Vojislav Ilić (Serbian Cyrillic: Војислав Илић; 14 April 1860 – 21 January 1894) was a Serbian poet, known for his finely chiseled verse. 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. Biography Ilić was born in Belgrade on 14 April 1860, the youngest son of poet and politician Jovan Ilić. On both sides of the family was of the highest provincial middle class, but was not noble; his father was fairly wealthy after retiring from the Privy Council in 1882, and living quietly as the patriarch of a literary dynasty which he helped create. Jovan Ilić, together with politicians-historians Jevrem Grujić and Milovan Janković, played a critical role in the St. Andrew Day National Assembly in 1858 when the call for a parliamentary check on Alexander Karađorđević's monastic power for the first time gained popular support. Vojislav was educated at various grade schools and high schools and at the end of his school days he enrolled in the Faculty of Philosophy at Belgrade's Grande école (Velika Škola), but did not graduate. The hub of literary activity was his home, where he befriended Jovan Jovanović Zmaj and Đura Jakšić and even married one of Jakšić's daughters. In certain aspects Vojislav does belong somewhat to all the four main periods of European literary style that he passed through in a period of less than 15 years, a unique phenomenon, but his great merit as a poet is that he emancipated himself from the affectations and puerilities of his masters. Literary critic Jovan Skerlić said one of the most striking aspects of Vojislav's activity is the attention he drew to the form and technique of poetic creation. In 1885 he joined the Serbian Army as a volunteer and accompanied his detachment to Bulgaria but did not encounter the enemy. The short-lived Serbo-Bulgarian War gave Ilić another direction than the military. From 1887 until 1892 he was an editor at the Government Printing Press. In 1892 he taught at a Serbian grammar school in Turnu Severin, in Romania. That same year he was appointed press secretary at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and afterwards vice-consul in Priština, then under Turkish rule. Literary work His first publication was a book simply entitled Pesme (Poems) which appeared in Belgrade in 1887