[ xx ]
songs, including "The Wife of Hassan Aga." It is an admirable work. The introduction, the notes and the translations are sound and reliable, and as an introduction to the subject, it is the most generally useful book that has appeared since Talvj.
Two years later, we find in Owen Meredith's Serbski Pesme, National Songs of Servia, another attempt to interpret Serbian folk-song to Englishmen[1]. Regarded as poetry, these versions are on a much higher level than Bowring's, but the author allowed himself much greater liberty of treatment. As he says himself, "no attempt has been made at accurate verbal translation from the original language. They cannot, indeed, be called translations in the strict sense of the word. What they are, let the reader decide." The first seventy-five pages are devoted to a spirited rendering of the Kossovo ballads and the second half of the book consists of "Popular or Domestic Pesmas" among which is to be found once more "The Wife of Hassan Aga[2]."
The wide attention that had been given to Serbian literature was part of the universal romantic movement. But it was no longer new. Foreign interest had reached its high-water mark and was now failing rapidly. Writing in 1905, Dr Ćurčin deplored the fact that Germans knew less about Serbian literature
- ↑ Owen Meredith, the pen-name of Edward Robert, first Earl of Lytton (1831-1892). He was Viceroy of India in 1876 and was Ambassador in Paris at the time of his death.
- ↑ Owen Meredith in his Introduction acknowledges his indebtedness to Dozon's work, and indeed certain passages are transferred almost literally from the French, e.g. "Il (Marko) est de la famille des Roland, des Cid, des Roustem (et aussi des Gargantua)," Dozon, Introd. p. 20; "féroce comme un Viking scandinave," p. 13. "Marko Kralievitch...a sort of burly, brawling Viking of the land, with just a touch in his composition of Roland and the Cid, but with much more about him of Gargantua," Introd. p. xxvii, Owen Meredith.
5. Marko reconnait le sabre de son père.
6. Marko et le bey Kostadin.
7. Marko et Alil-Aga.
8. Marko et la fille du roi des Maures.
9. Marko va à la chasse avec les Turcs.
10. Marko laboureur.
11. Mort de Marko.
12. La sœur du Capitaine Léka (Analyse).
