Oblivion and Discourse of Being

In ancient Sparta art was far from the centre of public life. It had a secondary role and predominantly educational character. In fact, this was valid for the many traditional cultures which share a cultural "minimalism". Works of art there do not bear the "stamp of individual authors", do not express their personal aspirations and don’t serve artists’ curiosity. The experiment is missed, same as any questioning of the meaning of artistic expression; concise, laconic way of speaking has become proverbial. But, here it is not a question of atrophy of forms of primitive cultures, as modern historians of art and culture believe, but actually about the refusal to develop something that is with a secondary importance (and this is precisely the area of culture, at least in its current meaning). The expression is there concise, and self-sufficient, without the need for the self-interpretation and any explanation.

Three human domains

Namely, when is the talk about the development and abilities of man, human being in general, there are three areas in which they are manifested.

The first and the lowest is the one of elemental forces, which corresponds to what modern science calls "primitive societies" (but this is not about the initial state, but of the state of extreme degeneration of ancient cultures, up to the true state of savagery).

The second is the development of values that are commonly considered as civilized, with appropriate forms of spirituality (and there are, in the first place, culture and the arts in today's sense of the term).

Third, in fact the first and highest area is truly superhuman, because it involves the development of human capabilities beyond oneself, beyond what is merely human. It should be observed that every civilization has only horizontal development of the principles of this last and highest area, and that such development has always as result loss of metaphysical dimensions and tensions inherent in this field. This is precisely the case of European society in the late Middle ages and early Renaissance. From the viewpoint of the second area, however, it is very difficult to distinguish between the first and the last, because both of them, as opposed to all "and only too human", are similar, at least in their manifestations.

On the other hand, in terms of the presumed "primitiveness" and atrophy of the ancient culture, we should be reminded of the observations such are those of Serbian writer Rastko Petrovic, which in 1924 noticed:

"In the caves which were used as primitive habitat, the so-called cavemens, were found rock drawings, ornaments which show the strange creative power and even weirder creative perception of those who created them. Movements of animals in the jump) – buffalo, deer, etc... – confirmed in modern science with the using of the the current photographic technics, show such precision in the eye of the primary artists which forcibly impose belief that their visual power was much stronger than is ours, which is primarily synthetic, so we're practically not able to observe a movement separated from the movement, which he follows, while, for the population of the cave, that was quite normally experience. There is also observed that those painting fragments are found in the deep cave, where is total darkness, and where we could work only with the artificial light, while in those places is not find any remaining of the smoke and soot, whose tracks had to stay there, because the torches and oil lamps of that time had to smoke, sam as today ones. They, therefore, were able to see in that, for modern humans, darkness, more clearly and they felt the need for coloring, drawing for which eye request even more light" (Rastko Petrovic: „A primitive civilization which became extinct“).

Art as instrument of the oblivion of the being

In Athens, however, was real abundance of artistic creativity, and because of that it is even possible to speak of a flowering of Athenian art. The target of Isokrates and Plato criticism of the poet's "free-thinking" are fantasies of a one degraded culture. Skill of the sophists consisted in making a reasoned and representative statements, giving to them the illusion of free judgment, valued were, same as is today, mere rhetoric, empty verbal skills. Something similar happens in philosophy in the twilight of the Roman Empire, when the idea of philosophy disintegrates and subject of it becomes a variety of areas and objects, complite out of the pure philosophy. The crown of the same process is the period that we know as the Italian "Humanism and the Renaissance“, than period of modern era, in which an abundance of artistic creation becomes an purpose and goal by it self, and that process is continuing until kind of idolatry of art and artistic creation.

However, in ancient Sparta artist does not needed to make his work as expression of a tradition, nor to make any exteriorization of his inner contents: it implied that they are all the same and the common and well known to all. The first function in such art was, therefore, an educational, pedagogical function. Where is a function of the art organic, it finds its perfect form and expression, and there is no need for its further development. There is an artist, on the contrary, forced to restrain, to tame his own imagination and individuality. Epic poetry, from the Vedas to Homer, from Homer to Filip Visnjic, has a previous-set formula, previous-known patterns, which are not pure stylish decoration, but, as proved Georges Dumezil, device of transfering of an view point, an ideology.

On other words, there is a spirit subordinated to the being. He is subordinated to the higher principle, and there can be no question of its autonomy. Free, autonomous spirit is finally turning against the being, subordinatig the being with the corosive dilemmas and doubts. „Pure“, „autonomous art“ – free from the demands of being – turned against being by itself. Refusing to submit to a superior, it submits to an inferior. What used to be just a tool, it becomes an end in itself, the „first“ and the goal. This shift in the balance can not be without impact on the language of the epoch. When artists is focused at purely formal plan, as well as he rethinking questions of artistic creation or transformation of art into a means of mere psychological introspection of him self, that has only one meaning: the loss of the original meaning and purpose of art. Then the art, having lost of the principle that was used to determined it, turning in something what is really inferior, even subhuman.

In a word, art is such situation (as well as all areas of the spirit), gets turned into a frightening, tautology which does not help a man to "perceived him self" but, rather, serves to distract him from him self. Art becomes a means of forgetting being.

Disintegration of meaning and purpose

Language is the most perfect and most complete tool of human expression. However, the fact of the existence of different languages is probably the result of the dissolution of the original character and integrity of the human beings. Language becomes a means of expression of one particular type of human, one ethnic group. But, and such language is subject of development under the sign of gradual degradation and dissolution of meaning. This perspective, of course, is quite different from those of modern science, which is based on assumptions about the evolution of language: from primitive, to a state of greater and greater complexity. Jean Haudrey, in his study “Indo-Europeans”, breaks some of these misconceptions: "To the Indo-European languages was not approved using of the complex sentence on the plea that they used dependent conjunctions very late in all Indo-European languages, and the absence of a complex sentence is an indication that the thoughts is just born and still undeveloped. This is wrong: if conjunctions are recent, there seems to be is old dependence forms, in particular, and they did not emerge as ex nihilo creation, as a result of intellectual progress, but from the text structures that previously existed(...) Indo-Europeans were undoubtedly able to have linguistic units higher than are simple sentences(...)" (Jean Haudrey: „Indo-Europeans”).

To Indo-Europeans was denied the ability for abstract thought and due to the fact that abstract nouns in Indo-European languages are gender specificated entities, or a gender ambiguous entities or forces, neuter. But as Haudrey warns, that illusion of the "animistic vision of the world" is based on a misunderstanding: "Nothing obliges us to see in them (nouns for the living species) label (mark) of living being; should be for it to assume that in the Indo-European language, contrary to what happens in other languages, grammatical gender is totally motivated." After all, many experts in the "dead" languages profess the same feeling: that the ancient languages, ranging from traditional, have the fullness of meaning and purpose that makes them hard to translate (or even untranslatable) into modern languages. In other words, they have an organic nature, which makes them different or substantially different from all modern languages.

Here, then, is active process of the dissolution of meaning and purpose, reaffirming the rule that, as older is language, he kept increasing measure and the sense of fullness. Word of the ancient languages are fully insured suit. The meanings of modern languages fall of the signified. They remind of dead bodies in decomposition. Modern languages to become a truly expressive, must be "cleaned" of the sediment in the dissolution of meaning, and returned to their original words, the original meaning. It is something quite different, both from the ruling era rhetoric speach, and from the speech of the streets, in which, many, wrongly, expected renewal of artistic language. "If you're watching, do not think that you see", wrote Goethe. Paraphrasing his saying, today we can say: if you hear, do not think you understand.

Arrows of the words

The poet is the first mate and companion of heroes. Epic and heroic myth belong to the heroic age of poetry. Warrior nedded an poet, which will describe his works, and save them in the memory of the descents: "in the aristocratic society, right partner of an aristocrat is exactly poet, without him great, heroic activity of nobility will fall into oblivion, without him reproaching and praises would have no effect" ( J. Haudrey). Such are and the songs that sing the bard at the warrior feasts. The legendary Nart nation, according to Ossetian tradition, had a magic cauldron, which allows them to verify the truthness of words. On the other hand, according to Iranian tradition, when king Yima "began to enjoy the false and misleading words" he lost his glory (charisma) of warrior“. Right in them, in these "false and misleading words", lies the true cause of the decadency.

The ideal is, by contrast, true and correct word: only those words could become "the words which are as arrows". Homer speaks of "featrelylike words", in the Vedas we can find assumptions of "words that touch the heart". If we following formulas which are transmitted from generation to generation, we achieve coherence and decency, which, again, does not exclude the inventiveness or inspiration of poets. Such poetry is understood as a "technics" but it is at the same time and "divine rabies", "mania", that special status which encouraged poets by the gods themselves. The Latin name for the poets was vātēs, which is derived from the root of latin word "to breathe"… Emile Benveniste, therefore, rightly speaks of the "aristocratic style" in the Indo-European traditional epic poetry.

Disintegration of the "aristocratic style" was follved with the collapse of the languages. Artistic language then becomes a matter of "artistic experiment", or psychological introspections created by artist, starts to be device of his personal expressions, not so rare and psychopathological contents, which at end gave result: losing of the ideal of decency and coherence in expression. The final outcome is a monstrous modern and postmodern art, which stops to be an expression of being, and becoming prey and object of personal fantasies and phantasms. Language is finally turning into raving, „the story of idiots“, as in "automatic texts" of Surrealists, whose results, instead of the desired break through in the „Unknown“ (as wished Arthur Rimbaud), starts to be, as Louis Aragon summed up, „really deplorable nonsense“. Where the meaning and significance is absent, after all, are good and their illusions, which arise as a result of the coincidence, for example, as is randomization of the order of chapters that made the reader (as suggested to his readers Serbian novelist Milorad Pavic. We can only conclude that this is just extreme case of degradation of language and meaning). The missing sense also, with equal success, is replaced with countless interpretations, the commentary of a work of art, as well arbitrary and random, as are and the illusions of the sense,which are given to the reader by purely mechanical selection of the order of reading. The epic poetry dont need (re)interpretation, moreover, any attempt to make "new" and "different" interpretation is waste from her, as diseased part waste from the healthy body, because it itself, epic poetry, as it is remebered and written, is represent, model of clarity and meaning, real one and later usually unreached.

In the disintegration of language and style, language becomes a central problem for the artist to whom art is not the goal in itself, but a means of expression of being. Such art is subordinate to a higher principle. The same is true and for the language, which must be able to express these higher principles and orders of being. Such artist is, moreover, faced with another, truly new problem, quite unknown to artists from earlier eras and ancient cultures: that such contents, which were shared and well known to all in previous time (almost without exception), try to show, to manifest (not to explaine) in one basically a foreign, not hostile environment. Such request requires those "arrows of the words" that have already been discussed, and he not need any more conventional language and speech, and is not just a coincidence that these "arrows of the words" evokes Ernst Juenger in his novel „Heliopolis“: „Going to hunt for words was the supreme competency of the archer, shooter. Of course, this goal will never be reached: he was in the one ideal point, it was postulate and border. In all these transformations, his mission was; with the words, send sense into indescribable; with the sounds, to the exquisite harmonies;with the marble, to the untouchable areas; with the colors, to the spark, flash of supernatural“.

Being, ethics, ethnos, language

It has long since been observed relationship which linking ethnos and ethics, ethics and being, being and ethnos, ethnos and language.

Ideally, the spirit is subordinated to being (and is not autonomous, or free from being); from being, and not by the speculations by spirit, is performed ethics. Ethics, in fact, is not a product of the speculation, but, on the contrary, is the imperative of being.

We can only agree with the position Dragos Kalajic who, in his book „Stronghold“, discussed relationships between ethnicity and being, and who says: „This relationships we can not rationally explain, but just realize“: „In the terms of our history, a credible and impassable being can have no other definition than ethnic. All other definitions, changing the mode of man, belonging to categories which are temporary and contingent“.

The expression of the beings is language. In terms of contemporary philosophy, Martin Heidegger is the first and only one to have noticed the deep relationship between language and being. His "opinion about the language", he starts, seemingly paradoxical, with the tautological assumption: "Language is language". He refuses to explain language with anything else, all conventional approaches to language, from grammatical to lingvistic, from the lingistic to the logical-philosophycal, in his opinion, unmatch the essence of language, its ontological dimension. „Language speaks“, Heidegger says. Language is the discourse of being, in the language and through the language speaks just being. The relationship of an nation to the being is revealed through the language of that nation. We can only add that archaicism, antiquity of one language, is his only true measure of closeness to the being. Of all the modern languages with Indo-Europens roots, Serbian language shows the greatest affinity with Sanskrit: this relatedness refers to the words and their roots and the grammatical and mindsets forms, as well.

There is no need for being to explain itself, because it is. Unlike morality, ethics is concept which can be object of the development, but is the order of being, a commandment. The honor is not for discussing, it is not susceptible to prooving. The meaning of the traditional art is the transfer of certain ethical content, and they are, as we have seen, closely associated with ethnic groups. One language is a suitable to convey certain content, others is not, at least not in the same degree. Different languages do not have the same expressive power but here, of course, is not a word about the relation of superior and inferior, but is about the relationship of complementarity. The emergence of different ethnicities follows disintegration of the original integrity of the men kind and; the development of different languages from a single proto-language (Indo-Europeans) is a consequence of the collapse of the original language, which was the most perfect and complete expression of the being.

Translated by Vesna S. Disic