The poet's experience in the Foreign Legion.

Tin Ujević, a great Croatian poet and famous bohemian, enlisted in the Foreign Legion just before the start of the First World War. At that time, he was extremely politically active, while his literary work stagnated. Living in Paris at the time, he wanted to be sent to the Balkans and take part in the historical events that would soon take place there. He was traveling on a ship which, as promised to the legionnaires, was to be anchored somewhere in Dalmatia, after which an uprising would be launched.

Ujević traveled to Boka Kotorska at the end of the war. There, the ship was hit by a rocket, during which the poet suffered a minor concussion. Due to an injury, Ujević ended up in Avignon instead of Dalmatia, from where he left for Paris a few months later. He continues his political activities there.

(Jasen Boko: Tin Ujević – biography: thirty years of travel, 2017)

In the Foreign Legion

Dino

Tin Ujević was a so-called Yugoslavian Bukowski – a true bohemian, and an artist. A man about whom many myths have been spun. This is not a surprise, as the famous poet was a well-known guest of many Croatian and Serbian bars, during the cities' most vivid nightlife era in the beginning of the 20th Century.

Tin moved to Belgrade straight from Paris, where he started his bohemian lifestyle in the café Rotondo while hanging out with Picasso, Trotsky, and other significant European artists and politicians. After long years of crazy adventures in France, he arrived in the Serbian capital with only a hat, his distinctively torn and worn-out coat, and a bag full of manuscripts.

Being completely broke, immediately upon arrival he visited the famous gathering place of Serbian intellectuals – a cafe in the Hotel Moscow, with the hope that someone will spare him a drink. Luckily, there he met a poet called Rade Drainac, another famous Belgrade bohemian, and sat at his table. A waiter soon approached two praised artists and asked them what they would like to drink. Rade replied to the waiter: – Nothing, thank you! – 

Right after, the waiter popped the same question to Tin, to which his famous reply was: – I’d like the same as Rade. Only with a glass of white wine on the side! – Back then, Tin was already a well-known intellectual in the Kingdom, so Rade couldn’t wait to hear his famous long and poetic monologues. As their quick drink turned into hours of sitting at the bar, distinguished guests of the hotel kept sending drinks to the table of two educated tramps, just so they could amuse them with their dialogue.

When the evening came, they would go to the cafe "Three Hats" in the famous Skadarlija Street. There, drunk and in ecstasy, they frolicked until the morning, or rather, until they bored the waiters and neighbors with their shouting and drunkenness. During their night outs, the police often had to intervene.

The famous Artists of The Bottle, as they were called, were lucky that the administrative division of the city worked in their favor. Briefly, Skadarlija Street was divided into two city districts - Palila and Dorćula, so each side of the bohemian street had different police surveillance. This allowed boozers to initially vandalize a bar on the one side of the street and then, without the fear of arrest, cross over to the other side and continue their debauchery there. The police in the first bar carried out an investigation but they had no authority to intervene on the other side of the street

When the police managed to catch them, Tin would sometimes get beaten, and sometimes they would just take him to the station. 

In the police station, officers would cut Tin's hair and shave his beard, since he never did that himself. During his stay in Belgrade, over time it became a routine for the police to detain him every three months without him doing any offenses, just so he could wash, cut and shave. Because of similar benefits, he became friends with Belgrade police chief Ljubiša Lazarevic. Two men befriended through a convenience they both had insomnia. Tin would keep him company during his long nights and Ljubiša would kindly share his always full stock of cigarettes.

When he wasn’t drinking, partying, or, in those rare moments, writing, the poet would sleep on park benches, usually in Kalemegdan Park. On one such occasion, local policeman approached Tin to wake him up. The policeman thought that he was just a regular tramp.  

As soon as he realized that he had woken up a respectable writer, the policeman started apologizing. – You don’t have to apologize. – Tin mumbled, with his eyes still half-closed.

– Although, I would consider you more polite if you had first woken up the neighbor from the ground floor. – he added, while pointing his hand to the poet Rade Drainac, who was sleeping under the bench.

The Last Bohemian

 A little poet in a girl's and a monk's dress.

The most famous Croatian poet and bohemian Tin Ujević was born in a Turkish tower in Vrgorac. The tower was a temporary monument to the Turkish conquests and was dilapidated and uncomfortable. A poor village teacher, his father Ivan Ujević, was forced to build his hearth there. His place of birth, like most of his future lodgings, was so dilapidated that in the autumn his father riveted the windows with boards to protect his home from the strong Dalmatian wind.

Tin was an unusual child. In his autobiography, he wrote that as a little boy he liked to dress in women's dresses because he felt more comfortable in them. He learned to read and write before starting school, where his father was the teacher. Tin described his father as a patriarchal man who, of all his teachers, beat him the most and was the strictest towards him. He was an extremely lively child. He climbed trees, walls, fell into pits, once even into a well. He later claimed that his skull had changed shape from all those falls.

Due to the force of circumstances, the family moved to Imotski and not long after to Makarska. There, Tin continued to attend school as a lonely and withdrawn child. However, the locals still remember the incident in which this calm and self-effacing boy got into a fight in front of the Kačić monument. The fight broke out for unknown reasons, and thin and long Tin was the winner.

After graduating from public school, Augustin entered the Split high school. After the entrance exam, he enrolled straight into the second grade. He went to the city under Marjan alone when he was only twelve years old. He lived with a friar and was extremely poor. Poverty was the leitmotif of his whole life. As a high school student, he didn't have his own books, so he borrowed them before class in order to learn in a short time what he needed to learn at home. He started writing more significant poems as a thirteen-year-old boy, but none of them have been preserved. He was an excellent student, and he loved mathematics very much. He was dissatisfied that the classical gymnasium he attended could not provide him with better knowledge in that subject. However, the course of his life was directed by his love for reading. As a high school student, he read everything he could get his hands on.

Although he lived in a seminary, he was an anti-clerical and, together with his colleagues, hatched conspiracies against the friars and wrote novels. In the seventh grade, the priests discovered the negatively intoned letters that the young men were exchanging and punished them with a harsh rebuke. His high school classmates remember him as quarrelsome and withdrawn, but also as a real little encyclopedia. Namely, Tin remembered everything - names, years, even poems that he would only read once. He finished high school as a native of Starčević and was intrigued by politics, like all young men of that time, and thought about enrolling in law. His parents wanted him to be a priest. Ujević did not respect their wish. Interested in getting to know himself and the world more deeply, he enrolled in the study of Croatian language and literature, classical philology and aesthetics at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb. With the beginning of his studies, he started writing poetry again. His first published poem was the sonnet Za novi vidicima in the magazine Mlada Hrvatska, in which he continues to publish his works later.

About dresses

Student days and Tino Ujević's first drunkenness.

Despite his parents' desire to become a priest, Tin enrolled in the Croatian language and literature, classical philology and aesthetics at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb. At the beginning of his studies, he started writing poetry. His first published poem was the sonnet "Za novim vidicima" in the magazine "Mlada Hrvatska", in which he continues to publish his works.

He lived at many addresses in Zagreb - in small apartments, in sheds and in attics. He lived modestly because he wanted to support himself by writing. He hung out with Matoš, Kovačić and Wiesner. He was happy to talk with Matoš, then a young and innovative poet, in the Bauer cafe, which was located on the corner of Ilica and Frankopanska.

Tin spent his mornings in the library, reading and writing, and spent the afternoons and evenings in cafes. He lived on water and white coffee. During his student days in Zagreb, he did not consume alcohol at all. This is why he remembered his first drunkenness. He got drunk for the first time on Easter in 1910. Then, discussing with Matoš, he drank half a liter of wine, which then gave him a headache. It was just the beginning of what would follow after going to Paris, and then to Belgrade...

First drunkenness

The most famous (and funniest) Croatian polemic in art.

Since his arrival in Zagreb, Ujević has been hanging out with Matoš every day. Their fortress was the Bauer cafe, which was located on the corner of Ilica and Frankopanska. However, their friendship did not last long. Rebellious and averse to authority, Tin felt that Matoš had a patronizing attitude towards him. Matoš, although a frequent guest of the cafe, was already an established poet, unlike Tino, who was still waiting for his fame. However, this was not the cause of the breakup of a great friendship. It is more likely that the breakup of the relationship was decided by a difference in political opinion.

Ujević, like Matoš, was an ardent rightist since his high school days. However, during his studies, disappointed with Starčevićism, he turned to Yugoslav unitarism. Not long after arriving in Zagreb to study, he published a text in which he criticized the patriot August Harambašić, calling him a rhetorician instead of a great poet. Nationalist-oriented Matoš understood this as betrayal. That's when the famous lines appear in which Matoš complains about a certain "plagiarist", writing that "instead of students I got monkeys". Thus began the most entertaining polemic between two Croatian writers published in various magazines for many years.

Tin soon retaliated in kind, writing about Matoš as a "dying Caesar". He says of him that he is "a coward who dares to object only to young poets, while he writes about older ones under a pseudonym", "a crow adorned with the feathers of all birds", "the great master of all literary burglars and pickpockets with the comical gestures of a polemical emperor" and much more...

Matoš, of course, retaliates by writing that he, Huljević, and not Ujević, is actually a fakin literary parasite. The polemic continued until the two bored themselves and the entire literary world. Until the end of his life, Ujević tried to distance himself from Matoš, proving that he was never under his literary influence.

Matoš, on the other hand, was conciliatory and, knowing that the latter had eternally empty pockets, even offered to pay for "tours" in the Kazališna kavana cafe, where the latter moved with his new circle of followers. But Ujević had an exceptionally good memory when it suited him. He was determined in Ujević was stubborn in his rejection of Matoš, but he mentioned him in many of his works, mostly negatively. Ujević's obsession with Rabbi, as he called his teacher Matoš in better days, lasted his whole life.

Matoš vs. Ujevic

According to the story, they used to break into cafes with white flowers on their suits and clubs on their shoulders...


From his high school days, the great Croatian poet Tin Ujević was an ardent rightist. Later, after breaking up with Matoš and being exiled to Paris, he turned to Yugoslav unitarism. Kovačić, Mitrinović and he founded the secret association OM. According to the story, they used to break into cafes with white flowers on their suits and clubs on their shoulders...

In cafes, they would frighten and seduce guests by saying some kind of sentences that would always end with OM. The reason and meaning of this engagement was never revealed, and they were soon politically persecuted. Ujević, exiled for many months from Croatia, goes to Belgrade. At that time, he was extremely politically active, while his literary work stagnated.

He arrived in Belgrade alone, and a Dalmatian lent him money for the ticket. There he gave important political speeches about the unification of Serbia and Croatia. In 1913, he founded the newspaper "Uježdinje" in which he spread his ideas about Serbian-Croatian unification. At that time, he lived on a scholarship from the Serbian government, which amounted to one hundred dinars.

It was said that, two years before the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand, Gavrilo Princip, then still a high school student, met with Ujević and Kovačić in the Belgrade Hotel Moskva. However, Princip denied this at the trial.

Ujević goes to Zagreb again, where he is arrested and where he admits his involvement in political events. He was exiled from the Kingdom of Croatia and Slavonia and went to Split. He continues his political activities there. He was arrested again when crossing the border illegally - he wanted to go to Zagreb with someone else's documents. By going to prison, he becomes a political star in Dalmatia, and his like-minded people try to portray him as a martyr. After his release, he was arrested and imprisoned several more times until he finally went to Paris.

What's a club for a poet?

Coming to Paris, young Ujević was fascinated by the City of Light. He spent his days in the national library, he listened to lectures at the Sorbonne, and at night he went to "Rotondo", a cafe frequented by many artists, poets, and journalists. Jean Cocteau, Ilija Erenburg, Modigliani, Picasso, Trotsky, D'Annunzio also used to go there... That cafe was a world-famous gathering place for bohemians. American tourists came there to see "artists in rags" who, in exchange for a drink, would write verses and paint.

In the first months, Tin had no money because his so-called scholarship was overdue. Later, he wrote that the following was on the menu: All months – milk and bread, sometimes chocolate, and often air. He concluded that it is not a joy to live without means in Paris. He supported himself from the scholarship, but also by writing for the Dalmatian newspaper Sloboda. Some of the songs he dedicated, according to some interpretations, to famous actresses who, drunk on narcotics, kept the artists gathered in the Rotondo company.

After the episode with a short-term departure to the Foreign Legion, Ujević returns to Paris. A war is coming, which is welcomed by the hungry. He makes a living by digging ditches and selling newspapers, and at night he plays chess with Trotsky, arranging glasses of absinthe. Later, again for political purposes, he travels to London, and very little is known about his tasks there. Returning to Paris, he closely follows the development of the war. In the winter of 1916, driven by hunger and loneliness, he writes his most important work "Everyday Lament". Then, disappointed, he also leaves his political activities...

Parisian nights

How Tin saw his greatest inspiration, the woman who made him lose faith in love and who sent him into madness...

During the First World War, the great poet and recognizable bohemian Tin Ujević stayed in Paris. There he wrote political articles that propagated the idea of ​​Serbian-Croatian unification. During his stay in Paris, he often visited the Serbian embassy. There he saw his greatest inspiration, a woman for whom he completely abandoned the idea of ​​romantic love in the later years of his life.

In Paris, he met Lucille, the stepdaughter of Serbian ambassador Milenko Vesnić. The stepfather fondly called this charismatic girl Lepa. It is not known what developed between the two young people, but it is known that Lucille considered the poet a witty and charming man whom she enjoyed meeting. But the story did not end happily for Ujević, because Lepa married a prominent Romanian banker four years later. Only the collections of love poetry "Lelek sebra" and "Kolajna", which he wrote during his last years in Paris, which he spent in deep depression, could honestly testify to their love. These are the collections that were published ten years later when he was already living in Belgrade. And whether they are really talking about the unfulfilled love of Tino and Lucille, let their readers judge. Nevertheless, letters from that period testify that the great poet in those years, perhaps because of unfulfilled love, was extremely mentally distracted - he was obsessed with conspiracy theories and the thought that he was being persecuted.

Under intense psychological pressure, he loses funding from the Yugoslav Committee, which declares him insane and unfit to write articles. Then, disappointed with the Yugoslavs, he joined the society that gathered in the "Rotondo" and propagated ideas about the annexation of Croatian territory to Italy. He writes a letter to Benito Mussolini, then editor of the Milanese magazine "Il Papolo d'Italia", in which he states that the aspirations of the Italian people towards Dalmatia are just. Enthusiastic Mussolini praises Ujević, calling him "Uljević". At that time, Ujević was abandoned by all former Yugoslav collaborators and unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide several times. He finds solace only in writing poetry. Disappointed in himself and the whole world, he changes his name to Tin and returns to Yugoslavia.

The mysterious Lucille and letters to Mussolini

Arriving in Belgrade, he went straight to the cafe "Moskva"...

Ujević earned his bohemian status precisely in Belgrade. According to testimonies at the time, he was more often drunk than sober. There he completely discarded all his former civil manners. Before, a promising young man, sharp and persistent in political action, grew into a genius artist. But that artist survived exclusively on other people's charity.

Arriving in Belgrade, he went straight to the cafe "Moskva". The place where, as a young man, he gave fiery political speeches and gathered like-minded people eager to create Yugoslavia. He met Rade Drainac, a young Serbian poet, in a cafe and asked him if he could sit at his table. Drainc was delighted because he had already heard of the poetic genius. After sitting down, Tin began one of his legendary monologues that could go on for hours, during which, of course, it was up to the listener to buy a drink. After drinking well, he went to the famous cafe Triglav. Prominent politicians dined there. According to the story, he met a former political associate of Matošić there. The latter ordered lunch, and Tin asked: - What about me? - He said that he had no money and that he also needed an apartment. Matošić ensured that he would eat in the cafe for the whole month and placed him in the small hall on an old couch.

Over the next ten years, Tin would become known as a coffee house entertainer with words. He spent evenings with the cream of society and those less important in different inns, most often in the "Three Hats". He would talk to them and entertain them, usually in exchange for drinks, lunches, and sometimes some money. At that time, his two poetry collections "Lelek sebra" and "Kolajna" were published. Although he was offered a significant fee for printing, Ujević initially did not want to publish these collections, considering them to be "dirty laundry" that should not be made public. Nevertheless, the collections were published, and Tin then began to assert himself for the first time in Belgrade as a significant poet, and not as an unaccountable bohemian as he appeared to the world at first.

First day in Belgrade

Although at first he seemed insane, the famous bohemian Tin Ujević, disillusioned with politics and love, actually did all the wrong things in order to mislead his fellow citizens and provoke the on-duty gossipers and small-towners.

On one occasion, he was thrown out of the Serbian cafe. According to the story, Tin, provoked by questions about his own poor hygiene, suddenly started scratching his ears. He arranged nine ears on the table and let them "run". He said he wanted to determine which one was the fastest. But according to Jasen Boka, the ears behaved unsportsmanlike and, instead of proving themselves in this athletic discipline, to the general disgust and fear of the guests, they scattered around the cafe.

A few days later, he was thrown out of the Moskva cafe because he was scratching his ears at the table again, unburdened by the general outrage of the guests. The owner then forbade him to come. The on-call "alternative scene" reacted immediately and at the request of the literary public, but also fearing that he would not be without the profit that such entertainers brought him, the owner turned the tables and Tin was allowed to stay again.

In the Foreign Legion

The poet's experience in the Foreign Legion.

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