The opening speech of Mr Svetislav Bozic, composer, winner of the Karic Brother Award in 1998.
TRUST IN A MORE SUCCESSFUL FUTURE
Honourable Fathers, your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen and esteemed members of the Karic family,
I was given an exceptional honour to announce and welcome the 6th Anniversary of the prestigious Karic Brothers Award. In its thus far short, but generously inspired tradition, this award has grown into an exclusive ceremonial assemblage of spirit, intellect and organization, heading towards future and all those metamorphosis that shall, through awarding individuals and expert teams, initiate the progress of standard in all spheres of life, on this forever heated Balkan soil. It will restore faith in creative work, invention, and those irretrievable passions that are the highest peak of any person’s yearnings, regardless of their national or religious belonging.
The idea for this award as I wish to see it as one of its initial recipients, has its roots in the heart of a family that rose from Pec in Kosovo and Metohija, a town where once governed the Serbian Patriarch, Makarius Sokolovic, the blood relative of the Grand vizier Mehmed Pasha Sokolovic. The dream of joined riverbanks and the everlasting longing of a gentle heart to triumph over the ephemeral, existed like divine radiance frequently interrupted by the impenetrable darkness of the mysterious Orient. The eternally intertwined hope and fear have always been the main streak of life on the Levant, which had spread its spiritual wings from Baghdad to Budapest. One in a chain – the Bridge on the Drina, one in a chain of grand viziers on the Bosphorus, one in a chain of Serbian patriarchs governing Pec, all entered the world history not only for the bloodshed and tragedy of its people, but for the Nobel Prize awarded to a loner from Levant and a chronicler of consular times in Travnik.
As if the unique monasticism of a giant from Lovcen has entered a dream of Nikola Tesla and showered this award with light and melancholy of the Orient, giving way to its predisposed course to Athos, to the land of the rising sun, to the endless Crnjanski’s blue circle, the prayers on the lake of St Nikolai of Serbia, trailing the Orthodox world and all its wisdom that has stretched all the way from Constantinople to Janjina, Moskopolje, Drac, Skadar, Vallone, Salonica, Bitolj, Kumanovo, Vranje, Nis, Belgrade, Negotin, Trebinje, Inaca, Budapest, St Andrea, Timisoare, Gratz, Vienna, the whole wide world, Prizren and Pec, gazing at the majestic Kiev’s door and listening out for the mystery of the out-sung Russian church bells. I believe that the Karic Brothers Award will be as much worldly, European and local as will our results.
Its key task, after all, is to extract from the miniature familiar surroundings and honourably and wisely draw attention to the values that surpass the boundaries of localization. It aims, in its inspired and rational manner, to go beyond the concealed local pragmatism with the intention to reach out to its ‘kindred spirit’ throughout the world and enrich its criteria and spiritual diplomacy with such selection, that it will take upon itself the role of a coryphaeus of its people with an everlasting effect. It appears that the Karic Brothers Award has announced its majority as of this evening, trusting that the prior laureates as well as the future ones, resembling a newly formed family created out of exceptional individualities, will be able to carry on enhancing their spiritual and secular capacity, have recurring creative triumphs; be generous with the newcomers and with those who have remained neglected.
I am certain that the Karic family, who gave this award their name in addition to everything else that makes it so unique, will tonight leave plenty of ceremonial room for the selected ones to unreservedly express themselves and remain remembered with generations to come.
I wish you a successful future.
