The Dedication

To G. S. Milutinović. Cetinje, 1 May 1845.

Yes, my ever-dear teacher, Serbian singer sown with heaven's seed: human fate is a ridiculous riddle, and human life a terrible dream.

Is the earth a secret punishment for man, or a reward, or a nursery of spiritual bliss? That is the highest mystery; and its keys are in the grave.

Man, driven out beyond the gates of wonders, is himself a wonder. Thrown onto a stormy shore by the secret hand of bold chance, poor, without a guardian, he remembers his first glory, he dreams of a bliss beyond all happiness; but his dreams and memories hide from his sight, and flee into the dark annals of eternity, leaving on his soul only a trace of sorrow as they pass.

How often I have asked generous nature why the Creator made her; she, crowned with sunbeams, answered only with her laughter. I begged the starry vault to reveal the holy mystery, and it showed me my own nothingness. I asked the wise men of the earth, and their answers were a thirsty groping in the dark.

Man is lulled in a heavy sleep, in which he sees terrible visions, and can hardly tell whether his being belongs to them or not; and whenever he thinks he has woken, he has only sunk into a deeper and darker dream. Malice and envy, his inheritance from hell, set man below the beast; and yet his mind makes him equal to the immortals. The higher he climbs toward glory, the greater an enemy of happiness he becomes.

From every point of view consider man; judge man however you will: to man, man is the highest mystery. Man is the Creator's chosen creature! If the east gives birth to the bright sun, if being boils up in shining rays, if the earth is not an illusion, then the human soul is immortal: we are a spark in mortal dust, we are a ray engulfed by darkness.

Pythagoras, and you, Epicurus, evil tyrants of the immortal soul! You degraded man, making him equal to the brute, and robbed heaven of the divine spark.

If one believed the fools, poets are a mad generation. All the wonders of heaven and the heavens, all that blooms with holy light, whether worlds or minds, all mortal and immortal loveliness: what is all this together, but the poetry of the universal Father? The calling of the poet is sacred; his voice is the breath of heaven; the bright ray is his guide; his language is the majesty of the Creator. The Almighty whispers his holy secret only to the soul of the poet.

Wondrous singer of the Serbian people, you have tasted fate's whip already. And my own fate has no likeness on earth: I have come out at the very gates of Tartarus; hell roars at me with curses. Yet I dare not cry out against my destiny, for my hope shines by the Creator's will. And I ask still more of you: set before the eyes of the Serbs and all the Slavs, in flaming lines, Obilić, Karađorđe and Dušan; and thunder your terrible curse on Vujica, Vuk and Vukašin, the traitors of our people.

(End of Episode 1 — continued in Episode 2: Canto I)