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 () 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 Néprajzi Múzeum, Open- ...

and

judge A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a panel of judges. A judge hears all the witnesses and any other evidence presented by the barristers or solicitors of the case, assesses the credibility an ...

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

Bratislava Bratislava (, also ; ; german: Preßburg/Pressburg ; hu, Pozsony) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Slovakia. Officially, the population of the city is about 475,000; however, it is estimated to be more than 660,000 — approxim ...

Trnava Trnava (, german: Tyrnau; hu, Nagyszombat, also known by other alternative names) is a city in western Slovakia, to the northeast of Bratislava, on the Trnávka river. It is the capital of a ''kraj'' (Trnava Region) and of an '' okres'' (Trna ...

Wien en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

and

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...

. 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'' ( sr, Пашалија новаја), later also recorded by

Avram Miletić Avram Miletić ( sr, Аврам Милетић) (1755 – after 1826) was a merchant and writer of epic folk songs who is best known for writing the earliest collection of urban lyric poetry in Serbian language, Serbian between 1778 and 1781. Fa ...

. Avakumović died in 1810. As a poet Avakumović came to hold definite theories of purposes and values of

poetics Poetics is the theory of structure, form, and discourse within literature, and, in particular, within poetry. History The term ''poetics'' derives from the Ancient Greek ποιητικός ''poietikos'' "pertaining to poetry"; also "creative" an ...

and

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...

, 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, polyglot and the first minister of education ...

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

vernacular A vernacular or vernacular language is in contrast with a "standard language". It refers to the language or dialect that is spoken by people that are inhabiting a particular country or region. The vernacular is typically the native language, n ...

, 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 mode ...

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 male writers 19th-century Serbian poets {{Serbia-writer-stub