Jovan Avakumović ( sr-cyr, Јован Авакумовић, – 1810), also known by his nickname Pašalija, was a Serbian poet, nobleman and lawyer.

Life

Jovan was born in 1748 into the prominent family of Nikola Avakumović, a merchant of

Szentendre Szentendre, also known as Saint Andrew is a riverside town in Pest County, Hungary, between the capital city Budapest and Pilis Mountains, Pilis-Visegrád Mountains. The town is known for its museums (most notably the :hu: Szentendrei Szabadtéri ...

and

judge A judge is a person who wiktionary:preside, presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a judicial panel. In an adversarial system, the judge hears all the witnesses and any other Evidence (law), evidence presented by the barris ...

whom Emperor Leopold II named a nobleman in charters. He was schooled in

Bratislava Bratislava (German: ''Pressburg'', Hungarian: ''Pozsony'') is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the Slovakia, Slovak Republic and the fourth largest of all List of cities and towns on the river Danube, cities on the river Danube. ...

Trnava Trnava (, , ; , also known by other #Names and etymology, alternative names) is a city in western Slovakia, to the northeast of Bratislava, on the Trnávka river. It is the capital of the Trnava Region and the Trnava District. It is the seat o ...

Wien Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

and

Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...

. He was a lawyer of the Temišvar Eparchy. As a poet he was famed in his time and known as a representative of the Serbian folk poetry of the 18th century, even if he only wrote a few poems which were part of handwritten poem books. In 1775 he composed song ''Pašalija'' (), later also recorded by Avram Miletić. Avakumović died in 1810. As a poet Avakumović came to hold definite theories of purposes and values of poetics and

orthography An orthography is a set of convention (norm), conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, punctuation, Word#Word boundaries, word boundaries, capitalization, hyphenation, and Emphasis (typography), emphasis. Most national ...

, which he set forth in poems collected after his death in ''Pesme Jovana Avakumovića'' (Poems of Jovan Avakumović). Besides

Dositej Obradović Dositej Obradović ( sr-Cyrl, Доситеј Обрадовић, ; 17 February 1739 – 7 April 1811) was a Serbian writer, biographer, diarist, philosopher, pedagogue, educational reformer, linguist and the first minister of education of Se ...

, he was among the first to produce works in verse in Serbian

vernacular Vernacular is the ordinary, informal, spoken language, spoken form of language, particularly when perceptual dialectology, perceived as having lower social status or less Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestige than standard language, which is mor ...

, anticipating the 19th century language reforms of

Vuk Karadžić Vuk Stefanović Karadžić ( sr-Cyrl, Вук Стефановић Караџић, ; 6 November 1787 (26 October OS)7 February 1864) was a Serbian philologist, anthropologist and linguist. He was one of the most important reformers of the moder ...

References

Sources

Rastko
''Istorija Srba'' 18th-century Serbian lawyers 18th-century Serbian nobility 19th-century Serbian nobility 1748 births 1810 deaths Serbian male poets People from Szentendre Serbs of Hungary Habsburg Serbs 18th-century Serbian writers 19th-century Serbian male writers 19th-century Serbian poets {{Serbia-writer-stub