Svetozar Ćorović
| Svetozar Ćorović | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
29 May 1875 Mostar, Bosnia Vilayet, Ottoman Empire |
| Died | 17 April 1919 (aged 43) Mostar, Kingdom of Yugoslavia |
| Occupation | Novelist |
Svetozar Ćorović (29 May 1875 – 17 April 1919) was a Herzegovinian Serb novelist. In his books, he often wrote of life in Herzegovina and, more specifically, the city of Mostar. His brother was Vladimir Ćorović, a distinguished Serbian historian who was killed in 1941 during World War II in Greece.
Svetozar Ćorović was born on 29 May 1875 in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was then a part of the Ottoman Empire, where he completed elementary school and trade school. From 1887 he published various works in many newspapers and magazines such as Golub (The Pigeon), Neven, Bosanska Vila (Bosnian Fairy), Luča, Otadžbina (Fatherland) and Brankovo Kolo. He was an active member of the Society of Mostar called "Gusle". He also participated in other Serbian literary and cultural activities. He was the editor of Neretljanin calendar (1894, 1895), the initiator and editor of the first three issues of Zora (Dawn) magazine (1896–1901), member of the editorial board and associate of the Narod (People) newspaper (1907). His friends and peers in the field of culture at the time were Jovan Dučić and Aleksa Šantić. One of Šantić's sisters, Radojka (Persa) became Ćorović's wife.
During the annexation crisis of 1908 he fled to Italy but was elected as the delegate by The Bosnian Parliament in 1910. Prior to the first Balkan war of 1912, he combined patriotic themes with folkloric elements to produce, Zulumćar (The Despot), his best-known play. Upon the outbreak of war in 1914 Ćorović was arrested and sent to the notorious POW camp of Boldogason in Hungary where he developed the disease that eventually caused his premature death. Seriously ill he returned to Mostar in 1917.
His two remaining years were a constant fight against tuberculosis that raveged his body. In "Serbia's Great War, 1914–1918" by Andrej Mitrović on page 77, we read how he was mistreated as a prisoner-of-war: "Josip Smodlaka later recalled 'furious Hungarian soldiers wanted to massacre' him and his comrades in Budapest, and the prominent writer Svetozar Ćorović was forced by guards to run without food or water beside the railway transport carrying prisoners".
...
Wikipedia