Vojislav Ilić (1860 - 1894) was a 19th century Serbian

Serbs

The Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group of the Balkans and southern Central Europe. Serbs are located mainly in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form a sizable minority in Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. Likewise, Serbs are an officially recognized minority in...

 poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 of finely chiselled verse, son of the Romanticist playwright and poet Jovan Ilić. He was born in the capital of Serbia, Belgrade

Belgrade

Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...

.

Vojislav failed to complete his gymnasium

Gymnasium (school)

A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...

 education and was forced to take various clerical positions of minor importance. Living for the most part in penury, he wrote poetry extensively and soon became the leading Serbian poet in the last decades of the nineteenth century. As so many Serbian artists of that era, he died young, of consumption

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

, in 1894.

His poetry exemplifies a classic example of modern Serbian language

Serbian language

Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....

 and features the standard Decadent motifs of the epoch: cruel nature (e.g. cold wind blowing across empty fields), and times of Elagabalus

Elagabalus

Elagabalus , also known as Heliogabalus, was Roman Emperor from 218 to 222. A member of the Severan Dynasty, he was Syrian on his mother's side, the son of Julia Soaemias and Sextus Varius Marcellus. Early in his youth he served as a priest of the god El-Gabal at his hometown, Emesa...

.

Biography

Vojislav J. Ilić, Serbian poet, was born in Belgrade on the 14th of April 1860, the son of poet and politician Jovan Ilić. On both sides of the family was of the highest provincial middle class, but was not noble; his father was fairly wealthy after retiring from the Privy Council

Privy council

A privy council is a body that advises the head of state of a nation, typically, but not always, in the context of a monarchic government. The word "privy" means "private" or "secret"; thus, a privy council was originally a committee of the monarch's closest advisors to give confidential advice on...

 in 1882, and living quietly as the patriarch of a literary dynasty. Vojislav, the eldest child, was educated at various grade schools and high schools and at the end of his school days he enrolled in the Faculty of Philosophy at Belgrade's Grande École (Velika Škola), but did not graduate. The hub of literary activity was his home, where he befriended Jovan Jovanović Zmaj

Jovan Jovanovic Zmaj

Jovan Jovanović Zmaj was one of the best-known Serbian poets. He was a physician by profession, like his literary predecessor writer Jovan Stejić ....

 and Đura Jakšić and even married one of Jakšić's daughters. In certain aspects Vojislav does belong somewhat to all the four main periods of European literary style that he passed through in a period of less than 15 years, a unique phenomenon, but his great merit as a poet is that he emancipated himself from the affectations and puerilities of his masters. Literary critic Jovan Skerlić said one of the most striking aspects of Vojislav's activity is the attention he drew to the form and technique of poetic creation: Vojislav Ilić ima veliko čisto pesnički talenat, više čiste umetnosti, no i jedan srpski pesnik pre njega.

In 1885 he joined the Serbian Army as a volunteer and accompanied his detachment to Bulgaria but did not encounter the enemy. The short-lived Serbo-Bulgarian War

Serbo-Bulgarian War

The Serbo-Bulgarian War was a war between Serbia and Bulgaria that erupted on 14 November 1885 and lasted until 28 November the same year. Final peace was signed on 19 February 1886 in Bucharest...

 gave Ilić another direction than the military. From 1887 until 1892 he was an editor at the Government Printing Press. In 1892 he taught at a Serbian grammar school in Turnu Severin, in Romania. That same year he was appointed press secretary at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and afterwards vice-consul in Priština, then under Turkish rule. He died in Belgrade on the 21st of January 1894.

Literary Work

His first publication was a book simply entitled Pesme (Poems) which appeared in Belgrade in 1887 and this was followed at other intervals by other volumes of more verse. As a poet he soon made a reputation as one of the ablest and most versatile writers of his day. His influence was infectuous, young aspiring poets would gather around him and in that period the term Vojislavism became a coined word in Serbian literature. In the 1890s a true Vojislavism reigned among young Serbian poets; no wonder he was proclaimed "the greatest Serbian poet" by Skerlić and other critics. Of the best known Serbian poets who looked up to him during that period were Milorad J. Mitrović, Mileta Jakšić, Aleksa Šantić

Aleksa Šantic

Aleksa Šantić was a Serb poet from Herzegovina.He was born and lived most his life in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, a province that was occupied by Austria-Hungary in 1878 and annexed by them in 1908...

, Danica Marković, and for a short while even Jovan Dučić, who soon went on to abandon Vojislavism for a new literary wave that Dučić and Milan Rakić would ultimately espouse, influenced by the French poets. This independence Dučić and Rakić owed in part perhaps to their studies and frequent travels abroad, both were in the diplomatic service. It was Jovan Dučić who put it best in perspective, Even if Vojislav did not succeed in becoming our greatest poet, he is certainly our most beautiful poet. But nothing deminishes Vojislav J. Ilić's standing in Serbian literature which remains on a firm foundation more than a century later.

Undoubtedly Vojislav J. Ilić achieved much for a poet who died young -- he had not reached 34 years of age. He was, indeed, the poet of his period. Jovan Skerlić, the great Serbian literary critic, wrote: What Lukijan Mušicki

Lukijan Mušicki

Lukijan Mušicki was a Serbian poet, prose writer, and polyglot.Mušicki was a monk, and later abbot of a monastery in Fruška Gora, whose religious poetry in Church Slavonic, a language distant from the spoken koine, but the only literary language of his time, was recognised and valued by the...

 meant to Serbian literature in the 1830s, Sima Milutinović Sarajlija

Sima Milutinovic Sarajlija

Sima Milutinović "Sarajlija" was a Bosnian–Serbian poet, hajduk, translator, historian, philologist, diplomat and adventurer.-Biography:...

 in the 1840s, Djura Jakšić and Jovan Jovanović Zmaj in the 1860s, so too, did Vojislav J. Ilić make his imprint in the 1890s. He brought Romanticism to its conclusion and ushered in a new direction -- Vojislavism.

Compared to Pushkin

Vojislav J. Ilić was an ardent follower of Vuk Karadžić's reforms. He displays richness of fancy and aptness of language, like Pushkin with whom he has been compared with, and his work has even stood the test of time. Various editions of his Collected Works have been published after his death, one in 1907 and 1909, in two volumes.

Vojislav has been credited for having influenced many poets that came after him, thereby paving the way for higher achievements in Serbian poetry in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Vojislav Ilić was in Serbian literature in the late 1880s and the early 1890s what Lukijan Mušicki

Lukijan Mušicki

Lukijan Mušicki was a Serbian poet, prose writer, and polyglot.Mušicki was a monk, and later abbot of a monastery in Fruška Gora, whose religious poetry in Church Slavonic, a language distant from the spoken koine, but the only literary language of his time, was recognised and valued by the...

 was in the 1830s; Sima Milutinović Sarajlija

Sima Milutinovic Sarajlija

Sima Milutinović "Sarajlija" was a Bosnian–Serbian poet, hajduk, translator, historian, philologist, diplomat and adventurer.-Biography:...

 in the 1840s; and Jovan Jovanović Zmaj

Jovan Jovanovic Zmaj

Jovan Jovanović Zmaj was one of the best-known Serbian poets. He was a physician by profession, like his literary predecessor writer Jovan Stejić ....

 and Đura Jakšić were in the 1860s.