SOURCE: Cooper, Henry R., Jr. “Jernej Kopitar and the Beginning of South Slavic Studies.” In American Contributions to the Ninth International Congress of Slavists, Vol. II: Literature, Poetics, History, edited by Paul Debreczeny, pp. 97-111. Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers, 1983.

[In the following essay, Cooper offers evidence to support the claim that Kopitar is the “Father of South Slavic Studies.”]

Hier entscheiden facta,
nicht Räsonnements!

(Kopitar to Dobrovský)

Scholarly paternity, unlike its human correlate, often matters more to distant generations than to the immediate offspring. In the rapid changes and advances which characterized Slavic studies during the first decades of its existence (approximately 1790-1850¹), the origination of ideas frequently counted for far less than their application to the popular ideologies of the day. The grateful “son” paying tribute to his intellectual “father” is in the scholarly works of that time a less usual figure than the rebellious youth, by and large of a Romantic bent, castigating all his forebears for their faulty insight and suspect motivations.² More than fifty years—and several generations—had to pass before the relationships of the early part of the nineteenth century could be described with some degree of objectivity.³ And even more time has been required, stretching into our own day, to discern and reevaluate the originality of the patriarchs of modern Slavic studies, most especially Jernej Kopitar (1780-1844).⁴

Many modern investigations which touch upon Balkan and South Slavic studies (both linguistic and literary) recognize the seminal quality of Kopitar's work in these areas. In Jagić's words, Kopitar stood “rjadom s Dobrovskim … vo glave avstro-slavjanskogo filologičeskogo perevorota.”⁵ Kristian Sandfeld, the great twentieth-century Balkanologist, acknowledged Kopitar as the first to signal similarities in the Balkan languages,⁶ while Sandfeld's successors echo this point to the present day.⁷ Three Czech Slavicists credit Josef Dobrovský and Kopitar, “jako jeho přimého žaka,” for elevating Czech Slavic studies to the sophisticated levels it achieved in the nineteenth century.⁸ And I. V. Čurkina maintains unequivocally that Dobrovský, Kopitar and the Russian A. X. Vostokov “stojat u istokov naučnogo slavjanovedenija.”⁹ Even Viktor Kudělka, who finds much to criticize in Kopitar's alleged retardation of Slovene literature, nonetheless accepts Kopitar's role as the founder of Slovene linguistics and collaborator in the creation of modern Slavic studies.¹⁰

The present paper, accepting as a given Kopitar's stature as a patriarch of the Slavic field, seeks to refine this belated recognition of his pioneering activities in one additional way. Within the broader designation of the field we generally call slavistika or slavjanovedenie (in the US, “Slavic studies,” though “Slavics” and even “Slavistics” seem to be making some inroads), several subordinate fields can be identified, many of which relate to individual Slavic ethnic groupings, for example: polonistyka, bohemistika, bălgaristika, rusistika and so on. These subspecialties in some cases predate the larger field under which they are now grouped.¹¹ But they share with Slavic studies one crucially important feature: they entered their modern phases, i.e., became the scientific disciplines in whose continuous tradition we are working at this very moment, only after they had undergone three fundamental changes in the way they operated. First, they assumed a critical and dispassionate attitude toward the object of their study. Since this object was the national tradition, however, expressed in language, literature, customs, history and the like, this step was extremely difficult, and backsliding was (and has continued to be) an ever-present danger.¹² Second, they approached their studies armed with Enlightenment Europe's advances in many collateral fields. It was no coincidence that Dobrovský was first an Orientalist, and applied the techniques of analysis he learned there to the nascent Slavic field. This second condition implies the end of dilettantism in Slavic studies, and again it is not coincidental that one of Kopitar's earliest publications rails against uninformed silliness in dealing with res slavicae.¹³ Third, the first Slavicists, Bohemists, Slovenists, Polonists and the like sought to disseminate their information to the scholarly world at large in an attempt to integrate the Slavic discipline(s) with the other sciences of the time. The amateur Slavicist disappeared; in his place stood the professional researcher and reporter.

Josef Dobrovský is by right recognized as the brilliant scholar who moved Slavic studies into its modern, scientific phase. The thesis this paper seeks to promote, and the refinement it intends to make in the reputation of the no less brilliant, though somewhat less dispassionate Kopitar, is that he laid the groundwork for the scholarly study of the Balkan and South Slavic languages, literatures and cultures of his time by elevating that study to the level of a scholarly discipline whose results he propagated throughout Europe and across the ocean to North America.¹⁴ Therefore he merits the title “Father of South Slavic studies.”

In his outline of the development of Slavic studies in the South Slavic lands to 1850, Viktor Kudělka juxtaposes the contributions of the more “progressive” Czech Slavicists (Dobrovský, Šafárik, Čelakovský, Kollár), who were farther along in “the theoretical formulation of fundamental goals and methodological principles as well as in the concrete results of research activity,”¹⁵ with the more limited achievements of the most important Slavicists from the South Slavic lands (Kopitar, Vuk and Vraz). While the Czechs were interested in matters related to the Slavic world in toto and thereby had a great impact on the development of scholarly South Slavic studies in particular, the South Slavs abstained from all but South Slavic (and, one might add, Balkan) issues, and must therefore share with the Czechs the designation as cofounders of South Slavic studies. Even Kopitar's works, Kudělka claims, were all written “pro domo sua.”¹⁶

Such a point of view implies both parochial interests and parochial applications in the works of Kopitar and others. A fairer assessment of the achievements of the South Slavic scholars vis-à-vis the Czechs would admit, however, that the Balkan and South Slavic area represented for scholars throughout Europe terrae incognitae, more mysterious and puzzling than any other European region including Russia. If Kopitar and Vuk among others concentrated their efforts on the South Slavic area, then their goal was not narrowly patriotic (though it had that dimension), but rather genuinely scholarly: alone among the Slavicists of their day they had the requisite linguistic skills, first-hand knowledge of the territories in questions, extensive contacts with native informants and, at least in Kopitar's case as custos of the Court Library in Vienna and censor for South Slavic, Romanian, Albanian and Neo-Greek books, direct access to all the literature emanating from Southeastern Europe. In his enormous correspondence with Western and Slavic scholars,¹⁷ in the majority of his publications, particularly in the years up to approximately 1825,¹⁸ Kopitar freely shared his knowledge with and actively promoted further scholarly investigations by the outstanding European scholars of the day.¹⁹ As Sergio Bonazza puts it in describing Kopitar's contributions to the founding of Slavic studies in Italy: “Aber Kopitar informierte nicht nur, er empfahl auch, was zu tun sei.”²⁰ Heinz Pohrt ascribes the beginnings of South Slavic studies in Germany to Kopitar's direct influence upon Goethe,²¹ and what he says in another article about the general level of Slavic investigations in German applies with particular accuracy to the state of South Slavic studies there:

… Die kleine Zahl deutscher Wissenschaftler, die sich ernsthaft für die Sprachen, die Geschichte und Kultur der Slaven interessierte, konnte für ihre Studien zunächst fast nur Werke von Fachleuten slavischer Nationalität auf diesem Gebiet benützen oder ihre persönliche Unterstützung finden.²²

If the South Slavic scholars', and particularly Kopitar's, interest in matters Balk and South Slavic was not parochial in aim or application, so likewise was it not inferior to Czech South Slavic studies in quantity or quality. The Patriarch himself consulted with Kopitar constantly whenever working on a South Slavic topic, and his Institutiones linguae slavicae dialecti veteris (1822) owed much, to say the very least, to Kopitar's knowledge.²³ Moreover, despite Kopitar's best efforts at enlightening him, Dobrovský could be surprisingly ignorant about some Balkan phenomena.²⁴ The other Czech Slavicist who also had an abiding interest in South Slavic studies, P. J. Šafárik, was likewise clearly in Kopitar's debt in his treatment of the South Slavs in particular in the volume Geschichte der slawischen Sprache und Literatur nach allen Mundarten (1826): Kopitar is cited in the South Slavic section more often than even Vuk Karadžić, and is third in the entire book (after Dobrovský and A. L. Schlözer) in the number of times he is referred to.²⁵ Subsequent investigations have also demonstrated that Kopitar's seminal article, “Blick auf die slavischen Mundarten, ihre Literatur und die Hülfsmittel sie zu studieren,”²⁶ lay at the base of Šafárik's history.²⁷

In his monograph on Kopitar, Jože Pogačnik concludes that among Kopitar's several accomplishments, one of the foremost was his addressing the issue of the history and existence of the Slavs. While his predecessors had investigated the Russians, Czechs and Poles, Kopitar was able to concentrate his efforts on the South Slavs:

Er gliederte den südslawischen Bereich ethnisch, sprachlich und kulturell und berücksichtigte dabei das gesamte balkanische Territorium (Beschäftigung mit Rumänen, Albanern und Griechen), dadurch machte er diesen Teil Europas und sein wirkliches Bild im damaligen intellektuellen Bewusstsein aktenkundig. Vor ihm gab es nur sogenannte Sprachapologien …, die schon auf der Linie der Wiedergeburt lagen, sprachen sie doch durch ihren gefühlmässigen Einsatz zu den Herzen der Zeitgenossen und schlossen sie zu einer sprachlich-literarischen Einheit zusammen. Kopitar tat in dieser Apologie einen Schritt vorwärts; es ging ihm nicht mehr so sehr um ein Lob der Sprache als darum, die Slawen as geschichtliche Einheit zu zeigen, die existiert und um einen entsprechenden Platz an der Sonne kämpft … Wenn Kopitar sogar in einem Bericht an österreichische Behörden behauptet, Vuks literarisches Werk habe den Illyrer (= Kroaten und Serben) eine “geistige Heimat” gegeben, besteht kein Zweifel daran, dass es ihm primär um die Feststellung der sogenannten existentiellen Identität der Südslawen ging.²⁸

In other words Kopitar endeavored to identify and analyze for the scholarly community of his time the language, history, culture and related data of the Balkan and South Slavic peoples and to establish their place not only in the political sphere but in the intellectual world as well. His efforts resulted in the founding of South Slavic as well as Balkan studies, the specific components of which are outlined in the following section of this paper.

Thanks in large part to the resurgence of interest during the past two decades in the history of Slavic studies and in particular as a result of the scholarly reexamination of Kopitar's contribution thereto,²⁹ the details of the Viennese custos' endeavors in the South Slavic and Balkan field, if somewhat scattered and diffuse, are nonetheless reasonably well known. Though further publications, particularly of his massive correspondence and the articles, notes, reviews and miscellaneous materials of the last decade of his life (1835-1844)³⁰ promise still more fruitful insights, a sufficient body of information has already been assembled which enables us to draw some conclusions about Kopitar's life's work. On occasion this information still bears traces of the mistrust with which Kopitar's contributions have traditionally been treated (a mistrust grounded largely in personality issues, that exceeds a healthy scholarly skepticism concerning value³¹). To the following four major points only matters of scholarly consequence are germane.

1.0 The claim that Kopitar is indeed the founding father of Balkan and South Slavic studies rests most squarely on his life-long investigations of the five South Slavic languages of his day. Like Dobrovský, to whose generation he belonged,³² Kopitar was a philologist: his primary interest, being, however, linguistic, he was particularly concerned with describing the features of a language as it was actually spoken at that time. The synchronic, descriptivist study of most of the South Slavic languages began with Kopitar.

1.1 Most attention has been focused on Kopitar's contributions to the study of Serbian, the formation of the Serbian literary language and, of course, his celebrated relationship with Vuk Stefanović Karadžić.³³ Clearly Kopitar guided and corrected Vuk, particularly in his early works (collecting folk poetry, compiling a dictionary, writing a grammar). His influence on Vuk was so profound that in some areas (the use of Ijekavian, the preference for the language of the simple folk over the intellectual language of the cities, the introduction of the grapheme “j” into Cyrillic³⁴), it prompted the Serb to champion reforms that were inimical to his longterm interests. But the self-same influence made itself felt in the ultimate union of Serbian and Croatian, as well,³⁵ so that on balance Kopitar's influence may be considered salutary.³⁶

Nor should one neglect Kopitar's own extensive writings on Serbian matters, from his earliest pieces on Dositej Obradović³⁷ to his thorough treatments and translations of Serbian folk poetry. Moreover he persuaded not only Vuk to undertake the scholarly investigation of Serbian, but Jacob Grimm and Theresa A. L. von Jakob as well, in the latter case to the ultimate benefit of American Slavic studies.³⁸ Finally his contact with Goethe concerning Serbian poetry eventually brought the Serbian language and its literature to European attention.³⁹

1.2 Elsewhere I have written about Kopitar's role in initiating modern Bulgarian studies.⁴⁰ In that paper an examination of Kopitar's relationship with Vuk in matters Bulgarian, especially in Vuk's publication, Dodatak k sanktpeterburgskim Sravniteljnim rječnicima sviju jezika i narječija (s osobitim ogledima bugarskog jezika) (Novine serbske [Vienna], 1821-2),⁴¹ reveals that Kopitar not only initiated Vuk's study of Bulgarian, the first of its kind, but also publicized and corrected it.⁴² Moreover Kopitar continually reproved Dobrovský for his failure to acknowledge a separate Bulgarian language (and therefore people: Dobrovský lumped the Macedonians and the Bulgarians together with the Serbs⁴³), without success however. Dobrovský's one mention of Bulgarian as a separate language is probably ascribable to Kopitar's editorial alteration of the Patriarch's words.⁴⁴ Kopitar himself felt he deserved the credit for beginning Bulgarian studies,⁴⁵ and with this estimate the evidence would seem to agree.

1.3 Equally clear is Kopitar's claim to be considered the founder of modern Slovene studies, due especially to his most important work, Grammatik der slavischen Sprache in Krain, Kärnten und Steiermark (1808). Not only did this book serve as a model for other grammars of the Slavic languages,⁴⁶ but it laid the foundations of the modern Slovene literary language and of modern Slovene linguistics as well.⁴⁷ Although much has been made of Kopitar's negative role in the development of modern Slovene literature,⁴⁸ the fact of the matter is that Kopitar both helped the poet Francè Prešeren early on, and remained on friendly terms with Matija Čop, Prešeren's friend and the chief theoretician of early modern Slovene literature, until the “ABC Battle” of the early 1830s. Prešeren's language followed the linguistic norm Kopitar had established. And if the poet and his friend did clash with the scholar over the context in which Slovene culture was supposed to develop (Čop and Prešeren favoring a Romantic, urban, international and secular one, Kopitar opting for a pure peasant culture, protected from excessive external influence), their debate nevertheless defined explicitly and for the first time the perimeters within which Slovene culture could develop. For while Čop and Prešeren were striving to broaden the expressional possibilities of the native literature, to introduce new uses for the language, to intellectualize and internationalize Slovene and through it the culture, Kopitar was seeking to isolate (and preserve) the local and peculiar, to identify what was specifically Slovene and then to integrate these unique phenomena into general linguistics and world history. No doubt Čop-Prešeren enriched Slovene by borrowing heavily from European culture, but Kopitar, as Bonazza points out,⁴⁹ enriched European scholarship by introducing Slovene exempla to it. In that the founding of a field involves not only work in it, but integration of it into broader disciplines for the ultimate advantage of science as a whole, Kopitar's contributions to Slovene studies must be considered larger than any of his predecessors' or contemporaries', and he rightly deserves to be considered the founder of the field.

12.4 Admittedly far less direct, though nonetheless important, was Kopitar's role in the beginning of modern Croatian studies. New information points to Kopitar's very early involvement in matters of Croatian orthography and dialect differentiation.⁵⁰ Though he did not like Ljudevit Gaj, and objected violently both to his orthography and his Illyrianism,⁵¹ nonetheless the very ideas that motivated Gaj can be traced back to Kopitar, particularly to his “Patriotische Phantasien” (1810).⁵² Kopitar's concern for the Croatian dialects has proved to be an enduring concern for all Croatianists in both linguistics and literature, particularly in our own day. And, of course, as noted above, Kopitar's spirit was very much present when the Vienna Language Accord of 1850 was signed by Serbian and Croatian representatives.⁵³ Finally the Slovene's Glagolita Clozianus (1836), the first Glagolitic manuscript to be published, represents a milestone in Glagolitic studies, an essential component of modern “Croatistics.”⁵⁴

Unlike Serbian, Bulgarian or Slovene, however, Kopitar never championed a separate and unified Croatian language; he published relatively little about matters Croatian; and, as in Slovene, when the atmosphere became too inimical to him (especially as the 1830s progressed), he simply turned his attention elsewhere. Still his contributions were not inconsequential, and if they do not support his designation as founder of Croatian studies, then at least they do not challenge his position as the chief promoter of South Slavic studies, in which he recognized a Croatian component and contributed to its study.⁵⁵

1.5 Reference has already been made to Kopitar's part in Dobrovský's grammar of Old Church Slavonic,⁵⁶ as well as to his review of this work, which along with his “Epimetra Kopitarii tria,” the formal addendum to the Institutiones, comprises yet another essential addition and amplification of the work.⁵⁷ Kopitar's labors in publishing Old Church Slavonic manuscripts, such as the Glagolita Clozianus (1836), witness to his life-long interest in the language, placing him within the first generation of scholars who brought to bear critical methods on the linguistic and historical materials contained in the old manuscripts. And, as Lencek points out,⁵⁸ both Kopitar's discovery of the oldest level of lexical borrowings into Church Slavonic (the Germanic loan words and calques used in place of the Greek-based words developed in the south), and his use of philological tools to “localize” the provenience of manuscripts, are original contributions to the study of Old Church Slavonic.

More controversial in determining Kopitar's role in the early stages of this discipline is, of course, his insistence upon his famous “Carantanian-Pannonian Theory” of the origin of Old Church Slavonic,⁵⁹ a theory which has been discredited in modern scholarship, but which in its day had its fair share of adherents (notably Šafárik and Franz Miklosich). In assessing Kopitar's passionate commitment to this thesis, however, we must not neglect certain facts: thanks to it he broadened the interest in Old Church Slavonic, and challenged the best scholars of the day to answer his probing questions; and, in line with his central interests, which involved primarily the living linguistic situation of his time,⁶⁰ he brought to bear on Church Slavonic modern dialectal information, with the intention of elucidating the ancient linguistic situation. Vostokov had successfully applied this approach to Old Church Slavonic by deducing the existence of nasals in the language on the basis of Modern Polish.⁶¹ Kopitar had, however, the converse of this last point in mind as well: that is, he sought to use the ancient situation to promote matters he considered of great importance to the present. Chief among these was to show that Old Church Slavonic was in fact ancient Slovene, that it was from a Slovene nucleus that the South Slavic realm had initially radiated, and that in reestablishing a South Slavic union under the “blessed scepter of the House of Austria,”⁶² the centrality of Slovene would have to be considered.⁶³

Thus Kopitar's work in Old Church Slavonic cut both ways. But his focus on the relevance of the ancient universal language of the Slavs especially to the modern situation of the South Slavs illustrated clearly Kopitar's use of all available materials in order to elucidate and explain the South Slavic linguistic situation, particularly in history. The notoriety he attracted, and the attention he compelled others to pay to questions of South Slavic linguistics not only in Old Church Slavonic, but in Serbian, Bulgarian, Slovene and Croatian as well, further justify the contention that Kopitar was the founder, in matters linguistic, of South Slavic studies.

2.0 A collateral discipline of South Slavic studies is Balkan studies. As noted earlier, in this field Kopitar's role as founding father has never been questioned.⁶⁴ He not only initiated the modern study of Romanian, Albanian and Neo-Greek,⁶⁵ but he also integrated them with their South Slavic neighbors (especially Bulgarian) in what subsequently would be called the Balkan Sprachbund. By ceaseless reviewing and constant correcting, he introduced European scholars to Balkanological problems.⁶⁶ And most important for the subsequent development of the field, he became the mentor of Franz Miklosich. For not only did Miklosich continue Kopitar's work in South Slavic and Old Church Slavonic, but, as Jakopin points out he also took over Kopitar's already established network of Balkan informants. To them the younger Slovene added Turkish speakers, applied his knowledge of comparative linguistics, and branched out in new directions of his own. The fields of Albanian and Romanian studies in particular, and Balkan studies in general, bloomed and flourished thanks to the influence of Kopitar on his student.

Accompanying this interest in the linguistic situation of the Balkans was Kopitar's life-long preoccupation with South Slavic and Balkan folklore. His collections of folk songs, promotion of Vuk, keen awareness of folk art (thanks in part to his own peasant origin, and to his extensive readings of folk materials), and his anticipation, as Thomas Butler notes,⁶⁷ of modern epic studies based on Homeric and Balkan traditions, were a fertile base from which Balkan folklore studies could grow. In collection and analysis of this material Kopitar was a pioneer, and in the process he rounded out his Balkan linguistic interests with literary and broadly cultural concerns as well, to the benefit of all three areas.

3. The circulation of timely information was carried on during the first half of the nineteenth century largely by letter. Notes, book reviews and articles in the journals of the time provided broader but slower coverage of scholarly issues, while books, then as now, were years in preparation, publication and dissemination. Perhaps because he felt a certain urgency in communicating with scholarly Europe concerning South Slavic and Balkan matters, Kopitar avoided the book format for almost all of his scholarly writing,⁶⁸ preferring instead the article and above all the personal letter. Much but far from all of his correspondence has been published; from the list of his recipients we can compile a roster of many notable scholars of Kopitar's day⁶⁹: Dobrovský, Vuk, F. M. Appendini, Angelo Mai, Giampietro Secchi, V. Vodnik, M. Čop, Šafárik, J. Grimm, K. G. Rumy, J. Rudež, K. B. Hase, A. H. Hoffmann von Fallersleben, J. K. Erberg, I. Kristijanović, F. Thiersch, J. Fesl, J. Bowring, P. Cloz, C. O. Castiglione, W. von Humboldt, Goethe, Talvj,⁷⁰ and many others. Of his reviews, notes and article, approximately half have been reprinted, forty-eight in Miklosich's edition of 1857 and another forty-eight in Nahtigal's two volumes (1944-45), all very difficult to find now. But even were these books in which Kopitar's writings appear readily accessible, we would still have only a limited idea of the extent of his correspondence or publication activity.

In his writings Kopitar informed, corrected, cajoled, proposed, and frequently rebuked. He offered data, theories, contacts, books, money, manuscripts, opportunities for travel, collaboration and the like. His topics were largely Balkan and South Slavic, his languages German or Latin (the scholarly tongues of the day) in an often incredible macaronic mixture with other languages.⁷¹ The letters and publications, though occasionally very long, are never dull, and were in their time more likely to ignite or prolong controversy than diminish it. This epistolary style, which some have called “playful” even in the extreme,⁷² provoked interest; coupled with the information he freely offered, Kopitar's letters were a most efficacious means of promoting South Slavic studies in Europe.

Nor should we neglect Kopitar's contribution in one other related area. At the very end of his article “Patriotische Phantasien,” Kopitar called for the establishment of a “Slavic central academy”⁷³ in Vienna to extend Austria's interests particularly among the South Slavs by encouraging Slavic studies in the Austrian capital. Nothing came of this idea during Kopitar's lifetime (a chair in Slavic languages and literatures was established in Vienna only in 1849, and awarded to the young Miklosich), but in anticipation that Vienna would someday rank as a major Slavic center, Kopitar all through his working life oversaw and expanded the Slavic collection of the Court Library there. In 1814 he traveled to Paris to regain some of the books and manuscripts Napoleon's army had plundered from Vienna. In 1827 he proposed to the Austrian government to buy up Slavic and other manuscripts from Mt. Athos (his proposal was, however, rejected). He sent Vuk Karadžić on book-buying trips through the Balkans, and even arranged a book exchange with the Russian P. von Köppen, an extremely difficult procedure at the time.⁷⁴

In building his collection and corresponding with scholars, Kopitar pioneered in integrating knowledge of the Balkan and South Slavic areas with European scholarship of his time, particularly in linguistics, folklore, ethnography, history and textology. Himself educated in the Enlightenment tradition of the late eighteenth century, he realized the necessity of both accurate data and good organization. Since he was the first to bring such scholarly values to bear on the Balkan and South Slavic field as a whole, he must therefore be credited as its great pioneer and founder.

4. Kopitar was not only an analyst and purveyor of Balkan and South Slavic data. He also attempted to synthesize that material into cogent patterns that would explain and integrate the extremely heterogeneous information he gathered from the region. His synthetic, theoretical formulations were not always successful (e.g., his Carantanian-Pannonian Theory), nor were they his strong point. On the other hand he did have ground-breaking insights too (on the Balkan Sprachbund, for example, or the interrelationship between the Homeric epics and Balkan folk poetry). But whatever the balance of his successes to his failures, it was of the utmost consequence to Slavic studies, and particularly to South Slavic and Balkan studies, that Kopitar based his formulations as much on fact and as little on speculation as possible. He eschewed the Romantic, subjective approach to his field, even at the risk of encouraging the wrath of his colleagues (as he did when he questioned, and then denied, the authenticity of V. Hanka's forged Czech manuscripts). He rejected tampering with what he considered to be the natural developmental processes of the phenomena he observed. Time and again he reiterated his respect for all the things that he studied, which caused him utterly to reject falsification or distortion, even if the most laudable national reasons could be adduced for such action. He rejected unity if it came at the price of individuality, but he did not reject unity altogether: his goal was always global and entailed positing unity on the most comprehensive level possible. Some of the finest elaborations of his principles are to be found not only in his own works, but in those of his two principal students, Vuk and Miklosich. In them Kopitar founded a scholarly tradition, complete with an approach, models and limits. This final major field of his endeavors, the realm of ideas and approaches, was Kopitar's most influential, the one for which we must be the most indebted to him today.

The thesaurus offers just so many suitable synonyms for founder, and most of these have been used above to describe the four principal areas, South Slavic languages, Balkan studies, dissemination of information, and ideas and approaches, which justify designating Kopitar the originator of South Slavic and Balkan studies. If it is true, as Pogačnik claims,⁷⁵ that Kopitar belonged to the type of “cultural activist” who sowed while others reaped the gain, then we must admit that this harvest of his labors has continued for a long time, from Miklosich's earliest treatises to the most modern works on Balkanology and South Slavic linguistics. One may still look into Kopitar with profit; a century-and-a-half after his death he is still a source to be reckoned with. And that insight is perhaps the most valuable conclusion to be drawn from this examination of his contributions to the Balkan and South Slavic fields.

Notes

1. A. S. Myl'nikov, “Problemy periodizacii istorii mirovoj slavistiki: celi i principy,” in: V. A. D'jakov et al., eds., Metodologičeskie problemy istorii slavistiki (Moscow: Nauka, 1978), pp. 50-1. Also Milan Kudělka, Zdeněk Šimeček, Radoslav Večerka, “Česká slavistika v prvním období svého vývoje (do poloviny 19. století),” in: Jozef Hrozienčik et al., eds., Štúdie z dejín svetovej slavistiky do polovice 19. storočia (Bratislava: Veda, 1978), pp. 35-40.

2. A model of the respectful attitude is certainly Kopitar, who particularly in his relationship with Dobrovský was always pius filius vis-à-vis his Meister. On the other hand the younger generation of Prague Slavicists, including Palacký, Šafárik, Jungmann and others, poisoned Dobrovský's last years with their disrespectful and calumnious mistreatments of his work (see Milan Fryščák, “Kopitar and Dobrovský,” in Rado L. Lencek and Henry R. Cooper, Jr., eds., To Honor Jernej Kopitar, 1780-1980 (Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Slavic Publications, 1981) (this volume is currently in production, therefore page numbers are not yet available for it)). Even Franz Miklosich can be faulted for his defective volume of Kopitariana (see Franc Jakopin, “Kopitar's Share in the Work of F. Miklošič,” in Lencek and Cooper, op. cit.).

3. Particularly in the works of Vatroslav Jagić, Istorija slavjanskoj filologii (Saint Petersburg: Akademija Nauk, 1910), pp. 185-214; and N. M. Petrovskij, Pervye gody dejatel'nosti Kopitarja (Kazan: 1906).

4. Most important among the works revising the traditional but extremely distorted description of Kopitar's contributions are: Rado L. Lencek, “The Theme of the Greek koine in the Concept of a Slavic Common Language and Matija Majar's Model,” in: American Contributions to the Sixth International Congress of Slavists, Prague, 1968, Vol. 1, Linguistic Contributions (The Hague-Paris: Mouton, 1968), pp. 199-226; Thomas Butler, “The Origins of the War for a Serbian Language and Orthography,” Harvard Slavic Studies 5 (1970), pp. 1-80; Rado L. Lencek, “Kopitar's Slavic Version of the Greek Dialects Theme,” Symbolae in honorem Georgii Y. Shevelov (Munich: Ukraïns'kyi vil'nyi univerzytet, 1971), pp. 244-56; Jože Pogačnik, Bartholomäus Kopitar (Munich: Trofenik, 1978); and Sergio Bonazza, Bartholomäus Kopitar, Italien und der Vatikan (Munich: Trofenik, 1980).

5. Jagić, op. cit., p. 185.

6. Kristian Sandfeld, Linguistique balkanique: Problèmes et résultats (Paris: Champion, 1930), p. 11; he credits Miklosich with closer investigations of the phenomena, however (p. 12).

7. See, e.g., “Balkanologija,” in Enciklopedija Leksikografskog zavoda, vol. 1 (Zagreb: Leksikografski zavod, 1955), p. 360; “Balkanistika,” in Bol'šaja sovetskaja ènciklopedija, vol. 2 (3rd edition) (Moscow: Sovetskaja ènciklopedija, 1970), p. 574; H. W. Schaller, Die Balkansprachen (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1975), p. 37; J. Xamm (Hamm), “O specifike razvitija slavistiki v neslavjanskix stranax,” in: D'jakov, op. cit., p. 135; and G. R. Solta, Einführung in die Balkanlinguistik (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1980), p. 9, note 39.

8. M. Kudělka, op. cit., p. 41.

9. I. V. Čurkina, “E. Kopitar i pervye russkie slavisty,” in: Hrozienčik, op. cit., p. 321.

10. Viktor Kudělka, “Vznik a vývoj jihoslovanské slavistiky do poloviny 19. století (Stručný nástin),” in Hrozienčik, op. cit., p. 404. Kudělka's allegation is by now a familiar charge, but of debatable merit. See Sergio Bonazza, “Jernej Kopitar—His Place in Slovene Cultural History,” in Lencek and Cooper, op. cit. Ironically from the point of view of this paper, it is among the South Slavs as a whole that Kopitar seems to enjoy the worst reputation: “nemo propheta in patria sua.” See also Pogačnik, op. cit., p. 39, note 85, on this subject.

11. “Slovenistika” as a discipline though not a name can be taken back, for example, to the sixteenth century and Adam Bohorič's Arcticae horulae (1584); I doubt, however, that many Slavicists will agree with Emil Georgiev's claim that Slavic studies began with Constantine and Methodius, or that St. Cyril was “of course a Slavist” (Georgiev, “Ob osnovnyx ètapax razvitija slavistiki v slavjanskix stranax,” in D'jakov, op. cit., p. 89).

12. See M. Kudělka (Hrozienčik, op. cit., pp. 37ff) on the backsliding of the second generation of Slavicists.

13. “Serbien oder Servien?” Vaterländische Blätter, 18 May 1810, pp. 41-2, and in Franz Miklosich, ed., Barth. Kopitars kleinere Schriften (Vienna: Friedrich Beck's Universitäts-Buchhandlung, 1857), Item 9, pp. 56-7.

14. Cf. Rado L. Lencek, “Three Editions of Jernej Kopitar's “Patriotische Phantasien eines Slaven,” with an English Translation,” in Lencek and Cooper, op. cit., Appendix II.

15. V. Kudělka, in Hrozienčik, op. cit., p. 409.

16. Ibid.; he then continues: “A je přiznačné, že kdykoli Kopitarovo úsilí zamířilo k cilům slovansky velkorysejším, sklouzávalo zpravidla do oblasti nevědeckých smyšlenek a fikcí.” This I believe is an exaggeration.

17. Pogačnik, op. cit., p. 84, estimates he had some 650 different correspondents.

18. See Pogačnik, “Kopitar-Bibliographie,” ibid., pp. 214-26, where of the 213 publications he lists, 78 have to do with the South Slavs alone.

19. Outstanding examples of this are to be found in Max Vasmer, ed., B. Kopitars Briefwechsel mit J. Grimm (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1938), and Philip Mattson, “Wilhelm von Humboldt und die Anfänge der Slavistik: Briefe an Kopitar,” Zeitschrift für slavische Philologie, 38 (1975), pp. 303-23.

20. Bonazza, Kopitar, op. cit., p. 88.

21. Heinz Pohrt, “Beiträge zur Geschichte der slawistischen Studien in Deutschland von der Spätaufklärung bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts,” in Hrozienčik, op. cit., pp. 470-1.

22. Heinz Pohrt, “Die Bewegung der nationalen Wiedergeburt bei den Slawen in ihrer Bedeutung für die Entfaltung der Slawistik in Deutschland, 1800-1850,” Zeitschrift für Slawistik, 18 (1973), p. 388.

23. See N. M. Petrovskij, Kopitar' i “Institutiones linguae slavicae dialecti veteris” Dobrovskogo (St. Petersburg: Senatskaja tipografija, 1911), and Fryščák, op. cit.

24. I have in mind particularly his attitude towards neo-Bulgarian; see Henry R. Cooper, Jr., “Kopitar and the Beginning of Bulgarian Studies,” in Lencek and Cooper, op. cit.

25. Based on a count in the “Menný register” of the annotated Slovak translation of the Geschichte: Pavel Jozef Šafárik, Dejiny slovanského jazyka a literatúry všetkých nárečí (Valéria Betáková and Rudolf Beták, trans.) (Bratislava: Vydavatel'stvo Slovenskej Akadémie Vied, 1963), pp. 559-600. One might also note that Schlözer and Dobrovský were Kopitar's principal mentors.

26. Wiener allgemeine Literaturzeitung I/34-5 (27/30 April 1813), pp. 535-44, 552-3, and in Lencek and Cooper, op. cit., Appendix II.

27. See Lencek, ibid.

28. Pogačnik, op. cit., 198-199.

29. As noted above, p. 1, and in D'jakov, Hrozienčik, op. cit., and in the remaining volumes of the series “Studies in the History of World Slavistics.”

30. In other words, the promised third part of Kopitar's writings, to complement Miklosich, op. cit., and Rajko Nahtigal, ed., Jernej Kopitarja Spisov II. del: Srednja doba (doba sodelovanja v “Jahrbücher der Literatur,” 1818-1834), vol. 1 (1818-1824) (Ljubljana: AZU, 1944) and vol. 2 (1825-1834) (Ljubljana: AZU, 1945).

31. For a comment on the bias still felt against Kopitar, see Bonazza, op. cit. in Lencek and Cooper, op. cit.; for a good example of the healthily skeptical approach to Kopitar, see Kenneth E. Naylor, “Kopitar as Slavicist: An Appreciation,” in Lencek and Cooper, op. cit.

32. M. Kudělka, op. cit., p. 36; according to Pogačnik's bibliography of Kopitariana, the Slovene published only 24 pieces in the last 15 years of his life (1830-44), i.e., from the year following Dobrovský's death. Furthermore a diminution in his publishing activity set in from 1820, and became obvious by 1825. Perhaps here we see Kopitar responding to the change of generations in Slavic studies, with the rise of a new, romantically oriented group in Prague (especially Kollár and Šafárik), and the removal of the older, Enlightenment oriented scholarship of the first two decades of the nineteenth century.

33. To document this relationship would require too much space, and is besides not the point of this paper. For the relevant documentation, see Thomas Butler, op. cit., and Pavle Ivić, “Kopitar and the Evolution of Vuk Karadžić's Views on the Serbian Literary Language,” in Lencek and Cooper, op. cit. See also Pogačnik, op. cit., p. 34.

34. Ivić, op. cit.

35. Lencek, “Kopitar's Slavic Version …”, op. cit.

36. Jagić, Istorija, op. cit., p. 194.

37. In 1810 in Annalen der Literatur und Kunst in den österreichischen Staaten.

38. See also Lencek, “Three Editions,” op. cit.; also Pogačnik, op. cit., pp. 35-6.

39. Pogačnik, op. cit., p. 36, especially note 74.

40. Cooper, op. cit.

41. Reprinted in V. S. Karadžić, Skupljeni gramatički i polemički spisi, vol. II, 1 (Belgrade: 1895-6), pp. 178-240.

42. In his review of Dobrovský's Institutiones, Jahrbücher der Literatur 17 (1822), Jan.-Feb.-March, pp. 66-107.

43. See Kopitar's Grammatik der slavischen Sprache in Krain, Kärnten und Steiermark (Ljubljana: 1808), pp. xix-xx, for a similar, early treatment borrowed from Dobrovský.

44. Věnceslava Bechynová, “Josef Dobrovský a česká bulharistika,” Rozpravy Československé akademie věd, Ročnik 73, Sešit 11 (1963), p. 72. Unfortunately Emil Georgiev overlooks this possibility, and gives Vuk and Dobrovský all the credit for the earliest stage of modern Bulgarian studies, mentioning Kopitar only peripherally: Emil Georgiev, Osnovi na slavistikata i bălgaristikata (Sofia: Nauka i izkustvo, 1979), p. 96.

45. N. M. Petrovskij, “O zanjatijax V. Kopitarja bolgarskim jazykom,” Spisanie na Bălgarskata akademija na naukite (klon istoriko-filologičen i filosofsko-obštestven), 8 (1914), 73, note 3.

46. E.g., see Hanna Orzechowska, “Jernej Kopitar's Influence on Contemporary Grammars of the Slavic Languages,” in Lencek and Cooper, op. cit., where she deals with a Polish example; and Xristo Părvev, “Novobălgarskata gramatična tradicija prez părvata polovina ot XIX vek,” in Hrozienčik, op. cit., pp. 437 and 444.

47. See Jože Toporišič, “Kopitar's Grammar,” in Lencek and Cooper, op. cit.

48. See H. R. Cooper, Jr., Francè Prešeren (New York: Twayne, 1981), pp. 45-51 for the background; and also V. Kudělka, op. cit., in Hrozienčik, op. cit., p. 404.

49. Bonazza, “Kopitar …”, in Lencek and Cooper, op. cit.

50. Olga Nedeljković, “New Perspectives on the Collaboration between Maksimilijan Vrhovac and Jernej Kopitar,” in Lencek and Cooper, op. cit., section 3.4 of the paper.

51. Pogačnik, op. cit., p. 111; see also pp. 98ff.

52. Ibid., p. 167; by way of Kollár and Šafárik.

53. P. 5 above and Lencek, “Kopitar's Slavic Version,” op. cit.

54. One of Kopitar's earliest publications also involved B. Appendini and Glagolitic, that is “Glagolitica,” (1810), in Miklosich, Kopitars kleinere Schriften, op. cit., pp. 47-9.

55. Though unsuccessful, Kopitar did try to collect Croatian folksongs (Nedeljković, op. cit., section 3.1). One of Kopitar's major problems in treating Croatian was his conviction, based on a clear understanding of the Croatian dialect situation, that the Croats belonged to two separate South Slavic linguistic entitites, the Kajkavian (together with the Slovenes), and the Štokavian (with the Serbs). This division, plus a lack of national awareness among the Croats themselves until the 1830s (and then the “wrong kind of awareness”, i.e., Gaj's Illyrianism after that), quite understandably impeded Kopitar's more thorough treatment of Croatian. Elements of his understanding must be sought in sections of his Slovene and Serbian studies. See Pogačnik, op. cit., pp. 98-100.

56. See above, note 23, Also Fryščák, op. cit., note 1.

57. Included in Institutiones, pp. 705-20.

58. Rado L. Lencek, “Kopitar's Share in the Evolution of Slavic Philology,” in Lencek and Cooper, op. cit. See also William R. Schmalstieg, “Današnji pogled na Kopitarjevo delo,” Slavistična revija, 28/4 (1980), pp. 415-24.

59. For a full discussion, see Pogačnik, op. cit., pp. 171-91; also Lencek, “Kopitar's Share,” op. cit.

60. Petrovskij, “O zanjatijax …,” op. cit., p. 72.

61. Kopitar rejected this notion because he felt the parallels between Old Church Slavonic and Polish were not accurate.

62. J. Kopitar, “Patriotische Phantasien eines Slaven,” translated into English in Lencek and Cooper, op. cit., Appendix II.

63. Pogačnik, op. cit., p. 187.

64. See above, p. 1.

65. F. Jakopin, op. cit., and Pogačnik, op. cit., p. 73.

66. For example, see items 15, 32, 41, 46 in Miklosich, Kopitars kleinere Schriften, op. cit., and 17, 20, 29 (both especially important), and 30 in Nahtigal, op. cit.

67. Thomas Butler, “Jernej Kopitar and South Slavic Folklore,” in Lencek and Cooper, op. cit.

68. In all he wrote four books: the Grammatik (1808), which was in toto 510 pages; Glagolita Clozianus (1836), 168 pages; Anti-Tartar (1836), 41 pages (i.e., shorter than many of his articles); and Hesychii glossographi discipulus (1840), 96 pages.

69. For the specific bibliographic references to the publications of these letters, see Pogačnik, op. cit., “Auswahl aus den Quellen und der Literatur,” pp. 207-11, which is quite thorough.

70. The last in Jevto Milović, “Talvjs erste Übertragungen für Goethe und ihre Briefe an Kopitar,” Veröffentlichungen des slavischen Instituts an der Friedrich-Wilhelm-Universität, Berlin, 33 (Leipzig: 1941).

71. A good example is cited in Pogačnik, op. cit., p. 85: “Bodo hudi na me, ki sim jim obljubil da proxime habebis res bestellatas, ino še zdej tukej leže!”

72. F. Jakopin, op. cit.

73. Lencek and Cooper, op. cit., Appendix II, Section D.

74. Čurkina, op. cit., in Hrozienčik, op. cit., p. 383. Though famed for his tightfistedness, Kopitar apparently did not spare even money when it came to acquiring books: he gave Dobrovský, for example, travel money in exchange for the Czech's personal copy of the Institutiones. Though this arrangement was meant only as a loan, Kopitar wound up retaining the book, which is now in the Ljubljana collection of his literary remains (see Fryščák, op. cit., for details).

75. Pogačnik, op. cit., p. 88.