Park of the Greats

JOVAN DUČIĆ

(1874-1943)

...For our homeland is only where
our sweat falls and where our fathers' blood has shed...

Hymn of the victor, Jovan Dučić

Jovan Dučić, a Serbian poet and diplomat and a member of the Serbian Royal Academy, was born on February 17, 1874, in Trebinje, although there are records indicating that Dučić was born in 1872. He grew up in Trebinje and Mostar, where he attended elementary school and the lower gymnasium. His father, Andrija Dučić, suffered in the Herzegovina Uprising of 1875 and was buried in Dubrovnik. His mother, Joka, from her marriage to Andrija, had another daughter, Mileva, and from her first marriage to Šćepan Glogovac, she had two children.

After completing the teacher's school in Sombor, he worked as a teacher in Serbian schools in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He studied law in Geneva and Paris, where he also obtained his degree. Alongside writers Aleksa Šantić and Svetozar Ćorović, he initiated the literary magazine "Zora" in Mostar.

For a time, Dučić served as a diplomat for the Kingdom of Serbia and Yugoslavia, representing his country in nine states. He held positions in Sofia, Geneva, Rome, Athens, Madrid, Cairo, Budapest, Bucharest, and Lisbon.

Dučić, a writer whose creative work left a mark on Serbian poetry in the first half of the 20th century, wrote prose, travelogues, essays, and studies in addition to poetry. With the publication of the poetry collection "Pesme" (Poems), he made his literary debut in Serbia in 1901. He was shown in the anthology as a gifted songwriter who was drawn to themes of pain, loneliness, love, and death. He was a great patriot, a contemporary, and a witness to numerous historical events. Due to political circumstances, Jovan Dučić relocated from his diplomatic mission in Lisbon to the city of Gary in the American state of Indiana in August 1941.

After World War II, due to his patriotic views and beliefs, he did not receive a favorable reception from literary critics. In America, where he remained until his death, Dučić led an organization founded by Mihajlo Pupin, whose mission was to best represent the Serbian diaspora in America.

Jovan Dučić passed away on April 7, 1943, in Gary. He was buried in Indiana, and on October 22, 2000, his remains were transferred to Herzegovina Gračanica, located on the hill of Crkvina above his hometown of Trebinje.

In his honor, an award for poetry is established and presented every year at the "Dučić Evenings of Poetry" event, held in the city beneath Mount Leotar. Numerous educational and cultural institutions in the Republika Srpska and Serbia, as well as a gymnasium in his hometown, bear his name.