This article seeks to briefly revisit the connection between World War I and Serbian literary modernism. The argument is that this connection is subtler, deeper and more enduring than it is usually presented. To illustrate it, the literary development of three key writers of Serbian modernism, Miloš Crnjanski, Ivo Andrić and Rastko Petrović, is taken as an example, and their attitudes regarding the literary representation of World War I compared to the actual representations of war in their poetry and fiction.
This article explores the paradoxical position of Serbian modernist authors, chiefly Ivo Andrić, vis-à-vis Gavrilo Princip. It addresses the discrepancy between the powerful hold that Princip, as a symbolic figure, had on the members of his generation and the absence of literary representations of his act in the literature of the interwar period. A more attentive reading of the texts in which Princip’s act is mentioned or alluded to, shows, however, that he performed an important and highly symbolic function in the modernists’ auto-designation as the members of a new generation of authors.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.