| Radoje Domanović | |
|---|---|
| Born | February 4, 1873 Ovsište, Principality of Serbia |
| Died | August 4, 1908 Belgrade, Kingdom of Serbia |
| Occupation | writer |
| Nationality | Serbian |
| Literary movement | Realism |
Radoje Domanović (Serbian Cyrillic: Радоје Домановић) (February 4, 1873 - August 4, 1908) was a Serbian writer and teacher, most famous for his satirical short stories. His few remaining years were a constant fight against consumption. This circumstance of his life, and the affection which he inspired in all who knew him, added something essentially romantic in the true sense in the man himself, have tended to surround Domanović and his work with an aura of sentiment which somewhat obscured the character of his actual accomplishment.
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Domanović was born in a village Ovsište which is located in Topola municipality, Šumadija District. He attended a gymnasium in Kragujevac. Two of his teachers, Pera Đorđević and Sreten Stojković, who were followers of Svetozar Marković, were arrested for an attempt to take control of the local government and displaying a red flag. From 1890 to 1894, Domanović studied history and philology at Belgrade's Grande École (what soon became the University of Belgrade). He read some of his first works to the members of a student organization Pobratimstvo (Bloodbrothers).
In 1893, he published his first work, a short story Na mesečini (In the Moonlight), in a magazine Javor. Two years later, he got his first tenure as a lecturer in a gymnasium in Pirot. There he met Jaša Prodanović, who helped found the Serbian independent Radical Party in 1901. At that time, Domanović joined Republikanska stranka (The Republican Party), and got married to Natalija Ristić. He took an active part to maintain the doctrine of republicanism during the time of the monarchy. He was threatened repeatedly not to criticize The Establishment. After nine months, he was transferred, as a punishment on request of his political rivals, to a gymnasium in Vranje. On the same count, after a year in Vranje, he was transferred to Leskovac. Following a critical speech on the position of teachers in 1898, he was dismissed from his post, along with his wife. As a response, he wrote a short story Ukidanje strasti (The Tearing of Passion).
In 1899, he published two collections of short stories and his famous story Danga, perhaps an inspiration for Yevgeny Zamyatin's We (novel). The following year, he got a well-paying, government job as a clerk in the State's Archive. In 1902, after he published Stradija, he was again dismissed from his post. He started writing editorials for magazine Odjek (Echo). After the coup in 1903, Domanović returned to his post, and soon got a stipend to work on his stories. It was rumoured that the coup saved his life, since he was on a list for liquidation of the old government. In 1904, he started a magazine Stradija, that had 35 editions. The following year, he was appointed to the State Press corps. He died in 1908 of tuberculosis survived by his wife, son Zoran and daughter Danica.
It can be said that Domanović is the diminutive Serbian Swift, that is, if we lend ourselves to compare our writers to foreigners (one would say, a daunting proposition, indeed). During his short literary career he succeeded in developing the great powers of the satirical novel, although some of his stories are distorted by pessimism and grime.
Domanović lived for only 35 years and did not publish much, leaving some work in manuscript form. But in the last years of his brief life he projected and in part completed an ambitious fictional project which did justice to his theories. He proposed to tell in a series of short stories the wrongdoings and excesses in the political and social life of a society trying to find itself. Some of his most famous stories are:
Jovan Skerlić, Istorija Nove Srpske Književnosti / A History of New Serbian Literature (Belgrade, 1914, 1921), pages 403-405.