Za ovim
dajemo hronološki pregled i naglašavamo detalje najnovijih prikaza da bismo ustanovili kako je lik
zemlje ostao gotovo zamrznut do naših dana. Da bismo izbjegli politizovanje, esencijalizovanje,
samostigmatizaciju, zaključićemo da je odsustvo zemlje kao stvarne istorijske i društveno-političke
kompleksnost iuslovljeno njenom dugom i višestrukom izolacijom. Koristićemo se primjerima iz
putopisa, turističkih i medijskih odjeljaka, fikcije i filma, oslanjajući analizu na autoritete iz oblasti
teorije putopisne književnosti.
Ključneriječi: Crna Gora, istorija, putopis, fikcija, turizam.