Dobrovsky and the South Slavic Literary Languages*

Home , Hrvatsko Zagorje, Marko Pohlin, Phonemic orthography, South Slavic languages, Valentin Vodnik

RADO L. LENCEK

1. The Slavic literary languages have been said to stem from two different cultural traditions, identified by Roman Jakobson with the two civilizing currents pervading the Slavic world from the time of its appearance in history: Greek, embodied in Church Slavonic, and Latin, embedded in Old Czech and penetrating deep into the East.1 Among the several independent traditions created in these currents were two prototypes of Slavic literary languages: modern Russian, based on Church Slavonic, and modern Czech, based on Old Czech. Both share a dependence on tradition and a slow evolution. A third prototype, Serbo-Croatian, has neither of these two features, having begun with a deliberate break with the past. It has been suggested that Serbo-Croatian "has lost connection with any literary-linguistic tradition", and that the South Slavic literary languages, with the exception of Bulgarian,

* This paper is a contribution to a topic which has been receiving growing at- tention in Slavic scholarship during the postwar period. See B. Havránek, "Josef Dobrovsky, zakladatel védecké slavistiky", Co daly nase zeme Evrope a lidstvu, 2nd ed. (Prague, 1940), pp. 228-233; idem, "Vliv nové spisovné CeStiny na spisovné jazyky jihoslovanské", ibid., pp. 304-307; F. Wollman, "Josef Do- brovsky a jazykové literární obrození u Slovanú", Sborník prací filosofické fakulty brnénské university, III (D) (Brno, 1955), pp. 5-40; idem, Slovanství v jazykové literárním obrození u Slovanü (= Spisy filosofické fakulty v Brné, 52) (Prague, 1958). For a detailed account of the state of contemporary Slavic literary languages, see Slovanské spisovné jazyky v dobé pritomné, ed. M. Wein- gart (= Dobrovského kniznice duchovédná, 1) (Prague, 1937). This paper attempts to bring into focus a new aspect of Dobrovsky's intercourse with the South Slavic world: the formation of the linguistic models underlying the codification of the literary languages. The writer should like to express thanks to his colleague F. Y. Gladney for his helpful remarks. 1 See R. Jakobson, "The Kernel of Comparative Slavic Literature", Harvard Slavic Studies, I (Cambridge, 1953), pp. 1-71. Cf. also M. Weingart, "O poli- tickych a sociálních slozkách v starSích déjinách spisovnych jazykú slovanskych, zvláSté církevnéslovanského", Sborník Jaroslavu Bidlovi (Prague, 1928), pp. 157-187. Dobrovsky and the South Slavic Literary Languages 1045 belong to neither the Church Slavonic group of literary languages nor the Western tradition.2 In spite of their venerable traditions, however, the present-day Slavic literary languages are generally believed to be of more recent date. Although the models on which they were formed mutually influenced each other, each of these literary languages developed independently from a living spoken idiom. The models of modern literary Polish, Lusatian, Czech, and Slovak, on the one hand, and Slovene and Serbo- Croatian on the other, were shaped at about the same time during the wave of linguistic romanticism. For a long time, the center of this influence, for all Western and Southern Slavs, was Prague. In the period to be considered, the movement spread by way of Vienna to the Southern Slavs.3 In this linguistic romanticism - specifically, Slavic linguistic romanticism, which had such a powerful impact on the development of the various Slavic literary languages - there originated three different linguistic models, which will be contrasted in this paper. They are identified with the names of Dobrovsky, Kopitar, and Karadzic; from them stem contemporary Czech, Slovene, and Serbo-Croatian. Our purpose is to discuss these three models and make some inferences about their origin.4

2. Slavic linguistic romanticism - a movement at the turn of the nineteenth century characterized by the search of the awakened Slavic communities for their linguistic identity - is the grafting of German em- pirical linguistics on a native ideological legacy. Slavic ideological tradition, inherited from the Middle Ages and faithfully preserved through the centuries by the so-called humanist and baroque Slavism, charged Slavic romanticism with a vigorous

2 Cf. N. Trubetzkoy, The Common Slavic Element in Russian Culture, Slavic Studies, Philology Series (ed. L. Stilman), 2nd rev. ed., Columbia University, Department of Slavic Languages (New York, 1952), p. 26. 3 Cf. M. Murko, Deutsche Einflüsse auf die Anfänge der Slavischen Romantik, 1. Die Böhmische Romantik (Graz, 1897). 4 The term "literary language" is used here for a codified grammatical system, specifically as postulated and described at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Although the discussion will touch upon "norm", particularly in connection with contemporary Czech, the notion of a grammatical norm or of a dis- parity between the norm and the codification barely existed then. At that time, the codified systems of Slavic languages existed merely as symbols of favored or desirable forms of speech within the linguistic communities. In Dobrovsky's and Kopitar's language, the term "Schriftsprache" expresses this concept. In the titles of their books, there appears simply "Sprache"; elsewhere, "Sprache", "Dialekt", or "Mundart" are used as synonyms. 1046 Rado L. Lencek dynamism. The dominant tenets of this Slavic ideology were the following: idealization of the Slavic tongue, belief in the linguistic unity of all Slavs, consciousness of native literary traditions, and, above all, an awareness of the Cyrillo-Methodian teachings, which claimed equal rights for all national tongues. The German grammarians of the Enlightenment in the second half of the eighteenth century, on the other hand, supplied a linguistic theory and set an example for practical work on languages. The contemporary German lands were witnessing an intense effort to create a standard German literary language. Only recently had the German language been introduced as a subject into the schools. The need for textbooks called for a good many new grammars. A vigorous puristic drive was launched, and a number of orthographic reforms was proposed. The endeavors of Slavic grammarians of linguistic romanticism can be properly understood only against this background. Two German linguists of that period are usually mentioned: Friedrich Karl Fulda (1724-1788) and Johann Christoph Adelung (1732-1806). The writings of the latter had perhaps the greatest and most profound influence on the formation of the Slavic literary languages. Adelung's Versuch eines vollständigen grammatisch-kritischen Wörterbuches der Hochdeutschen Mundart (1774-1786), and his classical Umständliches Lehrgebäude der Deutschen Sprache (1782), for a long time the authority for literary German, offer a synthesis of the post-Gottsched German grammarianship, and Dobrovsky, Kopitar, and Karadzic make frequent reference to them.5 The extent to which Adelung's ideas under- lie their models of literary languages remains to be investigated. Most typical of the teachings of German grammarianship to which the Slavic grammarians of linguistic romanticism were exposed at the end of the century are the following.6 (1) Language is the tool of communication; its efficiency depends on the degree of lucidity of the ideas expressed and the refinement of its speakers' taste. (2) A good grammar is the pragmatic history of the language.

5 It is interesting that Vuk Karadzic, in his introduction to the first edition of his Pismenica serpskoga jezika (Vienna, 1814), mentions Adelung's and Do- brovsky's grammars, although it is clear that he did not use either as his model. Cf. Vuk S. Karadzic, Skupljeni gramaticki i polemicki spisi, I (Belgrade, 1894), p. 6. " These principles are summarized from Adelung's Umständliches Lehrgebäude ... (1782). Cf. also M. H. Jellinek, Geschichte der Neuhochdeutschen Gram- matik von den Anfängen bis auf Adelung (Heidelberg, 1913). Dobrovsky and the South Slavic Literary Languages 1047 (3) A literary language is the creation of taste. Its perfection depends on the knowledge and refinement of educated speakers.7 It is based on the dialect of that region which shows the highest development of its culture. (4) The usage (Sprachgebrauch) of the best literary works decides what is good and correct in a language. (5) The grammarian is a legislator; he respects usage, but discrimi- nates between "correct and incorrect usage" and combats arbitrariness. Arbitrary usage is the greatest danger to which a literary language can be exposed. (6) The ideal orthography is governed by the "natural" law of writing: Write as you speak! This law, however, is applicable only when a literary language is based on a single dialect, and when such a rule does not run counter to existing usage. Stability and continuity of the orthography are indispensable to the growth of a literary language. Many of these points may be readily recognized as features in our own concept of a literary language and obviously point to the continuity of the German Enlightenment, inherited by linguistic romanticism and passed down to our time.

3. It is not surprising that Josef Dobrovsky's views on literary Czech proceeded from the same positions as those of Fulda and Adelung for literary German. He was, after all, their contemporary and shared their grammatical traditions and ideals; they all faced strikingly similar prob- lems: a dangerous drift toward arbitrary usage, phonetic and morpho- logic deviations from established usage, a growing frequency of vulgar- isms, and neologisms in the written language. Dobrovsky's ideal was the purity and simplicity of the written language of the sixteenth century, and on this basis he began to build his concept of literary Czech. He elaborated it during thirty years of careful criticism and positive constructive work. His Ausführliches Lehrgebäude der Böhmischen Sprache was first published in 1809, with a second edition appearing ten years later (1819). Dobrovsky's Czech model is presented here in its final version (1819).

7 The nonliterary codes of languages are treated by Adelung with aloof con- tempt; e.g.: "... Wenn der Geschmack so weit verfällt, dass die Musen nicht mehr erröthen, die Sprache des Pöbels zu reden, wenn das alles, sage ich, allgemeine Geschmack wird, dann ist der Verfall der Sprache da . .." Cf. Um- ständliches Lehrgebäude ... (1782), p. 71. 1048 Rado L. Lencek Dobrovsky's ideal8 was a polished literary language, a refined tool of educated writers and speakers, based on the older written tradition. Its phonology and grammar are those of the second half of the sixteenth century; its resources are in the patterns of living usage. Thus, a kind of balance between a traditional basic structure and adaptability to the living patterns of the language is established. Such an attitude is essentially normative. It creates ideal conditions for the harmonious growth of a literary language. It has been followed ever since by Slavic normative grammarians. The principles of stability and continuity are part of this pattern. To motivate continuity, a grammarian must educe evidence from the past and be prepared to accept in his normative decisions the value of historical arguments. Dobrovsky's grammar is a pragmatic history of the language. Dobrovsky saw the main problem of a Slavic literary language in the growth of its vocabulary. He rejected the purism of loan-translation practices, and pointed to the word-formative possibilities of Slavic languages. He stressed again and again that it is not the task of grammarians to produce new words.9 Dobrovsky favored moderate borrowing. He was the first to point out the feasibility of borrowing from related Slavic languages, provided that the nature and specificity of the receiving language are respected. Dobrovsky's principle of "harmony among Slavic languages" played later an extremely important role in the mutual influencing of Slavic literary languages. A characteristic of both Dobrovsky and Adelung is their rather supercilious attitude toward the dialects. Dobrovsky recognized the lexical value of a dialectal expression, but only to the degree to which it helps to explain the meaning of the literary vocabulary. He repudiated the idea of building a literary language on a "lingua corrupta", as he put it, and he did not always discriminate, it would seem, between dialect and Adelung's "Pöbelsprache". This may well have been moti- vated by his essentially philological interests; ultimately, it is an echo of the hostility toward dialects generally current during the Age of Enlightenment. A one-dialect base, tradition, a sixteenth-century grammatical struc-

8 Cf. B. Havranek, "Vyvoj spisovneho jazyka ceskeho", Ceskoslovenska vlasli- veda, Rada II (Prague, ] 936), pp. 1-144. Cf. also J. Jakubec, Dejiny literatury ceske, 2 (Prague, 1934), pp. 64-133; and J. Vlcek, Dejiny ceske literatury, II (Prague, 1960), pp. 139-159. • "... dies Verdienst ist nur dem ästhetischen Schriftsteller eigen; und auch dieser hat seine Gränzen". Böhmische Literatur auf das Jahr 1779, p. 329. Dobrovsky and the South Slavic Literary Languages 1049 ture, adaptability to living usage in vocabulary, a concern for elegance, stability, and continuity - these are the distinctive features of Do- brovsky's model. The stress is on tradition, the past, and slow evolution. Czech is a model of a conservative literary language.

4. In the South Slavic state of affairs at the end of the eighteenth century - we limit our observations to Slovene and Serbo-Croatian - there was little room for such a concept of a literary language. The centuries-long dismemberment of the South Slavic speech-area between two empires and at least fifteen administrative "Landesver- waltungen" created a series of cleavages in the culture structure and a drift toward a plurality of territorial languages (Landsprachen). Then, as now, there existed a chain of dialects in a linguistic continuum. Three alphabets, Glagolitic, Cyrillic, and Latin, and three different spelling systems for the latter (a German, adopted by Adam Bohoric, a Hunga- rian, and an Italian), were employed in at least seven literary traditions. The written Slovene of the central regions was based on the authority of old Protestant texts of the sixteenth century. This tradition grew out of one single dialect (Low Carniolan), which had, like most Slovene dialects, undergone the modern vowel reduction. In two hundred years, the differences between dialects increased so much that they began to jeopardize the sense of unity. Exactly at this point, one of the most faithful followers of Vaclav Pohl, Father Marko Pohlin (1735-1801), formulated similar demands for changes in the traditional grammatical structure in written Slovene.10 There were two varieties of the Croatian written language: the Croa- tian version of Church Slavonic, used for liturgical literature, and the vernacular of the region in which a secular literature had developed. This was the literary tradition of the Kajkavski dialect, spoken in Zagreb, Varazdin, and Hrvatsko Zagorje; that of the Cakavski dialect of the Dalmatian islands, Hrvatsko Primorje and Istria; and three famous literary traditions of the Stokavski dialect which flourished in Dubrovnik, Slavonia, and Bosnia. For old Serbian literature, liturgical and secular, the Serbian version of Church Slavonic was used up to the eighteenth century.11 After the

10 Cf. V. Burian, "Po stopâch cesstvi a ceské knihy v starSim slovinském pisem- nictvi", Slavia, 8 (1929-1930), pp. 54-75, 248-270, 449-482. 11 Cf. B. Unbegaun, Les débuts de la langue littéraire chez les Serbes (— Tra- vaux publiés par l'Institut d'études slaves, 15) (Paris, 1935); A. Vaillant, "La formation de la langue littéraire serbo-croate", Revue des études slaves, 28 (1951), pp. 80-92. 1050 Rado L. Lencek first and second "great migrations" of Serbs (1690 and 1739), which created a large new Stokavski dialect base in Vojvodina, a new Serbian cultural center developed north of the Sava river. At that time, the Russian version of Church Slavonic was being introduced for literary use. This was Russian-Slavonic (Orfelin, Rajic). Toward the end of the eighteenth century, Dositej Obradovic tried to graft Russian-Slavonic onto spoken Serbian. This Slavonic-Serbian language (Slaveno-Serpski jezik) was a strange, arbitrary crossbreed of vernacular Serbian and bookish Russian. It served as "literary Serbian" at the turn of the eighteenth century.12 Fifty years later, the situation in this area was substantially different. The drift toward multiformity had been checked and a new trend toward integration firmly inaugurated. At the time of the knjizevni dogovor (literary agreement) signed in Vienna in 1850,13 two literary languages were already taking shape: Slovene and Serbo-Croatian. They were patterned after different models.

5. The model for literary Slovene was provided by Bartholomaeus

18 The main centers of South Slavic literary traditions at that time were Ljubljana, Zagreb, Dubrovnik, and Novi Sad. Among Dobrovsky's correspond- ents were the most representative men in these centers. In Ljubljana: Baron £iga Cojz, grammarians Blaz Kumerdej, Valentin Vodnik, and Jernej Kopitar; in Zagreb: Bishop and philologian Maksimiljan Vrhovac; in Djakovo: Bishop and philologian Antun Mandic; in Dubrovnik: lexicographer Joachim Stulic (Stulli), grammarians Josip Voltic (Voltiggi), Marijan Lanosovic, and Franjo Marija Appendini; in Venice: Pavle Solaric; in Novi Sad: Lukijan MuSicki, Metropolitan Stjepan Stratimirovic, and Vuk's opponent Milovan Vidakovic. We are not surprised to find that the first 150 pages of Dobrovsky's Slavin, Botschaft aus Böhmen (1806) include 124 pages on the South Slavic area and more than one-half of these (72 pages) on the cultural history of Slovenes. The influence Dobrovsky exerted through his personal contacts and through his writings on the South Slavic revival has been investigated extensively. The most important contributions are published in Josef Dobrovsky, 1753-1829, Sbornik stati k stemu vyroci smrti (ed. J. Horäk, M. Murko, M. Weingart) (Prague, 1929). In it are the following papers: A Breznik, "Dobrovskega vpliv na slovenski pismeni jezik" (p. 1-16); V. Dukat, "Dobrovsky i Hrvati" (p. 44f); J. Nagy, "Prvi odjeci Dobrovskoga u Dalmaciji" (p. 236 f); P. Popovic, "Do- brovski i srpska knjizevnost" (p. 277 f); and Lj. Stojanovic, "Dobrovski kod Srba" (p. 162-166). Published as a separate monograph was F. Kidrii's Dobrovsky in slovenski preporod njegove dobe (= Razprave Znanstvenega drustva v Ljubljani, 7, Historicni odsek, 1) (Ljubljana, 1930). Cf. also footnote 1, above. 13 The "knjizevni dogovor" was signed by Ivan Kukuljevic, Dimitrije Demeter, Ivan Mazuranic, Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic, Vinko Pacel, Fran MikloSii, Stjepan Pejakovic, and Gjuro Daniiic. It appeared in Narodne novine, XVI (Zagreb, 1850), p. 832. Cf. V. S. Karadzic, Skupljeni gramaticki i polemicki spisi, III (Belgrade, 1896), pp. 299-301. Dobrovsky and the South Slavic Literary Languages 1051 Kopitar Carantanus (1780-1844) - Magni Dobrovii Ingenius A emula- tor, as he is styled in his memorial - the most original and respected follower of Dobrovsky, for twenty years his loyal friend and corre- spondent, and for more than thirty years the most prominent, indeed the only Slavist in Vienna. Although his name is far better known in Slavic philology for his Pannonian theory, for his personal contacts with Humboldt, Grimm, Goethe, and the Brothers Schlegel, and for his great service to Vuk Karadzic, than for the service he rendered to his native Slovene, it was his Grammatik der Slavischen Sprache in Krain, Kärnten und Steyermark (1808) 14 which set the norm for and directed the subsequent evolution of literary Slovene. Moreover, it was here that Kopitar first expressed a much more revolutionary concept of a literary language, later applied to Serbo-Croatian. In spite of the fact that it exhibited quite different complexities, Slovene shared with the Czech of Dobrovsky's time the following features: one, a relatively strong, written Protestant tradition dating from the sixteenth century, and two, a tendency toward the dissolution of this tradition in contemporary usage.13 The literary tradition of the Slovene Reformation, however, was far from unified: it represented only the Lower Carniolan dialect (Dolenjsko). A number of writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth century followed this practice, while others introduced some phonemic and grammatical features of Upper Carniolan (Gorenjsko). Kopitar himself was a speaker of this dialect, the second central dialect of Slovene. He succeeded - at least, on paper - in codifying modern Slovene as a compromise between the Lower Carniolan and the Upper Carniolan dialects. This scheme had been worked out by 1808, and forty years later a small volume of poems of Francò PreSeren gave the breath of life to this design. On the other hand, the integration of a language with as high a degree of dialectal differentiation as exists in Slovene necessarily calls for a different attack. It seems that Kopitar understood this. His grammar was not normative, but descriptive, as we understand this term

14 Cf. A. Slodnjak, Geschichte der slowenischen Literatur (— Grundriss der slavischen Philologie und Kulturgeschichte), ed. by M. Vasmer (Berlin, 1958), pp. 106-108. Cf. also Slovenski biografski leksikon, ed. F. K. Lukman (Ljubljana, 1932), vol. I., pp. 496-513. 15 The striking similarities in the immediate motives for Dobrovsky's and Kopitar's actions point to much earlier parallel and intersecting evolutions in the history of Czech and Slovene. Cf. V. Burian, "Närodnostni ideologie öeskä a slovenskä v jihoslovanském obrozeni", Co daly naie zemè Evropè a lidstvu, 2nd ed. (Prague, 1940), pp. 238-254; idem, "Po stopäch CeSstvi ... See footnote 10. 1052 Rado L. Lencek today, i.e., presenting the structure of a language as it exists, without reference to its history. Kopitar formulated this approach by the quite modern claim that a grammarian must be a "statistician": "Der Gram- matiker ist ja aber nicht Gesetzgeber, nicht Reformator, sondern Statist- iker, Historiker. . .. Und am Ende, ist denn Geschmack eine conditio sine qua non beym Grammatiker? Nein, sondern Beobachtungsgeist, Methode und Treue . . ." (italics added).16 The combination of the principle of continuity with the principle of living speech makes Kopitar's concept of literary Slovene contrast sharply with the model of Adelung. The idealization of folk-speech, of pure, uncorrupted forms of language, conceived by German philoso- phers as the "Naturgabe" of illiterate communities, was a new and essentially romantic feature in Kopitar's ideology. It had already been set forth in his Grammatik (1808); it was repeated again and again as the formula for the harmonious evolution of literary Slovene, and was to become the germ of the revolutionary new concept of a literary language for idioms without literary traditions. To sum up, Kopitar's model for Slovene may be characterized by tradition, the basic grammatical structure of the sixteenth century, stability and continuity opposed to the arbitrary practices of contempora- ries, the integration of the phonemic structure of a second central dialect, a search for a larger base which would unite all the dialects around the older tradition, an idolization of the unspoiled usage of the speech of the uneducated, no special consideration for elegance, a strong stress on purism, and a consistent phonemic orthography.17 5.1 The most persistent strain of Kopitar's linguistic romanticism was his life-long search for an ideal orthographic reform for all West- Slavic or, at least, for all South-Slavic languages.18 Orthographic

18 Cf. "Ueber Wuk's serbisches Wörterbuch . ..", Jahrbücher der Literatur, IV (Vienna, 1818). Cf. also in Jerneja Kopitarja spisov II. del. Srednja doba. Doba sodelovanja v "Jahrbücher der Literatur", 1818-1834, ed. Rajko Nahtigal, vol. 1, (Ljubljana, 1944), p. 20-21. 17 Cf. Fr. Tomsic, "Razvoj slovenskega knjiznega jezika", Zgodovina slovenskega slovstva, 1. Do zacetkov romantike, ed. L. Legisa and A. Gspan (Ljubljana, 1956), pp. 19-22. 18 The Kopitar's concern with an ideal orthography was stimulated by the writings of Johann Sigmund Valentin Popowitsch (1705-1774), another Slovene philologist, known in anti-Gottsched German philology for his demand for the study of the spoken dialects. In his Untersuchungen vom Meere (1750), Popo- witsch returned to Klopstock's old claim for the phonetic principle and one-to- one correspondence between sound and symbol. Cf. Jellinek, op. cit., p. 315. Popowitsch offered a series of naive romantic proposals for an orthographic reform for Slovene, German, and, later, for all European languages. As the Dobrovsky and the South Slavic Literary Languages 1053 reform to Kopitar meant the introduction of a uniform spelling system with one-to-one correspondence between sound and symbolization. His postulate: "Write as you speak!" was based on the "Theorie der Buch- stabenschrift" of the time, which operated with analytical procedures similar to those of modern phonemics. Vuk's analysis of Serbian sound and prosodic systems,19 as well as the attempts of Metelko's Slovene phonemic alphabet,20 are the best evidence that Kopitar's ideal was a phonemic system. His orthographic reform aimed at a uniform phonemic alphabet.21 Kopitar's concept of a uniform alphabet was based on the assumption that the literary languages of the Western and Southern Slavs, which were written with different spelling systems, but used the same Latin alphabet, were mutually intelligible dialects of one and the same lan- highest authority on the German language in Vienna, at that time - he taught German "Wohlredenheit" at the University of Vienna and was a prolific writer- philologist - Popowitsch had a strong influence on Austrian-German linguists of this time, and also on Adelung. Cf. Jellinek, op. cit., pp. 252-255. Cf. also Slovenski biografski leksikon, II, pp. 447-455. 19 In 1842 Kopitar wrote to the German linguist, A. F. Pott (1802-1887): ".. . Im Grunde meine ich und verstehe Leibnitzens Vermehrung des lat. Alphabets nur so, dass man, wie früher zu C, I, V noch G, J, U in Quadrat= und Minuskel hinzu erfunden wurde, so und nicht anders auch für lj, nj, dj, tj etc. eben so einzügige und leicht schreibbare einfache Lettern hinzuerfinden werde. Sic fecimus cum Vukio pro Serbis h, lj, jt, H>, u, j & traximus volentis nolentis." Cf. Kopitar's Briefwechsel mit Jakob Grimm (= Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Jahrgang 1937. Phil.-Histor Kl., 7) (Berlin, 1938), p. 208-209. 20 Cf. F. Metelko, Lehrgebäude der slowenischen Sprache im Königreiche Illyrien und in den benachbarten Provinzen. Nach dem Lehrgebäude der böh- mischen Sprache des Hrn. Abbé Dobrowsky (Ljubljana, 1825). Cf. also Slovenski biografski leksikon, II, pp. 106-109. 21 It should be stressed that Kopitar's demand: Write as you speak! is, from the peint of view Adelung and Dobrovsky, diametrically opposite to the idea of the balanced stability and harmony, the elegance and perfection of a literary language. Kopitar did not really try to apply it to Slovene as conse- quently as he advocated it for Serbo-Croatian. The principle for which he stood in 1808 was historical orthography, "verbesserte Bohoritsch", as he put it, a consistent discrimination of close and open mid-vowels /e,o/ and the substitu- tion of digraphs for the sounds /c z s c/. It is known that Kopitar did not agree with the use of the Czech diacritic over /c, z, s/; on the other hand he had a high regard for the consistency of the Czech phonemic system. In a footnote to the synopsis of alphabets in his Grammatik (1808), he apologizes for not having included the Latin alphabets of other Slavic languages with the following remark: ". .. aber die Drukerey hatte keine Böhmischen Lettern, und wir dachten: aut Caesar, aut nihil . .." (op. cit., p. 161). Forty years later, the Czech graphic system was also firmly established in Slovene usage. Cf. footnote 22. 1054 Rado L. Lencek guage.22 He obviously underestimated the differences, although his assumption of a basic propinquity of the spoken languages might have been valid for uneducated speakers at least.23 Kopitar's ideal was the harmonious coexistence of closely related written dialects within a uniform alphabet. One single writing system would create ideal conditions for the establishment of a universal Slavic intellectual community. "The products of the talents of one tribe would be shared by all - as once in Olympia, where the Ionian Herodotes could read his History before all Greek tribes. Similarly, our dialects would also, as once in Greece, continue to live in literature, one beside the other, until - as then - a most beautiful common literary language would be born. . . ." 24 Kopitar was not concerned for the future. He believed that the process of amalgamation would lead to unification. ". . . The introduction of one single literary language for all Slavs we leave rather to the gradual but certain course of nature. German, French, and English are too far [advanced] in their evolution; they cannot return." With Slavs it is different: ". .. Wir stehen noch am Scheidewege; . . . Ihre Sprachen, was die Hauptsache ist, sind verschieden-, die unsrigen sind nur Dialekte, die wir selbst einander nur durch die Orthographie unverständlich machen." 25 The most romantic feature of Kopitar's concept was the prayer for a new Constantine. "May the Heavens send us a Roman Cyrill . . . who would invent a new Latin-Slavic alphabet, as perfect as Cyrillic was for the ninth century", he writes in his Grammatik,26 which he dedi-

22 Cf. Kopitar, Grammatik . . p. XXV-XXVI. In 1830 Ljudevit Gaj, in his Kratka osnova horvatsko-slavenskoga pravopisana, repeated Kopitar's claim for a uniform graphic system of Western and Southern Slavs. The Czech graphic system was shortly afterwards proposed, introduced, and generally accepted among the Croats. In Slovene, the Czech system was finally introduced, under the name of "gajica", in 1843. Cf. M. Murko, op. cit., pp. 243-244. 23 Cf. A. Vaillant, "Les traits communs des langues slaves", Conférences de l'Institut de linguistique de l'Université de Paris, Vlll (Paris, 1949), pp. 17-31. B. O. Unbegaun, "La formation des langues littéraires slaves. Problèmes et état des questions". Langue et littérature (= Actes du Ville congrès de la Fédération internationale des langues et littératures modernes) (Paris, 1961), pp. 135-149. 24 Cf. Kopitar, Grammatik . .., p. 204-205. See also footnotes 25 and 26. 25 Cf. Kopitar, Grammatik . .., p. 160, footnote. 20 "Wenn, sage ich, uns der Himmel einen zweyten, Römischen Kyrill sendete, der, jenem ersten Griechischen als denkender Römer nachahmend, zu den un- tadel haften 20 Römischen Buchstaben, nahmentlich uns noch 9 neue, den Rö- mischen der Figur nach analoge, Buchstaben hinzu erfände, - so wären die Slaven die einzigen Glücklichen in Europa, die dann ein vollständiges und ver- nünftiges Alphabet hätten! Und es wäre in diesem Falle ein Glück fur die Dobrovsky and the South Slavic Literary Languages 1055 cates to "Herr Abbé Dobrowsky in Prag", confident that the editor of Slavin would address himself to the task of the revision of Slavic ortho- graphies. "Wir legen daher gegenwärtige Revision unserer Grammatik, als einen kleiner Beytrag zu diesem grossen Unternehmen, in seine Hände. . . .".» On this ground both men knew each other long before they met in person. The atmosphere of the circle of Baron Ziga Cojz in Ljubljana, where Kopitar's interests were shaped, was permeated with the Cyrillo- Methodian ideology. Cojz's library was at that time one of the few places where Glagolitic and Cyrillic books and manuscripts were sys- tematically collected. Dobrovsky addressed several bibliographical in- quiries to Cojz and his associates.28 It is striking to realize how the Cyrillo- Methodian ideology sealed the Kopitar-Dobrovsky friendship for life. Hundreds of pages of their correspondence, a unique compendium of Slavic philology, are devoted to the Old Church Slavonic tradition.29 The two central questions they discussed are the preparation of Do- brovsky's Institutiones (which appeared in 1822) and the scholarly dispute about the origin of Old Church Slavonic. Both of them resound in Kopitar's recurring plea to Dobrovsky to become "Cyrillus alter Slavorum",30 Dobrovsky, the realist, never answered this plea. Thus, a romantic dream remained a dream. . . .

Slavische Literatur, sich so lange verspätet zu haben. . .. Wahrlich! stellt einem Dobrowsky eine solide Schriftgiesserey zu Gebothe, deren geschickte Künstler seine Angaben gehörig ausführen, und deren Verlagskräfte die halbe Slavenwelt mit diesem neuen Alphabete versehen, ja, überschwemmen können - und das grosse Werk ist gethan! Ja! ein grosses Werk. .. . Dann, dann erst werden die zahlreichen, in der Sprache einander eben so nahen, als bisher durch die wider- sprechendsten Orthographien wie durch eine Chinesische Mauer geschiedenen, Stämme mit einander communiciren können; die Geistesprodukte eines Stammes werden wechselseitig von allen genossen werden, so wie einst in Olympia der Jonier Herodot seine Geschichte den Griechen aller Stämme vorlesen konnte. So könnten auch unsre Dialekte, wie einst die Griechischen! alle neben einander auch in Schriften fortleben, bis, wie dort, am Ende der würdigste allgemeine Schriftsprache würde." Cf. Kopitar, Grammatik . . ., p. 203-205. " (continuation) ". .. mit dem sehnlichen Wunsche, dass unsre übrigen Brüder von ihrer Seite ein gleiches thun mögen, um den Richter in den Stand zu setzen, aus verlässlichen Thatsachen ein richtiges Urtheil fällen zu können". Cf. Kopitar, Grammatik . . ., p. XXVIII-XXIX. w Cf. Kidrii, op. cit., pp. 125-128. M Cf. Briefwechsel zwischen Dobrovsky und Kopitar (1808-1828). Heraus- gegeben von Ord. Akad. V. Jagic (= Istocniki dlja istorii slavjanskoj filologii, I) (Berlin, 1885). I. V. Jagii, Istorija slavjanskoj filologii (= £nciklopedija slavjanskoj filologii, 1) (Sanktpeterburg, 1910). 30 "Nicht haeresiarcha werden Sie, sondern Cyrillus alter Slavorum, wenn Sie die ehrenvolle Mühe übernehmen wollen, den albern getrennten ein vernünftiges 1056 Rado L. Lencek 6. Paradoxically, this dream of Kopitar's provides a model for a literary language in open revolt against its Church Slavonic tradition. More exactly: the Church Slavonic tradition of literary Serbian at the end of the eighteenth century was nothing more than a lofty glory of the distant past. A new culture for a new nation had just been inaugurated, with, unfortunately, an imported vehicle of communication. Slavonic-Serbian was neither Slavonic nor Serbian: it was an odd variety of Petrine Russian. Vuk Karadzic had two possible solutions: either to accept this gro- tesque lingua franca, or to return to the vernacular. For Kopitar, there was no alternative: the vernacular possessed a unique poetic tradition which easily outweighed the glory of the literary monuments of other traditions, and Slavonic-Serbian had neither. Linguistic romanticism gave Kopitar scientific methods and a set of postulates for creating a new literary language. Moreover, he found Vuk a man willing to listen and to act. Within five years, from 1813 to 1818, a new antitype of literary Serbian was created. The Vuk-Kopitar model was based on the following principles:31 (1) literary Serbian was to be the Stokavski dialect, with its rich folk- poetry tradition, i.e., the language of uneducated speakers of Serbian villages; (2) everyone would be allowed to write his own dialect, provided that he uses it consistently and in compliance with the basic rules of grammar, with time and circumstances to decide what would be unified and what remain different; and (3) literary Serbian was to be written according to the postulate: Write as you speak and read as it is written.32 The revolutionary principles of this new model may be summarized as follows: (1) a literary language was to be based on the living speech gemeinschaftliches Alphabet zu schaffen. Wenn Sie. das was ich hin und wieder in der Grammatik darüber gründlich geseufzet nicht rührt, so lesen Sie auch in Popowitsch's Untersuchungen XVIII-XXIII, XXXIII, 265 in nota et alibi. - Die Zeichen sind freilich willkürlich. .. . Ihre Altslaw. Gramm, ist der wahre Ort das neue Alphabet einzuweihen! Es ist wahrlich kein Neuerungskitzel, sondern die lebendige Überzeugung von der Notwendigkeit und Zwäckmässigkeit dieses Mittels zur Vereinigung der armen Slawen, die mich so zudringlich macht ..." Cf. Briefwechsel zwischen Dobrovsky und Kopitar, 1, p. 201. 31 Cf. Vuk S. Karadzic, Pismenica serpskoga jezika po govoru prostoga na- roda (Vienna, 1814); idem, "Srpska gramatika", Srpski rjecnik, istolkovan nje- mackim i latinskim rijecima (Vienna, 1818), p. XXIX-LXXI. 38 "Vuka Stef. Karadzica i Save Tekelije pisma ... o Srpskome pravopisu sa osobitijem dodacima o srpskom jeziku." (Vienna, 1845). Cf. also Vuk S. Karadzic, Skupljeni gramaticki i polemiiki spisi, III (Belgrade, 1896), pp. 147-188. Dobrovsky and the South Slavic Literary Languages 1057 of uneducated speakers; (2) every written tradition was rejected; (3) the amalgamating nature of a literary language was posited: the basic grammatical structure of one single dialect, admission of dialectal differences, and exposure to the integration process; (4) an alphabet based on a consistent phonemic system; and (5) a phonemic orthography.33 On the whole, these principles repudiate the conservative concept of a literary language based on ideas of the harmony of tradition and living idiom, of stability and continuity, of elegance, taste, and refinement. Such classicist models were created by Adelung and Dobrovsky. Within the frame of the broad opposition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Vuk-Kopitar model is their antithesis. Here is the clue to why the rationalist, Dobrovsky, stood for "stylus medius", why he sided with Siskov in his fight with Karamzin, and with Vidakovic in his controversy with Vuk, and why he could not understand the determination with which Kopitar defended the Serbica hodierna corrupta against Serbica antica incorrupta,34 The logic of Kopitar's argument was clear: A language is either dead or living. If dead, its inventory can be itemized; although it still may be used in liturgy, as Latin is, it can never become the functional tool of commu-

33 Vuk's orthographical system, as outlined in his "Srpska gramatika" of 1818 (See footnote 31), encoded the phonemic principle: each phoneme is represented by its letter and all the assimilative changes in the frame of a single word are written as they are pronounced (e.g.: rob 'slave', roba, ropski). At one point, however, Vuk consciously yielded to the etymological principle; he noticed two different treatments of cluster ds in the spoken dialects, e.g.: ljuski and ljucki 'human', gospostvo and gospoctvo 'rule', osjeci and ocjeci 'cut off. For want of a unique solution Vuk retreated from a consistent principle to the etymological spelling: Ijudski, gospodstvo, odsjeci. Cf. Vuk S. Karadzic, Skup- Ijeni gramaticki i polemicki spisi, II (Belgrade, 1894), p. 29. Later in 1921 A. Belie made a proposal to limit this deviation to -ski and -stvo suffixes (e.g.: Ijudski, sredstvo), while the Zagreb school defended the etymological spellings with d also before the affricates c, c, c. The 1960 Ortho- graphical Dictionary (Pravopis srpsko-hrvatskoga knjizevnog jezika & Pravopis hrvatsko-srpskog knjizevnog jezika, Novi Sad, Zagreb, 1960) accepted the old Vuk's solution. The Serbo-Croatian orthography of today is therefore phonemic; it records all the assimilative changes in the boundaries of "phonological" word except when a d occurs before a s or s (e.g.: rob 'slave', ropstvo, vs. rod 'tribe', rodstvo), or where two normally assimilating consonants are separated by a morpheme boundary (e.g.: predturski 'ante-Turkish', postdiplomski). The proper names of foreign origin do not follow these rules (e.g.: Rentgen 'Roent- gen' vs. rendgen 'a unit'). Cf. M. Stefanovic, Savremeni srpskohrvatski jezik (Gramaticki sistemi i knjizevnojezicka norma) (Belgrade, 1964), pp. 100-107. 34 Cf. F. Wollman, "Josef Dobrovsky a jazykovg literarni obrozeni u Slovanu", Sbornik praci ..., pp. 12-13, 16-17. 1058 Rado L. Lencek nication in a society.35 Furthermore ". .. dead languages do not produce classics; living languages do that, and only the living. Who reads the Latin works of Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, rather than their immortal writings in the 'Pöbelsprache'?" 36 But if such a language already pos- sesses a classical tradition in its oral poetry, this antithesis practically disappears. Continuity is possible. On the other hand, the revolutionary principles of Vuk and Kopitar affirm the possibility of a new solution for literary languages. Judged from the perspective of history, they brought the only meaningful answer to the specifically South Slavic linguistic drift toward multiformity. The idea of the harmonious coexistence of literary languages of related dialects under the cover of a uniform alphabet, originated in Kopitar's romantic dream of a South Slavic Olympia. Thirty-five years later, these ideas, taken almost word for word from Kopitar's Gram- matik (1808), resound again in Vuk: ". .. and we shall leave it to the time and circumstances; either they shall bring us together within our dialects, or we shall write equally in all." 37 In 1850 this principle was incorporated into the charter of Serbo-Croatian which put all three dialects of Stokavski (jekavski, ekavski, ikavski) on the same terms with the codified Southern (jekavski) dialect.38 One point should be made: Too much parochialism has been un- justly attributed to Kopitar in his relation to the South Slavic languages. The fact is that his romantic attachment to dialects at this point yielded to realism. Beyond his dreams, the uniqueness of the existing situation in the South Slavic area led him to adhere to the principle of integration. His model of literary Slovene is essentially an integrating one, and so is his assessment of the South Slavic linguistic situation in general. There are only three South Slavic languages, he writes, in his review of Jnstitutiones, "Bulgarisch, Serbisch (Illyrisch) und Slowenisch. Denn

35 "Ueber Wuk's serbisches Wörterbuch .. .", Jahrbücher der Literatur, 4 (1818). Quoted from Jerneja Kopitarja spisov II. del, 1, ed. R. Nahtigal (Ljubljana, 1944), pp. 17-18. It is instructive to read Kopitar's remark couched in his characteristic style on the margin of the manuscript of Levickij's Ukrainian grammar: "Vos dico, Graecos, Armenos et Russos et Serbos, qui assueti venerari veterem linguam omni nedelja et prasniko, auditam in ecclesia, vix potestis aequi aestimare domesticam et Werkeltags-linguam matris. Sed separandae sunt omnino, sicut fecerunt iam Moscovitae." Cf. Jerneja Kopitarja spisov II. del .. ., Vol. 2, p. 301. 36 Cf. Jerneja Kopitarja. spisov II. del ... Vol. 1, p. 16. 37 Cf. Vuka Stef. Karadzica i Save Tekelije pisma . .. See Vuk S. Karadzic, Skupljeni gramaticki i polemicki spisi, HI, p. 187. 38 Cf. Knjizevni dogovor, first two paragraphs. Cf. footnote 13. Dobrovsky and the South Slavic Literary Languages 1059 nur drey, von einander in Grammatik und Lexicon hinlänglich ver- schiedene südslawische Dialekte gibt es." 39 And it is clear that the principle of historical tradition did not allow him to sacrifice any of them.

7. In conclusion, I should like to propose the following generalizations: (1) The models of literary Czech, Slovene, and Serbo-Croatian, shaped during the first wave of Slavic linguistic romanticism, are three independent and original answers to different linguistic premises, de- finable in terms of the depth of the existing tradition, the latitude of dialectal differentiation, and the linguistic concepts of their creators. They are conservative-classicistic Czech, romantic Serbian, and conservative-integrating Slovene. (2) Of two possible influences under which the South Slavic literary languages were shaped, those of Dobrovsky and Adelung, neither has been found really significant. Dobrovsky's impact on the linguistic re- birth of the South Slavs is more general than specific, and limited to the formation of models of literary languages. Particularly obvious is his influence on the development of Kopitar's interest in Slavistics. In contemporary Slovene, Serbian, and Serbo-Croatian models, however, there was little room for his concept of a literary language. Adelung's influence in the history of the South Slavic literary languages is un- questionably far less significant than is usually claimed. (3) The models discussed differ in their relation to two basic con- stituents of a literary language: tradition and the living speech. The tradition-type model is biased against dialects, while the living-speech- type is necessarily integrating. Their antithetical nature is revealed also in their approach to language: while the first tends to be normative, the second is descriptive. This antithesis is a projection of two conceptions of a literary language; they confronted each other in early Slavic linguistic romanticism and were embodied respectively by Dobrovsky and Kopitar.

38 "Institutiones linguae slavicae", Jahrbücher der Literatur, 17 (1822). See Jerneja Kopitar ja spisov II. del ... Vol. 1, p. 201.