Songs of the Serbian People: From the Collections of Vuk Karadžić

by Vuk Karadžić, Milne Holton (Editor)

In the early nineteenth century, Vuk Karadžić, a Serb scholar and linguist, collected and eventually published transcriptions of the traditional oral poetry of the South Slavs.  It was a monumental and unprecedented undertaking.  Karadžić gathered and heard performances of the rich songs of Balkan peasants, outlaws, and professional singers and their rebel heroes.  His four volumes constitute the classic anthology of Balkan oral poetry, treasured for nearly two centuries by readers of all literatures, and influential to such literary giants as Goethe, Merimee, Pushkin, Mickiewicz, and Sir Walter Scott.

This edition of the songs offers the most complete and authoritative translations ever assembled in English.  Holton and Mihailovich, leading scholars of Slavic literature, have preserved here the unique meter and rhythm at the heart of Serbian oral poetry, as well as the idiom of the original singers.  Extensive notes and comments aid the reader in understanding the poems, the history they record and the oral tradition that lies beneath them, the singers and their audience.

The songs contain seven cycles, identified here in sections titled: Songs Before History, Before Kosovo, the Battle of Kosovo, Marko Karadžić, Under the Turks, Songs of the Outlaws, and Songs of the Serbian Insurrection.  The editors have selected the best known and most representative songs from each of the cycles.  A complete biography is also provided.

328 pages, Paperback

First published April 17, 1997

About the author

Vuk Stefanović Karadžić was a philologist and linguist who was the major reformer of the Serbian language. He deserves, perhaps, for his collections of songs, fairy tales, and riddles, to be called the father of the study of Serbian folklore. He was also the author of the first Serbian dictionary in the new reformed language. In addition, he translated the New Testament into the reformed form of the Serbian spelling and language.

Karadžić held the view that all South Slavs that speak the Shtokavian dialect were Serbs or of Serbian origin and considered all of them to speak the Serbian language. This view is today a matter of dispute among scientists.

He was well known abroad and familiar to Jacob Grimm, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and historian Leopold von Ranke. Karadžić was the primary source for Ranke's Die serbische Revolution (The Serbian Revolution), written in 1829.

Reviews

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous, thorough, and extremely readable. Exactly what I was looking for.

[Nicholas · Rating 4 out of 5]

The oral epics included by Mihailovich and Holton in this collection of the songs of Serbia is fantastic. In addition to capturing the desterci meter of various songs, the editors annotated the text with footnotes to provide historical and social information concerning the South Slavs. Overall this work exhibits the excellent scholarship of Vuk Karadzic concerning his collection of South Slavic oral epics.

[Danae Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot overstate how incredible it felt to see English translations of Serbian poetry that tried to maintain the Deseterac poetic style. I have no idea how much time and effort had to be put in to ensure the translations matched the rhythm and syllable count (4/6). This is my first experience with Serbian folk 'music' in book form.

For the uninitiated Serbian songs are accompanied by instruments like the gusle. The poetic structure is designed to accommodate a one-stringed instrument native to the Balkans.

A translation lacking those may still work, but this is as close to an accurate translation that I could find here in the US. Serbian media is kind of rare here, so this book was a special treat when I found it in a used book store.

I highly recommend this for anyone interested in the culture, but also any writers out there that want to see a unique form of poetry that I haven't really seen anywhere else. This book helped me with my own writing because even if it's a translation into English, somehow these madmen managed to get the flow and cadence. I don't know how they did that, I've been trying to figure it out. But note how the poetry makes you slow a bit, or speed up? That is something even novel writers can attune to. It's an exercise in something culturally different that can resonate with a non-Serbian audience.