Lyre

THIRTY YEARS SINCE THE DEATH OF DESANKA MAKSIMOVIĆ (1898–1993)
Great Lady of Serbian Poetry
She was the good spirit of Serbia and its secret. She has been in the very top of Serbian literature since Pandurović’s anthology from 1921. Describing Desanka among the great writers of his time, Duško Radović concluded: ”Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs”. Selections from Serbian love or patriotic poetry cannot be imagined without her. It seems that there wouldn’t be Serbia without the book ”I Am Seeking a Pardon” or poem ”Bloody Fairytale”. Since Desanka was buried in the local churchyard, Brankovina became the inevitable landmark of Serbian poetic geography, similar to Lovćen or Stražilovo

By: Dragan Lakićević
Photo: Branko Belić, Bojana Nikolić, Dragiša Medenica, Jovo Anđić,
Desanka Maksimović Endowment, Museum of Native Writers in Valjevo

She was singing for seventy years. She was the poet of her nation.
The already legendary history about the literary encounter of notable Serbian writers with their people in Dalmatia in May 1971 perhaps best testifies about it. The literary evening with a group of Belgrade writers was supposed to take place in Zadar, but, after landing in Zadar, the writers were informed that there was no free hall for the guests in the city and that the literary program would be canceled. The writers then went to Ravni Kotari, to hold a literary meeting by the tower of epic hero Stojan Janković and near the tomb of his descendant, great writer Vladan Desnica, not even anticipating the great number of people in the audience. People rushed from villages and towns, men with red caps, women with scarves – many of them black. Young men were carrying ”Red Star” flags. These flags replaced the Serbian state flag – remembered witnesses later. Young Jovan Radulović, later writer of Golubnjača and remarkable novels and stories, was in the audience.
The group of writers who arrived was extraordinary: Desanka, Ćosić, Mihiz, Isaković, Dragoslav Mihailović, Dušan Radović, Matija, Bulatović and Crnčević. People in white shirts gathered as if at a church-national gathering. Writers from all Serbian lands were coming to visit them.
When Desanka stepped behind the microphone – the people were enthralled. They were looking at the poetess of the ”Bloody Fairytale”. When she started: It happened in a land of peasants… the audience, thousands of them, continued: ”In the hilly Balkans”… Desanka was reciting: They died a martyr’s death… and the people: ”A squad of students in only one day”… And so on, until the end of the poem – a great national chorus and poem-liturgy! Everyone was on their feet – they learned the poem by heart while listening to their school children reciting it.
Later, in the plane, Dušan Radović concluded: ”Snow-White and the Seven Dwarves!” That was Desanka among the great writers of her time.

WOMAN – NATIONAL BARD

And thus lived her poem ”Bloody Fairytale”. It was written in Belgrade in 1941, when the poetess heard in the street that occupiers shot thousands of people somewhere in Serbia, including school students taken from their schoolrooms. (The shot Serbia resembled the ”Mowed Meadow”.) The ”Bloody Fairytale” was the greatest poem from World War II – replacement for a prayer. It had its place in school textbooks as if in a church calendar. Its Christian ending was completely natural:

Entire rows of boys
holding their hands
from their last class in school
went calmly to be shot
as if death were nothing.
Entire rows of friends
ascended in the same moment
to their eternal dwelling place.

Desanka was getting close to that poem ever since her early youth. The ”Bloody Fairytale” was a poetic paradigm of the Serbian fate in the XX century, perhaps even the entire fate, when Desanka directed her contemplative poetic glance to the spaces of duration of nation and its faith.
She was born in 1898, on May 16, in Rabrovica near Valjevo. Her father Mihailo was a teacher in Brankovina, so little Desanka grew up there. The arrival of the poetess and her father to the wonderful historical village of the Nenadović family – warriors and poets, and when the poetess chose the churchyard for her eternal dwelling place, Brankovina became a landmark of the Serbian poetic geography, similar to Lovćen and Stražilovo – marked by great Serbian poets. Milovan Vitezović wrote about her childhood and growing up in his romanced biography Miss Desanka.
There were two schools: one with her father as teacher and one with the nation as teacher. Between them was a creek: blackboard, desks and books on one side, church and service on the other, with tombs of Aleksa, Jakov, Prota and Ljuba – epic history of rebellion...

THE SOUL UNDERSTANDS THE LANGUAGE OF LEAVES AND GRASSES

The soul of the poetess, however, best understands the language of leaves, grasses and birds… In her childhood, blue books were arriving from Belgrade and the girl discovered printed poetry – world and Serbian subjects. One of the books of the Serbian Literary Cooperative, which her father ordered for the school, Stone Age, written by geologist and academician Jovan Žujović, arrived. One never forgets what they read in their childhood. Remembering images from drawings and text in the book, Desanka wrote the novel Pregirl half a century later.
She discovered both love and death very early. ”It came suddenly, at a fair in the churchyard, when a bully killed a man, a peasant I knew. Even now I remember the name of the killer and someone’s voice in the yard: ‘Beserovac killed a man!’ Much later, a thought was torturing me how someone who danced kolo a moment before his death could disappear in a blink of an eye…”
”There, in my grandfather’s park, I wrote really many poems, not only in my youth, as a university or gymnasium student, while visiting for school vacations, but also later as a mature woman and poetess. There, on a log, in the bushes, I read many books written in the great wide world – in Belgrade, Moscow, Paris, Poland, England…”
She made her middle school even more famous – the Valjevo (mixed) gymnasium, established in 1870, which Bishop Nikolai attended, and later painter Ljuba Popović, poets Petar Pajić and Matija Bećković, and other remarkable people and academicians.
She published her first poems in the Misao (Thought) magazine in 1920. Since then, her living word has been lasting in hundreds of books. Each of her books was a real event in Serbian literature. Continuous freshness was arriving from the language and meaning of her unique lyrics – deep and understandable, both for children and adults.
Already in 1921, eleven of her poems appeared in Simo Pandurović’s Anthology of the Latest Lyrics. She has been at the top since then.
She was in communication with nature and time. From nature she discovered love and from time experience.
Sensitive and responsible, matured on the best books from tradition and world culture, she was able to speak about ants and birds, about historical turbulences and greatest conflicts of the contemporary world.
She translated from Russian, French and Bulgarian.
The dates of her books became more impressive than the dates of her service and her life. The life of Desanka Maksimović was in poetry. She studied at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, then worked as professor in Paris for two years. She was publishing even during World War II. After the war, she participated at the volunteer working camp for constructing the Šamac-Sarajevo railroad, became member of SANU (Serbian Academy of Science and Arts), while at the same time writing and publishing books. She received the greatest recognitions and, during her lifetime, unwillingly watched the monument in Valjevo raised by her enthusiasts and compatriots… The monument is ”watching” the monument raised to Field Marshal Mišić on the other side of the square in Valjevo. The poetess and the warrior did not separate there either.

SINGING GENTLY AND STRONGLY

She sang about things people had been singing about since the beginning of time – love, loneliness, shimmering of the being and mind. About nature, land, passing of time and life. About Homeland and ”each of its faces”. She sang on journeys, about cultures. She knew that her literary ancestors were St. Sava, Vuk, Njegoš… One of her subjects was also God. And Man… (One of her titles and refrains states: ”I feel sorry for man”…) Brankovina, Serbia, landscapes and people of Yugoslavia. Everything had a special and distinctive place in her heart and her poetry.
She sang simply and deeply – gently and strongly.
Brankovina was her cradle and Serbia – a secret. She added certain metaphysical dimensions to that secret.
Desanka Maksimović’s woman seemed to come from the Holy Bible and folk poetry. She didn’t need equality – she was created and ornamented by God. Desanka also didn’t need equality among poets – her place was always known and could never be replaced. In ”lyrical discussions with Dušan’s Code” Desanka asks for a pardon for Mary Magdalenes, for peasant women, for barren women, for the shepherdess who doesn’t have her father’s last name, for the ”poetess, ancient land”, for Cinderella…
She wrote novels, stories, fairytales, monograph about Joan of Arc. Her fairytales take place there, around us. She chose them under a rhetoric and charming title If We’re to Believe My Grandmother. She wrote religious stories and stories about puppies. Forchildren – about the children’s world and the childhood of entire nature – plants, animals,bugs, seasons of the year, languages, dolls, everything that exists.
One of the most wonderful Desanka’s poems, both for children and adults, is entitled ”Summer Is Coming”:

Summer is coming;
I anticipate it in my soul,
Its golden hair is emerging
in ripened yellow fields.
Crickets told me,
I met them on my way:
”Summer is coming.”

As if the music of the poem is complemented with the rhyming colors: the being of the poetess is trembling just as the glow of the sun is trembling. The entire nature is speaking and singing – birds on a fountain, crickets, fields, flowers, forests, fireflies:

Summer is coming.
Its scarlet lips are appearing
in red poppies.
The scent of lavishing meadows
and fields and  groves
I met on my way:
”Summer is coming.”

Scents and sounds become the building material of a picture of a great empire of beauty – the gold of language is merged with the gold of the sun – the poem turns into a ray of splendor and spark of summer:

Summer is coming.
Like a glowing imperial crown,
its golden hair is sparkling
full of rosy fireflies.
They all told me,
I met them on my way:
”Summer is coming.”

Without her poems (”Trepidation”, ”Anticipation”, ”Warning”), anthologies of love poetry, not only Serbian, cannot be imagined. Close to them are poems about solitude and soul of a young woman: ”Spring Poem”, ”In a Tempest”, ”On a Winter Day”, ”I Will Become a Shepherdess”. Then, poems about nature, rhythms of seasons, and the sensibility of a being in it: ”Mowed Meadow”, ”Snake”, ”On a Winter Day”, ”It’s the End of Summer”, ”Merry Autumn”, ”Leaves”, ”Silver Dancers”, ”It’s Spring and I’m Fading”… Desanka’s patriotic poems are also lyrical, refined, sincere. There is nothing pathetic in them. Our poetess articulated the being of Serbia and its features: ”Sava’s Monologue”, ”Serbia at Dusk”, ”I Believe”, ”Serbia Is Waking Up”, ”Serbia Is a Great Secret”.

GOLDEN BORDER BELT

Land of wars – courage and sacrifice, received a kind of an aura in Desanka’s poetry on historical pictures and compositions. Here is the poem ”Balkan Wars”:

Sitting at wooden tables stuck into the ground
peasants of Brankovina are drinking the wine of honor
and deciding for the heavenly empire.

Each of them is proudly belted
with the golden border of homeland.

Through the open church doors
apostles are watching them
and burying them in advance.

But my compatriots are not watching the iconostasis,
they don’t see the compassionate glance of the apostles,
or angels barely eight months old.
The only thing before their eyes
is Samodreža
and the invisible apocryphal icon
of the Prince’s Supper.

The Kosovo symbols are artistically built into Desanka’s poems. She told that one of the most important scenes from her childhood was the painting of the Last Supper in the church in Brankovina. The painting was small in format, but in Desanka’s young eyes it was as great as the famous Last Supper. The Supper repeated in the eve of the Battle of Kosovo and in the eve of the Balkan Wars in all Orthodox monasteries and churches. In her entire poetry.
In the zenith of her creative maturity, Desanka became a woman-bard of Serbian poetry. She took over the most important subject of Serbian state history – ”lyrical discussions with Dušan’s Code”. She addresses the great monarch and lawmaker, asking him for mercy for all those she both prays for and supports before the Law of Human Ethical History. Thus, the famous book I Am Seeking a Pardon (1964) was created. In her discussions and requests from the emperor, the poetess begs ”For the dethroned”, ”For the misunderstood”, ”For the naive”, ”For alcohols”, ”For decapitated love letters”, ”For the envious ones”… ”The same poetic wisdom was woven into the book I Am Seeking a Pardon, in a great lyrical discussion with the principles of human justice and hierarchy of people, concepts and things”, wrote Ivan V. Lalić.
In the great rosary of poems and subjects, acters and determinations, the poetess derives the lyrical characterology of man and phenomenon of life, for which she seeks a pardon – understanding, forgiveness of sins. – ”A true poet came upon his real subject”, wrote Stevan Raičković about the book I Am Seeking a Pardon. The book, the unique epic and poetic-ethical code, ends with the Emperor’s speech about forgiveness:

I am not a judge,
the law is in their hands
to arbitrate;
and not an executioner who hangs, cuts,
lapidates anyone.
I’m an emperor
and have no reason
to go down among people as a slaughterer,
and although I rule by the mercy of God,
I’m not God to forgive.

GREAT LADY OF THE OLD COOPERATIVE

She wrote nicely about others, especially about poetry. Thus, in a prologue she wrote about her neighbor and friend Branko Ćopić: ”Branko Ćopić is essentially a sorrowful poet!” And everyone thought that the father of Nikoletina Bursać was a joker and humorist, hilarious merrymaker. ”So, I see, Mihiz and Desanka figured me out”, said Brančilo… Branko also said some nice words about Desanka: ”I envy and admire Desanka Maksimović, who forgot all her years on a station between Gevgelia and Ljubljana while traveling to literary evenings, so even today she writes youthful poems, melancholic and statehood wise – when she offers poetic amendments to Dušan’s Code…”
The Serbian Literary Cooperative ”Old Archive” keeps Desanka’s ”Report about the stories of Milan Kašanin” – four pages typed in Cyrillic alphabet, sometime between the two world wars. She wrote clearly and distinctly, as a professor or criticist who has to be trusted: ”Kašanin’s stories don’t have a big plot or a particular fabula. It rarely happens. Most of them are built of psychological analyses. They are a mixture of something very realistic and, at the same time, lyrical. They are often filled with humor and even more often irony. They are woven with lively landscapes…” The conclusion of the review says that ”Milan Kašanin’s stories can become part of the Serbian Literary Cooperative editions…”
In the year 1932, she wrote a review, also for SLC, about a collection of poems by Danko Anđelinović, Noon Fires, on a piece of paper from a notebook, with lines. In one place she writes that ”a Serb will never recognize that the poems were written by a Croat, since there is so much love in them for the entire nation, for our entire past.” That manuscript ”can also become a Cooperative’s edition, both for its esthetic and ethical value, which should also be considered”.
She assessed the collection of stories Rabbit and Mouse written by Milica Janković  as a ”masterpiece” – and wrote a review on ten pages by hand. She continues: ”I read the collection of verses Earthly Table (by Desimir Blagojević) and I’m honored to write this review about it…” From a dozen of preserved reviews, it is obvious that the strict Cooperative trusted her and that she was constantly present in the work of this old institution.

WEARING A LARGE WHITE HAT

She told Petar Pajić that she was writing love poems even though she was already in her nineties.
”Will you publish them?” asked Pera.
”I build verses from those poems into other poems – they are not visible, but the poem becomes better and more beautiful…”
She was wise and witty. Hundreds of her sayings, statements, anecdotes – with Andrić, Ćopić, Matija… were circling around.
Someone mentioned poet Petar Pajić in a conversation with Desanka.
”Is that the boy from Valjevo?”
”He’s not a boy! He’s forty!”
And Desanka said:
”Nowadays any pothead can be forty!”
Or, when she fell and broke a rib. She was already ninety years old. They visited her in the hospital and asked:
”Do you feel pain?”
”I don’t care about the pain now, I care because it will hurt a little for the rest of my life!”
Once I followed her to a large poetry academy observing six hundred years since the Battle of Kosovo (1989) – in the big Kolarac hall. A month earlier, she wrote down the date… A day before the ceremony, I called her on the phone – there was no answer. I was afraid that she was sick, and a literary academy without Desanka was not complete, regardless of the glory and greatness of other participants… On the day of the academy, at noon, I called her again. The voice that answered the phone told me:
”Aunt returned from Brankovina today. She’s sleeping now. If she promised you, come and pick her up. She never broke a promise.”
At the agreed time, I rang the two-winged door in Maršala Tita Street (present Kralja Milana 23). The door opened. The ninety-year-old poetess was standing before me, all dressed in white lace and frills, with a large white hat, wearing perfume, like a blossoming cherry. She held out both her hands:
”Take me, but bring me back, dear child!”
On the stairs of Kolarac, she whispered:
”Stay next to me, but don’t hold me.”
She took the duties of a poet seriously and practically. She replied to multitudes of letters from readers, received guests, gave her evaluations of others’ literary works taking care not to insult them, advised students who wrote graduate papers about her poetry: ”I have to look for a job or apartment for young people who say that they fell in love and got married while reading my poems, and that I should now take care of them…”

THE TRUTH OF THE ELDERBERRY FLUTE

For the hundredth anniversary of the Serbian Literary Cooperative in 1992, she promised her new collection of poems Elderberry Flute for the jubilee Kolo edition.
”I will give it as a gift to the old Cooperative – it supported me when I was young, already before World War II. The leading writers of the Cooperative at the time were Ivo (Andrić) and Mika (Alas). I can never forget that.” (It was known that she never accepted payments from SLC, because the Cooperative was among the first who recognized her work.)
”We are neighbors too, from the same street! Branko (Ćopić) and SLC – they are my favorite neighbors.”
I personally went to pick up the manuscript of Elderberry Flute. Desanka was at home with her niece.
”Sit in your old place”, the great poetess addressed me on first name basis, as if she were my aunt as well. ”You are from the Cooperative, you will certainly have a rakia”, and went to pick up a small old-fashioned carved bottle and shot glass. ”This one is from Brankovina, I only offer it to poets!”
She poured the rakia and sat opposite of me.
Then she noticed that there was no pad under the glass and got up:
”Oh, I forgot the saucer”, and knocked with the wooden heels of her home slippers.
”Don’t get up, aunt, I’ll get it…” said the niece.
”No, honey. I serve my guests. He is from the Serbian Literary Cooperative.”
She put a folder with the manuscript on the table. On the folder, in Cyrillic letters, in her beautiful handwriting: Desanka Maksmović, Elderberry Flute.
Elderberry Flue is a sprout of the famous Vuk’s story about emperor Traian and the flute that tells the truth even when buried in the ground…
”Is the poem ’People of the Night’ in your manuscript?” I asked.
”I don’t know, honey. See for yourself and, if it isn’t there, put it in!”
The present and past were seen through that poem. As if she was writing it for half a century.
(The war in Bosnia was going on. She didn’t miss to sing about the war scenes, including those from the television).
It was a great day of my life, in the home of our greatest poetess.
A colleague of mine, a publisher, told me once that he took the trolleybus with Desanka on their way to a literary evening somewhere in Belgrade. She insisted on it. When they entered the trolleybus, all passengers stood up.
During her vacation somewhere in the Bay of Kotor, the locals recognized her and invited her to their homes for coffee and cakes.
I often went to Brankovina with Petar Pajić and school students from around the country for Desanka’s birthday. We were part of the youth competition for high school students’ first book… Many buses arrived, full of students. We were sitting on a bench next to her grave. Children approached the cross. Some bowed, some recited her poems: ”May invited / all bugs for tea, / from wasp to bee / to have a merry time…” One girl crossed herself, kissed the cross and placed ten dinars on it, as if on an icon.
Desanka, the good spirit of Serbia and its great secret.