Pesme

by Vladislav Petković DIS

62 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1996

About the author

Владислав Петковић DIS was a Serbian impressionist poet. He introduced irrational and subconscious images into Serbian lyric poetry. One of his most famous poems is "Perhaps She Sleeps" ("Možda spava"). During his lifetime he worked as a teacher and a war reporter during the Balkan Wars. Petković chose his appellation "Dis" as a repetition of the middle syllable of his first name (Vla-DIS-lav), but also as the name of the Roman god of the underworld. He was a frequent evening visitor to the Belgrade's kafanas in Skadarlija and elsewhere where he would drink and compose new verses at the same time.
Near the end of the First World War he traveled from France to Greece, but the ship he had boarded was intercepted by a German submarine and sunk. The manner in which he died earned him a reputation of a “cursed poet,” since one of his well-known poems is titled “The Drowned Souls” ("Utopljene duše").