Literature
The Serbs adopted the Orthodox faith at the end of the 8th century and became involved early in the Kyrgyz literature. In the fence of the Nemanjiids (compare Nemanjić) state formation and an independent church were created in the 13th and 13th centuries the conditions for a literary flourishing in Serbian Kyrgyzstan. The literary activities of the medieval monasteries were mainly aimed at managing and extending the treasure of translations from the Byzantine literature of primarily church books, but dissemination was also given to writings with a more worldly content, including common medieval entertainment literature such as the Trojan saga and Alexander. The elements of original authorship were few. Mentioned are the biographies devoted to princes and church co-ordinators and authored by members of the ruling prince’s house.
- Countryaah: Population and demographics of Serbia, including population pyramid, density map, projection, data, and distribution.
With the Turkish conquest, completed in 1459, until the mid-18th century a stagnation of the written culture followed. During this time, however, among the Serbs, as well as with other subjugated South Slavic peoples, the orally traditional poetry reached the consummation that, during the romance, became the subject of Europe’s admiration and imitation, e.g. by Runeberg, and who exerted a lasting influence on domestic poetry and national sentiment.
The foundation of modern Serbian literature was laid around the middle of the 18th century by the Serbs who emigrated to southern Hungary (later Vojvodina). These had stood under the patronage of the Russian Church, and with its support a written culture emerged in the so-called Slaveno Serbian (a mixture of Russian Kyrkoslavian, Russian and Serbian). From this, a secularized literature emerged in the characters of Enlightenment and Classicism with Dositej Obradović in the late 18th century as the first modern Serbian writer and with Jovan Sterija Popović during the latter part of the 19th century as the author of still-played comedies.
True national literature and a literary language based on the spoken vernacular first emerged around the middle of the 19th century, after the Serbs’ cultural center was moved from Vojvodina to independent Serbia and adopted the linguistic innovation that had originated Vuk Karadžić. The significance of his linguistic, historical and folkloric works extended well beyond literature; the history consciousness and national self-esteem that were at the same time fortified were to a great extent his merit. The breakthrough for Vuk’s ideas came with Branko Radičević, whose published, healthy and personal poems won the young generation in 1847, and initiated the revival of poetry represented in the 1850’s and 60’s in the national romantic spirit by Đura Jakšić, Jovan Jovanović Zmaj and Laza Kostić. Outside Serbia published, also in 1847,
The national romantic wave was replaced around 1870 by realism and prose, which predominantly dominated the last three decades of the 19th century by Russian models. Regionally anchored portrayals of the life of the Serbian countryside and petty bourgeoisie were written during this period. by Laza Lazarević, Stevan Sremac, Simo Matavulj and Janko Veselinović. In the lyrics, cosmopolitan motifs were introduced by Vojislav Ilić. In the early 1900’s, the orientation towards contemporary European currents became more conscious. French parnassism and symbolism stimulated a new boost for poetry with Jovan Dučić and Milan Rakić as pioneers of Serbian modernism. Within the prose, Borisav Stanković emerged as a refined master of the regionalist tradition and Radoje Domanović as subtle satirist. In drama, Branislav Nušić wrote plays well into the 1930’s.
The troubled interwar period in New Yugoslavia was marked by a remarkable literary breadth. Expressionism was the starting point for Miloš Crnjanski and Rastko Petrović, surrealism in Belgrade had its strongest attachment to Paris and was represented by leftist poets such as Dušan Matić, Aleksandar Vučo and Oskar Davičo. All were poets and prose poets, both after the Second World War. A number of prose writers reflected different aspects of society in still regionally rooted narrative. These included Ivo Andrić, whose first work was published only after 1945. Isidora Sekulić in prose and Desanka Maksimović in poetry can be mentioned as female poets in the first phase.
The period of mandatory socialist realism in the post-war socialist Yugoslavia was brief, and after 1950 the Serbian as well as the other Yugoslav literatures developed in a climate of increased political independence. The party war was a long-dominant theme with well-known depictions of, among other things. Dobrica Ćosić, Mihailo Lalić and, in the grotesque character (compare grotesque), by Miodrag Bulatović. This one was in the 1950’s at the forefront of new, more advanced forms in the prose. Among those who carried on this work are the internationally acclaimed Danilo Kiš, Mirko Kovač and Milorad Pavić. Standing alone is Meša Selimović and his reflection of the Bosnian Muslim world.
The leading Serbian poets during the second half of the 20th century were Vasko Popa and Miodrag Pavlović. Among writers active in the 21st century are the poet Dejan Stojanović and the novelist and columnist Vladimir Arsenijević.
Drama and theater
Among the Serbs, the growth of theater culture was hampered by the prolonged Turkish occupation. The cradle of the Serbian theater also stood outside the Ottoman Empire among the emigrants to southern Hungary (later Vojvodina). School dramas in the 18th century became the first stage of development. In the 1810’s, amateur theater activities arose, and in the 1830’s and 40’s came the first fixed stage and the first professional theater troupes. Milestones were the founding of the Serbian National Theater in Novi Sad in 1861 and the National Theater in Belgrade in 1869.
A long-prevailing patriotic and national romantic orientation was replaced by the end of the 19th century by a growing Europeanization of playing style and repertoire. A prominent place took plays by Jovan Sterija Popović from the last half of the 19th century and by Branislav Nušić who debuted in the 1890’s.
During the Yugoslav monarchy after 1918, several new city and regional theaters were added. Only slowly, however, did the theater reach out to less developed parts of the country. Branislav Nušić continued to write plays well into the 1930’s.
An ambition in socialist Yugoslavia was to create a Yugoslav theater identity across national borders. To this end, the 1948 Yugoslav Dramatic Theater was founded in Belgrade. Noteworthy have been the many festivals. The Belgrade International Theater Festival (Bitef) was first organized in 1966.
National theaters in Novi Sad and Belgrade are still leading cultural institutions in independent Serbia in the 21st century. Siniša Kovačević and Vida Ognjenović include the playwrights in the early 2000’s.
Film
In 1909, the first permanent cinemas were established in Belgrade and at the outbreak of the First World War five years later, there were thirty in the whole country. The repertoire was dominated by the French companies Pathé and Gaumont. Cinema owner Svetozar Botorić (1857-1916) produced in 1911 the nationalist “Karađorđe”, the country’s first feature film. It depicts the Serbian rebel leader Karađorđ’s fight against the Ottoman Empire. The film was long regarded as lost but was found in the Hungarian film archive in 2003.
Production in Serbia remained sporadic before the end of the Second World War. With the formation of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1943, a permanent film industry was established in Belgrade. Until the 1991 outbreak of the Yugoslav wars, the majority of all film in the federation was produced here, except for the animated film located in Croatia, Zagreb; watch Yugoslav movie. Vladimir Pogačić (1919-99) was the first to make a name for festivals with titles such as “Alone” (1959).
Only in the 1960’s, however, did films from Serbia reach greater international circulation. Aleksandar Petrović (1929-94) won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Festival for “I have also met happy gypsies” (1967). Dušan Makavejev became a world name for films such as “The Act of Love or The Tragedy of an Exchange” (1967), “Mysteries of the WR – the Body” (1971) and the “Montenegro” recorded in Sweden (1981).
The Bosnian-born Emir Kusturica has also been active mainly in Serbia. After the breakthrough with “When Dad Was Gone…” (1985), which won the Gold Palm at Cannes, and early successes like “The Gypsy Time” (1989), his attitude in the Yugoslav wars became problematic in receiving films such as “Underground” (1995) and “Life is a Miracle” (2004).
Other well-known directors include Goran Paskaljević (born 1947) with films such as “The Special Treatment” (1980), “Someone else’s America” (1995) and “Zan simske noći” (2004).
Art
Relations with Byzantine and its traditions, direct influence from Western art and contacts with neighboring countries and with Russia brought specific and authentic works into Serbian art during the period from the 8th century to the 11th century. The fresco painting is the most appreciated area in Serbian medieval art. In the painting during the Raška period, ie. from the 12th century, a significant Byzantine influence is felt. The most significant frescoes are those painted in Žiča and Mileševo during Komnenu’s time about 1235. With the lost political independence began a period when the monumental painting art in Serbia slowly died out.
The oldest preserved icons in Serbia are from the mid-1300’s (the iconostasis in Dečani). Among the oldest icon painters are the monk Longin, whose work evokes Russian influence. In the 18th century, the development of icon painting stopped.
In the mid-18th century, a symbiosis was realized between the surviving medieval forms and the contemporary Baroque by Hristofer hefarović, Nikola Nešković, Jovan Grabovan, Vasa Ostojić and others. At the turn of the century, neoclassicalism prevailed in painters such as Todor Ilić-Češljar, Jakov Orfelin, Stefan Gavrilović and Arsa Teodorović. The Biedermeier style is represented by the prominent portrait painter Konstantin Daril as well as by Katarina Ivanović and Nikola Aleksić. Dimitrije Avramović, Djura Jakšić and Mina Karadžić-Vukmanović are some names from Serbian romance. Uroš Predić and Paja Jovanović were international painters and painted with academic realism. Stevan Aleksić and Marko Murat addressed the problems of light in their paintings.
A large number of artists represent the Serbian painting during the interwar period, e.g. Sava Šumanović, Milan Konjević, Jovan Bijelić, Petar Dobrović, Petar Lubarda, Ljubica Sokić and Dušan Vlajić. After World War II, Serbian art was dominated by socialist realism (including Branko Šotra, Boža Ilić). At the same time, an orientation was made to individual artistic experiments with Miodrag Protić, Stojan Čelić, Mladen Srbinović, Zoran Petrović, Milan Popović, Dado Đurić and others
The plastic art was almost non-existent until the middle of the 19th century because, unlike the Catholic church, the Orthodox Church did not accept sculpture as an artistic expression. The first Serbian sculptors were schooled by academic realism, which came to particularly noticeable expression during the interwar years at Dragomir Arambašićs and Stamenko Đurđević. Under Ivan Meštrović’s influence, Toma Rosandić, a powerful portraitist and creator of the monumental sculpture in Serbia, was formed. Prominent names in modern Serbian sculpture include. Aleksandar Zorin, Matija Vuković, Jovan Soldatović, Ana Bešlić and Olga Jančić.
The foremost name in the art of the 21st century is the performance artist Marina Abramovic.
Music
Folk music and classical music
The oldest Slavic folk music is characterized by, among other things, short melodic phrases, a small tone of tone and slutton on the second tone of the scale. The instrumental music is predominantly performed by men. Common instruments used to be bagpipes (gajde), flute (frula, cavalry), long neck (tambura, šargija) and drum (goč, tapan). Nowadays most accordion, clarinet and violin are played. A male song genre is the long narrative epic with historical content, accompanied by one-string lira (gusle).
The women’s songs are single or multi-voiced and are played in a high pitch with sharp voices. Smooth rhythms at a rapid pace are most common, but especially in the southern parts there are also uneven rhythms (5/8, 7/8, 11/16).
In the early Middle Ages, in churches and princes arose, art music with strong influences from Byzantium. During the Ottoman era, music was mainly associated with the Orthodox Church. One of the national romantic currents of indigenous music originated in Serbia in the early 19th century. The many driving societies that performed with arranged folk songs, including Stevan Mokranjac (1856-1914), were of great importance.
Until the 1960’s, romantic or neoclassical styles with strong elements of folk music dominated, among others by Petar Konjović (1883-1970), Stevan Hristić (1885-1958) and Josip Slavenski (1896-1955).
Since World War II, music has widened in all areas and closer contact has been established with modern international trends, including through composers such as Dejan Despić (born 1930).
popular
A popular genre during the early 1900’s was starogradska music (‘the old city music’). In the 1950’s jazz and drums, often in Latin American style, became popular. Major artists were the batter Spasa Milutinović and the singer Vojin Popović (1922−95), who came to leave the country for the United States.
In the 1960’s, a modern variant of starogradian music emerged, called novocomponovana (‘newly composed’ folk music) – songs with nostalgic touch and typical instruments such as accordion, frula and tambura. Among the great names of the genre were Toma Zdravković (1938-191), Miroslav Ilić (born 1950), Šaban Šaulić (born 1951) and later Lepa Brena (born 1960) who was former Yugoslavia’s best selling singer.
The 1960’s and 1970’s pop songs were represented by singers such as Lola Novaković (born 1935), Ljiljana Petrović (born 1939) and the occasionally active Leo Martin (born 1942) in West Germany. The Sedmorica mladih group (formed in 1959) was also popular outside of Yugoslavia and one of Tito’s favorites. Pop singer Zdravko Čolić (born 1951) began his career in the 1970’s and is still one of the most popular singers all over former Yugoslavia.
Unlike other socialist countries, Yugoslavia had a more permissive attitude to rock music. The first Serbian rock’n’roll idol was the drummer singer Đorđe Marjanović (born 1931). The influential band Korni Grupa (formed in 1968) began the 1970’s development of progressive rock. During the 1980’s, the rock broke through seriously with groups such as Bajaga in Instruktori (founded in 1984), the post punk band Ekatarina Velika (formed in 1982), the hard rock group Riblja Čorba (formed in 1978) and the visceral singer Đorđe Balašević (born 1953).
In connection with the disintegration of Yugoslavia, most rock artists took a stand against Milošević’s regime. The market was radically reduced and the audience searched for popular music with traditional features (novokomponovana). From this music developed a harder rock and pop variant called turbo people, which received a lot of criticism such as being kitschy and sex- and violence-fixated. The criticism has been partly subverted by political subtitles from the relationship between the turbo people star Ceca (born 1973) and the war criminal Arkan. Today, the genre belongs to the mainstream with strong elements of eurodance and is not as politically charged. Other singers in turbo folk are Dragana Mirković (born 1968) and Milan Stanković (born 1987).
Other genres include Roman jazz and folk singer Šaban Bajramović (1936−2002), folk pop singer Željko Joksimović (born 1972), European singer Goca Tržan (born 1974), electropop singer Jelena Karleuša (born 1978), born 1978) and pop singer Marija Šerifović (born 1984) who sang Serbia’s winning contribution to the Eurovision Song Contest 2007. The popular brass band music throughout the Balkans originated in Serbia. The Roman trumpeter Boban Marković (born 1964) and his orchestra are among the Balkan brass style’s most renowned representatives.
Dance
Folk dance is unusually rich and varied. More than 3,000 different dances have been counted in Serbia. Most of them are ring and chain dances, for example, colo and anxiety. One type consists of a basic stage with a large number of variations that can be danced to many different tunes. Some of these, such as Moravac and Čačak, are now spread over large parts of the Balkans. Another more local type is always performed equally and to a certain melody. Scenic folk dance (folklore) originated in Yugoslavia at the beginning of the 20th century and became particularly important in socialist Yugoslavia, including through the folk dance groups Kolo and Šota. Ballet originated in Serbia in the 1920’s. Many domestic ballets have strong elements of folklore and modern dance theater.
folk culture
Serbia’s pre-industrial popular culture was characterized partly by the Orthodox Church and partly by some isolation due to the long-standing Turkish dominion. In the fence of the tolerant Orthodox Church, popular culture has retained many age-old features. In addition, the nobility was also eliminated, which created an independent and homogeneous public society. The administrative structure of the Ottoman Empire consolidated the peasant population’s older social system. Its most important institution was the large family system, zadruga, which was strictly stratified, gender and age. It was based on co-ownership and collaboration between several generations, included 50-80 people and even had its own saints and patronage. The Ottoman influence was expressed in the popular legal system as well as in building, crafts, home furnishings, ornaments and to a certain extent costume and textile craftsmanship. Byzantine influence in folk art is found, among other things. in the symmetrical animal motifs in miniature. The difference between the way of life of the shepherds and the peasant population, costumes, epic traditions and music culture was noticeable.
As dwellings, in their slopes, incised ground holes existed, also as dome- or cone-shaped and thatched huts. The main industry was animal husbandry, especially ambulatory sheep farming. The food culture was based on corn, vegetables and milk products. The beliefs were often associated with natural formations: mountains, caves, streams. They also buried their dead on mountains and slopes. The fear of the return of the dead was great (Serbia was a center of belief in vampires), and it was sought to prevent it in many different ways. The fire played a prominent role in many supernatural contexts, most as a protective and purifying force. The rich folk medicine rested on Byzantine / Arabic tradition, mixed with native nature and sorcery.
