Đorđe Kostić ( sr-cyr, Ђорђе Костић; 1909–1995) was a Serbian writer, poet and linguist. As a young man, Đorđe was part of the Yugoslav

Surrealist Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

group. However, later in his life he took up a career in linguistics and was the Research Director of the Institute for Experimental Phonetics for many years.

Biography

Early life

Đorđe Kostić was born in

Ruma Ruma (; ) is a town and municipality in the Srem District of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, Serbia. As of 2022, the town has a population of 27,747, while the municipality has a population of 48,621. History Traces of organized human life ...

in 1909 into a Serbian clerical family. In 1927 he graduated from the

University of Belgrade Faculty of Philology The Faculty of Philology is one of the constituent schools of the University of Belgrade. The school's purpose is to train and educate its students in the academic study or practice in linguistics and philology] History The study of philology ...

and then spent a short period in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

Surrealism

With

Oskar Davičo Oskar Davičo ( sr-cyr, Оскар Давичо; 18 January 1909 – 30 September 1989) was a Serbian novelist and poet. A leading literary figure of his generation, he was one of the most acclaimed Serbian surrealist writers, but also a revoluti ...

and Đorđe Jovanović, Kostić published three volumes of the magazine ''Tragovi'' (Trails). He joined a group of like-minded friends, Oskar Davičo, Đorđe Jovanović, Aleksandar Vučo, Milan Dedinac, Mladen Dimitrijević, who participated in the Yugoslav

group led by Marko Ristić. In the early 1930s, he was one of the 13 key artists who signed the manifesto in the ''Almanac Nemoguće-L'Impossible'', where a series of Kostić's drawings and ''Tri puta san'' (Three Times a Dream) was published (pages 32, 57, 104), including works of other colleagues. In 1933, Kostić was arrested for his revolutionary activity and imprisoned for a while. The following year, he decided to leave Belgrade and move to London for several years. There at the

Mayfair Mayfair is an area of Westminster, London, England, in the City of Westminster. It is in Central London and part of the West End. It is between Oxford Street, Regent Street, Piccadilly and Park Lane and one of the most expensive districts ...

, he attended the opening of the

International Surrealist Exhibition The International Surrealist Exhibition was held from 11 June to 4 July 1936 at the New Burlington Galleries, near Savile Row in London's Mayfair, England. Organisers The exhibition was organised by committees from England, France, Belgium, Scan ...

at the

New Burlington Galleries The New Burlington Galleries was an art gallery at 5 Burlington Gardens, Mayfair, London. From 11 June to 4 July 1936, they held the ''International Surrealist Exhibition'', the first full exhibition of surrealist art in the UK. From 7 June to 2 ...

from 11 June to 4 July 1936. That year he wrote a monodrama ''Dan bez noći'' (Day Without Night).

Linguistics

In London, Kostić co-authored with

Dennis Butler Fry Dennis Butler Fry (3 November 1907 – 21 March 1983) was a British linguist and Professor of Experimental Phonetics at University College London. Through experiments he conducted in the 1950s and 1960s, Fry demonstrated that lexical stress corr ...

"A Serbo-Croat Phonetic Reader" in 1939. From 1944 until 1949, Kostić was the Foreign Program Editor at Radio Belgrade. He was appointed Research Director of the Institute for Experimental Phonetics in Belgrade in 1949, a position he held until 1978. While at the institute, Kostić travelled to

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

doing linguistic research there. He also published numerous papers on comparative linguistics.

Final years and death

Kostić wrote a book about his recollections on Surrealism titled ''Do nemogućeg'' (To the Impossible) in 1972, and with Marko Ristić made a book of pastels and poems "Pass-T-Elle" (Calcutta). Four years later, he published a book ''U središtu nadrealizma, Čeljust dijalektike'' (At the Core of Surrealism, the Jaws of Dialectics) about the Surrealist survey from the ''Almanac Nemoguće-L'Impossible''. He died in Belgrade in 1995.

Works (partial list)

* ''Operativna gramatika srpskohrvatskog jezika'' (1987) * ''Rečenička melodija u srpskohrvatskom jeziku'' (1983) * Linguistic Habilitation for Hearing Impaired (1977) * A Short Outline of Telugu Phonetics (1977) * A Short Outline of Bengali Phonetics (1972) * ''Do nemogučeg'' (1972) * Bengali Speech Sounds for Hearing-Ilmapired Children (1976) * Under Your Sky (1972) * ''Opismenjavanja odraslih'' (1964) * ''Kvantitativni opis strukture srpskog jezika: srpski jezik od XII do XVIII veka - Domentijan''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kostić, Đorđe 1909 births 1995 deaths 20th-century Serbian poets Linguists from Serbia People from Ruma Serbian surrealist writers University of Belgrade alumni