Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family: or, A Residence in Belgrade and Travels in the Highlands and Woodlands of the Interior, during the years 1843 and 1844.Paton, A. A. (Andrew Archibald)
History
Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family: or, A Residence in Belgrade and Travels in the Highlands and Woodlands of the Interior, during the years 1843 and 1844.
Paton, A. A. (Andrew Archibald)
Serbia -- Description and travel
The journalism of Servia began at Vienna; and a certain M. Davidovitch
was for many years the interpreter of Europe to his less enlightened
countrymen. The journal which he edited is now published at Pesth, and
printed in Cyrillian letters. There were in 1843 two newspapers at
Belgrade, the _State Gazette_ and the _Courier_; but the latter has
since been dropped, the editor having vainly attempted to get its
circulation allowed in the Servian districts of Hungary. Many copies
were smuggled over in boats, but it was an unremunerating speculation;
and the editor, M. Simonovitch, who was bred a Hungarian advocate, is
now professor of law in the Lyceum. Yankee hyperbole was nothing to
the high flying of this gentleman. In one number, I recollect the
passage, "These are the reasons why all the people of Servia, young
and old, rich and poor, danced and shouted for joy, when the Lord gave
them as a Prince a son of the never-to-be-forgotten Kara Georg." A
Croatian newspaper, containing often very interesting information on
Bosnia, is published at Agram, the language being the same as the
Servian, but printed in Roman instead of Cyrillian letters. The _State
Gazette_ of Belgrade gives the news of the interior and exterior, but
avoids all reflections on the policy of Russia or Austria. An article,
which I wrote on Servia for an English publication, was reproduced in
a translation minus all the allusions to these two powers; and I think
that, considering the dependent position of Servia, abstinence from
such discussions is dictated by the soundest policy.
The "Golubitza," or Dove, a miscellany in prose and verse, neatly got
up in imitation of the German Taschenbucher, and edited by M.
Hadschitch, is the only annual in Servia. In imitation of more
populous cities, Belgrade has also a "Literary Society," for the
formation of a complete dictionary of the language, and the
encouragement of popular literature. I could not help smiling at the
thirteenth statute of the society, which determines that the seal
should represent an uncultivated field, with the rising sun shining on
a monument, on which the arms of Servia are carved.
The fine arts are necessarily at a very low ebb in Servia. The useful
being so imperfect, the ornamental scarcely exists at all. The
pictures in the churches are mostly in the Byzantine manner, in which
deep browns and dark reds are relieved with gilding, while the
subjects are characterized by such extravagancies as one sees in the
pictures of the early German painters, a school which undoubtedly took
its rise from the importations of Byzantine pictures at Venice, and
their expedition thence across the Alps. At present everything
artistic in Servia bears a coarse German impress, such as for instance
the pictures in the cathedral of Belgrade.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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