Biographies

Dimitri Mitrinović (1887 – 1953) Mitrinović was born in Bosnia-Herzegovina and was studying art history in Munich (where he is said to have known Kandinsky and Klee) when he became involved in the movement to form a united Yugoslavia separate from the Austrian Empire. Apparently, Mitrinović was the leader of one of two groups in Serbia that disagreed about the tactics that should be used to gain independence. One group, and revolutionary, advocated assassination and led to the formation of the infamous group, whose success precipitated World War I; Mitrinović led a group that advocated a Croatian and Serbian Yugoslavia. Confirmation of this claim appears in (Mairet 116, 138-39). Mitrinović told Paul Selver that he had edited a Serbian literary paper, (Selver 57). ultra-Serbian Black Hand , by The Road to Sarajevo (1967) Vladimir Dedijer Bosanska Vila He moved to England in 1914, where the Serbian Legation in London apparently employed him to promote the national cause (Mairet 83). In January 1915, Selver reviewed a book with an Epilogue by Mitrinović, in (Selver 56). Mitrinović asked to meet him, and Selver’s account of their relationship appears in his book (56-60). on the Slav nations, The New Age Late 1914 and early 1915, there was an exhibition of work by the Serbian sculptor and architect in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It included a model of a monument he had designed, named to commemorate the defeat of the Serbs by the Turks (Mairet 84-85). This project was to contribute to the formation of a “Yugoslavia” (southern Slavs), including Croatians and Slovenians (138). There was, however, a problem: the monument was too —with connections to the idea of a greater Serbia—and hence it wouldn’t work (128). In these two aspects of Mitrinović’s life we have a capsule history of that region, from WWI to the breakup of Yugoslavia and the recent situation in Kosovo. Kosovo, Serbian From pan-Serbian peoples, Mitrinović moved on to pan-European ideals, and then pan-human aspirations (Mairet 92, 107 bottom). It was in this phase that Mairet became a (doubting) disciple and Orage took Mitrinović on as M. M. Cosmoi. Mairet mentions a wide range of mystical texts in this connection, and provides a kernal (reconstructed) quotation about the task at hand—elevating the as a to become through anamnesis, or remembering (104). But he mentions only in passing the practices that resulted from this view. Mitrinović seems to have later turned his group in the direction of Adler’s psychoanalysis (131-34) and himself wrote a book on Adler (Mairet/Sisson xv). ‘I,’ living center of the universe a center of the universal consciousness—which is Divine, The place of the Jews in Mitrinović’s racial plan for humanity aroused the ire of Israel Zangwill (who coined the phrase about America being a “melting-pot”) (Mairet 182). Orage defended him against this charge; see the discussion of and anti-semitism in Stuart Christie’s of . Cosmoi introduction to volume 29 The New Age Mitrinović died ca. 1954-57 (Mairet 156). —Wallace Martin and the MJP Staff Works Cited and Consulted at: . Dimitrije Mitrinović and New Atlantis Foundation Library and Archive . Edited by C. H. Sisson. : , . Mairet, Philip Autobiographical and Other Papers. Manchester Carcanet 1981 (at ): a charitable group started after Mitrinović’s death in 1953 to keep his ideas and writing in circulation. New Atlantis Foundation . . : ; , . Rigby, Andrew Initiation and Initiative: An Exploration of the Life and Ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović Boulder East European Monographs distributed by Columbia University Press 1984 . . : , . Selver, Paul Orage and the New Age Circle London G. A. Allen & Unwin 1959