Ballads, Serbian; Folk songs, Serbian; Serbian poetry -- History and criticism; Serbian poetry -- Translations into English
_Stephanovich Karadjich Vuk_ was born on the 26th October, O. S., in the
year 1787, at _Trshich_, an obscure village in Turkish Servia (Iadar),
near the town of Losnitza and the river Drina, at a short distance from
the Austrian and Hungarian frontier, where, however, the Servian language
is spoken with far more purity than in the larger towns. In his early
youth he passed the borders, and received his education at the Gymnasium
of the dissidents from the Greek church at Karlovitz. There his school
instruction began and ended; but having visited Vienna, intercourse there
with intelligent and instructed men led to the development of the natural
powers of his mind, and directed his inquiries to the hidden stores of
popular literature which his country possessed. A feeble and crippled
frame unfitted him for bodily labour, and all his thoughts and all his
ardour attached themselves to intellectual exertions. He began his
literary career at Vienna, and published in 1814 his Servian Grammar, and
a century of Servian songs; but the embarrassments of the censorship
induced him to seek a freer field for the publication of his works, and
he removed to Leipzig, where the edition, in three volumes, of his
popular Servian poetry, appeared in 1823–4. He soon obtained high
reputation there, and received the diploma of doctor in philosophy, and
was elected to many literary distinctions. The emperor Nicholas, in that
spirit so honourable to many of the autocrats of Russia, has conferred on
him a yearly pension of 100 ducats; and he now pursues his interesting
inquiries, and from time to time exerts that creating and regenerating
power which has called the poetry of Servia into existence, and
established for it a permanent reputation. {0j}
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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