Milica Stojadinovic-Srpkinja
Encyclopedia
Milica Stojadinovic-Srpkinja (Serbian
Serbian language
Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....

 Cyrillic: Милица Стојадиновић Српкиња, mîlitsa stɔjadǐːnɔv̞itɕ sr̩̂pkiɲa) (1828, Bukovac
Bukovac
Bukovac is a village in Serbia. It is situated in the Petrovaradin urban municipality , in the Vojvodina province. The village has a Serb ethnic majority and its population is 3,595 .-The name:The name Bukovac is thought to be derived from the word for a tree - 'bukva'...

, Petrovaradin
Petrovaradin
Petrovaradin , is part of the agglomeration of Novi Sad in Serbia...

 - 1878, Belgrade
Belgrade
Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...

) was arguably the greatest female Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...

n poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 of the 19th century.

Biography

She was born to a family of a Serb Orthodox Church parish priest, and received acclaim for her patriotic poetry already as a teen; she expanded to other aspects of Romanticist poetry as she grew older. In her hometown of Bukovac
Bukovac
Bukovac is a village in Serbia. It is situated in the Petrovaradin urban municipality , in the Vojvodina province. The village has a Serb ethnic majority and its population is 3,595 .-The name:The name Bukovac is thought to be derived from the word for a tree - 'bukva'...

 her character was shaped; here she imbibed that passionate love of country scenes and country life which neither absence, politics nor dissipation could uproot. Here she learnt to understand the ways and thoughts of the peasant folk, and laid up that rich store of scenes and characters which a marvelously retentive memory enabled her to draw upon at will. The progress of her mind during these early years well deserves to be recorded.

Education, in the strict sense of the word, she had very little. Except for a lower Gymnasium
Gymnasium (school)
A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...

 education, she was mostly self-taught, and yet she was greatly appreciated in her lifetime by poets and writers much more soundly academic than herself, such as Petar II Petrović Njegoš, Branko Radičević
Branko Radicevic
Branko Radičević , an influential Serbian poet, within a short space of time contrived to enhance Serbian literature with several perennially attractive poems.- Biography:...

, Ivan Mažuranić
Ivan Mažuranic
Ivan Mažuranić was a Croatian poet, linguist and politician—probably the most important figure in Croatia's cultural life in the mid-19th century...

, and Ljubomir Nenadović. When Njegoš first met her in Vienna, he said: I'm a poet, she is a poetess. Were I not a bishop, Montenegro would now have a princess (quoted from Milovan Djilas's Njegoš: Poet, Prince, Bishop, published by Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, New York, 1966, p. 242).

Her first book of poems -- Pesme (Poems) -- was published in 1850, and, later on, two expanded editions were issued in 1855 and 1869. She also wrote a diary entitled U Fruskoj gori 1854 (In Fruska Gora
Fruška Gora
Fruška Gora is a mountain in north Syrmia. Most part of the territory is located within Vojvodina, Serbia, but a smaller part on its western side overlaps the territory of Croatia...

: 1854), in three volumes, published in 1861, 1862 and 1866. She spoke German fluently, and even translated articles from German magazines for Serbian newspapers. Milica is considered the first woman war correspondent in Serbia. In 1862 she was a witness to a skirmish between the Serbian Gendarmerie
Gendarmerie
A gendarmerie or gendarmery is a military force charged with police duties among civilian populations. Members of such a force are typically called "gendarmes". The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary describes a gendarme as "a soldier who is employed on police duties" and a "gendarmery, -erie" as...

 and Turkish troops near Belgrade's Cukur Fountain (Ćukur česma), which resulted in the bombardment of the capital by Turkish artillery ensconced in the Kalemegdan
Kalemegdan
Belgrade Fortress , represent old citadel and Kalemegdan Park on the confluence of the River Sava and Danube, in an urban area of modern Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. It is located in Belgrade's municipality of Stari Grad...

 fortress.

As her fame spread beyond the confines of Serbian culture of the Austrian Empire
Austrian Empire
The Austrian Empire was a modern era successor empire, which was centered on what is today's Austria and which officially lasted from 1804 to 1867. It was followed by the Empire of Austria-Hungary, whose proclamation was a diplomatic move that elevated Hungary's status within the Austrian Empire...

, Prince Mihailo Obrenović
Mihailo Obrenovic III, Prince of Serbia
Mihailo Obrenović was Prince of Serbia from 1839–1842 and again from 1860–1868. His first reign ended when he was deposed in 1842 and his second when he was assassinated in 1868.-Early life and first reign:...

 would invite her to court when she came to Belgrade and Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

-based anthropologist and poet Johann Gabriel Seidl
Johann Gabriel Seidl
Johann Gabriel Seidl was an Austrian archeologist, poet, storyteller and dramatist. He wrote the lyrics to "Gott erhalte, Gott beschütze unsern Kaiser, unser Land!" This was the 1854 version of the Austrian Imperial Anthem, music by Joseph Haydn .Born in Vienna, Johann Gabriel Seidl was the son of...

 devoted a poem to her.

She corresponded extensively with Vuk Stefanović Karadžić
Vuk Stefanovic Karadžic
Vuk Stefanović Karadžić was a Serbian philolog and linguist, the major reformer of the Serbian language, and deserves, perhaps, for his collections of songs, fairy tales, and riddles to be called the father of the study of Serbian folklore. He was the author of the first Serbian dictionary...

 and his daughter Wilhelmine/Mina, Božena Němcová
Božena Nemcová
Božena Němcová was a Czech writer of the final phase of the Czech National Revival movement.-Biography:...

, and with Ludwig August von Frankl
Ludwig August von Frankl
Ludwig August Ritter von Frankl-Hochwart was a Bohemian-Austrian writer and poet. He was a friend of Nikolaus Lenau. Also, he corresponded with Petar II Petrovic Njegos of Montenegro before he died in 1851. Frankl's Gusle, Serbische Nationallieder was dedicated to Vuk Karadžić's daughter in 1952...

. (In 1891 an almanach Die Dioskuren was issued in Vienna by Ludwig von Frankl with a collection of letters written by Milica Stojadinović).

Her work, though, has been mostly out of the public eye and almost forgotten except by literary experts for most of the 20th century, first during fin-de-siècle modernist poeticism as an outdated poetic form of pre-1870s, and later, under Communist rule as an unacceptable expression of patriotism for only one of the six nations of Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....

 (namely: Serbian).

After Josip Broz Tito
Josip Broz Tito
Marshal Josip Broz Tito – 4 May 1980) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian, Tito was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad, viewed as a unifying symbol for the nations of the Yugoslav federation...

's death the awareness of her work was revived, and in the last quarter of a century a four-day poetry memorial is convened annually in Novi Sad
Novi Sad
Novi Sad is the capital of the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina, and the administrative centre of the South Bačka District. The city is located in the southern part of Pannonian Plain on the Danube river....

 in her honour, where a poetry prize bearing her name is awarded to prominent poets from Serbia.

In a book on the history of Serbian literature, Istorija srpske književnosti, written by Jovan Deretić, she is mentioned numerous times as a figure who fascinated contemporaries not only because of her poetry, but also because of her unusual beauty.... but whose verses .... have more moral preaching and patriotic thoughts than real poetry. She expressed better her personality in her diary "U Fruskoj gori" than in her poems... (Deretić, 1983, p. 328)

Milica's diary was reprinted in 1985 by the publishing house Prosveta in Belgrade; her Prepiska Milica Stojadinovic Srpkinja sa Vukom i Minom / Correspondence with Vuk and Mina Karadzic was published in 1987 (Knizevna zajednica Novog Sada); and four years later her "Other Letters to Contemporaries" were published in a book, edited by Radmilla Gikic. A selection of her poems was published in 1995 by Papirus in Novi Sad. After 2000, the reception of Milica Stojadinović's work gained new momentum from women's studies
Women's studies
Women's studies, also known as feminist studies, is an interdisciplinary academic field which explores politics, society and history from an intersectional, multicultural women's perspective...

in the works by Celia Hawkesworth, Magdalena Koch, Slavica Garonja, and Biljana Dojčinović.
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