Dragutin Tadijanović

Who was Dragutin Tadijanović?

Dragutin Tadijanović was a renowned Croatian poet, and in his native Croatia he is referred to as a "Bard."

Tadijanović was born in the village of Rastušje close to Slavonski Brod in the region of Slavonia. He published his first poem in 1922. He graduated in literature and philosophy at the University of Zagreb in 1937.

He worked as the lector of the official paper Narodne novine, taught at the Academy of Arts in Zagreb. Later he worked at the publishing house "Zora", "Hrvatski pjesnici", as well as Matica hrvatska, before becoming an editor at the. He joined the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts's Literary Institute, where he became the director in 1953 and served until his retirement in 1973. He was the president of the Society of Croatian Writers in 1964–1965, and he also became an academician of the Academy.

Tadijanović holds distinction as one of the most popular and most influential Croatian poets of 20th century. His poem Balada o zaklanim ovcama, written in the 1930s, is one of the most powerful works of Croatian literature.

His works were translated into over 20 languages, and he published over 500 poems in some twenty collections.