| Petar Kočić | |
|---|---|
| Born | June 29, 1877 Stričići, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ottoman Empire |
| Died | August 27, 1916 Belgrade, Serbia under Austria–Hungary |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Nationality | Serb |
Petar Kočić (Serbian Cyrillic: Петар Кочић; June 29, 1877 - August 27, 1916) was a Serb prose writer and politician from Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was active in the Serbian National Organization with ties to the Mlada Bosna revolutionaries,[1] after which he seceded with his closest supporters leading a wing under his leadership.
Like both Borisav Stanković, who was self-made and successful storyteller of South Serbia, and Ivo Ćipiko, who gave us a picture of our Adriatic seacoast -- Kočić is a classical representative of Bosnian mountains and fresh life of his area.
Petar Kočić was born in Stričići, a village near Banja Luka. He attended primary school in Gomjenica Monastery, during which time his mother died and his father became a priest. He started his gymnasium (high-school) education in Sarajevo, but because of his pronounced nationalism, he was expelled from the school and had to finish his secondary education in Belgrade. He studied Slavic Studies under the mentorship of famous Professor Vatroslav Jagić in Vienna. He graduated from the University of Vienna and returned to his native region to teach but soon realized that his liberal, nationalistic views were incompatible with the entrenched foreign authority. There he joined a circle of Bosnian students and writers interested in South Slavic literature and national liberation. From then on the rest of his life was devoted to politics. In 1904 he moved back to Serbia, and for a short while earned his living as a teacher in Skopje. Two years later, already a well-known writer and publicist, he returned to Sarajevo, this time as a clerk of publishing company Prosveta, but after a while he was fired for taking a part in a worker's strike, and banished to Banja Luka, where he was persecuted and jailed for his patriotic stance.
There he founded a magazine Otadžbina (Fatherland), and formed a political group, which advocated a fight against the Austro-Hungarian occupation, and especially a fierce struggle against the remains of feudal slavery. As a national and social revolutionary Kočić was favoured among peasants and progressive youth, and as such he was elected as a member of Bosanski sabor (Bosnian parliament) in Sarajevo. Austria recognized Petar Kočić as a serious enemy, continuously persecuting and repeatedly arresting him between 1907 and 1909 for his activities. On the eve of World War I and the subsequent South Slavic unification, he started to show signs of a nervous breakdown, and was taken to Belgrade for treatment. He died in a Belgrade mental hospital, not having lived to see the liberation and unification of South Slavs.
Kočić enriched Serbian literature with three, popular collections of tales, namely From the Top and Bottom of a Mountain (С планине и испод планине, 1902-1905), Howls from Zmijanje (Јауци са Змијања, 1910). His two short stories -- Badger on Tribunal (Јазавац пред судом) and Trials (Суданија), first in a form of play, and second in a form of dialogue -- are excellent satires on the political and social life of the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina.