Name Milan Curcin | Role Poet | |
Milan Ćurčin (Pančevo, 14 November 1880 – Zagreb, 20 January 1960) was a Serbian poet and editor of an influential magazine, printed in Zagreb during the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
Biography
Pančevo-born Milan Ćurčin was educated in Novi Sad, and graduated from the Department of German and Slavic studies in Vienna with a degree of Doctor of Literature. He was appointed associate professor at the University of Belgrade in 1907, where he lectured on German literature until 1914. Before 1914 a great number of translations of Goethe's Zaratustra into Serbian were published, but the best of them, according to critics, was the translation of poet Milan Ćurčin which appeared in 1911. During the Great War Milan Ćurčin was sent by the Serbian government to London where he met Robert William Seton-Watson, a like minded individual, with whom he collaborated on the emergence of Yugoslavia and after.
In the 1920s and 1930s Milan Ćurčin was editor of the well-known Zagreb trimonthly "Nova Evropa". A friend of R. W. Seton-Watson, Milan Ćurčin set about collecting and publishing in his literary and political magazine, modeled on Seton-Watson's London-based "New Europe", whatever he could find of interest to South Slavs (commonly known as Yugoslavs). The close resemblance between the two journals was certainly planned, and that went not only for the names and the general ideological thrust but also for the intended editorial policy. Seaton-Watson and Ćurčin had been long-time friends and to all intents and purposes Ćurčin's venture was originally an attempt to implant British values and other changes along Western expectations.