The Modern Novel

Biography

Miloš Crnjanski (Milos Tsernianski) was born in Csongrád, Hungary in 1893. His father was a municipal notary. The family moved to Temesvár (now Timisoara in Romania), where he grew up in a Serbian environment, favouring Serbian nationalism. After high school, he studied in Rijeka and then Vienna. After the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, he was persecuted like other Serbs and then drafted into the army to fight the Russians. He was wounded in 1915, spending time in a hospital in Vienna. He was later sent back to the Italian front. He then studied art history and philosophy in Vienna and graduated from the University of Belgrade, where he had edited the student newspaper. He later worked as a teacher, a newspaper editor and an embassy press attaché in Berlin and then in the Yugoslav Embassy in Rome. He also worked as reporter in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. In World War II, he escaped to London, where he remained after the war, becoming a British citizen. He worked in Hatchards, the bookshop, while his wife sewed dolls dresses for Harrods. He returned to Belgrade in 1965, where he died in 1977.

He initially wrote poetry but later turned to prose fiction and drama, as well. He wrote about his disillusionment, the futility of war and the destruction of his country.

Other Links

Miloš Crnjanski
Miloš Crnjanski
The countenance of Milos Crnjanski
The Explanation of Sumatra, 1920 (poem and article by Tsernianski)