When you visit Belgrade, Serbia you will probably visit the famous Kalemegdan Park. In it you will find the monument with the bust of Vojislav Ilic, a famous poet in Serbia. The inscription and relief plaque is in wunderful Art Nouveau style.
"It was put up in 1903 with the funds provided by the Board of Belgrade Girls. It is the work of sculptor Jovan Pesic.
Vojislav Ilic (186 –1894) was a poet and descendant of a renowned Belgrade family. He is the pioneer of modern lyrics in Serbian literature. He dedicated his poem Over Belgrade to Belgrade. In his poem Freedom Herald he depicts the imprisonment of Rigas Ferairos in Nebojsa Tower."
Source: www.beogradskatvrdjava.co.rs
Vojislav Ilic
"Vojislav Ilic (14 April 1860 – 21 January 1894) was a Serbian poet, known for his finely chiseled verse.
Ilic failed to complete his college education and was forced to take various clerical positions of minor importance. Living for the most part in penury, he wrote poetry extensively and soon became the leading Serbian poet in the last decades of the nineteenth century. As many Serbian artists of that era, he died young, of tuberculosis, in 1894.
His poetry exemplifies a classic example of modern Serbian language and features the standard Decadent motifs of the epoch: cruel nature (e.g. cold wind blowing across empty fields), and the times of Elagabalus.
Literary work
His first publication was a book simply entitled Pesme (Poems) which appeared in Belgrade in 1887 and this was followed at other intervals by other volumes of more verse. As a poet he soon made a reputation as one of the ablest and most versatile writers of his day. His influence was infectious, young aspiring poets would gather around him and in that period the term Vojislavism became a coined word in Serbian literature. In the 1890s a true Vojislavism reigned among young Serbian poets; no wonder he was proclaimed 'the greatest Serbian poet' by Skerlic and other critics. Of the best known Serbian poets who looked up to him during that period were Milorad Mitrovic, Mileta Jakšic, Aleksa Šantic, Danica Markovic, and for a short while even Jovan Ducic, who soon went on to abandon Vojislavism for a new literary wave that Ducic and Milan Rakic would ultimately espouse, influenced by the French poets. This independence Ducic and Rakic owed in part perhaps to their studies and frequent travels abroad, both were in the diplomatic service. It was Ducic who said, 'Even if Vojislav did not succeed in becoming our greatest poet, he is certainly our most beautiful poet.'
Critics say he was an ardent follower of Alexander Pushkin: 'As far as Vojislav Ilic is concerned Pushkin's influence is beyond question: everything in Ilic's verses, their rhythm and power of expression remind one of Pushkin.' Jovan Skerlic reproached him for that, but Ilic himself never made a secret of it and openly avowed in one of his poems that he was a pupil of Vasily Zhukovsky and Pushkin.
Ilic was also an ardent follower of Vuk Karadžic's reforms."
Source and further information: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vojislav_Ilic