Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic Nations: With a Sketch of Their Popular PoetryTalvj
History
Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic Nations: With a Sketch of Their Popular Poetry
Talvj
Folk songs, Slavic; Slavic languages -- History; Slavic literature -- History and criticism
[Footnote 15: We must correct here a mistake made by Dr. Henderson in
his Biblical Researches, in respect to the Servian New Testament. He
says, p. 263, "A version of the (Servian) New Testament was indeed
executed some years ago, but its merits were not of such a description
as to warrant the committee of the Russian Bible Society to carry it
through the press; yet, as they were deeply convinced of the
importance of the object, they were induced to engage a native
Servian, of the name of Athanasius Stoïkovitch to make a new
translation, the printing of which was completed in the year 1825, but
owing to the cessation of the Society's operations, the distribution
of the copies has hitherto been retarded." Dr. Henderson probably
received his information at St. Petersburg, and felt himself of course
entitled to depend on it, being very likely not acquainted with the
great schism in modern Servian literature above mentioned. If we may
confide in our own recollections, the translation, the merits of which
the committee of the Russian Bible Society was so little disposed to
acknowledge, was made by Vuk Stephanovitch, who knew better than any
one else the wants of the Servian people, and who presented in the
above mentioned Gospel of St. Luke a specimen to the learned world,
which received the approbation of all those Slavic scholars entitled
to judge of the subject. The committee of St. Petersburg, however, was
probably composed of gentlemen of the opposite party; as indeed the
Russian Servians are, in general, advocates of the mixed Slavo-Servian
language, in which for about fifty years all books for the Servians
were written, and which we have described above in Schaffarik's words;
see p. 108. According to their ideas of the Servian language, the mere
use of the common dialect of the people was sufficient to inspire
doubts of the competency of the translator; although it was for the
people, the unlearned, that the translation was professedly made. They
engaged in consequence Professor Stoïkovitch, the author of several
Russian and Slavo-Servian books (see above p. 112), and who had been
for more than twenty years in the Russian service, to make a new
translation. This person, who, to judge from our personal acquaintance
with him, probably on this occasion read the Gospels for the first
time in his life with any attention, took the rejected version for his
basis; altered it, according to his views of the dignity of the
Servian language, into the customary mixed Slavo-Servian Russian
idiom; and received the reward from the Society. Whether this is the
version afterwards printed at Leipsic and distributed in Servia by the
English Bible Society, we are not informed. From private letters we
know, that in the year 1827, that Society proposed to Vuk
Stephanovitch to allow him £500, if after obtaining appropriate
testimonies for the correctness of his version, he would print one
thousand copies in Servia; and also authorized its correspondent in
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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