considered to be his translation of the Psalms into Servian verse
(Saltiyer Slovinski). He also wrote The Sighs of the Repenting
Magdalen and the unfinished tragedy Judith.
After Gyorgyich the Servian literature of Ragusa and Dalmatia during the 18th, century has no great name to show, except that of the mathematician, Ruggiero Boshkovich (see Boshkovich). His two brothers and his sister Anitsa Boshkovich were known in their time as poets. But on the whole Servian literature on the Adriatic coast showed little originality in the 18th century; its writers were content to produce good translations of Latin, Italian and French works.
Mention must be made, however, of an author whose work connects the literature of the Adriatic Servians of the 18th century with the regenerative efforts of the Danubian Servians in the second decade of the 19th century. The literature of the Adriatic Servians was, with very few exceptions, Servian only in language, but Italian in form and spirit. About the middle of the 18th century a learned Dalmatian monk, Andrea Kachich Mioshich by name, emancipated himself from the yoke of pseudo-classicism and slavery to Western models. As a papal delegate he had to visit all the Roman Catholic communities in Dalmatia, Herzegovina and Bosnia, and had numerous opportunities of hearing the bards recite songs on old national heroes. In 1756 he published a book entitled Razgovor Ugodni Naroda Slovinskoga (“The Popular Talk of the Slavonic People”), in which in 261 songs he described—in the manner and in the spirit of the national bards—the more important historic or legendary events and heroes of the “Slavonic people.” Under this denomination he comprised Servians, Croats, Slovenes and Bulgarians, anticipating the modern appellations of the Yugo-Sloveni (Southern Slavs). His book immediately became the most popular that ever appeared among the Servians, and was again and again reprinted, under the less ponderous title Pesmaritsa, “The Book of Songs.” Some sixty years after its appearance it inspired Vuk Stefanovich Karajich with the vision of his true mission. But Kachich Mioshich found no immediate followers among the Servian literati of the second half of the 18th century.
4. The Revival of Servian Literature: Obradovich and Karajich.—As long as the countries inhabited by the Orthodox Servians were under the deadening immediate rule of the Turks, they produced no serious literature. But when the Austrian wars of the 17th century began to roll back the Turkish power, and Hungary recovered its freedom, the Servians living in that country rapidly acquired some culture, and their literature began to revive. During the 18th century, however, they did not write in the living language of the Servian people. After the disappearance of the Servian printing-presses in the 16th century, all liturgical books were brought from Russia and printed in the Russian-Slavonic language; while the teachers in the Servian schools were Russians. Russian-Slavonic thus became the literary language of the Orthodox Servians.
The more important works of the time were the History of Montenegro, by the Montenegrin bishop Basil Petrovitch (Moscow, 1754); the Short Introduction into the History of the Origin of the Slaveno-Servian Nation, by Paul Yulinats (Venice, 1765); and above all the History of the Slavonic Nations, more especially of the Bulgarians, Croats and Servians, by Archimandrite Yovan Raich (Vienna, 1794). During extensive travels in Russia and the Balkan countries Raich had collected a rich historical material and was able to write, for the first time in the annals of Servian literature, a work which has every claim to be considered as a real history. The Servians call him “the father of Servian history.”
But Russian-Slavonic was not readily understood by the Servian reading public. It was not much better when through the influence of the living language it began to approach nearer to Servian than to Russian, and was called “Slavonic-Servian” (Slaveno-Serbski). The Servians had some authors in the 18th century, but it could hardly have been said that they had readers. All this suddenly changed when Dositey (Dositheus) Obradovich (1739-1811) appeared on the scene. In boyhood he had entered the monastery of Hoppovo in south Hungary and had become a monk. But as very soon he found that the monastery could not satisfy his aspirations, he left it and started to travel, acquiring a knowledge of classical and modern languages and literatures. An ardent Servian patriot, he proclaimed the principle that books ought to be written for the people and therefore in the language which the people understood and spoke. His first book, The Life and the Adventures of Demeter Obradovich—a monk named Dositey (Leipzig, 1783), was written in the language spoken in Servian towns. It immediately made a great impression, which was enhanced by the continuation of his autobiography (Home Letters) and especially by his Fables of Aesop and of other Writers (Leipzig, 1789). These books created a reading public among the Servians and mark the beginning of a really modern period of Servian literature. Obradovich, or rather “Dositey” as Servians call him, was so highly appreciated as an author, savant and patriot that in 1807 Karageorge invited him to Servia and appointed him a senator and minister of public education, in which capacity he established in Belgrade the first Servian college (Velika Shkola). Dositey was an admirer of England and English literature. While staying in London in 1783 he was much encouraged by the patronage and friendship of Dr William Fordyce, while his pupil, Paul Solarich, another distinguished author, was befriended by the Hon. Frederick North, afterwards 5th earl of Guildford, state secretary for public instruction in the Ionian Islands.
Only a few of his contemporaries followed the example which Dositey set in writing in the vernacular (although even he introduced from time to time purely Slavonic words and forms). It was believed that the vernacular could not be raised to the dignity of a literary language, and that literature and science needed words and expressions which were entirely lacking in the common language. But Vuk Stefanovich Karajich, a self-taught writer, proved the fallacy of that assumption. By his publication of the national songs and poems, which he carefully collected, he opened the eyes of Servian authors to the wealth and beauty of their own language, as spoken by the mass of the people and used by the national bards. Besides collecting national songs and poems, folk-lore, proverbs, &c., he wrote a grammar of the Servian language (Vienna, 1814) and the first Servian lexicon, with explanations in German and Latin (Vienna, 1818). His thorough knowledge of the Servian language led him to reform the Cyrillic alphabet, in which several letters were redundant and certain sounds of the spoken language were unrepresented. His efforts to make Servian writers adopt his reformed alphabet, and accept the language of the common people as a literary language, met with fierce opposition, especially on the part of the clergy and friends of the artificial Slaveno-Servian literary language. It was only after 1860 that his principles won a complete victory in all directions. (See Karajich.)
5. Modern Servian Literature.—The activity of Karajich brought new life to the Servian literature of the 19th century; The poets abandoned classical models and ceased to write in hexameters; they preferred to derive their inspiration from popular poetry, of which Karajich collected for them hundreds of examples. Writers in different departments of literature vied with each other to write in pure and correct Servian. And, although it could not be justly said that the Servians of the 19th century produced a really great work from the literary point of view, they certainly made progress and produced some remarkable poetry.
Their three greatest poets are Sima Milutinovich Sarayliya (1791-1847), Peter Petrovich Nyegosh (1813-1851), prince-bishop of Montenegro, and “Zmay” Yovan Yovanovich (1833-1904). Sarayliya's most important work is Serbiyanka (Leipzig, 1826), in which he describes the rising of the Servians against the Turks in 1804 and 1815. His imagination is lively, his descriptions graphic, but the impetuosity of his genius cannot find adequate words to express itself, and then he creates new words of which the meaning is not always clear. For this reason he never was really popular among the Servians. Nyegosh composed his first important poem, Lucha Microcosma or “The Light of the Microcosm” (Belgrade, 1847), under the influence of Paradise Lost. In the Lucha he describes how the spirit of man wished to solve the problem of human destiny. He was led by a protecting angel to the beginning of time when Satan, supported by an angel called Adam, was in full rebellion against God. But the co-rebel Adam repented and God then created the Earth and sent Adam to expiate his sin by living amidst difficulties and sufferings on that planet. In Gorski Viyenats, “The Mountain Wreath” (Vienna, 1847), Nyegosh describes the liberation of Montenegro from the Turks towards the end of the 17th century in the form of a drama. There is, however, hardly anything dramatic in the poem, but the characters deliver magnificent descriptions of Montenegro and Montenegrins, and the play is full of noble sentiments and great thoughts. The Servians consider Gorski Viyenats the finest poetical work in their literature. It has been translated into all the principal European languages except English. Dr Yovan Yovanovich, called by his admiring countrymen Zmay (the Dragon) on account of the high flight of his poetry and his ardent patriotism, began his poetical career by producing melodious translations of some of the best poems of other nations (the Hungarian Arany's Toldi János, Petöfi's János Vitéz, Lermontov's Demon, Tennyson's “Enoch Arden,” Bodenstedt's Mizra-Shaffy, Goethe's Iphigenie, &c.). His own lyrical and satirical poems are without a rival in Servian literature. In his later years he gave much of his time and talent to the interests of children, editing papers for boys and dedicating hundreds of his finest songs to children. There are several editions of his collected poems; one of the best is that of the Servian Literary Association (Belgrade, 1896).
Among the other prominent Servian poets of the 19th century may be mentioned Dr Milosh Svetich (1799-1869), Branko Radichevich (1824-1853), Gyura Yakshich (1832-1878), Yovan Subotich (1817-1886), Dr Laza Kostich (b. 1841), Aberdar (1842-1893), Voislav Ilich (1862-1894), Prince Nicholas of Montenegro (b. 1841). The Servians have as yet no great novelist, but they have several very successful writers of short stories. Among these the first place
