Tanja Bakić

The Fifth Conference on Angloamerican studies, Faculty of Philosophy Nikšić 2009

Province and Myth: Silence

The province inhabits the myth in order to be real. The root of
the myth is indiscernible. It is both the dissappearing and the
appearing one. The man from province does not recognize the
myth. He lives this myth through. Discerning nature in
something acknowledged as the body means to get the tongue
back to its metaphoric1, true and primal. Through the tongue
something other is being sought, and the myth is the
disclosure of this “otherness.“ To be “the other“ is to be “the
same one“: in the true and original sense. If the image of the
myth gets dissolved, then the new reality echoes through.
Such a reality is a fragile spot between place and time, a
privileged place from which to observe the otherness shadowed
by transcendence: from above and below, and from all the four
sides of the world. It is an encompassing glance at the
omniscience. The province as a body is an image of the
Universe, its symbol. Only by the understanding of this
symbol, is man able to experience the universal. But, isn’t the
language itself the greatest symbol? John Zerzan claims it is,
adding that the meaningful is something abolishing the
temporal, the tongue and language. Therefore, the myth is
meaningful, since it does abolish the tongue, thus fixating the
temporal and making it connected with the nontemporal.
Doesn’t such a longing for the animal represent the transition
from the tongue into the body, i.e. a jump from the temporal
into the nontemporal? The myth on province is a masterpiece
realized, a circle closed, and an imposing provincial longing for
closeness pulled forward to the open. Both the beginning and
the end of the circle are the same. Hence we should start
anew, so that the mythical cycle can get renewed.

The old dream on lingua Adamica as a dream about the true

language is a part of the human lust for the lost primordial,
and the tower in Babylon one of this lust’s symbols. The exile
from Heaven meant the fall into the temporal, the tongue and
language. And the words (which the tongue makes) are, on

1
Metaphorical as an exception from the original or basic.
 Tanja Bakić
The Fifth Conference on Angloamerican studies, Faculty of Philosophy Nikšić 2009

Nietzchean terms, cruel and depersonalizing. Cassirer

suggests that mythology may be interpreted as the language’s
function, due to its being nothing but the possible religion
from its very start, but also the unavoidable and logical
necessity of the language, as Muller puts. The province is a
closed and “stale“ circle. Both the beginning and the end of the
circle are same. If the tale about the myth and province
started in silence, then it ends in silence, as well. And the
silence is filled with signs and symbols.

In ancient times, the world was thought to have one shape and
one centre, and the religious ceremonies were coloured by the
embodiment of the mythical time in a closed space, wherein
gods would descend from the above in order to create a new
world. Such a world was cyclical. In the modern age the image
of the world has greatly changed, along with space, which has
turned wider and eternal. No longer were there stars by
themselves, neither were they the image of the Cosmos or the
unity in it. The principle of such a ceremony was contrary to
those ancient ones: simultaneity, multiplicity, direction
towards the gravitational here point. The centre of the world
was removed, and man stood somewhere outside. But no, this
was still not the end. The world was still the world, and man
was man (only the stars were no longer the stars). The
language turned in all directions, and man himself fell into
more unique and closed “me“ pieces. Such a process was
basically aimed at repetition, the cyclical, the mythical. In
some moments and in some places the myth could still be felt
and experienced. The art of the myth is still waiting to get
resurrected.

Silence. The myth clod in province is silently being created,

tirelessly longing to get the tongue returned to the body, i.e. to
that part of the circle to which it is a part of.