Writer - Dusan Vasiljev

Dusan Vasiljev was a Serbian poet, novelist and playwright. He was born in Velika Kikinda on July 19, 1900, where he died on March 27, 1924. He is one of the most important Serbian expressionists.

if he lived very short, only 24 years, he became one of the most prominent Serbian modern poets. He wrote about 300 poems, 20 novels and four plays.

Personal life Dušan Vasiljev was born in Velika Kikinda, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now Serbia. His mother's name was Rakila, and his father's name was Kosta. He had two sisters, Jelena and Aleksandra, as well as a brother Spasoje.

When Dušan was four years old, his mother died. After his mother's death, his father remarried. In this marriage, five more children were born, three of whom died in childbirth. Vasiljev finished elementary school in his hometown of Kikinda, and attended high school in Timisoara, where he moved with his family in 1911.

When the First World War started, his father was mobilized and then Dušan had to take over all the care for his brothers and sisters. During this time he attended teacher's school and worked as a scribe. In 1917 he joined the army, and the following year he was mobilized. He returned home from the war exhausted and in poor health. He struggled with bronchitis. When he rested and recovered, he went to Timisoara, where he continued to work for the Serbian army as an interpreter and scribe. He is the founder of the literary group "Kolo mladih Srba" and the magazine "Sloga". After the Serbian army left Timisoara, Vasiljev moved to Belgrade. He enrolled at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Belgrade. He has collaborated with various literary magazines, including Sloga and Dan.

He left his studies, but completed a course in pedagogy and worked as a teacher in Romania from 1920. That same year, he married Milojka Maletić. In 1921, he was again drafted into the army in Kratovo. However, due to poor health, he returned home the same year. He suffered from inflammation of the lung tissue and bronchial catarrh. For a while he rested, read and wrote, all trying to recover, but his condition only got worse.

Vasiljev was one of the most tragic personalities in Serbian literature. He spent his childhood in wartime circumstances, and at the end of the war he was a forcibly mobilized Austro-Hungarian soldier at the front in Italy. His youth was destroyed in muddy and cold trenches, where he watched human suffering on a daily basis. After the war he fell ill, his nerves and his whole organism were irreparably destroyed. He invested a lot of effort in achieving the best possible school qualifications, as well as places in society and the family environment. In addition, he still managed to write a large number of poems and short stories, dramatic texts, but he did not win in the fight against tuberculosis. A difficult fate, under the constant shadow of death, was the story of his life: in war he witnessed the deaths of others, and in peace he expected his own. All his wounds, physical and mental, poured out like a painful cry in his poetry. The great curse and sacrifice created his personal revolt, sorrow and indignation. He could not fill the void that had arisen in his life with anything but his deeds as a kind of vent for pain and the realization of what he had lost or what he did not have. And he was running out of time for poetry. In fact, it was a race and a cruel struggle with time to save himself and his emotions from oblivion. He also tried treatment in Zagreb, but without success. He died in his hometown at the age of 24. He was buried near the Holy Trinity Monastery in Mela's cemetery

The "Dusan Vasiljev" literary award is given as a sign of respect for the writer Dusan Vasiljev and with the aim of promoting contemporary Serbian literature. This award was established in 1997, by the decision of the Cultural and Educational Community of Kikinda.

The literary work of Dušan's dark and paradoxical poetry arose from a special understanding of the human condition, but also from a tragic experience during the First World War and its consequences. He also found inspiration for writing in Kikinda and Timisoara, the cities where he grew up and was educated, as well as the social background at the time. Vasiljev read Crnjanski and Vinaver the most. During and after World War I, many artists adopted extremist views. Apocalyptic and dramatic visions, denial of reality, loss of trust in others, skepticism towards knowledge, expansion of technology and industry, search for new worlds and new values, have contributed to the complexity of the new situation. Dušan Vasiljev's lyrics are markedly colored by defeatism.

The song "Man Sings After the War" was inspired by the poet's war and post-war experience. Vasiljev understood the absurdity of warfare and his personal participation in the war for other people's interests. He felt disappointed after the war when he realized that everything remained the same on the social level. Expressing personal anger and disgust, he wrote a song intoned as a confession and protest. It is a confession of hopes and vain dreams, and a protest against a promiscuous world. During the horrors of war, he believed that everything would fall into place when the war came to an end, that a new life would begin, full of hope for a better tomorrow, but the post-war reality, unfortunately, was deprived of freshness and purity. From all this followed a great disappointment that gave rise to rebellion, pain and protest, the basic feelings that prompted Vasiljev to write. These feelings conditioned the composition and structure of the song "Man sings after the war", as well as its type of stanza and verse, the arrangement of rhyme, rhythm and tone. A complete harmony was created between the external and internal composition in the song. Here, each stanza is a meaningful whole, consisting of several smaller wholes, poetic images, which are at the same time syntactic-intonational wholes. "The cry of the mother of man" is a special Vasiljev's song in terms of theme, tone, artistic paintings, and especially in terms of its explicitly anti-religious attitude. Carefully developing emotional levels are observed in the song. The poet very successfully created a transition between pain and rebellion. The rebellion arose in a moment of grief, it is general and all-encompassing, a rebellion against religion, but also a fierce rebellion against the world and its order. During his short life he failed in his intention to publish his book of poetry. Vasiljev's literary opus consists of about 300 poems, 20 novels and four plays. His two performances have been preserved, which are characterized by the discovery of his intimate world and the shaping of his life experience through a dramatic form. The themes of his plays are the problems and good sides of marriage, fidelity and infidelity. Most of his works are in the National Library of Serbia in Belgrade.