Vojislav Ilić: The Poetry of Contradictions and Synthesis

Abstract

This article deals with the correlation of the work of Vojislav Ilić, the most signifi cant Serbian poet of the late nineteenth century, with various literary trends: classicism, romanticism, realism, and the Parnassian-Symbolist school. Various points of view have been expressed on this issue for a number of years. V. Ilić is recognised mainly as a romantic with some authors noting inherent features of classicism, aestheticism, and symbolism in his work (Dragiša Živković and Dragiša Vitošević), some noting a closeness to realism and a break with romanticism (Jovan Deretić), and others recognising and at the same time denying Ilic’s belonging to any of these trends (Milorad Pavić). The syntheticity of Ilic’s talent is also noted, although the question of its nature is not considered (Regina Friedrikhovna Doronina). In this article, the starting point is the romantic principle in Ilić’s poetry and, owing to the spirit of the times, the further gradual overcoming of his romantic aspirations. Rejecting the subjectivity of romanticism, the poet turns to the early experience of his father, the famous poet Jovan Ilić, that is, to the experience of “objective lyrics” of the 1820s–40s. The appeal to antiquity, to the cult of tangible beauty, the perfection of the art form brought V. Ilić closer to the Parnassians, which naturally led the Serbian poet to symbolism. At the same time, V. Ilić, in the spirit of the modern development of national literature, also turns to realism, including “folkloric”, to a critique of the social foundations of the surrounding reality, to the social landscape. However, in general, the landscape descriptive lyrics of V. Ilić, often perceived as a manifestation of realistic tendencies, mean at the same time a return to the ancient idyll, and thus the approach to poetry of the Parnassians, who were close to the static idyllic landscape. In the landscape poetry of V. Ilić, his highest creative achievement, a synthesis of subjective and objective principles, modernity and antiquity, national traditions and experience of modern Western European literature, is manifested.