Đorđe Jovanović (; 27 October 1909 – 23 July 1943) was a Serbian writer and literary critic, and a surrealist poet, active in Yugoslavia during the interwar period. Along with his two high school classmates, Oskar Davičo and Đorđe Kostić, he represented the younger generation of the Yugoslav surrealist movement. Jovanović was often referred to by his childhood nickname and later nom de guerre Jarac ( billy goat).
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Jovanović helped shape Belgrade surrealism through small-circulation magazines and group publications, and he became a central participant in its internal debates about the group's aims and politics. He served as editor-in-chief of the review Nadrealizam danas i ovde (NDIO; 1931–1932), and contributed to the group's programmatic statements as it moved from avant-garde experimentation toward more explicit Marxist commitments.
After leaving poetry, Jovanović devoted himself mainly to polemical and programmatic criticism. Following imprisonment for communist activity in the mid-1930s, he emerged as a prominent Popular Front-era critic associated with "new realism", a local variant of socialist realism, writing essays and literary-historical interpretations that recast Serbian literature through Marxist and sociological approaches. His critical method in this period was shaped especially by György Lukács and Louis Aragon, and later commentators have sometimes dubbed him a "Marxist Skerlić", for his Marxist reinterpretation of Serbian literary history in dialogue with Jovan Skerlić's critical project.
During World War II he joined the Yugoslav Partisans and served as political commissar of the Kosmaj Partisan Detachment. Between periods of field service he lived illegally in occupied Belgrade, writing for the underground paper Glas Narodnooslobodilačkog fronta Srbije. In his 1943 article "Štuka kultura" (Stuka culture), Jovanović denounced occupation-era cultural life as propagandistic collaboration. He was killed near Kosmaj on 23 July 1943, and a novel and several collections of his essays were published posthumously.
Early life Đorđe Jovanović was born on 27 October 1909 in Belgrade. He was the son of Jovan ("Kalča") Jovanović and Danica ("Danka") Jovanović. His father was a colonel connected with the Salonika Trial. Jovanović's father Kalča left the family, and Jovanović was raised by his mother and aunt. He became very close to his aunt Draga ("Nuna") Stanišić, and sometimes referred to her as his "second mother".
Through his paternal grandmother, Jovanović descended from the Nenadović family, a 19th-century political dynasty. His uncle Buki Jovanović was a conspirator in the 1903 May Coup.
Jovanović became friends with his classmate and future co-author Đorđe Kostić around 1920, when they discussed the expulsion of a mutual classmate for spreading communist literature during Filip Filipović's mayoral campaign. The two initially bonded over their shared admiration for Miroslav Krleža and August Cesarec. They first became captivated by poetry after reading the poem Stražilovo by Miloš Crnjanski.
Pre-surrealist activities Along with another classmate, Oskar Davičo, Kostić and Jovanović would go on to represent the younger generation of the Yugoslav surrealist movement. Before joining the core of the local movement in 1930, the group would publish several literary magazines during their high school years. The group's first foray into publishing was the single-issue magazine Okna (Panes), published in 1925 and edited by Jovanović. Okna featured the first published prose of Oskar Davičo. Its first issue published François Fénelon's famous admonitory letter to Louis XIV.
In 1926, Jovanović and Kostić, alongside Filip Vasić and Božidar Z. Marković, published the magazine Stišavanja (Becalmings). The magazine was inspired by the writings of Robert Desnos, and included a translation of his poetry. It also featured Jovanović's critical essays on Ljubomir Micić, Stanislav Vinaver, Aleksandar Vučo, Rade Drainac and others, as well as an innovative short story by Jovanović titled "A Castle neither in the Sky nor on Earth (Composed According to the Words of the Vagabond Njegovan)". Filip Vasić provided the illustrations for Stišavanja. The title of the magazine was a reference to Kostić and Jovanović's belief that after the cessation of avant-garde magazines Svedočanstva and Putevi, the movement had entered a phase of stagnation.
Around this time, Jovanović was expelled from the First Belgrade Gymnasium for refusing to obey the dress code. Jovanović transferred to the Fourth Belgrade Gymnasium in 1925, where he participated in the literary society "Jovan Skerlić". At his new school, Jovanović first met Dušan Matić, one of his teachers at the time. According to Đorđe Kostić, it was during this time that Jovanović struggled with alcoholism, started abusing ether and developed a personal ethic of vitality (), eschewing nonconformism and adopting a hedonistic attitude. Because of all this, the two drifted apart for a short while. They reconnected in the autumn of 1927, when Jovanović introduced his former classmate to Matić. Soon after, Jovanović enrolled at the University of Belgrade to study philosophy. In 1928, Jovanović introduced Matić to Oskar Davičo, who took an instant liking to him after discussing their shared disdain for mainstream poets like Jovan Dučić and Milan Rakić, as well as the literary critic Bogdan Popović.
Between 1928 and 1929, Jovanović and Kostić, together with Davičo, published three issues of the literary magazine Tragovi (Traces). The magazine was intentionally limited to an exceptionally small circulation, namely only eight copies of each issue were printed. The readers were mostly known in advance and belonged to the surrealist group, to whom Tragovi would serve as a short anthology presenting the styles of the three collaborators. The trio would go on to produce three issues of the magazine in which they implemented elements of surrealist automatism. Jovanović's poems were less inspired by surrealism, and displayed an attitude of anarchic individualism and revolt. While working on Tragovi, Jovanović spoke admiringly of Jules Bonnot and regarded every excess as a symbol of the liberation of the human personality from the constraints imposed upon it. In his op-ed "Marginalije" (Marginalia) in Letopis Matice Srpske, Marko Ristić praised the magazine for its innovation and aesthetic appeal. However, he also critiqued the group for somewhat rigidly adhering to the principle of "art for art's sake," cautioning that this approach could lead to potential misunderstandings, especially with poems lacking contextual explanation. Jovanović was dissatisfied with his critique, which he expressed to Ristić in a disheartened letter.
Surrealism Formation and Četiri strane Following the publication of the final issue of Tragovi, Jovanović, Kostić and Davičo wanted to expand their circle. They envisioned launching a new series of Tragovi which would include their teacher Dušan Matić, and potentially Aleksandar Vučo and Milan Dedinac. Their plans took shape when Jovanović first met Marko Ristić at the theater, where he discussed the idea with Ristić and Matić. Matić suggested extending the invitation to Ristić, citing his prior collaboration with Vučo, Dedinac and himself on Svedočanstva. His students agreed and the nucleus of the surrealist group convened for the first time in the summer of 1929.
On 30 November 1929, the group convened for their second meeting at Aleksandar Vučo's apartment. Organized by Vučo and Ristić, this gathering brought together members from both the Tragovi and Svedočanstva circles, as well as contributors from the magazine 50 u Evropi (50 in Europe) and the literary critic Velibor Gligorić. During the meeting, tensions escalated between Jovanović and Gligorić, leading to a confrontation that resulted in Jovanović, with the assistance of Oskar Davičo, forcibly removing Gligorić from the premises due to his status as an employee of the state. Following the meeting, Jovanović reached out to Dušan Matić in December with the idea of establishing a new magazine. The attendees of the November meeting responded to a formal questionnaire over joining the new surrealist group in January 1930.
In early 1930, Jovanović, Kostić and Davičo published their final independent project as a trio, the single-issue placard magazine Četiri strane – Onanizam smrti – I tako dalje (Four pages – onanism of death – and so on). Literary theorist Biljana Andonovska argues that the publication challenges conventional forms of reading and print, emphasizing its experimental typographic design and its combination of features associated with the brochure, book and magazine. Marko Ristić welcomed its publication in his op-ed in Politika.
Nemoguće In May 1930, the first surrealist almanac the group authored was published under the title Nemoguće (The impossible). The publication opened with the surrealists' answers to the earlier questionnaire compiled by Marko Ristić and titled "Čeljust dijalektike" (The jaw of the dialectic), and closed with a short history of the group titled "Uzgred budi rečeno" (By the way) and written by Ristić and Matić.
At the time, Jovanović was drawn to individualist anarchism. In "Čeljust dijalektike", he was the sole member of the group to proclaim his embrace of the existence of evil, arguing that good could not exist without it, in the spirit of Comte de Lautréamont. Jovanović sardonically described his participation in the group as a betrayal of his individualism. On the question of his relation to French surrealism, Jovanović opined that he accepted the essence of Breton's first Manifesto, as well as Louis Aragon's Preface to a Modern Mythology from Le Paysan de Paris. He identified Bitka oko zida by Dušan Matić and Bez mere by Marko Ristić as important influences from Belgrade surrealism, while advocating work parallel to French surrealism rather than its imitation. Jovanović considered both French and Belgrade surrealism to be influential sources in the realization of his "integral revolt".
In "Čeljust dijalektike", the younger Tragovi group tended to favor shorter, ironic and subversive answers. The trio distinguished themselves from the rest of the group proclaiming their disbelief in miracles. However, divisions arose between them on the questions of "mythologization" and "constant suicide", both of which they had already discussed during the production of Četiri strane – Onanizam smrti – I tako dalje. The questionnaire "Čeljust dijalektike" contained a question on each of the two topics. In his response to the question of "mythologization", Jovanović sharply criticized the position of Kostić and Davičo, dismissing their suicidal ideation as childish, labeling it "one-sided psychological mythologism" and declaring the two "onanists of death". Consequently, a disagreement emerged between Ristić and Jovanović, where Matić tried to mediate between the two by writing an automatic text in which he tried to explore common ground between them. According to Kostić, regarding "mythologization", Jovanović alone treated the elevation of one's personality into myth as a justifiable reaction to mortality and viewed it as the ultimate imposition of oneself on their environment. Another question in "Čeljust dijalektike", concerned with "constant suicide" and framed through Jacques Rigaut, featured a sharp split within the Tragovi group. Kostić and Davičo answered in terms close to the rhetoric of suicide and death associated with the group's earlier text Onanizam smrti, while Jovanović flatly rejected their position. In a separate essay in Nemoguće titled "Disanje ili nema revolucija" (Breathing, or the mute revolution), Jovanović treats the act of living and breathing as a mute but constant revolution and a possible source of hope for inner liberation.