10 RARE SERBIAN BOOKS

I made a list of 10 Serbian rare books, and talked a little about each one of them. I realize that I could have included some other books, but I made my selection based on the amount of information I could find on each book, and also on my opinion of how much they are important to Serbian literature and culture.

1. Miroslavljevo jevanđelje (Miroslav Gospel)
2. Vukanovo jevanđelje (Vukan Gospel)
3. Marijanino jevanđelje (The Codex Marianus)
4. Istorija o žitija i slavnih djelah velikago gosudarja i imperatora Petra Pervago (History and life of Peter The Great), 1772. – Zaharije Orfelin
5. Srpske Narodne Pjesme (Serbian Folk Poems), 1814-1866 – Vuk Karadžić
6. Srpski rječnik (Serbian Dictionary), 1818. – Vuk Karadžić
7. Pismo Haralampiju (Letter to Haralampije), 1783. – Dositej Obradović
8. Sretenjski Ustav (Candlemas constitution), 1835.
9.  Gorski vijenac (The Mountain Wreath), 1847. – Petar II Petrović Njegoš
10.  Pesme (Poems), 1847 – Branko Radičević

REFERENCES:

• Miroslav Gospel, digital edition: http://scc.digital.bkp.nb.rs/collection/miroslavljevo-jevandjelje

• Digital edition of Miroslav Gospel on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDAS0bzrA0M#t=142

• Movie about Miroslav Gospel “In the beginning was the word”( in Serbian): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDkVx3p37Uc

• Letter to Haralampije, e-book in Serbian: http://ebooks.antikvarne-knjige.com/pismo-haralampiju/

More on “Letter to Haralampije”:

-          Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe (1770-1945), Volume One: Late Enlightenment Emergence of the Modern “National Idea”, Central European University Press, 2006.

• Vuk Karadžić - Serbian Dictionary, digital edition: http://scc.digital.bkp.nb.rs/document/BS-S-II-0033

• Njegoš and “Mountain Wreath”: http://www.rastko.rs/knjizevnost/umetnicka/njegos/mountain_wreath.html

•     Istorija srpske ćirilice – Petar Đorđić, Zavod za udžbenike, Beograd, 1990.

Interesting fact about the Miroslav Gospel:

While visiting the Hilandar Monastery in winter of 1845/46, Archbishop Porfiry saw the manuscript at the library of the monastery. Amazed at its magnificence, he could not resist the temptation, cut out one leaf from the book and took it away to Russia. This leaf was first shown at the exhibition in Kiev in 1874. In 1883 the leave came into the Imperial Public Library along with the material gathered by Archbishop Porfiry Uspensky.

Interesting fact about Vuk Karadžić’s dictionary:

Jacobb Grimm was the one who actually asked Vuk to put swear words in first edition of dictionary. In correspondence with Vuk he asked for their equivalent in German.

Interesting fact about Branko Radičević’s poetry:

Branko Radičević left some unfinished work. He left at least one text meriting close attention in any inquiry into Slavic Romantic irony, the ambitious unfinished poem of 1477 lines, composed in 1849, and featuring two titles: Ludi Branko (Branko the Fool) and Bezimena (Unnamed). Seventy-four years later, literary critics Pavle Popović and his brother Bogdan Popović found that in this poetic fragment "there is no poetry whatsoever" and that it "merits no compliment of any kind." Comparisons with European phenomena lead Serbian intellectuals and publicists such as Tihomir Ostojić, Ilija M. Petrović, Božidar Kovačević and Vladeta Vuković to reduce it to an imitation or at best thorough influence of Byron. Only after the centenary of Radičević's death, began the re-evaluation of Bezimena in essays by Salko Nezečić, Ljubiša Rajković and others. Milan Dedinac and Miodrag Popović, in his 1969 treatise, which is the first true scholarly study of the fragment since Ostojić's monograph of 1918, both move Bezimena away from Byron and Romanticism and toward Pushkin's Eugene Onegin and Vissarion Belinsky's essay of 1843 about Pushkin and Realism.

WOLF, DEVIL AND POPE: PHRASE - SPEAK OF THE DEVIL. LUPUS IN FABULA

Lupus in fabula, Speak of the devil, Mi o vuku... 

– these are all same phrases, and we use it as a reference to someone who appears unexpectedly while being talked about.

Although its definitely much older, first recorded version of that idiom is from 17^th century.

In the past this proverb had different meaning. It was part of superstitious belief that it was dangerous to mention something evil by its name (whatever that evil was; different countries had different representations of it), because that evil (devil, wolf...) may actually appear. As if the power of saying their name out loud will summon them.  

 It's interesting to see how meaning of the phrase has changed over the years (now people say it when someone who were they gossiping about walks through the door, and to see how all the seriousness has been drained out of it - even Ozzy Osbourne named one of his albums "Talk of the devil"), and also how different cultures had different objects of fear.

These are couple versions of the phrase in different languages:

• Palestinian Arabic: "ابن الحلال" (ibin Al halal), which translates to "the offspring of good". To say that once the person was mentioned, that person showed up.

• Armenian: "Շունը յիշէ, փայտը քաշէ:", which translates to "Remember the dog, prepare the cane."

•  Bulgarian: "Говорим за вълка, а той - в кошарата", translated as "Speak of the wolf and it is in the sheep pen."

• Catalan: "No es pot dir mal que no surti l'animal", meaning "You can't speak evil [of someone] without the animal turning up".

• Cantonese Chinese:日頭唔好講人，夜晚唔好講鬼, translated as "Don't gossip other people in daytime, nor ghost at night (, or they will show up)."

• Hebrew: "מדברים על החמור, והנה הוא בא", "M'dabrim 'al ha-khamor, ve-hinei hu ba" - "Talking about the donkey, and here it comes". Typically shortened to just "M'dabrim 'al ha-khamor..."

• Serbian: "Ми о вуку, (вук на врата)", (Mi o vuku, vuk na vrata) translated as "Speak of the wolf (and the wolf [is] at the door)."

• Urdu: "Shaitan ka naam liya or Shaitaan hazir", which translates to "take the name of Satan and Satan appears."

• Yiddish: "A shod m'hot nisht geredt fun moshiach" which translates to "We should have talked about the Messiah,"

This is my short video presentation on this subject: