@book{
author = "Кнежевић, Микоња",
year = "2016",
abstract = "Literary opus of Peter II Petrović Njegoš (1813–1851), the greatest poet of Serbian language, was formed “in the intersection of a number of coordinates”: it reflects the impulses of Romanticism and Enlightenment, as well as the glances of modern natural scientific currents, different influences of hexaemeral European literature, folk epics, ancient literature of Hellenic and Roman provenance, and different mystical motifs of orphic, gnostic and neoplatonic circles. The effects of these, and other, traditions of thought and beliefs, especially of those related to antiquity, were subject of detailed studies, which established direct sources that influenced Njegoš as a poet. On the other hand, the influence of Christian tradition on Njegoš’ writings was often neglected, and mostly treated in confessional and subjective tones, without particular investigation into similarities between Njegoš’ ideas, concepts and expressions, and those belonging to Christian systems of thought. This book represents precisely an attempt in that direction: namely, it aims at establishing the possibility of hesychast penetration into Njegoš’ meditative poetry, that is, it tries to establish whether that tradition, which gathered mystical cognitive and anabatic sensibility of neoplatonic apophaticism and revelational apophaticism of christological mysticism, had any direct or indirect influence on the writings of the Montenegrin bishop.
There are four hesychast elements in Njegoš’ poetry that are recognized in this study: a) the problem of God-knowing, which in Njegoš is treated firstly through the establishment of God’s transcendence and insight into the divine revelations in nature, and secondly through poetic treatment of the theme of mystical ascension to the moment of divine vision, b) apophatic discourse applied to speech on God, c) the existence of “chain” or “ladder” of being, that is, of something known in the history of ideas as catena aurea, and finally d) practice of Jesus prayer, which Njegoš connects to the character of abbot Stephen in his Mountain Wreath.
The first chapter (1–25) of the book offers a general historical overview of previous research on the philosophical and theological dimensions of Njegoš’ writings and determines the semantic arch covered by the notion “hesychasm”. This notion was taken in its wider meaning, related to: a) “monastic” hesychasm, covering those aspects that purport a specific type of ascetic practice, the main characteristics of which are gaining apatheia and hesychia, that is, practicing Jesus prayer, and b) “philosophical” hesychasm, which encompasses speculative articulation of that ascetic experience and persists in an apophatically toned ethos climaxing in the vision of God. Historically speaking, hesychasm is taken as a specific constant of christian thought, as a trend which was present, in terms of “proto-hesychasm”, already in early christian tradition, despite its culmination in 13th and 14th centuries.
After the status quaestionis (27–36) treatment in the second chapter, the third and most comprehensive part of the book (37–130) investigates in detail the convergences between Njegoš’ poetry and hesychast tradition. Such convergences are treated from the viewpoint of history of ideas, as well as on the basis of the so-called “philological microanalysis” which takes into account specific expressions, ostensibly incidental notes or characteristic concepts present in Njegoš’ writings. The first similarity worth noting is related to Njegoš’ insistence on the idea of divine transcendence, as a fundamental insight regarding the knowledge of God. As a consequence, a clearly highlighted apophatic ethos is reflected in Njegoš on two levels: foremost through the statement that God is unknowable, ineffable and unnameable, and secondly through a thesis that nevertheless man is not deprived of the knowledge of God – in other words, this knowledge is accessible to man, but in an epistemological framework completely different from the one characteristic for the knowledge of created things. The first dimension of Njegoš’ apophaticism is expressed through different poetic metaphors, as well as through a sequence of classical notions of apophatic repertory such as “incomprehensible”, “beginningless”, “endless”, “limitless”, “pre-eternal”, “incomparable”, “unreachable”, “ungraspable”, “indescribable”, whose Greek equivalents (ἀπέραντος, ἀπροσπέλαστος, προαιώνιος, ἀσύγκριτος, ἀπερίγραπτος, ἀκατανόητος) can easily be identified in the rich apophatic literature from Plotinus to Gregory Palamas. Of key importance, however, is the fact that Njegoš does not understand transcendence as an abstract cognitive insight, but as something with direct existential consequences for man and his positioning in the entirety of the created universe. In other words, God’s otherness for Njegoš does not imply “agnosticism” or “deism”, but refers to a higher type of knowledge, which, just as in Dionysius the Areopagite and Gregory Palamas, surpasses both sensible and intellectual understanding. This idea is artistically materialized by Njegoš in his Ray of the Microcosm, in which his treatment of the knowledge of God reached its peak: starting with the initial insight into the absolute transcendence of divine being and the impossibility of its comprehensibility, through the idea of “God visible in creation”, known as “natural theology”, Njegoš arrived to the idea of direct knowledge of God, which he represented as a vision: first, vision of the “divine throne” which in his poetry symbolizes hidden God, and finally the vision of Christ himself, in whom the ultimate personal encounter and union of man and God is realized.
Vision of God as the culmination of God-knowing is determined by Njegoš as “spiritual perception”. This expression (νοερᾶ αἴσθησις) is of a specifically christian origin and is found in Origen, Diadochos of Photiki, Maximus the Confessor, Symeon the New Theologian, Gregory of Sinai and Gregory Palamas. Closely related to the (neo)platonic expression “eye of the soul”, which is also found in Njegoš, the aforementioned term refers to the perception of divine realities and recapitulates the mystical experience of the divine, conceptually incommunicable. “Spiritual perceptions” are fruits of a synergetic experience of man’s ascent to the higher spheres, that is, his relocation from the domain of his gnoseological and linguistic situation, and God’s catabatic descent to man, meaning his intervention in the process of human cognition. These are the two principal topics of Njegoš’ Ray of the Microcosm: the experience referred to in the Dedication of The Ray, marked precisely as “spiritual perception”, represents the poet’s trial of mystical ascent to the divine realities, culminating in the self-revelation of God in Christ. Despite the predominantly neoplatonic motifs in The Ray of the Microcosm, its apophatic ethos, certain phrases and concepts, as well as Christ’s role in the end of the poem, suggest a certain influx of christian and hesychast ideas; furthermore, from the viewpoint of the composition of the said work, this testifies also to a specific christianization of motifs taken from the ancient tradition.
Since mystical experience of God is a consequence of revelation, it surpasses any rational knowledge and any conceptual expression. Thus the only mode of communicating such “spiritual perception” is found to be the poetry, which reaches its peak in glorifying the divine. In other words, where human cognition fails and where human language stumbles over the mystery of divine “endlessness”, the only remaining way is the way of hymnic praising of the incomprehensibility of the divine being. This praising is delivered as a reflex of the mysterium tremendum et fascinosum that one experiences before God and it is precisely in this point that Njegoš’ poetic sensibility converges with the hesychastic one: just as the mysterious author of the areopagitic writings, Njegoš sees the mysterious way of apophatic ascent, in which the highest form of God-knowing is reached, as culminating in the union with God and in his hymnic praise (ἀνυμνεῖται, ὑμνεῖν). Poetry thus becomes the “sacred calling”, since only through it one can communicate the mystical experience of heavenly realities, that is, divine incomprehensibility.
Christological motif at the end of The Ray of the Microcosm is present also in Njegoš’ treatment of the “ladder” or “chain of being” (103–123). As shown, the way in which Njegoš deals with the “ladder” in certain instances corresponds greatly to the treatment of the same subject by Dionysius the Areopagite, while the motif of the “chain that holds the worlds” relates to a christologically (triadologically) understood divine “word”. Unlike the usual interpretative currents, in this book the divine “word”, as used by Njegoš, is understood chiefly as the second person of the Holy Trinity, that is, as the pre-eternal divine Logos who became flesh. Besides the analysis of relevant loci in Njegoš’ poetic writings, an additional confirmation of such an interpretation is found in Njegoš’ Testament, as well as in a note from his Notebook.
The last hesychast motif treated in this book (123–130) relates to Njegoš’ possible awareness of the practices of Jesus prayer. Based on certain didascalies related to the abbot Stephen’s character in The Mountain Wreath, it is suggested that Njegoš could be acquainted with this practices, which was of central importance for hesychast spirituality.
The last part of the book (131–210) deals with the possibilities of hesychast ideas reaching Njegoš. After pointing to the wide reception of hesychasm in the Serbian culture, evident since the early Middle Ages, a special attention is given to the formation of hesychast colonies in Zeta’s Sveta Gora and to the activity of Jelena Balšić and Nikon of Jerusalem. Nikon wrote two collections with hesychast content: Gorica Miscellany (1441–1442) and Hexaemeron (1439–1440). The latter contains a number of notes on the practice of Jesus prayer and hesychast way of life, include those by Diadochos of Photiki, Gregory of Sinai, Nicethas Stethatos and Callistus Xantopoulos. Since in Njegoš’ times this Hexaemeron was kept in the monastery of Savina, where he stayed during his youth and which he visited frequently after his stay in Russia, there is a great possibility that Njegoš became familiar with hesychasm precisely through these writings. However, despite the proven similarities between certain Njegoš’ ideas, phrases and concepts with those found in Nikon’s Hexaemeron, it should be highlighted that this book should be taken only as one of the possible sources for Njegoš’ encounter with hesychasm. Different church histories, patristic manuals and other textbooks of ecclesiastical literature in Russian or other languages, which possibly were part of Njegoš’ original library, could have equally been his source for hesychast ideas found in his poetry. From this corpus of books, which may have been a part of Njegoš’ original library, one should mention the Slavic version of Philokalia, a collection of hesychast texts, published in 1793 by Paisius Velichkovsky. Since by the time Njegoš first visited Russia, this collection had four editions, it is quite possible that vladika had the opportunity to consult it and borrow certain ideas, concepts and expressions from it.
In the Concluding Remarks (211–221) the author gives a general evaluation of the research, and notes the dominantly mystical trend in Njegoš’ treatment of God-knowing, underlining that hesychastic motifs, though present in Njegoš’ writings, did not eo ipso have a constitutive role in the formation of his poetic physionomy, with the exception of a christologically marked mysticism noticeable in the end of The Ray of the Microcosm.",
publisher = "Косовска Митровица : Филозофски факултет Универзитета у Приштини, Београд : Универзитет, Православни богословски факултет, Институт за теолошка истраживања",
title = "Његош и исихазам",
pages = "1-296",
url = "https://hdl.handle.net/21.15107/rcub_dais_15678"
}
