The love of Magdalena Živanović and Jovan Dučić
What leaves every visitor to Bijeljina breathless is the story of tragic love...
What leaves every visitor to Bijeljina breathless is the story of the tragic love between Magdalena Maga Živanović, the first poet from Bijeljina and one of the greatest Serbian poets and writers, Jovan Dučić. If you follow this story, the road will take you to St. Sava Street, not far from the Church of St. George and the former building of the Gymnasium, to a small, dilapidated house overgrown with weeds and the oblivion of time and people. In this house, two young people, Magdalena Maga Živanović and Jovan Dučić, found their first and only love. This house used to be the most beautiful in Bijeljina, and today it testifies to our negligence and carelessness. With a small balcony, collapsed after a fire and left to itself for years, this house resists the ravages of time and bears witness to one great and tragic love, waiting to be restored to its old glory and to take the right place that has belonged to it for centuries.
In the fall of 1893, Dučić arrived in Bijeljina, where he graduated from the Teacher's School in Sombor in July of that year. After that, he received a decree from the National Government appointing him a teacher at the Serbian primary school in Bijeljina. Immediately upon arrival, he settled in the house of the famous merchant Pero Živanović, in fact his son-in-law Jova Nikolić.
Thus, Pero Živanović's granddaughter and Jova Nikolić's daughter, Magdalina, called Maga, had the opportunity to meet a new teacher immediately.
Immediately upon arrival, Dučić settled in the most beautiful house in town. "It's your boss Pero Zivanovic's house." From the opposite side of the alley, as you go from Dašnica, there is a narrow alley that leads to Živković's house. At the end of that alley, the fence is his and his house, where the plums are dried. From there, you go to the garden, from the garden to the yard. "
When he met Magdalena-Maga, Živanović Dučić was impressed by her beauty, and over time he got to know other features of her.
Ducic, together with his peers in Bijeljina-merchants, other craftsmen and rare employees, founded an amateur drama group that prepared and gave theatrical performances of various plays with romantic national content, which were then especially in Serbian literature in a large selection of various writers. These young representatives of the newly formed bourgeois class of the city sought a fuller and more cultural life with personal affirmation in culture. In that sense, a great public event was noticed in the Great Hall of the newly built Hotel Drina, on the feast of Saint Sava in 1894. Jovan Dučić prepared most of this program with his amateurs from the city, directed the tragedy "Svetislav and Mileva" by Jovan Sterija Popović and was the interpreter of the role of the unfortunate Svetislav. This is all based on a realistic assumption, because Ducic had a special love and affection for literature while he was still in school. That year, the romantic love of the poet blossomed, which he will carry all his life as an unhealed and unquenchable wound on his heart, which remained lonely and wounded throughout his youth, without healing.
"Love, cough and poverty cannot be hidden," Andrić wrote, and there was more and more talk about the love between Živanović's granddaughter Maga and the poor teacher from Trebinje. The Bazaar was waiting for what would happen and how the famous family would react.
In the stories of the elderly residents of Bijeljina, Dučić and Maga had to part because he did not suit such a girl as a groom. It could be assumed that Magic's father Jovo Nikolić and her brother Stevo, who was trying to write himself, were against Dučić.
In November, Ducic and Maga promised a miserable promise to each other. A year later, in a letter to Maga Dučić, he reminds her of this: “I did not give you a ring, but I gave you something worth more than a piece of gold, I gave you my word. The ring is just a formality, and the main thing is an honest word. "
Jovan Dučić did not suit her rich father, who did not want his daughter-in-law to marry a man from an unknown distance, but sought a friend equal in wealth and position. As a well-educated patriarchal daughter, she obeyed him and did not marry Dučić, but also the "found" rich merchant of Brčko, Paranosov, when his father wholeheartedly recommended him to his unit.
In May 1894. Dučić's apartment was searched on the order of the District Mayor Černi, and on that occasion two songs "Oj Bosno!" and "Otađžbini" were found. By the decision of the provincial government of July 10, 1894. under number 1872, Dučić was banned from teaching at Serbian schools in Bosnia and Herzegovina. After that, Dučić left Bijeljina. The magician tightened her heart as she parted from her lover. In one letter, later, Dučić will resent her for not shedding a tear during their parting, but the beautiful and proud Maga knew she was hiding her pain. Thus, two of Dučić's songs contributed to his leaving Bijeljina.
Bijeljina's Romeo and Juliet are thus forever separated, by the will of the elders who destroyed one sincere love: he remained unmarried, and she Magdalena Živanović unmarried out of defiance because of forbidden love. Magdalena Živanović, daughter of the rich merchant Jovan Nikolić from Bijeljina, Dučić's unhappy great love remained forgotten and abandoned in the shadowy shade, lonely and distrustful, in the world of her memories from her youth where she spent her days, filled with sadness and painful memories. True to the promise she gave to her father in front of the altar that she would not marry Dučić, she died on January 2, 1956, at a very old age, in her 80th year of life. The short stay in Bijeljina and the love for Magi will remain indelible in the poet's memory. They will carry them deeply engraved in their hearts for the rest of their lives, hiding the secret of one girl and one love. Because Maga is a part of Dučić's life, and Bijeljina is a legendary place of his youth. The embryo of a new, different Dučić came from Bijeljina. And that is why Bijeljina can be proud of the fact that such great people as Jovan Dučić walked its streets for a while.