Kalenić, Within and Beyond

When I first began visiting Serbia, my father inlaw was my main companion, and while my wife met with her friends in Belgrade, he helped me discover the Moravian monasteries of Šumadija. Awakened to the complex and intriguing history of the region on my previous visit (see SAN 8), this trip was the first where I chose the destinations. And, by the fortuity of whichever stars were aligned, my curiosity-driven need to feel a  connection with past civilisations to which we owe our own (see SAN 12) was yet again satiated with the wealth of Serbia›s cultural endowments. Enchantment was waiting just north of Trstenik...

Fortune was on our side as our visit to the strikingly beautiful Kalenić Monastery coincided with its 600th anniversary. It had been many things before becoming a nunnery: a place of worship, the scene of a murder, a sanctuary for royal reconciliation, and temporarily the ossuary of the First-Crowned’s relics. It seemed to embody all of Serbian history in one place, and I would soon discover much more. But first, my mind was blown wide open when the resident nuns served us sljivovica, tinted bright green with an herb, and distilled in anticipation of this festivity. Nuns! Serving us homemade booze! I thought to myself, “I love this country.”

Surprises were many in this tranquil refuge. Unique, and uniquely revealing, artistic expressions adorn the outer walls of its gorgeous church. Look carefully at the photos I have included with this article. These are the reliefs above the biforia all around the building, and they feature fantastic beasts and imagery with clearly

pre-Christian origins and obvious Hellenistic influence. Winged griffons; dragons in embrace; birds drinking and dancing above horned heads, chased by snakes; six-winged sirens; a centaur playing some sort of lute with a bow. When I think about how Roman and Greek paganism was violently extinguished in the centuries following Constantine’s conversion, with temples looted to build the Vatican, it amazes me how its imagery re-emerged through the hands of the builders of an Orthodox church.

It also reveals how enduring these ideas were in our collective (un)consciousness through a journey of millenia, where motifs and ideas moved through time and deviated only slightly amidst the ebb and flow of different peoples and beliefs.Essences of thought and imagination suppressed, only to re-emerge here almost intact. What treasures, what magic for the eye and the mind! Serbia holds rewards for the seeker. Ideas from ancient Greece and Rome, and everything they touched, including Persia, Egypt, and Babylon… could be seen here in these sculptures. I was spellbound. With these discoveries came the vibrant and tingly sensation I get when awakenings happen, and I feel this is best described as ‹spiritual›. There’s an intense thrill to finding something lost, matched with an inner discovery that joyously becomes part of who we are. This is how Serbia›s significance deepened for me: my own quest for history and self-knowledge seem to fit the shape that time gave to this corner of the world. Her hidden features glitter for my eye to catch, and I gratefully receive her whispered secrets.

Language is inadequate to the task of expressing the sort of sensation my visit to Kalenić evoked, but two lines I found in Vasko Popa’s poem about the abbey best convey, I think, its wonders:

Boje zru

Na lakoj grani vremena

Colours ripen

On a light bough of time