He obtained an appointment as a customs official with the municipal government, giving him a good income and leisure time to write.

Both Petković-Dis and Pandurović were considered the enfants terribles of their literary world (both being under the influence of Charles Baudelaire and other French Symbolists, like Šantić, Dučić, Rakić, Ćorović, and even Skerlić before he abandoned the movement).

At 9 pm on May 29, after two days of waiting, he boarded the French passenger steamship Italia destined to Corfu, from where he was supposed to join the Serbian army fighting on the Salonica front.

At 5:51 am on May 30, Italia was sunk by torpedo by the Austro-Hungarian Navy U-boat U-4, 46 miles southeast of Santa Maria di Leuca, Italy.

Dis's poetry was not well received at the beginning by Jovan Skerlić, one of the most distinguished Serbian literary critics of that time, who did not care for the poems' morbid and sinister tone.