Dimitrije Mitrinovic
Encyclopedia
Serbs
The Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group of the Balkans and southern Central Europe. Serbs are located mainly in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form a sizable minority in Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. Likewise, Serbs are an officially recognized minority in...
philosopher, poet, revolutionary, mystic, theoretician of modern painting, traveller and cosmopolite.
Biography
Dimitrije Mitrinović was born in a village near the town of StolacStolac
Stolac is a town and municipality in Bosnia and Herzegovina, located in the southern part of Herzegovina. Administratively, it is part of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina....
in Herzegovina during the Austro-Hungarian occupation
Bosnia and Herzegovina (Austro-Hungarian condominium)
The Austro-Hungarian condominium of Bosnia and Herzegovina was a condominium established after the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary in 1908, following its occupation in 1878 under the terms of the Treaty of Berlin.-History:...
. As a young student he took a leading part in the movement of Young Bosnia
Young Bosnia
Young Bosnia was a revolutionary movement active before World War I, the members were predominantly school students who were ethnic Serbs, but included Bosniaks...
(Mlada Bosna) in his country's struggle for independence from Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
and in the moves to create a united Yugoslavia. During this period Mitrinović edited the Sarajevo literary paper, Bosanska Vila.
Having studied history of art in Munich he came to England in 1914 to work for the Serbian Legation in London and moved among influential cultural circles in this country. From late 1914 to early 1915, there was an exhibition of work by Ivan Meštrović
Ivan Meštrovic
Ivan Meštrović was a Croatian and Yugoslav sculptor and architect born in Vrpolje, Croatia...
at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which included a model of a monument he had designed to commemorate the Battle of Kosovo
Battle of Kosovo
The Battle of Kosovo took place on St. Vitus' Day, June 15, 1389, between the army led by Serbian Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović, and the invading army of the Ottoman Empire under the leadership of Sultan Murad I...
.
A mysterious personality in Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
n and European cultural history, he began his work in the field of art by translating Rig-Veda and the works of Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
into Serbian. He studied philosophy and art history while staying in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
, Paris, Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
, and Tübingen
Tübingen
Tübingen is a traditional university town in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, on a ridge between the Neckar and Ammer rivers.-Geography:...
. He was one of the first advocates of the avant-garde artistic group Der Blaue Reiter
Der Blaue Reiter
Der Blaue Reiter was a group of artists from the Neue Künstlervereinigung München in Munich, Germany. The group was founded by a number of Russian emigrants, including Wassily Kandinsky, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, and native German artists, such as Franz Marc, August Macke and...
and gave a lecture on the art of Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely-abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics...
.
Being in favour of the building of a universal utopia, like many of the leading minds of his time, he wrote about the inevitable creation of the Pan-European community. Ten years before La rebellion de las masas by Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset was a Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist working during the first half of the 20th century while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism and dictatorship. He was, along with Nietzsche, a proponent of the idea of perspectivism.-Biography:José Ortega y Gasset was...
, Mitrinović prophesied: "Being different from the other races, the population of Europe has always given birth to its contradictions and always with the chances of their solution in some ultimate synthesis."
He was a regular contributor to the epoch-making periodical The New Age
The New Age
The New Age was a British literary magazine, noted for its wide influence under the editorship of A. R. Orage from 1907 to 1922. It began life in 1894 as a publication of the Christian Socialist movement; but in 1907 as a radical weekly edited by Joseph Clayton, it was struggling...
(the author of the column "World Affairs"), alongside Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
, and according to Edwin Muir
Edwin Muir
Edwin Muir was an Orcadian poet, novelist and translator born on a farm in Deerness on the Orkney Islands. He was remembered for his deeply felt and vivid poetry in plain language with few stylistic preoccupations....
, Mitrinović "has erupted with wild and profound contemplations ... not looking several ages ahead, like Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
or Wells, but several millennia ahead."
The Utopian and messianic ideas of Mitrinović (incorporated in the philosophical concepts of Husserl
Edmund Husserl
Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was a philosopher and mathematician and the founder of the 20th century philosophical school of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, yet he elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic...
and Peter Demianovich Ouspensky
P. D. Ouspensky
Peter D. Ouspensky , , a Russian esotericist known for his expositions of the early work of the Greek-Armenian teacher of esoteric doctrine George Gurdjieff, whom he met in Moscow in 1915.He was associated with the ideas and practices originating with...
, the theosophical doctrine of G. I. Gurdjieff
G. I. Gurdjieff
George Ivanovich Gurdjieff according to Gurdjieff's principles and instructions, or the "Fourth Way."At one point he described his teaching as "esoteric Christianity."...
, and the psychoanalytical school of Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
, Jung
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
and Adler
Alfred Adler
Alfred Adler was an Austrian medical doctor, psychotherapist, and founder of the school of individual psychology. In collaboration with Sigmund Freud and a small group of Freud's colleagues, Adler was among the co-founders of the psychoanalytic movement as a core member of the Vienna...
) were brought to the attention of the public not only in the periodical The New Age but also in the periodical The New Atlantis (which Mitrinović edited) and The New Albion (which he co-edited with A.R. Orage).
Mitrinović founded the Adler's Society (the English Branch of the International Society for Individual Psychology), but later he and Adler went different ways due, allegedly, to "politicizing of his scientific concepts". Mitrinović later founded the New Europe Group.
Mitrinović advocated a metaphysical Utopia (based on Plotinus
Plotinus
Plotinus was a major philosopher of the ancient world. In his system of theory there are the three principles: the One, the Intellect, and the Soul. His teacher was Ammonius Saccas and he is of the Platonic tradition...
, Clement of Alexandria
Clement of Alexandria
Titus Flavius Clemens , known as Clement of Alexandria , was a Christian theologian and the head of the noted Catechetical School of Alexandria. Clement is best remembered as the teacher of Origen...
, Lao Tzu, Jakob Böhme
Jakob Böhme
Jakob Böhme was a German Christian mystic and theologian. He is considered an original thinker within the Lutheran tradition...
) but was also politically pragmatic. He published an open letter to Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
in 1933 in which he accused Hitler of "behaving and acting as an evil superman ... possessed with some weird vision" which is "uncomprehendable by the human mind and belief and quite certain, and in all forms and essence, directed against the Orthodox soul."
The works of Mitrinović have remained scattered in numerous European periodicals (like the provocative texts based on psychological and philosophical theories, such as: Frojd prema Adleru (Freud versus Adler), Značaj Jungovog dela (The Importance of Jung's Work), Marks i Niče kao istorijska pozadina Adlera (Marx and Nietzsche being the Historical Background of Adler), Načela genija (The Principles of a Genius), Carstvo snova (The Realm of Dreams). Many of his works (including much of his poetry) were published in Serbian periodicals, and one of his major works, Aesthetic Contemplations, was published in Bosanska Vila.
In addition to the selected works of Dimitrije Mitrinović (published in the Serbian language, a number of years after his death) and the special study by Predrag Palavestra, Dogma i utopija (Dogma and Utopia), in the Serbian language in 1977), two books have been distributed by Columbia University Press
Columbia University Press
Columbia University Press is a university press based in New York City, and affiliated with Columbia University. It is currently directed by James D. Jordan and publishes titles in the humanities and sciences, including the fields of literary and cultural studies, history, social work, sociology,...
, New York; the first of them was published in 1984 and the second one in 1987. The authors of these books are Andrew Rigby (Initiation and Initiative: An Exploration of the Life and Ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović) and H. C. Rutherford (Certainly Future: Selected Writings by Dimitrije Mitrinović).
It is interesting to point out to the future explorers of the works of Mitrinović, that in 1914, wishing to establish the movement "The Fundamentals of the Future", he maintained correspondence with the following potential associates: Giovanni Papini
Giovanni Papini
Giovanni Papini was an Italian journalist, essayist, literary critic, poet, and novelist.-Early life:...
, Stanisław Przybyszewski, Martin Buber
Martin Buber
Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....
, Gershom Scholem
Gershom Scholem
Gerhard Scholem who, after his immigration from Germany to Palestine, changed his name to Gershom Scholem , was a German-born Israeli Jewish philosopher and historian, born and raised in Germany...
, Upton Sinclair
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...
, Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergson was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that immediate experience and intuition are more significant than rationalism and science for understanding reality.He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize...
, H.G. Wells, Dmitry Merezhkovsky
Dmitry Merezhkovsky
Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky, , 1865, St Petersburg – December 9, 1941, Paris) was a Russian novelist, poet, religious thinker, and literary critic. A seminal figure of the Silver Age of Russian Poetry, regarded as a co-founder of the Symbolist movement, Merezhkovsky – with his poet wife Zinaida...
, Leonid Andreyev
Leonid Andreyev
Leonid Nikolaievich Andreyev was a Russian playwright, novelist and short-story writer. He is one of the most talented and prolific representatives of the Silver Age period in Russian history...
, Maxim Gorky
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov , primarily known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.-Early years:...
, Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, also called Comte Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life...
, Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, Filippo T. Marinetti, Anatole France
Anatole France
Anatole France , born François-Anatole Thibault, , was a French poet, journalist, and novelist. He was born in Paris, and died in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire. He was a successful novelist, with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters...
, George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
, and Knut Hamsun
Knut Hamsun
Knut Hamsun was a Norwegian author, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. He was praised by King Haakon VII of Norway as Norway's soul....
.
Library and archive
The Mitrinović Library contains a collection of over 4,500 volumes, based on Mitrinović's private collection. The Library thus reflects Mitrinović's very wide range of interests and command of languages. Particular areas of strength are philosophyPhilosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
, politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
, society
Society
A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...
, religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
s and esoterica. The collection includes rare books on art history
Art history
Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style...
, literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
, psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
, history, science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
, oriental studies
Oriental studies
Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies...
, astrology
Astrology
Astrology consists of a number of belief systems which hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world...
, Freemasonry
Freemasonry
Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...
, theosophy
Theosophy
Theosophy, in its modern presentation, is a spiritual philosophy developed since the late 19th century. Its major themes were originally described mainly by Helena Blavatsky , co-founder of the Theosophical Society...
and more. Most material is from the nineteenth and early twentieth century; the main languages used are English and German, with some French, Asian, and Eastern European languages.
Part of the library was bequeathed to the Belgrade University Library
Belgrade University Library
The Svetozar Marković University Library is the central library within the system of the University of Belgrade’s libraries, named after Svetozar Marković, Serbian political activist in the 19th century...
in 1956 and part of it donated to University of Bradford
University of Bradford
The University of Bradford is a British university located in the city of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. The University received its Royal Charter in 1966, making it the 40th University to be created in Britain, but its origins date back to the early 1800s...
in 2003 and 2004.
The archive, which was donated to the University of Bradford by the Foundation of New Atlantis in 2003 and 2004, includes published and unpublished writings of Mitrinović and documents and correspondence produced by members of Mitrinović's circle, members of the New Europe Group and members of the New Atlantis Foundation.