Karadžić, Vuk

Karadžić, Vuk, b 6 November 1787 in Tršić, Serbia, d 6 February 1864 in Vienna. Eminent Serbian philologist, folklorist, and historian; the founder of modern literary Serbian. He published the first grammar, alphabet, and phonetic orthography of vernacular Serbian; the influence of Meletii Smotrytsky’s grammar on this work is considerable. In 1814 he also published the first collection of Serbian folk songs. Thereafter he devoted himself to promoting the adoption of vernacular Serbian as the literary language and collecting Serbian folklore. His orthography was officially adopted in Serbia in 1868. Karadžić’s pioneering contributions—opposed by both Serbian conservatives and Austrian censors—had a profound impact on 19th-century Ukrainian intellectuals, particularly Markiian Shashkevych, Yakiv Holovatsky, Ivan Vahylevych, Oleksander Barvinsky, and Yevhen Zhelekhivsky in Galicia and Mykhailo Maksymovych, Amvrosii Metlynsky, and Taras Shevchenko in Russian-ruled Ukraine, who used them as a model and inspiration for their own work; they translated some of his writings into Ukrainian. While living in Vienna, Karadžić became a close friend of the Galician journalist Ivan Holovatsky. In 1819 he visited Kyiv, Chernivtsi, and Lviv and became acquainted with several Ukrainian cultural figures. Later he corresponded with and influenced Osyp Bodiansky and Izmail Sreznevsky, who wrote his biography (1846). He was elected a full member of the Odesa Society of History and Antiquities (1842) and the Austrian (1848), Prussian (1850), and Russian (1851) academies of sciences, and an honorary member of the Kharkiv University Council (1846).

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kyryliuk, Ievhen. Vuk Karadzhych i ukraïns'ka kul'tura (Kyiv 1978)

Mykola Mushynka

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]