A close-reading of semantic sequence ‘power – violence – revolution’ in the early works of Ivo Andrić includes two books of lyrical prose, Ex Ponto (1918) and Unrest (Nemiri, 1920), some other contemporary pieces of the same genre, two reviews of two books on World War One (F. T. Marinetti, G. D’Annunzio, 1921–1922) and six journal articles on fascism (1923–1926). The predominantly melancholic subject of the collection Ex Ponto expresses little interest in public sphere – the exceptions mainly concern social empathy for the poor suffering from the consequences of the war. This can be interpreted as the beginning of a literary social engagement that will culminate in the cycle “Red Sheets of Paper” (“Crveni listovi”, 1918–1919) and in a few texts of the collection Unrest. An angry subject of the cycle predicts a social revolution, which is described more as a collapse of the system than as a violent act of the oppressed class. In the reviews of Marinetti’s novel about World War One (L'alcova d'acciaio. Romanzo vissuto, 1921) and of D’Annunzio’s lyrical diary from the same period (Notturno, 1921), Andrić focuses his critical attention on the way the two supporters of the Italian intervention in World War One and of the upcoming fascism explain the sense of the war. Andrić’s negative evaluation of the intellectual side of the books corresponds to his later evaluation of the Italian fascism with the attributes such as ‘violence’, ‘anti-intellectualism’, ‘provincialism’, ‘arrivism’. On the other hand, the notion of social deprivation, which was the central point of Andrić’s socially engaged lyrical prose, is completely absent in his journal articles on the political situation in Italy in the 1920s.