DRAGON’S CAVE ON BARREN ISLAND CLIFFS

Island of Brac, Dalmatia, Croatia

The diverse Adriatic coast is a treasure which has always been jealously cherished by Croatia. A multitude of islands and islets, never fully explored, always offer something special, something that draws curious passersby to the cliffs of these pearls of azure and their irresistible attraction.

The island of Brac, from east to west, from Sumartin to Sutivan, from the monastery of Blace, the Milna ACY Marina and the Pucisca quarry to picturesque Supetar, is one of the pearls of the Adriatic Sea. Walking along the winding paths, perspiring under a mercilessly glaring sun, only those who set off with the aim of reaching the Dragonja Caverns brave the heat and harsh terrain. The Dragon's Cave, a refuge and sanctuary of hermits, is situated above Murvica, a small settlement on the southern slopes of the island of Brac When passing through the cave, one can see the rocks assume the shapes of different figures and reliefs whose artists - and the era in which they created them - have still not been identified.

It is difficult to find a work of art whose artistic quality would be nearly as exhilarating as these figures, and yet it is not possible to determine their exact style and period of creation. In spite of continuous attempts to do so, their mystical quality and spiritual force makes it impossible to fit them into any chronology. Like the sun, warm emotions and all the things that have been and will be here forever, they are not possible to reduce to historical categories and therefore remain without a seemingly vital statistic: their "date of birth."

Through their cosmic presentation of the moon, they lead to the conclusion that they date back to prehistoric or some later pagan era, although the symbol of the moon is universal to many periods. The large relief on the western part of the wall represents a woman wrapped in the sun, with the moon under her feet, threatened by a large dragon with a gaping maw. Or, is it a wolf devouring the moon, the one from the legends of the old Slavs who lived here before Christians? Nonetheless, this work, which is everything but a mere artistic attempt, was preceded by a stone-cutting tradition. During the Roman period, quarries operated. on Brac and Diocletian's Palace (in Split) was built, while a large number of sculptors arrived in this region from Syria and Egypt.

The Dragon's Cave is the oldest abode of hermits from the Early Christian period. In the fifteenth century it was inhabited by Glagolitic monks from Poljice, where they found refuge from Ottoman invasions. An order by the local authorities in 1609 stipulated that the hermits could not be' disturbed.

Everyone had to obey them and show due respect because they came here of their own free will to bless and do penance, to live heavenly lives in the desert and maintain their purity. They did not simply follow other people's opinions unquestioningly, but integrated parts of themselves into each segment. Chapels, chambers and tombs whose style cannot be determined either are only several steps away from the reliefs which were probably formed by the hermits between their prayers.

It is the figures that make this work special. Each of them was made in a different way; many are rounded with firm and opened mouths, while others are modest, hardly visible at all. Is this the work of a number of artists or of only a single, truly gifted person? Maybe the hermit's subconscious, during his wandering throughout the world, recorded the shapes which he would afterwards simply engrave here, one after the other. Whoever created them, he preferred disproportion in order not to torture the walls by making them mere material for expression but rather to breathe together with them just as if they blend into the surface and then reappear. In addition to the dragon, which gave the cave its name, figures of people, birds and cranes, there is an amazing face of a man in reverse, the face looking inside the stone in which it was engraved. It looks into the essence, completely unrelated to time.

In the same way that we often make mistakes, maybe there will be someone after us who will find arguments which will lead him to the conclusion that this work belongs to our century. Because we also have the sun and the moon. And birds. We do not have dragons, just as they did not have them either, but they have always symbolically devoured something as they do today. Therefore, if you happen to visit Brac and if your inquisitive spirit takes you to its peaks, you may understand the bizarre thoughts that passed through the minds of the former residents of its extraordinary interior and the intentions that brought them to this region. (Magazin, the journal of Diners Club Adriatic) 1999