Miodrag Pavlović


Miodrag Pavlović, was a Serbian poet, writer, critic and academic. Pavlović was twice nominated for the Nobel Literature Prize,

Biography

He graduated from the University of Belgrade with a degree in medicine in year 1954. He studied foreign languages and wrote his first volume of poetry, 87 Poems. It appeared in 1952, the year the Yugoslav authorities, responding to a public address by the Croatian writer Miroslav Krleža, allowed more freedom of expression in politics and the arts.
In 1960 Pavlović was appointed director of drama at the National Theatre in Belgrade. He also worked for twenty years as editor for the leading publishing house of Prosveta.
A theme occupying Pavlović and many other intellectuals in the former Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece and Albania, is the continuity between the ancient peoples of the Balkans and their modern-day descendants. In Pavlović's work as well as in that of the Macedonian poet Bogomil Gyuzel or the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare, there are frequent references to the ancient and medieval past. Among his historical poems, most important ones are 'Odisej na Kirkinom ostrvu', 'Eleuzijske seni', 'Vasilije II Bugaroubica' and 'Kosovo'.
These poems are often allegorical in nature, referring in fact to our own times, with their tales of manipulation, deceit and, especially, fear. Written directly in the present are such poems as 'Prisoner', 'Requiem', 'Strah', 'Pod zemljom' and 'Kavge'.
In 2012 he was awarded the German literary prize Petrarca-Preis. His work has been widely translated. In the last years of his life, he lived alternately in Tuttlingen, Germany and Belgrade, Serbia.
A street in Belgrade is name after him.

Awards

In Serbian

Poetry:
Prose:
Essays:
Dramas:
Itineraries:
Anthologies:
Books of poems
Prose and other works