Aleksa Šantić | Origin of Street Names

Aleksa Šantić (1868 - 1924) is one of the greatest poets of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the creator of perhaps the most beautiful love and patriotic verses ever written in the Serbian language.

He was born in Mostar into a merchant family, and his education was oriented in that direction. He studied in Trieste and Ljubljana, but due to delicate health, he returned to his hometown at the age of 15, where he would spend the majority of his life.

Upon returning to Mostar, young Šantić kept the books in his family's trade shop and read the literature available to him at that time. His role models were Jova Zmaj, Vojislav Ilić, and Heinrich Heine.

After a few years, realizing that the merchant trade was not for him, he embarked on his independent literary and translation work.

It was a time after the suppression of the Herzegovina Uprising, when the freedom-loving people in Bosnia and Herzegovina fell out of favor with the Ottomans. It is likely that this fact inspired some of the most beautiful patriotic poems that Aleksa Šantić would later write.

"Stay here"... "We know our destiny"... "My homeland"... are just some of the poems that were born as the poet's outcry for the freedom of the Serbian people and the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Turkish and subsequent Austro-Hungarian occupation (annexation). Due to his poems, Aleksa Šantić was once imprisoned and expelled from Mostar.

However, in addition to a strong patriotic sentiment and defiance towards the conqueror, the poetry of Aleksa Šantić is perhaps even more defined by its lyrical nature. Some of the most beautiful love poems ever created in the entire Serbian-Croatian-speaking region originated from the pen and heart of the renowned poet from Mostar.

"If You Wish"... "Rose's Dream"... "Why You're Not Here"... "Emina"... are just some of those inspired by the poet's longing and (un)fulfilled loves.

A poet of strong personal feelings, with a pronounced sense of belonging to a nation and a region, and the ability to skillfully convey it onto paper, Aleksa Šantić earned great respect among the people and the public during his lifetime. In the last ten years of his life, he was also an associate member of the Serbian Royal Academy.

He died at the age of 55, from tuberculosis which he had been battling since World War I. The entire city of Mostar paid him tribute, and his bust proudly stands in the city on the Neretva River, despite all the political and interethnic problems in Bosnia and Herzegovina in recent decades.

In Serbia, besides numerous schools and libraries, the name of Aleksa Šantić is carried by streets in over 90 cities and villages throughout the country, as well as a settlement in the municipality of Sombor.