Jelena Dimitrijević (27 March 1862 – 10 April 1945) was a Serbian

short story writer A short story is a piece of prose fiction. It can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the old ...

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living wage, living writing novels and other fiction, while other ...

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

travel Travel is the movement of people between distant geographical Location (geography), locations. Travel can be done by Pedestrian, foot, bicycle, automobile, train, boat, bus, airplane, ship or other means, with or without Baggage, luggage, a ...

ler,

social worker Social work is an academic discipline and practice-based profession concerned with meeting the basic needs of individuals, families, groups, communities, and society as a whole to enhance their individual and collective well-being. Social wo ...

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

, and a

polyglot Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. When the languages are just two, it is usually called bilingualism. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolin ...

. She is considered to be the first woman in modern Serbian history to publish a work of travel related prose in 1894. During the years 1926 to 1927 she traveled around the world, including the

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East Asia East Asia is a geocultural region of Asia. It includes China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan, plus two special administrative regions of China, Hong Kong and Macau. The economies of Economy of China, China, Economy of Ja ...

, and

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, where she was the guest of

Rabindranath Tagore Rabindranath Thakur (; anglicised as Rabindranath Tagore ; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengalis, Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer, and painter of the Bengal Renai ...

Biography

Dimitrijević was born in

Kruševac Kruševac ( sr-Cyrl, Крушевац, ) is a list of cities in Serbia, city and the administrative center of the Rasina District in central Serbia. It is located in the valley of West Morava, on Rasina (river), Rasina river. According to the 202 ...

on 27 March 1862, and featured as a prominent Serbian writer of the late 19th- and early 20th-century. She taught herself to speak French, English, Russian, Italian, Greek and Turkish. She was raised in a respected and wealthy family, in the spirit of Serbian cultural heritage and Orthodox religion. From an early age, she dedicated herself to writing – notwithstanding a childhood eye injury that forced her to leave school, and against medical advice forbidding her to read. She had a great support in her husband Jovan Dimitrijević. Besides supporting her writing and social activities, he was often her fellow traveler and the person she could completely rely on. Dimitrijević travelled widely, describing her experiences of

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

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, and

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in a series of books. When he died, she was in mourning for the rest of her life. In 1881 they moved to Niš, which had been part of the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...

until 1878. She devoted her energies to the study of

Muslim Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

women, and in 1897 published ''Pisma iz Niša o haremima (Letters from

Niš Niš (; sr-Cyrl, Ниш, ; names of European cities in different languages (M–P)#N, names in other languages), less often spelled in English as Nish, is the list of cities in Serbia, third largest city in Serbia and the administrative cente ...

Regarding Harems) – "...'' the first Serbian prose book written and published by a female author." Among her achievements were gaining an understanding of the lives of Turkish women, including access to the private world of the

harem A harem is a domestic space that is reserved for the women of the house in a Muslim family. A harem may house a man's wife or wives, their pre-pubescent male children, unmarried daughters, female domestic Domestic worker, servants, and other un ...

, and undertaking a journey around the world in her sixties. Such portraits are a valuable counter to the narrow conceptions of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century feminism which sees it firmly rooted in north-west Europe and North America. For example, "Jelena was proud to have met Mrs Hoda Sha’arawi, the founder of the

Egyptian Feminist Union The Egyptian Feminist Union () was the first nationwide feminist movement in Egypt. History and profile The Egyptian Feminist Union was founded at a meeting on 6 March 1923 at the home of activist Huda Sha'arawi, who served as its first president ...

; an encounter she wrote about in great detail in her acclaimed 1940 travelogue ''Sedam mora i tri okeana'' (Seven Seas and Three Oceans) which deals with her travels across the

Near East The Near East () is a transcontinental region around the Eastern Mediterranean encompassing the historical Fertile Crescent, the Levant, Anatolia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and coastal areas of the Arabian Peninsula. The term was invented in the 20th ...

Her most important novel ''Nove'' (New Women) deals with the dilemmas facing educated Muslim women in the twentieth century in relation to their traditional way of life. For ''Nove'' Dimitrijevic won the prestigious

Matica Srpska The Matica srpska ( sr-Cyrl-Latn, Матица српска, Matica srpska, ) is the oldest Serbian language independent, non-profit, non-governmental and cultural-scientific Serbian national institution. It was founded on June 1, 1826, in Pest, ...

prize for literature in 1912. She also wrote lyric poetry as well as novels, but is possibly most famous for her ''Pisma iz Nisa o Haremima'', a semi-fictionalised, semi-historical, anthropological narrative containing portraits of life in the Turkish

s 50 years before her birth when the south-Serbian city of

was still a part of the

, and ''Pisma iz Soluna''/''Letters from Salonica'', a genuine travelogue from the Ottoman Empire during the

Young Turk Revolution The Young Turk Revolution (July 1908; ) was a constitutionalist revolution in the Ottoman Empire. Revolutionaries belonging to the Internal Committee of Union and Progress, an organization of the Young Turks movement, forced Sultan Abdul Hamid II ...

in 1908, of which

Salonica Thessaloniki (; ), also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, Salonika, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece (with slightly over one million inhabitants in its Thessaloniki metropolitan area, metropolitan area) and the capital cit ...

was the centre. The ''Letters'' were published first in ''Srpski književni glasnik'' (Serbian Literary Review) in 1908–09, and then as a separate book in 1918 in

Sarajevo Sarajevo ( ), ; ''see Names of European cities in different languages (Q–T)#S, names in other languages'' is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, largest city of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a population of 2 ...

. By the beginning of the 20th Century she and her husband were living in

Belgrade Belgrade is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Serbia, largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers and at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin, Pannonian Plain and the Balkan Peninsula. T ...

and she was a member of the Serbian Writers' Society. She died in Belgrade on 10 April 1945, aged 83.

Works

* ''Jelenine pesme (Pesme Jelene Jov. Dimitrijevića)'', 1894. * ''Pisma iz Niša o haremima'', 1897. * ''Đul-Marikina prikažnja'', short stories, 1901. * ''Fati-Sultan'', ''Safi-Hanum'',''Mejrem-Hanum'', short stories, 1907. * ''Nove'', 1912. * ''Amerikanka'', 1918. * ''Pisma iz Soluna'', 1918. * ''Pisma iz Indije'', 1928. * ''Pisma iz Misira'', 1929. * ''Novi svet ili u Americi godinu dana'', 1934. * ''Une vision'', 1936. * ''Sedam mora i tri okeana. Putem oko sveta'', 1940.

References

Sources

* * * Hawkesworth, Celia, ''Voices in the Shadows: Women and Verbal Art in Serbia and Bosnia,'' published by Central European University Press (Budapest, New York, 2000). * Skerlić, Jovan, ''Istorija Nove Srpske Književnosti''/A History of New Serbian Literature (Second Edition, 1921), p. 476. {{DEFAULTSORT:Dimitrijevic, Jelena 1862 births 1945 deaths Serbian feminists Women travel writers Serbian travel writers Serbian women short story writers Serbian short story writers Serbian novelists Serbian women poets Writers from Kruševac Serbian women novelists 19th-century Serbian women writers 20th-century Serbian women writers People from the Kingdom of Serbia

Biography

Works

See also

References

Sources