Songs of the Sun, Love and Death: Selected Poems

Jovan Ducic is the greatest Serbian lyric poet of the first half of the twentieth century. He appeared at a crucial point in the history of Serbian literature, the turn of the century, when the era of Romantic and Realist poetry was coming to a close and another, Modernism, was just beginning. By introducing new themes and sources of inspiration, Ducic was instrumental in setting Serbian poetry on a new course. He was an aesthete, and cultivated refined tastes and an aristocratic spirit. He is the best known practitioner of "l’art pour l’art" in Serbian literature. In his poetry, he strove for formal excellence expressed through clarity, precision, elegance, musical quality, and picturesque images. His subject matter and unique style, reflecting the manner of French verse—Parnassian, Symbolist, Decadent. Unlike previous Serbian poets, who were either romantically or realistically oriented, Ducic was attracted to esoteric, sophisticated, thought-provoking, and soul-searching themes, creating his own lonely world of the imagination, and reacting to it.

--Vasa D. Mihailovich, from the Introduction