Desanka Maksimovic

"Maksimović ... marked a whole era with her lyrical poetry," the literary scholar Aida Vidan writes. She was the first female Serbian poet to gain widespread acceptance from her predominantly male colleagues within the Yugoslav literary milieu, as well as the first Serbian female poet to attract a significant following among the general public. She was Yugoslavia's leading female literary figure for seven decades, first acquiring this distinction during the interwar period and retaining it until her death. The scholar Dubravka Juraga describes her as "the beloved doyenne of Yugoslav belles lettres". Maksimović "offered women writers a model of achievement in the field of lyric poetry," the literary scholar Celia Hawkesworth writes. Hawkesworth compares Maksimović's contributions to Serbian literature to that of Elisaveta Bagriana in Bulgaria, Wisława Szymborska in Poland, and Nina Cassian in Romania. The author Christopher Deliso describes Maksimović as "the most beloved Serbian poet of the twentieth century". During her lifetime, her reputation was such that many of her contemporaries referred to her simply by her first name. Her poem Krvava bajka is widely considered one of the best known pieces of Serbian-language verse. She is also credited with popularizing love locks in the former Yugoslavia through one of her poems. By the early 2000s, the phenomenon had spread to other parts of the globe.

Source: Sljivic-Simsic (1995, pp. 127–128)

Maksimović's husband died in 1970. Following his death, her poems increasingly began to deal with the topic of human mortality. In 1975, she received a Vuk Karadžić Award for Lifetime Achievement from the SANU, becoming only the second writer to receive the honour, after Nobel laureate Ivo Andrić. The following year, Maksimović published Letopis Perunovih potomaka (A Chronicle of Perun's Descendants), a poetry collection dealing with medieval Balkan history. She travelled widely in the 1970s and 1980s, visiting many European nations, including the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom, but also Australia, Canada, the United States, and China. Her visits to Norway and Switzerland inspired the poetry collection Pesme iz Norveške (Poems from Norway; 1976) and a travel book titled Snimci iz Švajcarske (Snapshots from Switzerland; 1978). In 1982, Maksimović became one of the founding members of the Committee for the Protection of Artistic Freedom, which sought an end to government censorship. In 1988, she published a poetry collection titled Pamtiću sve (I Shall Remember Everything). She died in Belgrade on 11 February 1993, aged 94.

A statue of Maksimović was unveiled in Valjevo on 27 October 1990, while she was still alive. In the 1990s, as part of the renaming of communist-era street names following the breakup of Yugoslavia, Đuro Salaj Street in Belgrade was renamed Desanka Maksimović Street. In May 1996, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia issued a commemorative postage stamp in her honour. A bronze statue of Maksimović was erected in Belgrade's Tašmajdan Park on 23 August 2007.

She was a writer and actress, known for Jedan covek - jedna pesma (1970), Trazim pomilovanje (1981) and Ti medjutim stojis na velikoj reci (1979).

In 1964, Maksimović published a volume of reflective poetry entitled Tražim pomilovanje (I Seek Clemency), which dealt with the 14th-century reign of Dušan the Mighty, the founder of the Serbian Empire. The collection was well received and quickly became a bestseller. Its veiled critique of Tito made it especially popular, especially among those frustrated with the Yugoslav government's increasing arbitrariness and corruption. Maksimović was the recipient of further honours over the next several years. In 1965, her colleagues voted to make her a full member of the SANU. By this time, Maksimović was not only well known and respected within Yugoslavia, but also abroad, with her works having been translated into dozens of languages. Among the translators of her works was the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. In 1967, Maksimović was awarded a medal by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union.

To mark her 60th birthday, Maksimović was named the recipient of a string of honours and awards in 1958. In 1964, she published one of her most acclaimed works, a volume of reflective poetry entitled Tražim pomilovanje (I Seek Clemency). The work's veiled critique of the Tito government made it especially popular. The following year, she became a full-fledged member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Following her husband's death in 1970, Maksimović's poetry increasingly began to revolve around the subject of human mortality. Maksimović travelled extensively in the 1970s and 1980s, and some of her visits abroad inspired several of her works. She became involved in efforts to combat government censorship in the early 1980s and was active until her death in 1993.

After the war, Yugoslavia became a socialist state under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito. Maksimović was reinstated as a professor at the First High School for Girls. In 1946, she published a collection of war poems titled Pesnik i zavičaj (The Poet and His Native Land). The collection contained one of her best known poems, Krvava bajka (A Bloody Fairy Tale), a requiem for the children killed in the Kragujevac massacre of October 1941. Although she was not a communist, her works received the approval of the Yugoslav government. Maksimović was a fervent Russophile, and at times, her Russophilia was mistaken for covert Cominformism, a serious charge in the years following the Tito–Stalin Split, that if proven, could have landed a person in prison. Maksimović retired from teaching in 1953. In 1958, to mark her 60th birthday, Maksimović received a number of awards from the Yugoslav government and literary establishment. The following year, she received partial membership in the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU).

In 1933, Maksimović married Sergej Slastikov, a Russian émigré writer. After being dismissed from her post at the high school by the Germans in 1941, she was reduced to a state of poverty and forced to work odd jobs to survive the three-year occupation. She was only permitted to publish children's literature during this period, but secretly compiled a collection of patriotic poems, which were not published until after the war. Among these was Krvava bajka (A Bloody Tale), about the Wehrmacht's killing of schoolchildren in the Kragujevac massacre. It was recited extensively in post-war commemorative ceremonies and became one of the best known Serbian-language poems.

Maksimović's poetry first appeared in Misao between 1920 and 1921. She received what was to be the first of many literary awards when one of her poems was voted to be the journal's best by its readers. Within a few years, the Srpski književni glasnik (Serbian Literary Herald), then Belgrade's most influential and respected literary journal, began printing her poems, and several of her works appeared in an anthology of Yugoslav lyric poetry. In 1924, Maksimović published her first poetry collection, simply entitled Pesme (Poems). The collection was met with positive reviews. Maksimović graduated from the University of Belgrade around this time and received a fellowship from the Government of France for a year's study at the University of Paris. She returned to Belgrade in 1925, and upon her return, received a Saint Sava medal from the government for her literary achievements and became a professor at the city's elite First High School for Girls.

Desanka Maksimovic was born on May 16, 1898 in Rabrovica, Serbia, Yugoslavia.