Poetry
Songs of the Serbian People
Српске народне пјесме
Vuk Stefanović Karadžić · 1814
Synopsis
Two families of songs drawn from the Serbian oral tradition. The heroic songs, which singers performed to the sound of the gusle, tell of the battle of Kosovo in 1389, the exploits of Marko Kraljević and the struggles of the hajduks against the Ottomans. The women's songs, sung at evening gatherings, at the spinning wheel or in the fields, speak of love, family and home. Several of the best singers were blind.
Context
The first collection appeared in Vienna in 1814 and brought together about a hundred lyric songs and six epic songs; a second followed in 1815, with the songs of Tešan Podrugović and Filip Višnjić. The Leipzig editions, from 1823, then the Vienna editions, from 1841, fixed the corpus. Kopitar made these songs known in the German journals, Goethe and the Brothers Grimm took an interest in them, Therese von Jakob, known as Talvj, translated them into German, and John Bowring gave an English version of them as early as 1827.
Who it is for
Short songs, heroic or lyrical, which can be read in any order. Nothing in them requires prior knowledge, but the Serbian defeat at Kosovo and the figure of Marko recur throughout.
Prizes and reception
The first book in which the spoken language of the Serbs appeared in print, and the work that opened Serbian Romanticism.