Revenge of the dead giants

Erol Rizaov

In the Museum of the City of Skopje, along with many beautiful people, urban characters, and famous public figures, last Tuesday we were direct witnesses of the revenge of two deceased giants, Slavko Janevski and Tome Serafimovski, for the injustice that was inflicted on them by one regime’s tyranny. Their unveiling in front of the public was the “revenge”, which was not bloodthirsty, but served cold, without evil and without an ounce of malice. Returning the blow was performed with beauty and with a plea, as the last call not to devalue the valuable, because we, the living and the generations to come, need it as we need bread. These two giants, Janevski and Serafimovski, do not need anything in the place they are now. They’ve done the jobs flawlessly. What we saw on the extraordinary exhibition is only a small part of what the two exceptional creators and personalities have left to us.
The greatness and timeless beauty of their work is the answer to the executioners who sentenced them without giving them the right to defend themselves. The two members of the Macedonian culture were declared as traitors and snitches by the political inquisition and by party charlatans, without the right to defend their honor. That terrible anathema against dozens of well-known scientists, writers, public figures, all worthy citizens that happened in Macedonia, those who devised and made this blackout, call it enlightenment, imagine. Those dark forces, even though defeated, are pressuring Macedonia to be a dark region, to remain stranded on the Balkan cobblestones, not to move a step away from the stone.

One deceased and turned to dust a long time ago, the other, while still alive, both marked by a regime that captured the state for a whole decade in the 21st century. We, who are witnesses of this crime, must not forget this great shame and injustice and let these sinners go unpunished by imposing collective amnesia on us. It is our duty to testify, not on the side of those who make history, but on the side of those who suffer from that same history, even if it were true and authentic, and not fake and bitter in the battles for power and wealth.

That is why every meeting with the work of the great Slavko Janevski and Tome Serafimovski, two contemporaries and great friends, brings excitement and profound thought to us mortals, regardless of whether it was by seeing their paintings and sculptures, reading their books in solitude, or when clashed with their works walking through the world metropolises and our cities, or reading art history, or while being examined by your rigorous professor, reciting a poem at children’s schools, or seeing their grandiose legacy in libraries and in a museum silence dedicated to its people…

The remembrance of Janevski and Serafimovski is not in their defense, nor is it a condemnation of the crime inflicted by talentless, primitive perpetrators of political interests… Their works defend them better than all of us. The respect for their art is the return of pride that protects us from tyranny, from isolation and from extinction. It is the best preventive of unscrupulous politicians in their fights for power. Janevski and Serafimovski have long been written in the pantheon of Macedonia among the people that the homeland recognizes, although that pantheon does not exist in reality. But these letters can not be removed by even the most infamous dictatorships and tyrants, because they are written in the consciousness of people.

With words and verses, colors, clay, marble and bronze, these activists, as well as the whole generation of contemporaries and ancestors, sent miraculously beautiful and important messages and reminders to us, the then-hopeful future generations. Have we heard and understood them? Unfortunately, we have to say – NO. We did not even hear nor understand them, though the messages are crystal clear. That’s what happens to us today when we are again faced with divisions and hatred, wavering about which way to go.

Slavko Janevski gave us the first novel written in Macedonian and left us a work that was never read by his inquisitors, because if they had read it, they would have found themselves there. Janevski discovered long ago that they would come after him. If they had read it, would have they pulled out a knife to a deceased man who indebted his homeland a million times more than their commanders.

It is not a coincidence that one of the most authentic and beautiful portraits of Serafimovski is the portrait of Slavko Janevski. Knowing his personality, their long-standing friendship can be made recognizable only with one wrinkle from Janevski’s forehead, sculpted by Serafimovski’s hands. Slavko Janevski learned the painting craft on his own. His paintings capture as if they were from the hands of the great Renaissance masters. His work is yet to be valued fairly, which was not a hobby between writing two books, but a serious and strong motive of a versatile artist. When one sees Janevski’s paintings, it becomes clearer why his miracles of horribleness, his novels and poems are in a language that is hardly reached in Macedonian literature. It seems as if all the words and languages ​​in the world were not enough for Janevski, so those words he lacked he wrote in paintings. His works should be read, re-read and seen after washing hands and expressing a worldly prayer in gratitude that the sky has granted such a creator to us, who, if he was born on other meridians, would have long been a Nobel laureate.

These days, there are tensions in the country yet again, hatred and nationalism are re-opening old untreated wounds,  divisions yet again between Macedonians and Macedonians with all those who have lived on this piece of land for centuries. Again, we hear bad words and quarrels with all neighbors, with the world’s economic giants and great powers. These are the same grim underground criminogenic forces that unceasingly lustrate Macedonia by seeking enemies and extinguishing the lights and signposts that show its European future, the ideal of all the Balkan nations, of which half have already reached the goal. Everyone that was behind us is now ahead of us. We definitely remain last and lonely in the Balkans, missing out on the biggest historic opportunity, this time unharmed by anyone, but ourselves, from those powerful people sitting in the defendant’s bench and wanting to evade justice for their crimes. Macedonia will remain in the Balkans for some time to get to terms with itself, to either go to Europe or fall part. To disappear.

I listen to the leader of the Macedonian dark column, Hristijan Mickoski, as he announces the victory of the bridge to Europe, citing the great Macedonian thinker, scientist and creator of the Macedonian literary language, Blaze Koneski, and I feel embarrassed for someone else’s stupidity. These criminals call on Koneski to help and defend them, and they do not know how to repeat two sentences as correct as the Macedonian genius spoke.  They call on Koneski to defend them, who the organizer of the campaign for the boycott of the future of Macedonia, Antonio Milososki, called “the dwarf from Nebregovo”. Should we still believe these people, in their patriotism and their Macedonianness, those who demolished, destroyed and liquidated all of Macedonia’s values in the past hundred years.