After an interval of private study in Osijek he went in 1889 to the Theological College in Sremski Karlovci and in 1893 he went to Vienna, where he fell under the influence of Vatroslav Jagić and Jakob Minor and others.

[1] At the age of fifty he renounced the priesthood, and married Zorka Andrejević, a teacher from a nearby village of Klarija.

In them we sense a strong influence of Vojislav Ilić with whom he shared a mutual friendship and literary sympathies with Pushkin and Vasily Zhukovsky.

Among the best known Serbian poets who looked up to Vojislav Ilić's genius, during that period were Milorad Mitrović (poet), Aleksa Šantić, Danica Marković, and for a short while even Jovan Dučić who soon went on to abandon "Vojislavism" and start his own movement with Milan Rakić.

He was the first to part company with Vojislavism and his Pesme (Poems), published in Velika Kikinda in 1899 (in volume form), demonstrates an original poet in the making.

When poet Veljko Petrović started writing stories Mileta Jakšić withdrew, though his prose work was considered of high literary value.