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

THE YOUNG BOSNIAN 25

federal Yugoslavia. Mitrinovi¢ was philosophical about such attacks. On December 21st 1913 he wrote to Rajic¢:

There reached me today a letter from Belgrade which in a friendly way speaks scowlingly and gives advice; it states that I’m terribly hated and people would like to crack me. It’s interesting that the snarlings are much more thunderous when I’m not there; and that few friends and innumerable enemies is a rule. I know this, and I don’t get excited about it. Only if there is anything at all that materially affects life and wants to destroy me, please tell me ruthlessly; and if some rogue wants to make me an Austrian hireling or in general deform me morally publicly and privately, again don’t spare me: for scoundrels can by moral rebukes make it hard and reduce success, and we don’t want to lose force. As for intellectual evaluations of me, let anyone do what they must... . 24

Whilst people at home felt that Mitrinovi¢ had deserted them and their cause at a crucial time he had, in fact, given some indication as far back as 1908 that his constituency spread far beyond the territorial boundaries of the South Slav lands. In an article entitled “The National Milieu and Modernism” published in Bosanska Vila he had written:

If one wishes to be a real poet he must be first of all a human being in the fullest sense of the word .. . the utmost and eternal subject of art is the human being everywhere and eternal . . . an individual is not only a member of a national group but also a member of the human race.35

In 1926 Cedomil Mitrinovi¢ travelled to Britain where he met his brother. He asked him why he had left his homeland. The reply was typically cryptic:

The torch flares, the fire has been lit. ] am the sower who does not reap the harvest.76