page_title: Aleksa Šantić
section_title: Works
hierarchical_section_title: Aleksa Šantić / Works
caption_attribution_description: Bosanski: Spomenik Aleksi Šantiću u MostaruEnglish: Statue of Aleksa Šantić in Mostar
context_page_description: Aleksa Šantić was a poet from Bosnia and Herzegovina. A Herzegovinian Serb, his poetry reflecting both the urban culture of the region and the growing national awareness. The most common themes of his poems are social injustice, nostalgic love, suffering of the Serb people, and the unity of the South Slavs. He was the editor-in-chief of the magazine Zora. Šantić was one of the leading persons of Serbian literary and national movement in Mostar. In 1914 Šantić became a member of the Serbian Royal Academy.
context_section_description: Šantić worked as merchant for his father and read a lot of books before he decided to write poetry and met another young merchant, Jovan Dučić from Trebinje who published his first poem in 1886 in the youth literature magazine Pidgeon (Serbian: Голуб) in Sombor (modern-day Serbia). Following example of his friend Jovan Dučić, Šantić also published his first song in literature magazine Pidgeon, its 1887 New Year's Eve edition.
  The first poems Šantić published were inspired by older Serbian poets like Njegoš, Zmaj, Vojislav Ilić and Jakšić. The first collection of Šantićs songs was published in Mostar in 1891. He awarded all income from its sales to erecting the monument of Sima Milutinović Sarajlija. In 1901 Bogdan Popović wrote negative critics of Šantić's poetry. Popović's critics had positive and stimulative effect on young Šantić and the quality of his future works.
  The oeuvre of Aleksa Šantić, widely accessible yet acutely personal, is a blend of fine-tuned emotional sensibility and clear-eyed historical awareness, steeped in the specifics of local culture. He worked at the crossroads of two centuries and more than other poets of his generation, combined theoretical and poetic suffering nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At the same time, Šantić writes about his personal troubles – the loss of close and dear people (his mother, brothers Jeftan and Jakov, and brother-in-law Svetozar Ćorović), the health that was a lifetime problem and loneliness that accompanied him to the end. Drawing themes and imagery from his hometown Mostar, the atmospheric capital of Mediterranean Herzegovina, and its surroundings, his poetry is marked in equal part by the late-Ottoman urban culture in the region, its social distinctions, subdued passions and melancholy, as well as the South Slavic national awareness.
  As a Serb who embraced the form and the sentiment of the traditional Bosnian love ballad sevdalinka, developed under a strong influence of Muslim love songs, he was a pioneer in attempting to bridge the national and cultural divides, and in his lamentation of the erosion of population through emigration, that was the result of Austrian-Hungarian occupation. Work on the translation of poems by Svatopluk Čech, tiring and exhausting, coincided with his first serious health problems, but the rebellious lyrics of this Czech poet, sung against the Austrian occupation, gave Šantić the strength to persevere: every verse of Svatopluk Čech, that he converted into a harmonious rhyme in our language, expressed his thoughts and his feelings. This combination of locally rooted, transcultural sensibility and a dedicated pan-Slavic vision has earned him a special place in the pantheon of Serbian poetry. Šantić agreed with the idea that the Ekavian pronunciation of Serbo-Croatian should be adopted by a unified literature of Serbs and Croats, although Šantić himself wrote in his native Ijekavian pronunciation of the language.
  He was influenced mostly by the poets Jovan Jovanović Zmaj, Vojislav Ilić and Heinrich Heine, whom he was translating. He is said to have reached his greatest poetic maturity between 1905 and 1910, when he wrote his best songs. Šantić's poetry is full of emotion, sadness and pain of love and defiance of social and national disempowered people whom he himself belonged. His muse is at the crossroads of love and patriotism, beloved ideal, and suffering people. The topics and images of his poems ranged from strong emotions for social injustices of his time to nostalgic love. His poems about Mostar and the Neretva river are particularly praised. Šantić wrote a number of love songs in the style of the Bosnian love songs, sevdalinkas. His most well known poem-turned-sevdalinka is Emina, to which music was composed and it is often sung at restaurants (kafanas). The ambiance of his love poems include the neighborhood gardens, flowers, baths, fountains, and girls who appear in them are decorated with a necklace, the challenging but the hidden beauty. This is right about the song "Emina". The spirit of this song is so striking that it be
caption: Statue of Aleksa Šantić in Mostar
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