Serbian Poetry

Introduction

Like all other South Slavic literatures, Serbian literature began after the Serbs were converted to Christianity around 873, having migrated from somewhere in Eastern Europe, from the sixth century on, to their present territory on the Balkan Peninsula. A special alphabet had to be devised for that purpose. There is no doubt that the Serbs had brought along their oral poetry and that they composed poems in praise of the newly adopted religion, but manuscripts from before the twelfth century were not preserved. There were also folk poems imitative of chansons de geste, which were sung by the singers accompanying the crusaders of the First Crusade (1096-1097) passing through the Serbian lands along the southern Adriatic Coast (Duclea). These poems were preserved in a manuscript titled “Kraljevstvo Slovena” (twelfth century; the kingdom of the Slavs) by Dukljanin of Bar.

Early poetry

Among the earliest extant Serbian poems are church songs commissioned and often composed by Saint Sava (1175-1235), the founder of the Serbian Orthodox Church and of Serbian literature. These poems were patterned after Byzantine church songs, but there were also original Slavic songs among them. As the Serbian state grew in size and strength, more poetry was written, mostly in the form of pohvale (encomiums) to national and church leaders. In addition, in the famous biographies of Serbian kings and archbishops, as well as in historical writings, there are passages so strikingly lyrical and rhetorical that some scholars now treat them as poems. “Slovo ljubve” (c. fifteenth century; a song of love), by Stephan Lazarević, and “Pohvala Knezu Lazaru” (1402; the encomium to Prince Lazar) are good examples of this kind of poetic literature. “Slovo ljubve” is written in a rather intricate form of acrostic, indicating that the poet drew on a sophisticated literary tradition.

With the advance of the Ottoman army into the Balkans and the gradual loss of Serbian independence, beginning with the Battle of Kosovo (1389) and ending with the fall of the last piece of Serbian territory (1459), Serbian literature entered a period of eclipse that would last almost until the eighteenth century. During this period, written literature was very difficult to maintain. Books were written exclusively by monks in secluded monasteries, aided by numerous intellectuals and writers from other countries who were fleeing the Turks. Among these writers, Dimitrije Kantakuzin (c. 1410-1474) and Pajsije (1550?-1647) stand out with their spiritually suffused poems.

Folk literature

The demise of written literature was more than offset by abundant folk literature in oral form—lyric and epic poetry, folktales, fairy tales, proverbs, riddles, and so on—and this folk tradition exercised a powerful influence on Serbian poets down to the present day. Indeed, when Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (1787-1864) collected, classified, and published a rich variety of Serbian folk literature in the first half of the nineteenth century, it was praised by such writers as Johann Gottfried Herder, the Brothers Grimm, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sir Walter Scott, Prosper Mérimée, Alexander Pushkin, and Adam Mickiewicz, and it inspired them to translate many poems and stories.

Serbian folk poetry consists of both lyric and epic poems. Lyric, or “women’s poems,” as Karadžić termed them, depict every phase of life: worship, work, play, customs, friendship, and, above all, love. Many poems have mythological elements, some of them showing kinship with the folk literature of other peoples in Europe and Asia, hinting at a common ancestry. These lyric poems are in various meter and verse forms and are often accompanied by a tune to be sung by a woman or an ensemble of women. As the poems were passed on from generation to generation, their linguistic form changed accordingly. They were recorded by Karadžić in a language that differs little from present-day Serbo-Croatian, indicating that they were probably the first literary works to be composed in the vernacular.

The epic poems of the folk tradition are on a much higher artistic level. For the most part, they deal with historical events, though often they transform history into legend. Divided chronologically into cycles, they follow the rise and fall of the medieval Serbian Empire, its glory and the subsequent misery under Ottoman rule. Two cycles stand out: the cycle about the feats of the Nemanjić Dynasty from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, culminating in the tragic but glorious defeat at Kosovo, and the cycle of poems about the legendary hero of the Serbs, Kraljević Marko (Prince Marko). Like the lyric folk poetry, these epics reflect the national philosophy of the Serbs, their understanding of life as a constant struggle between good and evil, and their willingness to choose death rather than succumb to the forces of evil. It is the ethical value of these poems that sets them above others of a similar kind. Their artistic value is also considerable. Almost all of them are composed in a decasyllabic meter (resembling a trochaic pentameter), with a regular caesura after the fourth syllable. They are concise and straightforward, overflowing with formulaic patterns, striking metaphors, and images, and told in a highly poetic language. They were sung by a male singer called a gouslar (a few of these skilled oral poets are still active today), accompanied by a one-string bow instrument, the gousle. Since these poems have been handed down orally for generations, their original authors will never be known. For that reason, among others, Serbian folk poetry is revered as a national treasure.

Serbian diaspora

The long occupation by the Turks, lasting in one form or another from the end of the fourteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century, forced many Serbs to migrate north, into Austro-Hungarian territories north of the Sava River and in the Danube region called Vojvodina, where they were well received in the hope of stemming the Ottoman tide. They brought along their religion and cultural heritage, which they endeavored to advance under the auspices of the enlightened absolutist rulers of the Austrian Empire. When Austrian rule seemed to threaten the national identity of the Serbs, they turned to the Russians for help. As a result, at the end of the seventeenth and into the eighteenth century, a new, hybrid language came into use, the so-called Russo-Slavic, employed by most Serbian poets of the time. Outstanding among these were Gavrilo Stefanović Venclović (680–1749) and Zaharije Orfelin (1726-1785). It is significant that they strongly advocated the use of a language comprehensible to the people and themselves wrote poems in a vernacular.

By the end of the eighteenth century, after a prolonged exposure to Western influence, Serbian poets wrote more and more in the spirit of the Enlightenment. The Russo-Slavic language gave way to a more comprehensible Slavo-Serbian, only to be supplanted by a full-fledged vernacular about the middle of the nineteenth century. Serbian poets displayed an ever-increasing erudition and familiarity with contemporary currents in world poetry, abandoning the provincial outlook of a confined culture. Their poetry became philosophical and contemplative, couched in higher, solemn, dignified tones. In line with Enlightenment trends, Serbian poetry in this period was highly didactic; it also reflected the influence of neoclassicism, as exemplified by the leading poet of the period, Lukijan Mušicki (1777-1837).

Nationalism and Romanticism

A reawakening of national awareness among the Vojvodina Serbs was spurred by uprisings in Serbia proper against the centuries-old Turkish rule. This patriotic enthusiasm, coupled with the revolutionary reform of the written language carried out by Karadžić in the first half of the nineteenth century on the principle “Write as you speak,” led to a nationwide renaissance. It first manifested itself during the transitional period leading toward Romanticism.

The leading proponent of this trend was Jovan Sterija Popović (1806-1856), a playwright and a novelist as well as a poet. His only collection of poetry, Davorje (1854; laments), showing a mixture of classicist, didactic, and Romantic features, laments the transience of life. Other transitional poets with an increasing inclination toward Romanticism were Sima Milutinović Sarajlija (1791-1847), Petar Petrović Njegoš (1813-1851), and Branko Radičević (1824-1853). Milutinović is more significant for his influence on other writers, especially Njegoš, than for his own works, but the few poems Milutinović wrote are distinguished by their pure lyricism and their unaffected celebration of earthly love. Both he and Njegoš drew heavily from folk poetry, which, owing to Karadzić’s work, the rise of Romanticism, and the successful national revival, became the primary source of poetic inspiration. Njegoš wrote all of his works, including his plays, in verse. His short poems reveal a predilection for meditation, a willingness to try new forms, and a language close to that of the people, while his long epic poem, Luča mikrokozma (1845; the ray of microcosm), which resembles John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667, 1674), offers in poetic form the author’s philosophical views on the origin of life and on the moral order of the universe. With this poem and the epic play in verse, Gorski vijenac (1847; The Mountain Wreath, 1930), Njegoš established himself as the greatest Serbian poet. Branko Radičević was the first to employ successfully in lyric poetry the vernacular as advocated by Karadžić. His ebullience and his celebration of simple, earthly joys would have been inexpressible in the era of neoclassicism.

The Romantic spirit reached its zenith with a group of poets, all of whom owed their inspiration, in one way or another, to Milutinović, Njegoš, and Radičević. Again, it was the poets from Vojvodina who set the tone, but, unlike those of the earlier generation, they fused the patriarchal heroism of Serbia proper and Montenegro with the fervor of the Vojvodina Serbs acquired during the Revolution of 1848, thus uniting the literatures of the north and the south. The verse of Djura Jakšić (1832-1878) illustrates more clearly than that of any other poet this revolutionary fervor. In his highly emotional patriotic poems, his fighting spirit and his indignation against all enemies of his people are combined with a yearning for freedom as promised by the revolutions in Europe around the middle of the nineteenth century. His unabashed love poems and his avowed taste for earthly pleasures make him one of the most emotional Serbian poets.

Jovan Jovanović Zmaj (1833-1904) dealt with similar feelings in a much more subdued manner. A physician by profession, he was capable of greater understanding of human nature and of inexhaustible love for his fellow human beings. Often struck by tragedy in personal life, he gave his sorrows a highly poetic expression in Djulići (1864; rosebuds) and Djulići uveoci (1882; rosebuds withered). His sincere patriotism was matched by his boundless love for children.

Other Romantic poets were Jovan Ilić (1823-1901) and Laza Kostić (1841-1910). While Ilić was a popular, down-to-earth poet of love and passion, of freedom and faith in the Serbian people, Kostić was a poet of lofty flights of the imagination. Combining metaphysical speculation with forceful love lyrics, Kostić was a bold innovator in metrics, thoroughly acquainted with other literatures (he translated William Shakespeare), especially with European Romanticism, and he developed a unique style of his own that often ignored traditional forms.

Romanticism in Serbian literature manifested itself best in lyric poetry. Thus, it was no wonder that poetry took a backseat when realistic tendencies began to assert themselves in the last third of the nineteenth century. Of all the poets in this period, only Vojislav Ilić (1862-1894) reached the level of his predecessors, and in some ways, he surpassed them. The son of Jovan Ilić, Vojislav discarded early the Romantic spirit in which he had been reared and instead combined classical themes with a realistic depiction of nature and human relationships. His ability to create lasting images was complemented by the musicality of his verses and by his sensitive impressions of life around him. Vojislav Ilić’s potential was cut short by an untimely death, but not before he had affected in Serbian poetry a turn that most new poets would soon follow.

Early twentieth century

That turn manifested itself at the end of the century, when three powerful poets—Aleksa Šantić (1868-1924), Jovan Dučić (1874?-1943), and Milan Rakić (1876-1938)—brought completely new tones to Serbian poetry. While Šantič was, to a large degree, still related to the preceding generation in his emotional inclinations and closeness to the native soil, he nevertheless showed in his love poems and poems on social themes a new awareness of problems besetting his fellow humans. His pure, sincere, and highly emotional lyrics were often set to music and are still very popular among common readers.

It was with Dučić and Rakić, however, that the new turn in Serbian poetry received its full impetus. Both educated in the West, they were inculcated with the fin de siècle spirit of the Symbolists and the Parnassians. Dučić used his erudition, refined taste, and aristocratic spirit to modernize Serbian poetry and free it from provincial confines. All traditional modes of expression were transformed into his peculiar idiom, primarily through new sensitivity, formalistic excellence, clarity, precision, elegance, musicality, and picturesque images. Though he paid lip service to the Decadence fashionable at the time, he was too much a poet of Mediterranean joie de vivre and of faith in life’s ultimate meaning to allow his pessimism to become a driving force.

Not so with Rakić, who was unable to alleviate his constant pessimistic outlook on life, especially in matters of love and the meaning of life. His few poems, collected in a single volume, Pesme (1903; poems), reveal a deep-seated decadence and a firm belief that life inevitably brings decay and misery. This intellectual awareness of humanity’s futility in trying to mitigate pain and misery was not a mere pose, and it is Rakić’s conviction and sincerity that, together with artistic excellence, render his poems highly poignant and aesthetically satisfying.

Other poets of the first two decades of the twentieth century worth noting are Vladislav Petković Dis (1880-1917), Sima Pandurović (1883-1960), Milutin Bojić (1892-1917), and Veljko Petrović (1884-1967). They all wrote in the shadow of Dučić and Rakić, yet they all contributed to the broadening of horizons in Serbian poetry of their time.

Interwar period

Amid titanic struggles and profound changes in Serbia during and after World War I, Serbian poets changed with the times, bringing on yet another decisive break with the past, not only in poetry but also in other forms of literature. The entire period between the two world wars was marked by these fundamental changes. At first, a new generation of poets raised its voice against the horrors of war and clamored, often in vain, for humaneness and greater understanding. Dušan Vasiljev (1900-1924), Miloš Crnjanski (1893-1977), and Rastko Petrović (1898-1949), the leaders among the modernist poets, reflected the influence of the German Expressionists. Toward the end of the 1920s, a group of poets, led by Dušan Matić (1898-1980), Marko Ristić (1902-1982), Oskar Davičo (1909-1989), and Aleksandar Vučo (1897-1985), introduced a form of Surrealism, to which they gave a peculiarly Serbian twist.

In the 1930s, a socially conscious poetry developed, dwelling on the pervasive social turbulence besetting the world in the decade prior to World War II. This pronounced politicization resulted in great commotion but not in great literature. During the war, the muses fell silent, as is often the case, nor were they articulate in the immediate postwar years, a period marked by profound political and social changes. It was only at the beginning of the 1950s that Serbian poetry experienced another renewal.

Later twentieth century onward

To be sure, several major prewar poets continued to write after 1945. Some added relatively little to their opus, while others reached their full potential only after the war. Crnjanski published only one significant poetic work after the war, the long poem Lament nad Beogradom (1962; lament over Belgrade), continuing where he left off almost four decades earlier. If this late work was not innovative, however, it did add a reflective quality to the essentially elegiac movement of Crnjanski’s poetry. Stanislav Vinaver (1891-1955), another prewar modernist, also published only one collection after the war, Evropska noć (1952; the European night), in which he confirmed his reputation as an interesting experimenter with language. Desanka Maksimović (1898-1993) wrote some of her best poetry after the war. Combining patriotic feelings with traditional lyricism and the apotheosis of nature, her poems in Tražim pomilovanje (1965; I seek mercy) are among the best in contemporary Serbian poetry.

Davičo also reached his full stature only after the war. In numerous collections, he exhibited his revolutionary spirit and his mastery of imagery and language. Unable or unwilling to compromise, he always went to the heart of the matter, carrying on polemics, attacking, changing positions, and often preaching. Above all, his strong sensual imagination, manifested in unexpected metaphors and paradoxical twists of language, makes Davičo one of the most gifted of contemporary poets.

Two other Surrealists wrote significant poetry after the war, Matić and Milan Dedinac (1902-1966). Matić influenced many younger poets with his contemplative, controlled poetry, which often has the fragmentary quality of journal entries. He was interested primarily in the essence of appearances, and his range is wide and rich in imaginative possibilities. The case of Dedinac is much simpler. After the turbulent Surrealist era, he combined, in his mature years, the old avant-garde spirit with an almost traditional lyricism.

In the first generation of postwar poets, Vasko Popa (1922-1991) and Miodrag Pavlović (1928-2014) played a very important and influential role. All the complex problems of tradition and the manner in which this tradition is to be absorbed, can be seen through the two distinct approaches these poets have taken. The aim of both poets, broadly speaking, is to rediscover the authentic native poetic tradition, to make its imagination contemporary, and, at the same time, to make available the processes and laws of that discovery.

Popa is generally considered to have been the best contemporary Serbian poet. His intensely original poetry is the result of a close attention to the metaphorical and mythical overtones that one finds buried in idiomatic language: For Popa, the archetypal animistic imagination survived in contemporary idioms. Informed by Surrealism and folklore, his cycles of poems construct intricate and precise systems of symbols that are never merely arbitrary, however baffling they may appear at first glance. His poems, even when they refer to historical events, have a timeless quality. With each new cycle, it became apparent that his entire opus partook of one vast and original vision of humanity and the universe.

Pavlović began his career with preoccupations similar to those of Popa, but Pavlović’s verse has gradually assumed a more historical orientation and a classical sense of form. Exploring the historical continuum which leads back to Byzantium and the ancient Slavs, Pavlović’s method, in contrast to that of Popa, is highly intellectual. Pavlović is searching for the philosophical and religious legacy of Serbian culture. To understand the need for and the complexity of that search, one must remember that historically, the development of Serbian culture has been interrupted by several “dark ages.” Pavlović’s search is not a matter of literary antiquarianism (for very little of the actual material of Serbian culture remains) but of an imaginative search for origins. At the same time, it cannot be denied that Pavlović taps the most ancient currents of Serbian poetry.

Ivan V. Lalić (1931-1996) also sought a living tradition, and he shared the intellectual and classical sensibility of Pavlović. What distinguishes his poetry from the latter’s is his sensuousness, his lyric precision and immediacy, which render the poet visible in his poems. Lalić’s historical vision always has at its center a contemporary individual, as a victim or simply as a witness. His genuine mastery of form and the beauty of his language must also be emphasized.

Similar characteristics can be seen in some other Serbian poets of the same generation. The poetry of Jovan Hristić (1933-2002)—meditative, philosophical, and with an austere, almost classical rhetoric—has a cool elegance. Milorad Pavić (1929-2009) is closer to Popa, in that Pavić, too, has based his poetry on language, specifically the predominantly religious texts of seventeenth and eighteenth-century Serbian literature. He approaches these texts with the eye of a Surrealist who dreams of being a mythmaker. His poems have the appearance of metaphorical tapestries. Ljubomir Simović (born 1935) is much more an instinctive poet, guided by an intimate, often confessional lyric sense. His poems combine simplicity of language with expressionistic imagery and a kind of Breughelian earthiness. The lyricism of Božidar Timotijević (1932-2001) is more traditional and subdued. The poet is always in the foreground, and it is his own life that is being explored. What is remarkable about all of these poets turned toward the various aspects of native tradition is that they are often the ones who are, from the point of view of prosody and imagery, the most experimental.

Stevan Raičković (1928-2007) represents the neo-Romantic wing in contemporary Serbian poetry. His books express his basic themes: nature as a source of perfection, and yearning for silence and solitude. Raičković’s anxiety over humanity’s disappearing ties with nature leads him at times into deep pessimism. Simplicity, directness, and a genuine lyric gift are his main traits. One of the most talented postwar Serbian poets, Branko Miljković (1934-1961), committed suicide and thus gave rise to a considerable legend. Influenced by French and Russian Symbolists as well as by the intellectual Surrealism of Yves Bonnefoy, Miljković’s poetry abounds in epigrammatic utterances, unexpected metaphoric constructions, and philosophical questioning, resulting in a poetry of heightened lyricism. Each one of his poems has the intensity of a farewell note.

Miljković influenced many young poets. Borislav Radović (1935-2018) owes a debt to him and to Matić. Radović is probably the most Hermetic poet of his generation. Beneath the prosiness of his lines, there is a powerful lyric pressure, and his poems open areas of language and style that are entirely new for Serbian poetry. Matija Bećković (b. 1939) stands somewhat by himself. His socially conscious poetry, his original and deliberate selection of antipoetic images, and his sense of humor establish his kinship with other Eastern European poets such as Miroslav Holub and Tadeusz Różewicz. The Villonesque emotional climate of Bećković’s poems has had a great influence on younger Serbian poets and foreshadows an interesting new development in Serbian poetry.

Among the poets born after the 1950s, there are many who are worth mentioning, especially Dragan Jovanović Danilov (b. 1960) and Milan Orlić (b. 1962). Their works are primarily published in Serbian, such as Kanjoni kroz nas (2023) and Talasi beogradskog mora (2014). Other important Serbian poets of the twenty-first century include Slaviša Pavlović (b. 1982), who wrote Osvit večnosti (2014; Dawn of Eternity) and Nenad Trajković (b. 1982), who published Banatski kulturni centar (2019; Thinner Line of Infinity). Writer, professor, and poet Vesna Goldsworthy published her prize-winning collection of poetry, The Angel of Salonika, in 2011, and she won Serbia's Momo Kapor Prize in 2022 for her novel Iron Curtain.

Serbian poetry at the beginning of the twenty-first century continued in a state of growth, quantitatively if not qualitatively. There has never been a period in Serbian history that has witnessed such a proliferation of talent and poetic output. More importantly, young poets are completely open to the world, follow the development of poetry everywhere, are susceptible to cross-cultural influences, and regard themselves as true members of the world poetic community. At the same time, they are constantly searching for their roots and examining their poetic tradition, sometimes making discoveries in the most unexpected places. The language of present-day Serbian poetry has reached an unprecedented stage of development. There is also a tendency among young poets to close themselves hermetically and guard their isolation fiercely.

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