Desanka Maksimovic

Born May 16, 1898, in Rabrovica, near Valjevo. Serbian author. Member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (1959).

Maksimović was the daughter of a rural teacher. She graduated from the department of philosophy at Belgrade University in 1924; her first works were published in 1920. Her early works, the collections Verses (1924), Childhood Garden (1928), and The Green Knight (1930), contain lyric poetry in which the themes of love and nature predominate. In the collection New Verses (1936), social themes are also widely represented. Maksimović’s poetry written during World War II conveys the spirit of the Serbian nation’s courageous struggle against fascism (the poems “Serbia—The Great Mystery” and “Serbia Awakes”). The lines of her poem “A Bloody Tale” are carved on a monument to the victims of fascism in Kragujevac.

In the postwar years, Maksimović has written the verse collections. The Poet and the Mother Country (1946), The Smell of the Earth (1955), Prisoner of Dreams (1960), I Demand Forgiveness (1964), and There’s No More Time (1973). She is the author of the novels The Open Window (1954), The Rebellious Class (1960; in Russian translation Children Become Adults, 1965), It Cannot Be Forgotten, (1969), and The First Girl (1970), several collections of short stories, and more than 30 children’s books in poetry and prose.