Initiation and initiative : an exploration of the life and ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović

10 LIFE AND IDEAS OF MITRINOVIC

when Mitrinovié was instrumental in creating a secret library for the use of the students. Out of this library a secret student literary society, Matica (Mainstream) emerged in 1905. The main activity of the society consisted of a weekly gathering at which the students would read their own poems and writing and discuss current literary questions. It was at these sessions that Mitrinovié began to develop his ability as a literary critic. It was also about this time that he began to publish his own poems. In 1905 the poems “Twilight Song” and “Lento Doloroso” were published in the journals Nova Iskra and Bosanska Vila. By the time he graduated from Mostar more than twenty of his poems had been printed, usually under the pseudonym of M. Dimitrijević. In 1906 he published his first critical article on the occasion of the death of the poet Jose Maria de Heredia. This appeared in the Prijegled Male Biblioteke (Review of the Little Library).

Along with his work with Matica Mitrinovié was also engaged in a secret political society at the school called Slobada (Freedom). Amongst the members of this group were Bogdan Žerajić, Vladimir Gaćinović, Pero Slijepcević and others who were to play an important role in the history of the Young Bosnians. A number in the group defined themselves as Serbian nationalists and pan-Slavists. Others, including Mitrinović, described themselves as Yugoslav federalists. The members were united, however, in recognising the need to overthrow the foreign rule of the Hapsburg Empire and the need to overcome the backwardness of their own society. None of them were very clear during those early days at Mostar how this transformation of their own society might be achieved. Students like Zeraji¢ and GaCinovi¢ advocated political assassination and a violent revolutionary upheaval. Mitrinovi¢ was particularly concerned with the role that a cultural and literary convergence of Serbs and Croats might play in the emergence of a Yugoslav consciousness. The students shared a general interest in Russian literature and history. R. Parezanin recorded how:

Chernisheysky’s “What Is to Be Done?’ was passed from hand to hand. Whole pages from it were copied and learned by heart. Besides Chernishevsky, the most esteemed writers were Bakunin, Herzen, Dostoyevsky (particularly ‘Crime and Punishment’) and Maxim Gorky . . .4

They also studied the German and Italian liberation movements. Especially influential in the early formation of the ideas of the Young Bosnians was Mazzini’s conception of the role of the young in the liberation of a nation, particularly with regard to his belief that, “There is no more sacred thing in the world than the duty of a conspirator, who becomes an avenger of humanity and the apostle of permanent natural laws.”