Jovan Ducic was a career diplomat and the poet most responsible for the modernization of Serbian poetry at the turn of the century. His poetry was heavily influenced by the French symbolists, but he was able to give it his own touch, that of a sensitive, refined, and highly articulate poet who paid great attention to his craft. In addition to exquisite lyric poems, he wrote poems in prose, erudite travelogues, pseudo-philosophical essays, and historical prose. Often accused of being aloof, pseudo-aristocratic, and posing, he is nevertheless recognized as a master of poetic mood and a consummate craftsman.
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