The function of the creator is expressed on multiple levels within the cycle, initially through the physical activity of building. He builds the Fortress and Marko’s Monastery, and even his attempt to block the Sterna is a form of building. At the initial, superficial level, this represents a symbol of Marko’s failure and defeat. It represents a betrayal of people’s expectations, as well as of their symbolic discourses – the epic and religious discourses that have been dominant in the Macedonian identity for a long time. But if we look more in depth, he succeeds in in the long term and in the interim – instead of physically preserving the Macedonian people, these acts preserve the memory their memory and history. They grow into monuments and symbols of tradition and the past, because the fortress and the monasteries represented centers of social, church, cultural and collective life throughout the entire history of the Macedonian people. Some of them, such as Marko’s Towers, the Fortresses in Skopje and Ohrid, as well as a large number of monasteries throughout Macedonia, have grown into an integral part of the collective identity. By including them as central symbols and semantic centers of the cycle, Koneski also integrates historical and cultural monuments within the historical narrative expressed through these poems.
In fact, the buildings of the Fortress and Marko’s Monastery are a kind of historical texts that preserve stories and memories, which is especially marked in “Marko’s Monastery”. It was built for Marko to atone for his sin and the death of the 70 children, but in its pages, i.e. the walls does not preserve and contain that specific story and legend, but through the fresco paintings preserve and tell the universal story of the sufferings of the Macedonian people. Their nature as texts is further accentuated by the fact that Prince Marko not only creates them, but also integrates and preserves them in his narrative in order to preserve them for future generations. They are part of his story, but also of the story that should be passed on to the new generations and is part of the tradition.
Finally, they also become a part of the structure of his character by the fact that he internalizes them after the moment of their construction, by the fact that the fortress becomes part of his dream, and he feels that he is taking the monastery to his grave. Their stories are voices that are buried or hidden in the tradition and are waiting for the new text, the new creator that will allow them to be heard in the voice and speech of the new age. Prince Marko, as a dramatis personae and a narrative character, contains that duality in himself – a look back and connection to the past, a text that embodies tradition, but also a voice and utterance of the new age through which tradition is transmitted and re-inscribed.
CONCLUSION
Through this short review of Blaže Koneski’s work, we wanted to emphasize once again the extremely significant role that poetry plays in determining and expressing the identity of a young society, especially one that has just emerged from the folkloric phase.
At the same time, we can find parallels for certain features of Koneski’s poetry in the literature and poetry from perhaps even more distant cultures, such as English poetry of the 19th century. But the very fact that the dramatic monologue perfected by Robert Browning would later find a productive role in Modernist poetry from which Blaže Koneski also draws inspiration, indicates the not always easily visible intertextual connections between cultures and traditions in Europe. Also, it indicates the multifaceted and complex nature of modern identity building, which is based in the tradition and previous history of a nation, but also tied with the cultural and civilizational values of its broader surrounding in which it exists and develops.