Milan Rakić | Origin of Street Names

Milan Rakić (1876 - 1938) was a Serbian poet, warrior, diplomat, and academic, a man who enjoyed exceptional reputation in the Serbian and Yugoslav establishment and society in general during the period between the two world wars.

He was born in Belgrade, into a prestigious bourgeois family, the son of Minister Dimitrije Rakić and Ana Milićević, the daughter of ethnographer and academician Milan Đ. Milićević. He received primary and secondary education in his hometown and after completing high school, he was sent to Paris to study law.

In Paris, he acquired a broad education, which recommended him for diplomatic positions in Serbian consulates in the still Ottoman cities of Pristina, Skopje, Shkodra, and Thessaloniki upon his return to the country.

Inspired by French poetry, like most of his contemporaries, he began writing poems in which love, historical motifs, and patriotism were often highlighted as the main leitmotif. History would show that alongside Dučić and Šantić, Milan Rakić would become one of the greatest Serbian poets of the 20th century.

During his service in Kosovo and Macedonia, Rakić actively supported the struggle for the liberation of Serbian regions under the Ottomans, first logistically by maintaining communication between Belgrade and the Serbian guerrillas in the south, and then by directly making himself available to the troops of Vojvoda Vuk.

On the wings of personal love affairs and later the Serbian triumph in the Balkan Wars, Rakić composed some of the most beautiful lyrical and patriotic poems in the history of Serbian poetry. Among them, "Desperate Song," "Sincere Song," "At Gazimestan," "Simonida," "Jefimija," and others stand out.

Interestingly, Milan Rakić's poetic opus does not consist of a large number of poems, as the poet did not want to engage in writing at all costs. Therefore, his career could primarily be marked as political and diplomatic, although the trace he left in Serbian literature will be eternal.

Milan Rakić spent World War I in diplomatic missions in Bucharest, Stockholm, and Copenhagen, and in the years after the war, he served as the ambassador of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in Sofia and later in Rome during the political rise of Benito Mussolini. The high reputation of the Serbian poet is evidenced by the fact that, upon his dismissal from the position of royal envoy in Rome, Mussolini organized a farewell for Rakić that even representatives of much larger and more powerful countries than the Kingdom of Yugoslavia did not receive.

Being a corresponding member of the Serbian Royal Academy for many years, he was elected as a full member in 1934. Four years later, at the age of 62, Milan Rakić passed away in Zagreb and was buried with military and state honors at the New Cemetery in Belgrade.

In addition to the prestigious literary award presented by the Association of Writers of Serbia, Milan Rakić's name is now carried by numerous schools in Serbia, as well as dozens of streets in cities and villages throughout the country.