Biography
He was born on the first day of March in the year 1891, in Šabac, Kingdom of Serbia, in a well-to-do Jewish family. His father Josif was a physician and mother Ruža a pianist. Vinaver finished elementary school in Šabac, attended high school in both Šabac and Belgrade, and studied mathematics and physics at the University of Sorbonne, Paris. There he became a follower of Henri Bergson's philosophical ideas, and in 1911 his thoughts and ideas were published in a collection of symbolic poems Mjeća.
Vinaver volunteered in the Balkan wars and took part in World War I as one of the “1,300 corporals” famous students’ battalion, in which he was a lieutenant. He went through the horrors of the Serbian army retreating through Albania and found himself on the island of Corfu, where he became the editor of “Serbian newspaper” working as a state press-bureau clerk. In the year of 1916 he was sent on a lobbying mission to France and Great Britain on behalf of Serbia to garner public support for the fighting on the Balkan front. During the Russian Revolution he was a Serbian diplomatic envoy in St. Petersburg.
Erudite and literate, Stanislav Vinaver was briefly employed at the Ministry of Education in Belgrade after World War I, but soon his restless and wondering spirit led him into journalism, translation work, and writing. In the newly formed Kingdom of Yugoslavia he became quite an outstanding person among young and modern Serbian writers and poets (Miloš Crnjanski, Dragiša Vasić, Rastko Petrović, Ljubomir Micić, Rade Drainac, Velibor Gligorić, Marko Ristić), and Croat literati who had come to Belgrade after Kingdom of Yugoslavia was formed (Tin Ujević, Gustav Krklec, Sibe Miličić).
The character of "Constantine" in Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is supposedly based on Vinaver.
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