The highland wreath

The Highland Wreath remains timeless, cherished as one of the greatest achievements of Serb literature as a whole. His largely decasyllabic epic drama, expressed in the traditional meter of Serb folk poetry presents a panoramic rendering of Montenegrin society at the end of the 17th century: sharply divided, and threatened by foreign military and spiritual rule. For, seeking to uphold their traditional worship of freedom, courage, and honor, passed on to them by their stern, Spartan-like ancestors, the Christian Orthodox, Montenegrin Serbs – whose selfhood and very lives were physically, economically, and morally threatened by the occupiers – were forced to turn against their native, also ethnically Serb countrymen, who, by converting to Islam, had joined the oppressors. Thus, Njegoš’s depiction of a historic event that took place on Orthodox Christmas Eve in Cetinje, preceded by the deliberations of the local headmen and their unsuccessful attempts to persuade the renegades to renounce their conversion, fully reveals this great poet’s insight into the Eternal Struggle – between Good and Evil.