Profile of Milos Crnjanski on Famous Like Me

Miloš Crnjanski, in Serbian Cyrillic: Милош Црњански (1893-1973), was a leading poet of the expressionist wing of Serbian modernism, author and diplomat.

In 20th century Serbian literature, Miloš Crnjanski was one of authors who (as poet, narrator and publicist) spoke loudest, and remained silent for longest time, and in his work, he achieved various values and results. From a journalist whose social-political stance at one moment openly opposed freedom and progress, he graduatly arose to a poet and romancist of greatest kind. That marked not only his interesting biography, but also one turning-point of Serbian literal history.

Crnjanski was born on September 26, 1893 in Csongrad, Hungary, in impoverished family, which moved in 1896 to TimiÅŸoara, where he grew up in a patriarchal-patriotic community which implanted cult of Serbia and Serbian heritage in his soul as a most precious relic. Deepest and longest lasting sensations of his childhood were those with national and religious contents: church school, St. Sava icon, incense, Serbian Orthodox cemetery with burial ceremonies, evning stories and songs about Serbia, hajduks, and Ottoman Turkish oppression - all of it in boys emotions transferred into continual unrest and everlasting source of hope, joy, doubt, disappointment, and rising.

He studied of art history and philosophy in Vienna and finished them on the Belgrade University after the WWI. After the war Crnjanski has worked as a professor and journalist, and in 1928 he was appointed for the cultural ataché in the embassy of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in Berlin, Lisbon and Rome. When World War II began, he was in Rome. From there, he went to London, where he lived as an emigrantand, haven't returned to Belgrade until 1965.

At the beginning of WWI, Crnjanski suffered retribution of Austrian government because of Princip's assassination in Sarajevo, but instead of jail, he was drafted to army and sent to Galician frontline to fight against the Russians. Most of time during this tragic war days, Crnjanski spent in solitary of war hospital, and just before the end of war he was sent to Italian front. In his memory sights of war havoc impressed unerasably. „...frontline, hospitals, then frontline again, and love, everywhere love, for bread and sugar, everything wet, everywhere rain and mud, fogs of dying“ – this were the sights that surrounded young Crnjanski.

30 million of guiltless young dead people found place in anti-war verses of this misfortunate young soldier that he brought from war, first to Zagreb and then to Belgrade, where he stayed for the longest time. From then on, Crnjanski lived as unfortunate Homer's hero, who retuns to his poem Itaka after long odyssey. Odysseus though found a way to preserve strength of life, unlike Crnjanski who (along with his generation) returned to destructed homeland with the feeling of tiredness and resignation. „In the great chaos of war – spoke young poet – I was unfaltering in my grief, muse and opaque feeling of loneliness“. Both in his war and post-war verses, this tired poet sincerely spoke about his resignation and lost illusions.

From his ramble across bloody frontlines of Europe, Crnjanski returns to thoughts about necessity for disintegration of false myth of "eternal" values of citizen etics. Both in poetry and life, he lives as a sentimental anarchist and tired defetist who with sorrow looks upon relics of his youth, now spluttered with blood, and spited on in mud. He felt then as a member of progressive social forces and loudly pledged for socialism, but his rebellion from those days was only "bloody explosion" of some shadowy social residue brought from war.

Literal work of Miloš Crnjanski from that period was a significant contribution to the effort of his generation to find a new language and expression for new themes and contents. Speaking about literal program of poets of his generation, he wrote: "As a some kind of a religious cult, after a lot of time, while art was ment to be a passtime, we are bringing unrest and upheaval, in word, feeling, thought. Even if we haven't expressed it yet, we undoubtly have it inside of us. From the mass, from the ground, from the time, it went to us. And it is not to be strangled... We stopped with tradition, for we are jumping thowads future... lyrics is becoming a passionate expression of a new faith." With completely new verse, and a lot of emotional bitterness, he expressed his disaccord, in that days, he spoke about futileness of war, pugently negated Kosovo battle myths and sarcastically mocked delusion of "golden century" which was promised to mankind.

Using the strength of his suggestive poet's word, he crushed many civil values, but he wasn't able to see or start something new on this ruins. Both the verse and prose of Crnjanski was strong during post-war years, as long as war revolt lived in him. But in time, those feelings allayed, so when he should have turn himself to something new, Crnjanski still wandered and staggered, going closer to te ideals of Serbian bourgeoisie, afraid of approach of proleterian revolution.

WWII and years after the war, Crnjanski spent in emigration in London, and he came back to his country in 1965. In the quest for the shores of his life, he was happy to see Belgrade, which glistened in his nostalgy "like a human laughter through tears". In his verses dedicated to Belgrade, he emotionally expressed his feelings of a man who returned from long odyssey of life:

      *There is no inanity and death in you...
       You even tears convert like a rain into colorfull rainbows.
       ------------------------------------------
       And when time comes, tham my old hart appease,
       yours will acacia fall over me like the rain.
                                (Lament over Belgrade) 

He died in Belgrade on November 30, 1977.

Work

Crnjanski published large amount of works of various subject and content:

• - poetry – Lyrics of Itaka (1918), Chosen verses (1954) and Lament over Belgrade (1965);
• - tales – Stories about male (1924)
• - novels – The Journal of ÄŒarnojević (1921), Migrations (1929) and Second book of Migrations (1962), Novel about London (1972);
• - drama – Masks (1918), Doss-house (1958) and Nikola Tesla.

Crnjanski has founded newspapers and magazines ("Putevi", with Marko Ristić, in 1922 and "Ideje", a political paper, in 1934). Ha also published two books of eastern nations poetry antology.

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Milos Crnjanski