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Princip’s only complete lyrical text from 1911 has been preserved in the guestbook of a mountain lodge on Bjela\u0161nica.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Silently, we walked with unsteady steps through the forest, lost in that mysterious, deep silence, we listened to the mute whisper of fragrant flowers and silent trees. Further and further into the dense forest – we looked at each other when the hellish darkness surrounded us, grinning with the laughter of grotesque monsters – a silent and light tremor and fear flowed through our half-tired limbs like electricity – silently we walked on, stumbling over various logs and scattered branches – woe is me, how many times the fatal thought flashed through my mind that I would not fly into some eternal abyss.”
Princip described that year, 1911, to Dr. Papenhajm as critical in his life. That’s when he began to acquire “ideals about life” and joined the Young Bosnians. He also fell in love that year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He wrote his last verses on the wall, a few days before his death, about the shadows that frighten the lords in the court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I found the books from the Pocket Assassination Library scattered in Vladimir Dedijer’s two-volume book “Sarajevo 1914” (“Prosveta”, Belgrade, 1978). As far as I know, they have never been collected in one place before, they were borrowed from various libraries, exchanged between the assassins, sold and then bought again, burned, read in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, and France, in student rooms, komita huts, cheap hotels, taverns, restaurants, and Ba\u0161\u010dar\u0161ija sweet shops, carried in pockets, learned by heart.
Books inevitably share the fate of their owners, which does not make them powerless or innocent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
One book from this library participated in the very act of assassination. It’s not the first time, of course, I know of two, and I haven’t undertaken any research – those carried by Mark Chapman and retired prison guard Mile Mati\u0107.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another book from the library, learned by heart for years, echoed in the mind of one assassin. It is always dangerous when one book echoes in the mind. Unfortunately, this is still a common occurrence today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the Pocket Assassination Library, I have compiled these books:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Conan Doyle, “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” Gavrilo Princip liked to read adventure novels, Alexandre Dumas, Walter Scott, and especially “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n He must have read this passage, in which Watson describes his friend: “His reserve had never relaxed so far as to allow me a glimpse of his past life. Beyond the vague knowledge which I had picked up in conversation it was a dark mystery to me. The latter was a subject upon which he had never spoken a word. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So far as I knew, he had neither kith nor kin in England. His temper was even, but somewhat cold and saturnine. In his moods he was reticent, and when he had his own purposes in view he was inexorable in his silence. His aversion to women, and his disinclination to form new friendships, were both typical of his unemotional character, and his dislike of any allusion to his own people was such that he never mentioned them.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nedeljko \u010cabrinovi\u0107 was 14 years old when he read the book “What Is to Be Done?”. His father Vaso found him with it, slapped him, and pulled the light bulb out of the socket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vaso was a strong man, weighing 120 kilograms, with hard fists and the stern character of a tired tavern keeper. Nedeljko was the oldest of nine children. His father beat them for the slightest violation of family or anyone else’s rules. Once, a worker in the printing shop slapped the apprentice Nedeljko. Vaso did not defend his son, he kicked him out of the house. Nedeljko went to Zagreb, wandered there for a month, and when he returned home dirty and hungry, his father called the police and persuaded them to arrest his son. The boy spent three days in prison for no reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chernyshevsky wrote the novel in 1862 in prison while awaiting trial on charges of revolutionary activity. He wrote about creating a more just society through a family-run manufactory. When he finished the manuscript, he was sentenced to exile in Siberia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Major Vasi\u0107 from the National Defense met \u010cabrinovi\u0107 in a Belgrade park and saw this book in his pocket, he was terribly disappointed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “What Maupassant, what love, what love, what after it, no, no, no, please, such books completely blind a young man, no, no, no, please\u2026” the officer must have said. Trifko Grabe\u017e and Gavrilo Princip did not allow \u010cabrinovi\u0107 to visit the Black Hand operative Voja Tankosi\u0107 with them because Nedeljko kept giggling (“It’s just my facial expression,” he vainly justified himself). The arrogant komita did not like frivolous people. He thought they were hiding something behind their smiles. He felt comfortable in the company of fanatics. He gave the Young Bosnians pistols, bombs, and pocket money for the trip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u010cabrinovi\u0107 read “The Education of the Will” in 1912 in prison in Trebinje, where he spent three days, suspected of organizing strikes by printing workers, destroying machines, and attacking strikebreakers. Perhaps the book was part of the prison library, a form of correctional measure that the Austrians introduced in Bosnia and Herzegovina, experimenting with the Irish progressive system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All in all, due to the education of the will or the strengthening of the body, his father never hit \u010cabrinovi\u0107 again from that year on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vaso complained about his son in a letter to his friend Vu\u010dina:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “\u2026whom I bore, raised, and for whom we toiled and spent. About one of our greatest household demons, who behaved indecently towards his father everywhere, who was never obedient or submissive to his father in anything\u2026”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nedeljko became his own man, the master of his own life. And death, of course, as it usually goes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the trial, he said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I don’t want to accuse my father, but if there had been better pedagogy, I wouldn’t be sitting on this bench.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/serbiantimes.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/04\/Ochrana-Kaffeehaus_in_Belgrad-1024x719.jpg\")
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Nikolai Chernyshevsky, “What Is to Be Done?”<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/serbiantimes.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/04\/Gavrilo_Princips_Arrest3-1024x685.jpg\")
Guy de Maupassant, “After Love”<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
He gave him a collection of Serbian heroic folk songs, a hardcover edition, adapted to be kept in the pocket of a soldier’s blouse over the heart, where a bullet could slow down and save a life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/serbiantimes.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/04\/Sarajevo_trial_accused-1024x720.jpg\")
Jules Payot, “The Education of the Will”<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
FIND OUT MORE IN ENGLISH:<\/mark><\/h4>\n\n\n\n