Miodrag Pavlović

Miodrag Pavlović studied at University of Belgrade Faculty of Medicine. The recorded working language is Serbian. The field of work recorded is literature. Distinctions recorded are Dis prize, Zmajeva prize, Vilenica Prize and Preis der Stadt Münster für Europäische Poesie.

He graduated from the University of Belgrade with a degree in medicine in 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, some of the most significant ones are 'Odisej na Kirkinom ostrvu' ('Odysseus on Circe's Island'), 'Eleuzijske seni' ('Elysian Shades'), 'Vasilije II Bugaroubica' ('Vasily II Bugaroctone') and 'Kosovo'. These poems are often allegorical in nature, referring to our own times with their tales of manipulation, deceit, and especially fear. Written directly in the present are poems such as 'Prisoner' (untitled in the Serbian original), 'Requiem', 'Strah' ('Fear'), 'Pod zemljom' ('Under the Ground') and 'Kavge' ('Feuds'). In 2012, Pavlović 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 named after him.