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

24 LIFE AND IDEAS OF MITRINOVIC

The ideal is the highest truth ... The ultimate truth is our dream, our ecstasy, our desiring. The conception of the good in us is truth . . .

At the same time this apparent naiveté is tempered by a quite sober sense of realism on occasions, as in the “recognition of the insolubility of all problems on earth” and the claim that “to the more refined intelligence things are ever more obscure... .”

It was perhaps in such a spirit of mental scepticism balanced by emotional optimism that Mitrinovic, early in 1913, decided to begin a new life in Munich where he could continue his personal and university studies. He arrived there in the early spring of 1913 and took lodgings on Adalbert Strasse. To his friend and patron in Belgrade, Velimir Raji¢, he wrote on March 4th that in Rome he had become a new person, that henceforth he would devote himself to his studies and play a less active role in the nationalist struggle, “because it is superfluous to rouse the world to something that is accomplished only in spirit and will and for which you still have to wait, and for which it is necessary to work.” He continued:

Here in Munich I shall remain for only one semester for intenser studies of art history and modern art, and in the autumn I shall go to some smaller city further into Germany and shall stay there till the end. I came here without any certain view of how I shall manage for support: but anyway I shall remain. I don’t want to return without a degree unless it is demanded by those older and bigger than me; but that won’t happen. I shall take my nationalism even more strongly and deeper and more seriously later on when I’ve finished and then I shall be more useful everywhere, to myself and to my friends . . . In Rome I existed well and badly, I lived splendidly and insignificantly, I worked and lost myself and wandered about seeking my soul. Now that’s finished; and nothing is left in this world but making myself ready for my real business with work which is not quite the real work and is not altogether pleasant.*?

Mitrinovic’s decision to leave his homeland was a difficult one for his friends and associates to understand. It seemed as if he was turning his back on the struggle to which they had devoted their lives. His younger brother, Cedomil, was later to recall that he “simply disappeared and vanished from the public life of his country. He went away from Serbia and stayed in Rome, Munich, Tiibingen. To his fellow country-men at home it seemed that he had become dead and feelingless towards his own country.”°? His departure also provided welcome ammunition to his political opponents who opposed his dream of the unification of Serbs and Croats within a