Poetry
Песме
Not translated into English
Vojislav Ilić · 1887
Synopsis
Poems that paint more than they confide: winter and autumn landscapes seen as pictures, and scenes borrowed from Greek and Roman Antiquity, where statues and gods keep returning. The poet tries out a long line there, imitated from the classical metre, which Serbian poetry had hardly practised, and gives landscape the place that effusion held before him.
Context
The book was published in Belgrade in 1887. The author published two others under the same title, in 1889 and in 1892, and many pieces remained in journals or in manuscript. Critics have linked this poetry now to Antiquity and the Parnassian school, now to early Symbolism, and its long line, which Skerlić called a classical metre, has been variously described: a pseudo-hexameter for Milorad Pavić, a sixteen-syllable line for Svetozar Matić.
Who it is for
Short pieces, often descriptive. It is better to know a little Greek and Roman mythology, which the author often stages.
Prizes and reception
First book of a poet in whom some see the break of Serbian poetry with Romanticism, and in whom critics have noted the first signs of Symbolism.