Lions from Kalemegdan
Even in historical times, a little more than two thousand years ago lions lived
in Macedonia
Feat, worthy of kings and heroes more than any other; task to defeat the Nemean
lion was the first of twelve, which Eurystheus propounded to Heracles. Beast
that ravaged the district of city of Nemea had a pelt that could not be pierced
by the spear or cut up by the sword; it was the offspring of the monstrous
Typhon, or Selene, or Chimera and dog Orthrus. To overmaster the Nemean lion,
Heracles had to strangle him with his bare hands, and then, just with the assistance
of lion's sharp claw, he could excoriate his skin. Since then he had worn it as
impenetrable armor - a symbol of immortality and invulnerability – and the
heavy lion head as a helmet. Lion also symbolizes the kingdom or empire. Precisely
lions tied with iron chains guard the entrance to the Celtic "Spinning
Castle", which is the same as the abode of the Fisher King and the secret
hideout of the Grail in the cycle of the Grail legends.
Lion, any lion, is the archetype, because it also applies to it what
Borges said about the tiger: one tiger represents all tigers which have been
and all tigers that will be, because "the individual, in his case, is the
entire species". The connection between the kings and lions is, undoubtedly,
both ritual and essential. Later on in history, when the custom of hunting extinguished
along with lions, only the kings become the collectors of these rare and exotic
beasts. There is no more worthy gift for the ruler than the lion, imprisoned in
a cage, which will be conveyed to him by boat from some thousands of miles distant,
fabulous country. Afterwards, the lions moved into the area of heraldry,
becoming almost mandatory addition to the royal and noble coats of arms.
Sculpted from stone, cast in bronze or forged in iron, we find them even
nowadays at the gates of the old castles and magnificent palaces, less as a
symbolic threat and more as a memory of a time when there was an equals sign
standing between royal and leonine dignity.
I do not know if the next experience belongs to the reality or to the
images we only see in dreams. It was late summer afternoon, almost evening, when,
during my climbing up the Kalemegdan fortress, I wished to get up to that high
plateau from which can be seen the confluence of the Sava into Danube and the War Island itself. Before that, I remember I was wandering for long
time through fortress underground rooms – in one of them, next to a pile of
waste, some kind of garbage or rubble piles, there were still laying neatly
stacked stone cannonballs. After those stuffy underground rooms, tight passages
and dark hallways, which can be found in old fort, and reminiscent of the tombs,
I wanted to set foot in a place from which I will sense the breadth of sight
and freshness of water. Murmur of many passers-by, scream and squeal of
children in the summer night, have not bothered me; it was something completely
different from fusty and assumptive dust of ages.
It was the last hour before sunset, when the sun is at its strongest. Kalemegdan
fortifications turned into brown and golden color. Beneath one of them, not
very high above our heads, suddenly I spotted two lions, gallantly and lazy acceding
under the sun.
These were the lions from the nearby
zoo, but no visible fence divided us from them. It seemed that they are
completely free to move, and that the ancient fortress is, moreover, their
natural environment, and that they are its integral part - image, which could
be born in dreams and which belonged to some other, almost mythical era, quite
different from ours.
The earliest recorded name of present-day
Belgrade
Boris Nad
Translated by: Zorana
Lutovac
KOMENTARI