Miloš Crnjanski

Miloš Crnjanski (Serbian Cyrillic: Милош Црњански, pronounced [mîloʃ tsrɲǎnski]; 26 October 1893 – 30 November 1977) was a Serbian writer and poet of the expressionist wing of Serbian modernism, author, and a diplomat. Crnjanski was born in Csongrád (modern-day Hungary), to an impoverished family which moved in 1896 to Temesvár (modern-day Timișoara, Romania). He completed the elementary school in Pančevo, and Grammar school in Timișoara. Then he started attending the Export academy in Rijeka in 1912, and in the autumn of the following year he started studying mathematics and philosophy in Vienna.At the beginning of World War I, Crnjanski was persecuted as part of the general anti-Serbian retribution of Austria to Princip's assassination in Sarajevo. Instead of being sent to jail, he was drafted to the Austro-Hungarian Army and sent to Galician front to fight against the Russians – where he was wounded in 1915. Crnjanski convalesced in a Vienna war hospital, although just before the end of the war he was sent to the Italian front. After the war, he started studying comparative literature at the University of Belgrade. but he interrupted his studies to go to Vienna, Munich and Paris, spending the winter and Spring of 1921 travelling in France and Italy.After graduating from the Faculty of Philosophy in 1922, he taught at the Fourth Belgrade Grammar School and espoused "radical modernism" in articles for periodicals including Ideje, Politika and Vreme – sparking "fierce literary and political debates".In 1928 in a semi-diplomatic capacity, he spent a year in Berlin after joining the Central Press Bureau of the Yugoslav Government.

He entered the diplomatic corps for the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and worked in Germany (1935-1938) and Italy (1939-1941) before being evacuated during WWII to England. He took odd-jobs and eventually became the London correspondent of the Argentinian periodical El economist. During this period he wrote Druga knjiga Seoba (The Second Book on Migration) and Lament nad Beogradom (Lament over Belgrade). He returned to Belgrade after 20 years of exile in 1965 and shortly after published Sabrana dela u 10 tomova (“Collected Works in 10 volumes”). In 1971, he received the prestigious NIN award for Roman o Londonu.Crnjanski, aged 84, died in Belgrade on 30 November 1977. He is interred in the Alley of Distinguished Citizens in the Belgrade New Cemetery.He is considered to be a classic of the Serbian literature by the scholars as well as the public.