Starac Milija

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Starac Milija , also Starac Milija Kolašinac, (* around 1770 , † 1822 ) was a Serbian Guslar from Kolašin in today's Montenegro (formerly "Old Herzegovina" in the Ottoman Empire) who is classified as an illiterate epic of oral poetry . Starac Milija was one of the Guslen instrument players, from whom Vuk Stefanović Karadžić wrote some of his most important epics for the edition of Serbian folk songs . Four epics of the Serbian folk songs (IV. Book of the Leipzig edition of the Serbian folk songs, 1823 - "Narodne srpske pjesme") with a total of 3284 verses come from the poem Milijas. The epics noted by Starac Milija are generally the longest in the Christian tradition in South Slavic oral literature , which have found their way into Vuk Karadžić's collection of South Slavic epics. Vuk met Starac Milija, who was marked by a difficult life and alcoholism, in the last year of his life in 1822. Two of Milija's epics were received in greater detail soon after their publication by Goethe.

Life

A major contribution of the Serbo-Croatian epic songs was the Vuk Kardžić verschriftlichen to the early 19th century, came from the Hajduks , outlaws the environment village were uprooted by biographical events from their social and led a hidden life in the forests and mountains. The biographical paths of the Haiduken are often traced in their songs to the Gusle. Vuk Karađić also wrote the epic Banović Strahinja of a Haiduken, the Starac Milija ( sage Milija , Starac is the honorary title of a wise man), who was terribly disfigured in the head by a fight with Turks in Kolašin, as a decrepit man fleeing Kolašin was forced in the Herzegovinian homeland and because of his own misery he was unable and unwilling to present himself to the Gusle without plenty of slivovitz . The personal misfortune of the sage Milija is due to the motives of destruction, homelessness and the broader concepts from the village patriarchal way of life of the lost homeland. In the behavior of the heroes in the epics of the sage Milija, the changes in a certain decline in the patriarchal moral concept that characterized his time in the transition from the medieval Ottoman feudal society to a modern European society are manifested.

Vuk had found out about Milija in 1820 and asked Prince Miloš Obrenović to find him in Kragujevac for his project of writing down Serbian folk songs from the competent administrative authorities in Paračin. Two years later he was able to visit Milija, who lived as a farmer in Kragujevac, to write Four Epics, which he had to write down in fifteen days because of the poet's health and psychological problems. Due to the incitement of villagers who vilified Vuk Karadžić as idleness, Milija soon became unwilling to deal with Vuk any further. After receiving the payment promised by Prince Miloš, Starac Milija finally went into hiding and was not found when Vuks returned in 1823. In the village he was only told that Milija had died.

reception

Goethe

The first Milijas epic, which was received in European literary critical circles without, however, referring to the author, was the partial translation of the "Marriage of Maxim Cernojewitsch" ("Ženidbe Maksima Crnojevića") by Johann Severin Vater , which Goethe in of his most important study of the Serbian folk epic - Serbian songs - as particularly important. However, the behavior of Banović Strahinja, in particular, who pardoned his wife who had become unfaithful with a Turkish pasha, was even more popular in literary history. In a letter in reply to Wilhelm Gerhard on April 21, 1827 , Goethe expressed his amazement after reading about it:

“... among the local friends there are some who by no means trust the so highly insulted Serbian spouse to have such news, but rather want to keep the character more appropriate if he had had the lady cut into so many pieces by her nine brothers; therefore the translator is accused of such modern-style mitigation. I am inclined to trust such a baroque process to be barbaric arbitrariness, but I must wish that you give me a definite word about this, and show the number and page where the original can be found in the good Wuk's poems. "

- Johann Wolfgang Goethe to Wilhelm Christoph Leonhard Gerhard, Weimar April 21, 1827

Overall, Goethe had been intensively concerned with Serbian folk poetry for many years. On the recommendation of Jacob Grimm , Vuk had visited Goethe in Weimar in 1823 and presented him with two epics that had also been translated by Grimm (Walling up Scutaris - Zidanje Skadra and inheritance division ). The Serbian folk songs were published with a printed dedication to Goethe by their translator Talvj , whose work he had also reviewed on April 12, 1824. He met Starac Milijas Banović Strahinja in 1826 in the translation of Wilhelm Gerhard's and had praised them with the other translations of Gerhard in 1828 in a letter to Grand Duke Carl August .

Works

  • "Ženidbe Maksima Crnojevića"
  • "Banović Strahinja"
  • "Sestra Leke kapetana"
  • "Gavran harambaša i Limo"

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Vijesti, March 23, 2013 Starac Milija - pjesnik koji ne liči na druge pjesnike
  2. ↑ Novak Kilibarda in the preface to Starac Mlija , Podgorica 2009 (PDF)
  3. ^ Svetozar Koljević: The Epic in the Making. 1980, pp. 314-318.
  4. ^ Anne Pennington, Peter Levi: Marko the Prince - Serbo-Croat heroic songs . Unesco collection of representative works - European collection. Duckworth, London 1984, ISBN 0-7156-1715-X , pp. 112-113.
  5. ^ Svetozar Koljević: The Epic in the Making. 1980, p. 316.
  6. ^ Vuk Karadžić: Srpske Narodne pjesme . Volume IV. P. 366
  7. ^ Johann Wolfgang Goethe 1825: Serbian songs . Serbian songs
  8. ↑ http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Goethe,+Johann+Wolfgang/Briefe/1827
  9. ↑ John Hennig 1987: The literary foundations of Goethe's occupation with Serbian folk poetry . In: John Hennig: Goethe's Europakunde: Goethe's knowledge of non-German speaking Europe; selected essays . 326-332, Amsterdam, Rodopi. ISBN 90-6203-669-4 . P. 331
  10. ↑ http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Goethe,+Johann+Wolfgang/Briefe/1828?hl=serbische+poesie To Grand Duke Carl August, February 1, 1828
personal data
SURNAME Milija, Starac
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Serbian Hajduk, poet and Guslar
DATE OF BIRTH around 1770
DATE OF DEATH uncertain: 1822
Place of death Kragujevac