SOURCE: Butler, Thomas. “Jernej Kopitar and South Slavic Folklore.” In Papers in Slavic Philology 2: To Honor Jernej Kopitar 1780-1980, edited by Rado L. Lencek and Henry R. Cooper, Jr., pp. 109-21. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1982.

[In the following essay, Butler examines Jernej Kopitar's support of Karadžić and the importance of both to South Slavic folklore studies.]

Jernej Kopitar's role in promoting the collection and popularization of South Slavic folklore, as well as the establishment of a scientific basis for its investigation, has never been adequately examined nor sufficiently appreciated. When the Slovene's name is mentioned within the context of folklore it is usually in connection with his encouragement and support of the activities of Vuk Karadžić (1787-1864), the foremost collector and publisher of Serbo-Croatian folksongs, as well as the reformer of the Serbo-Croatian literary language.

Scholars have tended to regard Kopitar's strong support for Vuk's folklore activities within the framework of a larger interest, namely, the establishment of a new Serbian literary language based on the spoken language of the peasantry. The responsibility for this distorted focus on the Slovene's contributions to the folklore field must, at least in part, be laid at the door of Kopitar himself, for on many an occasion, in reviews and articles, he pointed to the high aesthetic quality and expressive language of the folksongs as proof of the superiority of Vuk's new literary language over the “macaronic language” (mixed Serbian and Russian Slavonic) of his opponents. The following paper will attempt to offer a more accurate picture of Kopitar as a folklorist by examining his development in this field as a separate phenomenon, without reference (as much as this is possible) to any of his other interests in the area of slavica.

Jernej Kopitar had outstanding assets for a South Slavic folklorist. First, he was a true man of the people; the son of peasants, he grew up on a farm and spoke only Slovene for the first nine years of his life. In his autobiographical sketch, written in 1839 and included in his Kleinere Schriften, Kopitar tells us that he knew “not a syllable of German” when he left his native village of Repnje and went to Ljubljana to attend the gymnasium.¹ Kopitar knew the rural Slavic agricultural milieu in a way no city dweller ever could; he understood Slavic folk ways because he had lived them, and throughout his scholarly career he maintained an interest not only in the folksongs but in the folk customs as well. He also never lost his instinct for what was authentic folklore and what was false.

Kopitar's work as the secretary to Baron Sigismund Zois, from 1799 to 1808, certainly contributed to his development as a scholar. While living in Zois' house he played an active role in the efforts of a Zois-led group to revive the Slovene literary language on the basis of Adelung's principles, which stressed the spoken language as the ultimate arbiter of correct usage (“schreib wie du sprichst”).² During this period Zois and his brother gleaned hundreds of words in the fields of botany and mineralogy from among the country folk; and the poet Valentin Vodnik, who was preparing a German-Slovene dictionary, copied down Slovene folksongs as well.³ Although Kopitar's Selbstbiographie offers no information on the subject, it does seem possible that young Jernej made folksong-collecting forays into his own native region during this period. This would have been a natural thing for him to do, not only in competition with Vodnik, but also in sympathy with the romantic enthusiasm for everything “folk” then prevailing in Europe.

Kopitar's classical education, plus his natural facility in learning foreign languages, also contributed to his development as a folklorist. Not only was he able to read the Homeric epic poems in the original Greek, but he was also able to read Macpherson's Ossian and the modern Greek folksongs as well. Perhaps the single most important “event” in the Slovene's development as a folklorist was his reading of Goethe's translation of the “Hasanaginica,” published in Herder's Volkslieder in 1778. A poetic jewel in its own right, Goethe's “Klaggesang von der edlen Frauen des Asan Aga” made such a deep impression on Kopitar that he referred to it in his Slovene Grammar (1808)⁴ and continued to refer to it in his writings on Serbo-Croatian folklore in subsequent years. In an age when all of Europe was awakening to the value of its folklore, this exquisite Moslem ballad was like a single Slavic nugget that continually enticed the young scholar with the thought that somewhere in the Balkans there was a “mother lode” of folksongs which would prove that the Slavic bards were the equal, if not the superiors, of their Germanic and Celtic counterparts. And not only were Kopitar, Zois, and Vodnik interested in Slavic folksongs, but the Patriarch of Slavic linguistics himself, Josef Dobrovský, wrote to Kopitar from Prague (in answer to an earlier letter), enquiring about the existence of South Slavic folksongs and folk ways.⁵

When Kopitar moved to Vienna in 1809, he asked his newfound Serbian and Croatian friends whether they knew any songs like the “Hasanaginica” or the poems in Kačić-Miošić's Razgovor ugodni.⁶ In a letter to Dobrovský from Vienna in 1809, the Slovene writes, “First of all, I asked my new Serbian friends about the Serbian folksongs, such as those about Kraljević Marko, etc.”⁷ In that letter he also included a pair of Croatian folksongs he had taken down from a Croatian border guard. During the early years in Vienna he began to study Serbo-Croatian seriously, making a chart of the differences between “Serbian” and his native tongue. (About this same time he became convinced that there was no essential difference between Serbian and Croatian.⁸) In 1810, at the wedding in Vienna of his former student Bonazza (Zois' nephew), Kopitar met the Croatian Bishop Maximilian Vrhovac. He asked Vrhovac's help in finding the Croatian folk treasure, and he eventually persuaded the Bishop to send out a circular letter to all his parish priests asking them to write down words, folk expressions, folksongs, and customs, and ordering them to keep a notebook of all old Slavic books and manuscripts in their parishes.⁹ But this attempt was largely unsuccessful, and Vrhovac sent the Slovene few songs.

Kopitar then decided to try the Serbs. On 24 June 1811 he wrote the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Austria, Bishop Stefan Stratimirović, asking for the name of a Serb with whom he could correspond regarding serbica.¹⁰ Stratimirović put him in touch with the archimandrite Lukijan Mušicki, who was a lover of folklore and a poet as well. In a letter to Mušicki in 1811 Kopitar mentioned Goethe's translation of the “Hasanaginica” and comments on the song's “depth of feeling.” He also discussed the puzzling (for non-Moslems) question of Hasan Aga's wife's refusal to visit her wounded husband in his tent (“a ljubovca od stida nije mogla”). And in this same letter he also continued his quest for authentic examples of folksongs: “If only a better Kačić would turn up among the Illyrians, one who would collect the most beautiful songs of every type, then the Serbs and Croats would have a treasure like perhaps no one else!”¹¹ Kopitar's hopes for maintaining a scholarly correspondence with Mušicki were largely unsatisfied, the Serb being a poor correspondent.

In his early review articles too, Kopitar referred to the need for a skilled collector of South Slavic folklore. In an article entitled “Slavische Sprachkunde,” published in the Vienna periodical Annalen für Literatur und Kunst (II, 1811, 52-68), while reviewing a new Croatian grammar, he suddenly stops and exclaims: “One more time! The Croats have such beautiful folksongs that Goethe and Herder translated several of them in the collections of their immortal works. Can no one be found who will collect them in a more critical and more complete way than did Kačić?”¹² In the same article Kopitar also cites the first lines of four folksongs from a Jesuit songbook, included with a Croatian evangelium first published in 1619.¹³ The Jesuit gave the first lines of the peasant songs to show the airs to which he wanted church hymns sung (“Poszejal szem basulek, poszejal szem, draga ljuba,” “Igralo kolo široko,” etc.). Kopitar asks: “Does anyone know whether these four folksongs have been preserved among the people?”¹⁴ Later scholars, including Vatroslav Jagić, followed the Slovene scholar's lead, using the old church hymnals as sources for the history of Slavic song.¹⁵

Kopitar's persistent search for a qualified collector of South Slavic folklore was finally crowned with success when he met Vuk Karadžić in 1813. A refugee from the recently suppressed Serbian uprising against the Ottoman Empire (more precisely, against some renegade local rulers called the dahije), Vuk had written a pamphlet in which he discussed the causes for the failure of the Serbian ustanak. Since Kopitar was by now the Censor for all Slavic books in the Austrian lands, Vuk's manuscript came into his hands for approval. In Vuk's own words: “This manuscript of mine came into the hands of Mr. Kopitar, as Censor, and when he recognized from it … that I was a man of the people, and that I was different from all the Serbs he had seen and known … he came to my place to see me.”¹⁶ Now we do not know precisely what it was in Vuk's pamphlet that drove Kopitar to seek him out, but it was most likely Vuk's language, which would have been closer to spoken Serbo-Croatian than the language of Kopitar's Serbian friends Davidović and Frušić (the editors of the new Serbian newspaper in Vienna, Novine Serbske), and certainly purer than the written language of Dositej Obradović, whose works the Slovene had already reviewed.¹⁷ It is also possible that in his pamphlet Vuk quoted some lines from the Serbian epic poems about the uprising. Whatever the cause of his initial interest, Kopitar quickly ascertained that Vuk knew Serbian folksongs and that he had access to other Serbs who knew songs, and so the Censor soon convinced him to begin preparation of a small book.

Vuk's first book of songs, Mala prostonarodnja slaveno-serbska pjesnarica, was published in Vienna in 1814. That same year the German folklorist Jakob Grimm came to the Austrian capital as a member of the Hesse-Cassel delegation to the Vienna Congress. It was Kopitar who met Grimm and told him of Vuk's songbook and persuaded the German to study Serbo-Croatian so that he might be able to read the songs in the original. Grimm wrote a review of the Pjesnarica for the Wiener allgemeine Literaturzeitung in 1815, at Kopitar's suggestion.¹⁸ In his review Grimm disclaimed his own competence to judge the purity of the Pjesnarica's language (to which Kopitar commented, in a footnote: “It is highly correct!”), but instead he analyzed the meter and the imagery of the songs, comparing them to German folk verse. Grimm's thoughtful review was the first scholarly critique of Serbo-Croatian folklore.

In persuading a scholar of the German's caliber to review Vuk's Pjesnarica, Jernej Kopitar not only enhanced the prestige of the songs among educated Serbs and Germans, but what is even more important he managed through Jakob Grimm to establish South Slavic folklore collecting on a scholarly basis from the very start. Grimm's concern for purity (authenticity) of language, his request for details concerning the singers, the music of the songs, and the circumstances of their recording—all these essential elements helped shape the framework within which future South Slavic folklore collecting would be carried out. Grimm also sent Vuk (via Kopitar) a circular on the proper method for collecting folklore, one which he had recently printed for use throughout the German-speaking lands.¹⁹ The German folklorist's influence on Slavic folklore collecting was not confined to the South Slavic area alone, however; Max Vasmer has shown that Grimm also had a strong influence on nineteenth-century Russian folklorists, including Hil'ferding, Afanasyev, and Snegiryov.²⁰ It does not seem an overstatement then to say that Jernej Kopitar's enthusiasm for Slavic folklore, which led him to seek out Jakob Grimm and persuade him to study Slavic languages and folklore, had a profound effect on the collection and preservation of folklore in the Slavic world.

Vuk's second book of songs, Srpske narodne pjesme (1815), was reviewed by Kopitar himself anonymously, since the book was dedicated to him.²¹ The reviewer begins by stating that this book contains the first and only examples of pure Serbo-Croatian published to date. He shows the breadth of his Balkan interests, as he compares the Serbian songs to the modern Greek: “Only the peasants and the hajduk poets, who can neither read nor write, express themselves in pure Greek, as here in pure Serbian.” The reviewer compliments his protegé for reproducing the songs exactly as they were sung, reflecting for example the dialect differences between Bačka and Hercegovina. He also compliments Vuk for giving the music for some of the songs (here Vuk was helped by the Polish composer Mirecki), and for giving biographical details about the singers.

Kopitar showed his classical background in his review, as he compared the singer Filip Višnjić's “Početak bune protiv Dahije,” a song about the beginning of the Serbian uprising in 1804, with Homer's Iliad: “It is twice as long as Homer's catalog of ships in the Iliad!” the excited Slovene exclaimed. In this review and elsewhere he began to refer to the Serbian epic poets as “Homeriden,” and in 1819 he wrote the German scholar F. Wolf, author of Prolegomena ad Homerum (1795), to advise him that a study of the Serbo-Croatian epic songs would be a useful approach to understanding the composition of the Homeric epics themselves.²² This insight anticipated the direction of later scholars such as Murko, Parry, and Lord.

Having established through Vuk the existence of a rich store of Balkan Slavic song, and having promoted the publication of two books of these songs, Jernej Kopitar began to concern himself with their poetic translation into German. He hoped that such a translation might convince European scholars and literati of the wealth and beauty of Slavic folklore. In reviewing Vuk's second songbook, the Vienna Censor had asked whether “some Goethe might also transplant these magnificent flowers onto the German Parnassus.” Kopitar did not mention that he himself had already translated into German 107 songs from Vuk's Pjesnarica, and had sent them to Goethe with a “Vorbericht” in which he advised the great poet that Vuk Karadžić, the collector and publisher of these songs, was a refugee from Serbia, and that it was only after he had seen Herder's Volkslieder and Goethe's translation of the “Hasanaginica” that he was persuaded to write down the songs.²³ The Slovene, who signed himself simply “Kop.,” without giving any further clue to his identity, probably hoped that the renowned poet would rework his simple prose translations into a poetic German. This Goethe did not do, but he did keep the translations, and they did serve a useful purpose later, as we shall see.

Kopitar also tried to get his friend Jakob Grimm to do a poetic translation of the songs. He hounded Grimm to no avail, since the German folklorist did not believe it possible to translate poetry successfully. (On the other hand, Grimm did translate two songs for Goethe's journal Über die Kunst und Alterthum, and he is also believed to have translated the nineteen Serbo-Croatian songs in F. Förster's Sängerfahrt [1818], although this has been the subject of some dispute, some scholars preferring to ascribe the latter translations to Kopitar.)²⁴ Kopitar even tried to persuade Mušicki to do a German version of the Pjesnarica, but this attempt also failed.²⁵

But as was the case with his years-long quest for a collector of the songs, Kopitar's search for a translator was eventually successful. A Fräulein Theresa Albertine Louisa von Jakob, later known to the literary world by her acronym Talvj, inspired by Grimm's review of Vuk's 1823 (Leipzig) edition of the folksongs, as well as by Goethe's connection with the Serbo-Croatian lore, sent Goethe her own translations of a few of Vuk's songs. Goethe accepted the translations for publication in his journal and suggested that she do a full book of songs. He sent her Kopitar's 107 translations to help her on her way.²⁶ Now Talvj is said to have known both Russian and Church Slavonic, languages which she learned during the course of several years spent in Russia with her schoolteacher father.²⁷ Yet she did not know Serbo-Croatian, and so she wrote Kopitar on 23 May 1824, seeking the Slovene linguist's aid:

Your Excellency may pardon the boldness with which I, a complete stranger, propose a correspondence of which I have a very definite need. The impossibility to find here … advice on the Serbian language and … the lack of tools … all of this gives me the courage; and the actual part which your Excellency played in furthering Vuk's own undertaking gives me the hope that you will not refuse to give your kind attention to my translations.²⁸

An examination of Talvj's correspondence with the Vienna Censor in the period 1824-1826, and a comparison of her translations with the 107 translations first sent to Goethe by “Kop.,” will show that she was closely dependent on both Kopitar and Vuk in the preparation of her two-volume Volkslieder der Serben (Halle, 1825-1826). She nagged Kopitar and Vuk to send her more German prose translations of the folksongs, and she also borrowed heavily from the German translations published by the Slovene in Hormayr's Archiv.²⁹ But even while imploring their advice and guidance, she also complained bitterly when Kopitar did not allow her “muse” sufficient freedom. She preferred freer and more Germanized translations, at least in the beginning of her translating activity, while the Slovene, like Grimm, wanted a close and nearly literal rendition. Although Kopitar refused to allow her to mention his name in the foreword to her book, denying her translation of the protection of his “scholarly authority” (her words), she did manage to acknowledge his role in a later edition of the book, which appeared several years after the scholar's death.³⁰

Kopitar's efforts to gain Serbo-Croatian folklore a European audience were further enhanced by the publication of English and French editions of the songs, based on Talvj's German translations. John Bowring (Servian Popular Poetry [London, 1827]) had been in correspondence with Kopitar and had received two volumes of the songs in the original Serbo-Croatian. But this was hardly necessary, because he simply pirated Talvj's work, barely acknowledging his debt to her. Elise Voiart (Chants populaires des Serviens recueillis par Wuk Stephanowitsch et traduits d'après Talvj, I-II [Paris, 1834]) freely acknowledged her debt to Talvj, as the title of her book indicates.

The Talvj, Bowring, and Voiart editions of the Serbo-Croatian folksongs represented the culmination of the Slovene scholar's efforts in the folklore field, and the fulfillment of a task he had pursued over the course of some twenty years: to find the missing mother lode of South Slavic lore; to have it published in the original; and then to have the songs translated so that they might reach the broadest possible audience. It is true that he had a simultaneous interest in the establishment of a new Serbo-Croatian literary language based on the spoken language of the peasantry, but this was a separate goal; and while the two interests were inevitably intertwined at times (the beauty of the songs serving as a justification for the new literary language), still it would be an injustice to Jernej Kopitar not to view his folklore activities independently, as a pioneering effort which influenced not only the scholarly level at which South Slavic songs were collected and studied, but which also affected (through Grimm) the level of folklore scholarship in Russia as well.

Notes

1. Jernej Kopitar, “Selbstbiographie,” in Kleinere Schriften, I (cited hereafter as KS), ed. Franz Miklosich (Vienna, 1857), p. 3. Note that the German form of Kopitar's given name, Bartholomäus, appears on his writings.

2. Johann C. Adelung, Deutsche Sprachlehre zum Gebrauche der Schulen in den könig. preuss. Länden (Berlin, 1781), p. 577.

3. Nestor M. Petrovskij, Pervye gody dejatel'nosti V. Kopitara (Kazan', 1906), p. 29.

4. Bartholomäus Kopitar, Grammatik der slavischen Sprache in Krain, Kärnten und Steyermark (Laibach, 1808).

5. Dobrovský wrote Kopitar in 1809: “Gibt es erweislich alte Volkslieder? Sind sie 4 oder 8-sylbig? … Wer hat sich in Liedern (oder der Poesie) vor andern, früh oder spät ausgezeichnet? Gibt es Fabeln oder Räthsel? Gibt es gedruckte Sammlungen von Sprichwörtern?” In Pis'ma Dobrovskogo i Kopitara v povremennom porjadke, ed. Vatroslav Jagič, Sbornik ORJaS AN, 39 (St. Petersburg, 1885), p. 28.

6. Kačić-Miošić (1704-1760) published the first edition of his Razgovor ugodni naroda slovinskoga (A Pleasant Discourse about the Slavic People) in Venice in 1756. Kačić enlivened his history of the Slavs with poems about famous battles and leaders. Most of these poems are of his own composition, and although they have a folk style they also have elements such as rhyme which distinguish them from the true oral epic. For a while Kopitar believed, as did others, that Kačić had taken these songs from the folk bards. In a review of Dobrovský's Slovanka he said of Kačić's Razgovor: “… worin viele serbische Heldenlieder vorkommen und der daher unter allen mit lateinischen Buchstaben gedruckten Büchern allein auch von Orthodoxen Serben gelesen wird.” (In Wiener allgemeine Literaturzeitung [hereafter WALZ] II (1814); KS, p. 287.) In a letter to Vuk, dated 27 May 1814, he urged the Serb to republish Kačić's songs but in a Serbian text: “Die Krainer schreiben mir: Es gehört die Beharlichkeit eines Vuk dazu, um aus der schlechten und fehlervollen Orthographie des Kacsich den serbischen Text herzustellen. … Kein Volk wird dann so schöne Volkslieder aufzuweisen haben, als das Serbische.” (Vukova prepiska [ed. Ljub. Stojanović] I, p. 134.) Vuk stalled Kopitar by pointing out that since Serbs had already read Kačić in latin letters he doubted they would buy the same book again in cyrillic. (Vukova prepiska, I, p. 136.) But within nine months Kopitar figured out that Kačić's songs were not authentic folk songs, but his own. On 21 March 1815 he wrote to Vuk: “Eben sehe ich, dass Kačić nicht gesammelt, sondern sie alles selbst gemacht hat, und zwar im serbischen Metro, aber dazu noch gereimt. (Vukova prepiska, I, 143-44.) And just three days later he wrote Dobrovský: “Video Cacichium plerasque ipsum fecisse, modis quidem serbicis, sed tamen a se … factas etc.” (Pis'ma Dobrovskogo i Kopitara, op. cit., p. 401.)

7. Ibid., 35-36.

8. On 1 February 1810 he wrote Dobrovský: “Kroatischer und Serbischer Dialekt sind synonyma.” (Pis'ma Dobrovskogo i Kopitara, op. cit., p. 87.)

9. Bishop Vrhovac's circular letter of 26 June 1813 is cited by Matthias Murko in his Deutsche Einflüsse auf die Anfänge der böhmischen Romantik (Graz, 1897), p. 10. Murko quotes Vrhovac's circular: “Omnes cuiusvis generis cantilenas croaticas aut slavonicas cum adnotatione, quantum constaret, quando, et a quo … opportune colligat et haec omnia ad me successive transmittat.” The full circular was first published in Danica ilirska in 1837 (no. 24). It was later republished in Kolo, IX, 43-46.

10. Novye pis'ma Dobrovskogo, Kopitara, i drugix jugozapadnyx slavjan, ed. Vatroslav Jagič, Sbornik ORJaS AN, 62 (St. Petersburg, 1897), 779-80.

11. Ibid., p. 786.

12. KS, p. 46.

13. Szveti Evangeliumi, koteremi szveta czirkva katholiczka szlovenszko-horvaczka sivée (Czeska Ternava, 1694), 12th edition.

14. KS, p. 47.

15. See Vatroslav Jagić's article “Gradja za slovensku narodnu poeziju,” in Rad JAZU, XXXVIII (1876), 33-137.

16. Quoted from Vuk's article “Pravi uzrok i početak skupljanja našijeh narodnijeh pjesama,” republished in Vuk Karadžić, Skupljeni gramatički i polemički spisi, III, ed. L. L. Djordjević (Belgrade, 1896), p. 66.

17. Kopitar wrote several early articles designed to bring the works of Dositej Obradović to the attention of the Austrian reading public. He translated “Bruchstücke” from Obradović's autobiography, Život i priključenija, including the “letter to Haralampije” (Dositej's manifesto on the new Serbian literary language); he also published a “Vollständiger Auszug” from the same work, and wrote a eulogy to the Serbian “Anacharsis” after Obradović's death. All three Kopitar pieces are reprinted in KS, 49-56, 79-94, and 113-120.

18. Jakob Grimm's review of the Pjesnarica in WALZ in 1815 was republished in his Kleinere Schriften, IV, 427-36 (1869 edition). In his very thoughtful review Grimm touches upon the connection between a scarcity of written culture and a rich and vital folklore: “Unter allen slawischen Völkerstämmen sind diese Serben mit ihrer sanften, überaus singbaren Sprache, zum voraus begabt mit Lied, Gesang, und Sage, und es scheint, als ob der gütige Himmel ihnen ihre Bücherlosigkeit durch einen Haussegen von Volkspoesie stets habe ersetzen wollen”; op. cit., p. 436.

19. Jakob Grimm, “Circular wegen Aufsammlung der Volkspoesie” (Vienna, 1815).

20. Max Vasmer, in Bausteine zur Geschichte der deutsch-slavischen geistigen Beziehungen, I (Berlin, 1939), writes concerning Grimm's influence on the Russian folklorists: “Was die Sammlung Hilferdings (Onežskije byliny) besonders wertvoll macht, ist die genaue Beachtung der Eigenart der einzelnen Liedersänger und die treue Beibehaltung der sprachlichen Form. Beides hatte Grimm in seinen Besprechungen von Vuks Serbischen Liedern gefordert”; op. cit., p. xxxi.

21. Kopitar's review appeared in WALZ in 1816, 314-33. It is also in his KS, 347-69.

22. Max Vasmer, op. cit., p. xxxix, quotes Kopitar's letter to F. A. Wolf, dated 26 March 1819: “Nirgends gibt es noch heute zu Tage treffendere Pendants zu Ihren Homeriden, als in Serbien und Bosnien.”

23. Jevto Milović, Übertragungen slavischer Volkslieder aus Goethes Briefnachlass (Veröffentlichungen des Slavischen Instituts an der Fried.-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin, 28) (Leipzig, 1939), p. viii.

24. The “neunzehn serbische Lieder” in Förster's Die Sängerfahrt: Eine Neujahrsgabe für Freunde der Dichtkunst und Malerei (Berlin, 1818), are included both in the collected works of Jakob Grimm (KS, IV [1869], 455-67) and of Jernej Kopitar (Jerneja Kopitarja Spisov II del, 1 knjiga [Ljubljana, 1944]). Rajko Nahtigal, editor of the latter volume, gives a long discussion (72-75) of the dispute over the authorship of the nineteen translations in Förster's book.

25. Vuk wrote to Mušicki, relaying to him Kopitar's suggestion that the archimandrite should translate the poems “for the honor of the Serbian nation and language.” Novye pis'ma, p. 798.

26. The Kopitar-Goethe-Talvj connection is discussed by Jevto Milović (op. cit., p. xi).

27. For information on Talvj's life see Irma E. Voigt, Life and Works of Mrs. Theresa Robinson (Talvj) (Chicago, 1913).

28. See Jevto Milović, Talvjs erste Übertragungen für Goethe und ihre Briefe an Kopitar (Vëroffentlichungen des Slavischen Instituts an der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin, 33) (Leigzig, 1941), p. 36.

29. Kopitar published his translation of Višnjić's “Početak bune protiv Dahije,” (“Der Aufstand der Serbier gegen die Dahijen”), in Hormayer's Archiv für Geographie, Historie, Staats- und Kriegskunst, in January 1818 (republished in Jerneja Kopitarja Spisov II del, knj. 1, 28-45); in March of that same year he published three more translations of epic songs from the Serbian uprising: “O bitki srbskoj s Turcima na Salašu”; “O bitki srbskoj s Turcima na Mišarskom polju,” and “O smrti Mehe Orukčžića” (republished in ibid, knj. 1, 45-72). Kopitar's translations are accompanied by interesting notes which show that he was not a mere dilettante but a scholar who had studied the cultural background of these songs as well. For example, in one note he reminds the reader that the Bosnian Turks are not real Turks, but Serbs who profess the Koran: “they seldom know any Turkish, but just Serbian” (ibid., p. 67). Kopitar also sprinkles his commentary with references to the ancient Greek epics; for example, in a note to “O smrti Mehe Orukčžića,” where the singer hails the land of Pozerje, home of the hero Miloš Stojčevič, the Slovene writes: “Wir enthalten uns hier aller Parallelen mit der dankbaren altgriechischen Sitte, auch den Geburtsort des Helden zu preisen; sie ist in der Natur der Sache gegründet” (ibid., p. 71).

30. In the introduction to the third edition of her Volkslieder der Serben (Leipzig, 1853), published nine years after Kopitar's death, Talvj wrote: “Ich würde nicht den Muth gehabt haben, meine Versuche dem Publikum zu übergeben, wenn nicht der ausgezeichnete slavische Gelehrte Kopitar aus Liebe zur Sache übernommen hätte, mein Manuscript durchzusehen” (op. cit., I, p. xxxviii).