Milutin Bojic: Poet of the Great War: Poetry of pain and pride

Abstract

The First World War is the border point of the epochs in the cultural and political history of Europe, in which Serbia had one of the key roles. There are numerous testimonies about the Great War, both factual and artistic, whereas literary works inspired by this pivotal event in world history have still not been thoroughly researched. One of the most valuable testimonies of the epoch in artistic but also in historical sense is found in poetry of Milutin Bojić, one of the most talented pre-war poets of modernism and the author of the anthem- like 'Blue Grave' and a collection of poems created during the withdrawal through Albania and in exile, on the island of Corfu. 'Poems of Pain and Pride', published in Thessaloniki shortly before the poet's death, represent poetical transposition and philosophically sublimed sum of the historical experience of an entire nation, which found itself, by will of historical and fateful circumstances, in the middle of a four-year epic of biblical proportions.