Biographies, poems and legends
It took the meeting of several peoples for the Slavs to be born in the seventh century and the arrival of two brothers, Cyril and Methodius, to invent the Glagolitic alphabet, which was to become Cyrillic. Once this basis was established, Serbian literature had only to unfold, which it did with fervor in view of the magnificence of a manuscript, dated 1180, which is considered one of the most beautiful of the medieval period and which constitutes, in any case, the greatest cultural treasure of the country on which presidents today continue to take the oath during their investiture. The history of this Gospel of Miroslav (classified as a world memory by UNESCO) is a rocky one, since the 20th century and its two world conflicts have led to fears of its destruction on several occasions. Fortunately, these 181 leaves, with their sublime illuminations, but also eminent because they serve as a marker in the evolution of the Serbian language, were saved and now remain in the National Museum in Belgrade.
Although the time of the Ottoman conquest had not yet come, the ruler Stefan Nemanja (c. 1113-1199) decided to end his life far away, building with his son Sava the monastery of Hilandar on Mount Athos, where he took the name of Simeon under which the Orthodox Church canonized him. His sanctuary, which is still inhabited, will not only have a religious vocation, but will also become a place of literature, hosting priceless works and relics when the time comes to protect them, and initiating a genre that will become very important in Serbia: the biography of saints or powerful people. Indeed, in the Charter of Hilandar that he composed, Stefan Nemanja drew up an intimate portrait of himself, mixing feats of arms and states of mind, thus opening the way to others who would willingly lend themselves to the exercise, in particular his sons who devoted numerous texts to him: Sava with Typikon of Karyes or Typikon of Studenica, Stefan Prvovenčani with Zitije svetog Simeona (Life of Saint Simeon
). As a fair return, Sava will later inspire Domentijan (c.1210-c.1264) to write a "Life of a Saint" which will be extended by his disciple, Teodosije (1246-1326), in a new eponymous biography which is given a great stylistic value.This pronounced taste for what is ultimately related to the historical chronicle - this being all the more true since the writing will end up overlapping the existence of those it took as its object - will continue in the 14th century. Thus, we must mention Danilo II (c. 1270-1337) and his collection The Lives of Serbian Kings and Archbishops , completed by his successors. During the following centuries, these stories will be tinged with a more epic tone: the Turks have indeed conquered the country and it becomes necessary to preserve the national identity, even if it means choosing exile, especially in monasteries that are imposed as refuges. It is then that a new genre develops: poetry, generally accompanied by music drawn from a gusle, a single-stringed instrument that Unesco has also classified as a cultural heritage of humanity. It is no longer appropriate to write the life of a man as much as that of a nation, whether through the symbolic figure of a character with multiple adventures, as can be the haiduc, this "gentle bandit" with a false air of Robin Hood, or through annals such as The Chronicle of the Slavo-Serbs written by Đorđe Branković (1647-1711), The History of the Various Slavic Peoples, especially the Bulgars, Croats and Serbs by Jovan Rajić (1726-1801) or The History of the Slavo-Serbian People
by Pavle Julinac (1730-1785), which became a reference document. Among the celebrated poets, the names of Avram Miletić (1755-1826) and Filip Visnjić (1767-1834) were set in stone. The former, a merchant by profession in Mosorin, bequeathed a collection of 129 songs and poems, lyrical and folkloric. As a collector of local legends and a singer of folk heroes, he evoked the tragic story of Omer and Merima, as well as that of Duke Momtchilo, who was betrayed by his wife, who, in order to marry another man, did not hesitate to set fire to the wings of the magic horse Yaboutchilo, which served as his protector.. Filip Visnjić also possessed an undeniable talent for storytelling, which certainly saved his life when, forced to beg because of his premature orphanhood, he had to spend many years begging for food. It is while performing in front of soldiers that the major theme that earned him his reputation was certainly imposed, the one that portrayed the Serbian uprising against the Ottomans. His work, although modest - only four reinterpreted epics and thirteen originals, for a total of a few thousand verses - nevertheless figures prominently in the cultural treasure of his country. However, it was two other writers who would leave their mark on the Serbian language and definitively orient it towards modernity: Dositej Obradović (1739-1811) and Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (1787-1864). Both belong to the list of the hundred most influential Serbs compiled by the Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1993, which has been reissued ever since.Independence and emancipation
The beginning of the 19th century saw revolts against the Turkish occupiers multiply and autonomy was finally announced. In the same way, the language is rising and is about to free itself from the traditional codes of Russian. Dositej Obradović takes part in both movements, his pronounced taste for travel also gives him an open-mindedness proper to the Enlightenment of which he will be an important representative. With the aim of making himself intelligible to the greatest number of people and unifying them through the medium of language, he abandoned Slavonic for Serbian and invested himself in a pedagogical mission, contributing, among other things, to the foundation of the future University of Belgrade. In his line, Vuk Stefanović Karadžić will continue the path thus traced, becoming a witness of his time through articles, a receptacle of the past through the energy he devoted to collecting folkloric elements, and an innovator through his study of grammar in a work whose title clearly indicated his position: A writer of the serve language writes in the language of ordinary people
.Vuk Stefanović Karadžić's desire to promote popular speech and his appetite for simplification - which unite in a saying he made his own: "write as you speak and read as it is written" - was not at all the credo borrowed by Milovan Vidaković (1780-1841), one of his detractors, who instead advocated a compromise between the old and new language via
Slavonic-Serbian. Despite this conservative tendency, it is nevertheless the latter who inherited the credit of "father of the modern Serbian novel", even if most of his works are now completely forgotten. On the theater side, the one who benefited from this same honorary title is Joakim Vujić, born in 1772 in Beja (Bulgaria) but died in 1847 in Belgrade. An enlightened traveler and skilled polyglot, it was not until he was in his forties that he arrived on the scene, but it was there that he made a name for himself by initiating the first performance in Serbian at the Rondella Theater in Budapest on August 24, 1813, he then toured his plays in many localities before creating, in 1834, at the request of the sovereign Milos Obrenović, the Knjazesko Srbski Teatar in Kragujevac - then capital of the Principality of Serbia - of which he became director. His last tour of duty was in 1839 with the staging of Kir Janja by Jovan Sterija Popović (1806-1856), the "father of Serbian drama". Poetry, on the other hand, responded to the romantic wave that swept Europe and had its most prominent representative in the person of Branko Radičević (1824-1853), who did not hesitate to compose with his roots by drawing inspiration from Serbian oral tradition and folklore. He shared his fame with Jovan Jovanović Zmaj (1833-1904), the author of The Faded Roses. Both had in common a certain attraction for a pen that knew how to be satirical and that perhaps foreshadowed the realism that would soon permeate Serbian literature. Indeed, even if Serbia had finally succeeded in freeing itself from its historical occupier, not all the problems had disappeared. And who else but writers could point out what was wrong?From realism to committed literature
Thus, the second part of the nineteenth century saw the emergence of authors who did not hesitate to severely scratch the bourgeois world in which they evolved, while maintaining a certain tenderness for the rural world from which they sometimes came. This realist trend can boast the talents of Milovan Glišić (1847-1908), often compared to Gogol, Laza Lazarević (1851-1891), a doctor who joined the chair of literature at the Royal Academy, Simo Matavulji (1852-1908), who thanks to his biting portraits was elected the first president of the Association of Writers of Serbia, Stevan Sremac (1855-1906), whose posterity is ensured by a museum in Niš, Janko Veselinović (1862-1905), who knew how to be picaresque in the thirty books he wrote, or Branislav Nušić (1864-1938), who did not lack humor, and especially Radoje Domanović (1873-1908), who became known for his satirical short stories that are said to have precipitated the fall of the regime in place.
The dawn of the twentieth century was synonymous with openness to European trends, a trend that would not be curbed even by the First World War, which led to the establishment of the avant-garde, nor by the Second World War, which ended with a social and committed literature. The twentieth century is also the century that saw the emergence of Ivo Andrić (1892-1975) - the author of the historical novels The Bridge over the Drina(Le Livre de Poche) and The Chronicle of Travnik (Rocher). This future Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1961) will have known several nationalities, a sign of the twists and turns of his time. His friend Miloš Crnjanski will be distinguished in 1971 by the no less prestigious Nin Prize for The London Novel (Black on White), an award he will share with Meša Selimović (The Dervish and Death, Gallimard), Danilo Kiš (Garden, Ash, Gallimard) and Milorad Pavić (The Khazar Dictionary
, The New Attila). Since then - and whatever may have happened from a political point of view - Serbian literature has undoubtedly entered its golden age, a certainty in view of the number of writers who have been multiplied and many of whom benefit from international translations, legitimized by their inventiveness, the strength of their themes and their stylistic qualities. Without claiming to be exhaustive, we could conclude by mentioning the poet Branko Miljković(In Praise of Fire, L'Âge d'homme), the novelist Grozdana Olujić-Lešić(Voices in the Wind, Gaïa editions) available in dozens of languages, Svetislav Basara, who handles the absurd as well as cynicism, Aleksandar Gatalica, who received the Nin prize for In War as in War! and finally Uglješa Šajtinac who proves that the new generation still has things to say.
