"Haunted" Poet Jaša Grobarov | Old Belgrade Stories

There are many people, among public figures, who are characterized as urban "legends." This epithet usually refers to people who were beloved and popular in society. If there were a hierarchy of "legendary" Belgraders, the poet Jaša Grobarov would undoubtedly be at the very top, both in terms of the number of urban legends and anecdotes that accompanied him.

Born in Mostar in 1938 as Miladin Kovačević, he lost his mother at a very young age and his father during the war. Left to fend for himself, after completing high school, he lived as a drifter and wanderer until he was brought to Belgrade in the 1950s by the then young and unknown writer and painter, Momo Kapor. While working odd jobs, including as a gravedigger in Belgrade, he started writing verses. He soon discovered the Young Writers' Club and later the Klub književnika, where he would become a dominant figure in the following decades. Thanks to one of his earliest verses, "I - fate, servant of the grave," he acquired his pseudonym - Jakov Grobarov, under which he became and remains famous to this day.

Numerous fellow writers emphasized Jaša Grobarov's great poetic talent and potential, but his character was such that he was always, as one would say today, an underground poet. He was a close friend of Momo Kapor, Bogdan Tirnanić, Toma Zdravković, Zoran Radmilović, and other famous bohemians of Belgrade. Known as a man who literally and exclusively did only what he wanted, he didn't care about conventions, steady jobs, apartments, or income. When Matija Bećković, Duško Radović, Brana Crnčević, and Skender Kulenović worked to find him a job and "arranged" everything for Jaša to become the poetry editor at "Prosveta," one of the largest publishing houses in Yugoslavia at the time, Jaša didn't show up for work on the first day.

He also enjoyed the sincere sympathy of the great Ivo Andrić, and there is an anecdote related to the Nobel laureate that goes like this: the two of them met one Friday near the National Theater. Andrić joyfully informed him that he had just left an envelope with money at the secretary's office in the Writers' Association, which was supposed to solve all of Jaša's financial problems. After parting ways, Jaša, excited, decided to treat the company at the Writers' Club and, as it often happens, arrived late to collect the envelope during working hours. Not knowing the exact amount, but assuming it must be significant, Jaša spent the entire weekend celebrating, treating others, promising loans, "repaying" old debts... Monday came, and Jaša boldly and proudly went to collect his money - which, to everyone's astonishment, covered only half of the bill at the tavern, which amounted to approximately half a million dinars today. Disappointed, Jaša simply shrugged and handed the envelope to the tavern manager. The rest of the debt was postponed for a long time and eventually forgiven... Because Jaša left much more there.

Jakov Grobarov was arrested and detained on multiple occasions. On one occasion, of course, in a tavern, he exclaimed the verses "Av, av, av, as long as Tito is healthy," provoking Miroslav Krleža and Oskar Davičo, writers close to the regime at the time. In Padinska Skela, due to minor incidents and politically inappropriate comments, he was a regular guest, and he personally considered going to prison as a vacation. He even "served" a month in Paris, where, during his painting episode in Montmartre, under the influence of a large amount of consumed beer, he decided to "relieve himself" on the "Eternal Flame" beneath the Arc de Triomphe. Thanks to interventions at the highest level, an international scandal was avoided.

In Paris, Jaša Grobarov socialized and drank with many internationally renowned artists, such as Salvador Dali, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Gabriel Garcia Marquez... He traveled throughout Europe, but European "culture" and codes of conduct always brought him back to Belgrade. In Belgrade, among the numerous café crowd, he especially enjoyed having a drink with Danilo Kiš and Branko Miljković.

Jaša's adventures didn't stop even when he ended up in the neuropsychiatric ward for the treatment of alcoholics. It was noticed that many friends would bring him eggs as gifts every day. However, these were not ordinary eggs; they were special ones from which the yolk and egg white were extracted with a syringe, and then alcohol was injected. That's how Jaša drank his "eggs" until one of them cracked and he was discovered. Causing a new scandal, he received a scolding from the doctors along with a prognosis that if he continued like that, he would die in three months. And indeed, death occurred three months later—he suddenly died, and the doctor was the one who passed away.

Jakov Jaša Grobarov, probably due to his uniqueness and inappropriate behavior, never received any literary awards, although his quality of writing deserved recommendations from many academics. He was never a member of any artistic cliques; he remained free, solely himself.

He passed away in 2013 and was buried at the New Belgrade Cemetery in Belgrade.