Dimitrije Mitrinović in the Quest for Gnosis. From National to Cosmopolitan Identity
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18485/kis.2020.52.171.6Keywords:
Dimitrije Mitrinović, Gnosticism, social club, cosmopolitan identity, Eric GutkindAbstract
The paper follows the development of Mitrinović’s identity from local Serbian and then Yugoslav, to cosmopolitan. The change to a supranational identity already began during his Rome (1911-1913) and Munich periods (1913-1914) and was completed during the Great War, which he spent in London where he had moved in 1914. During the Great War, his concepts became increasingly focused on universal ideas connected to Christianity. In London, Mitrinović launched a series of initiatives, some of which were religiously based while others were more secular. The recollections of his contemporaries and disciples are contradictory. While early followers of Mitrinović who were with him during the Great War, in the 1920s and in the early 1930s (Graham, Mairet, Davis, Watt, etc.) describe a mystical Mitrinović, his later followers, who gathered in the New Atlantis Foundation, left recollections of a more rational and secular Mitrinović. This is explained by two streams of his thought and his followers. The paper identifies the core of Mitrinović’s teaching as belonging to the Judeo-Christian tradition with the influence of Gnostic Christianity being particularly prominent.
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