Milutin Uskoković

Milutin Uskoković (4 June 1884, Uzice - 15 October 1915, Kursumlija) was a Serbian short story writer and soldier.

Serbian literature had suffered injury in many ways during the Great War. But one important part of what the war destroyed could never be restored. A very large part of the nation's youth, of the potential writers and poets of a generation died in battle or in POW camps or died of typhoid or underwent injuries to body and soul which blocked creative achievement. One of such many promising Serbian novelists to die was Milutin Uskoković.

Milutin Uskoković was born at Uzice, Serbia, on the 4th of June 1884 and took his own life at Kursumlija in southern Serbia on the 15th of October 1915 while witnessing the tragic retreat of the Serbian army. Uskokovic, dying at thirty-one, was a casualty of World War I. His suicide note read:

"I can no longer endure the destruction of my fatherland!"

He had an excellent education considering the difficulties he had to surmount in order to obtain it. Finally he graduated from University of Geneva's Law School with a degree of Doctor of Jurisprudence in 1910.

Like Veljko Milicevic, Uskokovic mixed fiction with journalism, he served as a war correspondent embedded with the Serbian army in the Balkans wars and in the tragic World War I. To both journalism and fiction he brought an unusually rich and varied preparation.

As a novelist and short story writer Uskokovic came to hold definite theories of the purpose and value of fiction, which he set forth in the essays collected after his death. He wrote "Crtice" (1901) and poems in prose "Pod zivotom" (1905) and "Vitae freagmenta" (1908). His short stories "Kad ruze cvetaju" (1911) first appeared in magazines, then came two novels "Cedomir Ilic" (1914) and "Dosljaci" published posthumously in 1919.

References

• Translated and adapted from Serbian Wikipedia: Milutin Uskoković
• Jovan Skerlic, Istorija nove srpske knjizevnosti (Belgrade, 1914, 1921) page 466.