Poetry
Посмртне почасти
Not translated into English
Sima Pandurović · 1908
Synopsis
Poems of alienation and decline: the flight of time, the fall, death, seen without consolation and sometimes from a great height, as if present life were already taking on a golden patina. The best-known piece in the collection, “Светковина”, has remained its title to fame. The verse is regular, the language elevated, and one hears the echo of Baudelaire and his taste for decomposition.
Context
The collection appeared in 1908, when its author, still a student, was already running journals. Jovan Skerlić condemned it severely, and later, along with it, Dis's first book, in a single disapproval of a poetry he judged negating, plaintive and dark. The author published a second collection in 1912. The title was taken up in 1968 for an anthology of the author's work, and the book was the subject of a German thesis by Bärbel Schulte, published in the series Slavistische Beiträge.
Who it is for
A short collection, in an elevated language and regular verse. It helps to know that the Serbian poets of 1908 read the French decadents and sought to answer them.
Prizes and reception
The book for which its author is remembered, to the point that its title is still used for selections of his poems.