Serbian Poetry Research Articles

Large Language Model Displays Emergent Ability to Interpret Novel Literary Metaphors

ABSTRACT Despite the exceptional performance of large language models (LLMs) on a wide range of tasks involving natural language processing and reasoning, there has been sharp disagreement as to whether their abilities extend to more creative human abilities. A core example is the interpretation of novel metaphors. Here we assessed the ability of GPT-4, a state-of-the-art large language model, to provide natural-language interpretations of a recent AI benchmark (Fig-QA dataset), novel literary metaphors drawn from Serbian poetry and translated into English, and entire novel English poems. GPT-4 outperformed previous AI models on the Fig-QA dataset. For metaphors drawn from Serbian poetry, human judges – blind to the fact that an AI model was involved – rated metaphor interpretations generated by GPT-4 as superior to those provided by a group of college students. In interpreting reversed metaphors, GPT-4, as well as humans, exhibited signs of sensitivity to the Gricean cooperative principle. In addition, for several novel English poems GPT-4 produced interpretations that were rated as excellent or good by a human literary critic. These results indicate that LLMs such as GPT-4 have acquired an emergent ability to interpret literary metaphors, including those embedded in novel poems.

Mrs. Talfj's salon and her methods of mediating Serbian culture in Germany

Creation of cultural and poetic conditions in German cultural and political centers suitable for the reception of folk poetry in general, and thus also of a Serbian poetry; conceptualization and textualization of the image of Serbs, especially on the basis of Talfja's translations of Serbian folk poetry in German literature and nonfiction in the 20s and 30s of 19th century. Formation of literature circles in Berlin led by Goethe, Brothers Grimm, Kopitar, Stieglitz and Varnhagen. Description of the trip in the book Visit to Montenegro, with Stieglitz's special interest in folklore, legends and epic folk poetry in Njegos's Grlica. Stieglitz's importance as a cultural mediator and one of Talfja's best followers is also mentioned.

The “Giant Role Model”: the “Serbian” Petőfi

Abstract The reception of Sándor Petőfi’s poems and the critical discourse on them in German by bilingual German poets and publicists in Hungary began during the poet’s lifetime and ran parallel to the development of his career. In the same period, however, from the mid-1840s, a very intense interest in his person and his poetry, which was even deeper and more diverse than in German, was awakened in southern Slavic, especially Serbian, literature. This paper explores the possible reasons for his integration in Serbian poetry and public poetry. Among the most important factors is the fact that in the 18th and 19th centuries, strong centres of Serbian culture developed in Hungary, including Buda, and that in the northern part of present-day Serbia, in Vojvodina, the population had for centuries been of mixed nationality, including Serbs, Hungarians and Germans. As a result, a large part of the Serbian intelligentsia spoke Hungarian, and many of the Hungarians in Vojvodina had spoken Serbian since the last century, so they could read each other’s literature in the original. Petőfi’s poetry, like much of 19th century Hungarian literature, was translated by renowned authors, sometimes of European quality, and his poetry was an inspiration for Serbian Romanticism in terms of form, theme and poetics (Jovan Jovanović Zmaj, Đura Jakšić). Finally, it is worth mentioning the historical circumstances, the fact that, although the two peoples were on opposite political sides in the Hungarian War of Independence of 1848 and several times later, Petőfi’s figure transcended political differences and his reception remained unbroken even in the most difficult periods. The belief that Petőfi, who originally went by the name Petrovics, was of Serbian origin – a belief that is difficult to verify biographically – and which dates back to Petőfi’s own time, has contributed to this. The layers and trends in the history of Petőfi’s reception in Serbia also shed light on the mechanisms of intellectual relations in the common cultural space of the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans.

A linguistic investigation of monosyllabic or masculine rhymes in Serbian poetry

This paper focuses on the prosodic properties of monosyllabic, that is, masculine rhymes in Serbian poetry. Word stress has been identified as a crucial prosodic feature of Serbian rhyme in general, and of masculine rhyme in particular, based on a quantitatively analyzed poetic database, which includes eight poets, four from the Romantic and four from the post-Romantic period. The role of stress is demarcative: it signals the beginning of the domain of rhyme, thereby considerably promoting its effectiveness. However, the presence of stress within the rhyme domain is not obligatory. The most effective are resonant rhymes, with demarcated domains in both lines, next in effectiveness are semi-resonant rhymes, with demarcation in only one of the lines, while nonresonant rhymes, which lack demarcation, are the least effective. Masculine rhymes are indistinct from feminine rhymes in terms of their prosodic organization, but differ significantly in terms of their linguistic realization. The lexical material provided by the Serbian grammatical system is only partially adequate for realizing masculine rhymes. The most effective resonant rhymes are formed exclusively by monosyllabic words, which are an extremely rare prosodic profile in the Serbian lexicon. On the other hand, the least effective nonresonant rhymes are exclusively formed by polysyllabic words, which are a dominant prosodic profile in the Serbian lexicon, but often yield infelicitous, barely recognizable rhymes. It is notable that masculine rhymes are not used by all poets in our database, which may well be due to the onerous lexical constraints on their formation. Masculine rhymes are in fact used by only four poets: three from the Romantic, and only one from the post-Romantic period.

РУССКИЙ ПУШКИНИСТ В БЕЛГРАДЕ: ВСЕВОЛОД ПРОКОФЬЕВ (1908–1983), ЕГО СУДЬБА И НАСЛЕДИЕ

The article provides the biographical information about the fate and the scientific legacy of the Russian emigree scholar in Belgrade (Serbia) Vsevolod Prokofiev (1908–1983). It focuses on his research article dealing with the influence of the Russian poet A. Pushkin on the Serbian poetry.

Hrišćanska inspiracija u savremenoj srpskoj poeziji

The subject of our research in this paper are aspects of religious spirituality in contemporary Serbian poetry. First, we give an overview of poetic, ideological and cultural characteristics of poetic production in the last three decades, with certain value categorizations. We then direct our attention to the individual poetics of poets born in the seventies and eighties, whose poetry has a proven presence of Christian inspiration. Our goal is to establish a literary-historical and culturally distinct poetic flow and situate it within the History of Modern and Contemporary Serbian literature, predominantly secular. The focus of our analysis is not exclusively quotes, narratives or motifs from the Bible and patristic literature. We examine how Christian (Serbian-Byzantine and Western-Christian) spirituality participates in the formation of an individual poetic view of the world, as well as poetic spirituality that manifests itself through poetic images, expressions and figures. We are interested in the work of the religious consciousness of our poets in shaping their artistic, moral and value attitudes towards the phenomena of our epoch, but also towards the culture to which they belong. Therefore, we analyse the cultural models that these poets embrace in their poetry, as well as the humanistic messages that they place within their immanent poetics. We come to the conclusion that male and female poets, with their poetic and spiritual commitment, have taken the risk of deciding to give up poetry as a form of social engagement, aware in advance of the burden of the alternative and the minority.

The Moral Witness: The Poetics of Testimony in Modern Serbian Poetry

The Moral Witness: The Poetics of Testimony in Modern Serbian PoetryThis essay reviews Dunja Dušanić’s book Sa silama nemerljivim: Pesnici kao svedoci modernog terora [Immeasurable Forces: Poets as Witnesses to Modern Terror, 2021], outlining the methodological assumptions of the book, tracing its overarching argument, and evaluating its importance within multiple scholarly contexts, including comparative literature, literary criticism and literary history. Świadek moralny. Poetyka świadectwa we współczesnej poezji serbskiejTekst stanowi recenzję książki Dunji Dušanić Sa silama nemerljivim: Pesnici kao svedoci modernog terora [Siły niezmierzone. Poeci jako świadkowie nowoczesnego terroru, 2021]. Zostają nakreślone założenia metodologiczne książki. Recenzent tropi jej nadrzędną argumenację i ocenia znaczenie w wielu kontekstach naukowych, jak na przykład literatura porównawcza, krytyka literacka i historia literatury.

Serbian medieval poetry: 20th-century literary-historical and theoretical interpretations

This paper examines how national literary histories written in the twentieth century define medieval Serbian poetry. Grounded in the canon of Byzantine liturgical poetry and dedicated to cult practice, hymnography often did not conform to modern poetic principles, originality, and metrical form. Formalist approaches to poetry shaped the anthologies of Serbian medieval literature published in Yugoslavia in the 1960s. The editors transformed sequences from narrative prose into poetic texts, thus creating medieval poems. These cases draw attention to the importance of textual criticism and the social context in defining medieval literary genres. Exploring hymnography as a linguistic and liturgical event - a poem sung to an engaged audience - introduces new perspectives on its interpretation.

TРАДИЦИОНАЛНО И МОДЕРНО У ПОЕЗИЈИ РАДОСЛАВА ЗЛАТАНОВИЋА

The lyrical profile of Radoslav Zlatanović marked the second half of the 20th century in the Serbian poetry of Kosovo and Metohija. The Kosovo myth and the cult of woman in his poetry are imbued with pagan and modern elements. This paper follows the traditional and modern layers of this poetry, that make a lyrical symbiosis. Zlatanović represents the ecstasy of life’s joy and youth, by which he can be related to the avant-garde Serbian poet between the two world wars Rastko Petrović. His poetry carries the traditional archetypal images, but also the modern sensibility and authentic poetic expression. The poetry of Radoslav Zlatanović influenced the forming of the entire generation of contemporary Serbian poets in Kosovo and Metohija.

A linguistic investigation of disyllabic or feminine rhymes in Serbian poetry

This paper focuses on the prosodic properties of disyllabic, that is to say, feminine rhymes in Serbian poetry. On the basis of a quantitatively analyzed poetic database, which includes eight poets, four from the Romantic and four from the Post-Romantic period, we have identified word stress as a highly relevant prosodic property. The investigation of its role in creating rhyming pairs resulted in a classification of feminine rhymes into three types: resonant, semi-resonant, and non-resonant. This classification is based on the presence or absence of stress in the domain of rhyme, which begins with the rightmost strong metrical position in a line, followed by a weak final syllable. In resonant rhymes both lines that form a rhyming pair contain stress in their domains, in semi-resonant rhymes only one of the lines contains stress, while in non-resonant rhymes, stress is absent from both. The role of stress is demarcative: it signals the beginning of the domain of rhyme, thereby considerably promoting its effectiveness. The most effective are resonant rhymes, with demarcated domains in both lines, next in effectiveness are semi-resonant rhymes, with demarcation in only one of the lines, while non-resonant rhymes, which lack demarcation, are the least effective. Based on this classification, clear differences can be established not only among individual poets, but also among poetic eras. Moreover, the classification of feminine rhymes into resonant, semi-resonant and non-resonant allows for a detailed insight into their lexical composition, that is, into the prosodic profiles of words that constitute them.

Problems of Poetic Reactualization of Medieval Heritage in Post-War Modernism

A significant portion of Serbian poetry of the latter half of the 20th century was marked by the creative reactualization and rediscovery of medieval heritage. This orientation is evident in some of the leading poets of post-war modernism, such as Vasko Popa, Miodrag Pavlović, Ivan V. Lalić, and Ljubomir Simović. At the same time, this creative direction raised a number of poetic and cultural studies questions, most notably those that pertain to the nature of the relationship with that distant era. Namely, is it possible to establish authentic contact between the Middle Ages and the 20th century, given the linguistic, spiritual, and even civilizational distance between them? In this essay we attempt to define the nature of this connection as it appeared to the most important poets of the latter half of the 20th century. We show how some of the most central characteristics of post-war modernism (ideas of the totality and history, the poem as prayer) were formed through interactions with medieval poetics and its worldview. We further examine whether this relationship is established and realized exclusively as an individual poetic act of modernist poetry, or as a result of older and more profound cultural and historical forces. In other words, whether medieval legacy is only a part of individual poetic memory, or part of a greater spiritual body of Serbian history and culture.

„KO KAŽE DA U SVETLOST?“ „ISTOČNICE“ LjUBOMIRA SIMOVIĆA

The complexity of observing a collection of poems is reflected in its structure and thematic richness. The sources by Ljubomir Simović, reveal a specific experience of the world and man in circumstances that are recognizable and close to everyone who has experienced conflict, repression and dissatisfaction in their social or personal history. The different layers that rest on biblical morality and mytho- logical tools in this collection of poems are revealed through two different, but not necessarily conflicting principles: the Principle of the Female and the Principle of the Male. In the context of twentieth-century Serbian poetry, this collection, published in 1983, will be ideologically close to the works of authors who treat the themes of the Kosovo myth, social movement and transformation from the Middle Ages to the present, and understand human destiny through a certain destiny of national identity. The diversity in the forms used by the author as well as the semantic potential of the collection will make Istočnice a very challenging and provocative text for interpreta- tion both today and through many years to come.

Grzegorz Łatuszyński and Serbian literature

Grzegorz ?atuszy?ski (1933-2020) was undoubtedly one of the finest Polish translators of 20th century Serbian poetry. Apart from 16 volumes devoted to poems by selected authors, he also published two-volume anthology presenting poems by 155 Serbian poets. Even an on surface analysis of the translations proves ?atuszy?ski?s ability to combine his poetic sensi?tivity with philological precision. Grzegorz ?atuszy?ski also translated two important novels (by Milos Crnjanski and Borislav Pekic) as well as a book of letters by Filip David and Mirko Kovac. Each volume of ?atuszy?ski?s translations is accompanied by a biographical profile of the poets and some characteristics of their work. Another aspect of ?atuszy?ski professional profile is essay writing and journalism. Besides, he translated Polish poetry into Serbian. All ?atuszy?ski?s professional activities has led to a closer cooperation between Polish and Serbian literary circles.

Odiseji bez Itake

The essay discusses different ways in which contemporary Serbian poetry responded to the experiences of the wars for the Yugoslav heritage, as well as to the experiences of the consequences of those wars. A broader overview of four characteristic approaches to these topics is given, in the works of Stevan Tontić, Duško Babić, Đorđe Nešić and Nebojša Devetak. These poets artistically articulate painful experiences of suffering, destruction, loss of homeland, exile and the search for new ways of affirming personal and collective identity.

New Medievalism: Byzantine Motifs in Contemporary Serbian Poetry

New Medievalism: Byzantine Motifs in Contemporary Serbian Poetry Milan Gromović, Guest Editor Click for larger view View full resolution The papers in this special issue of Serbian Studies were first delivered at a Roundtable, organized at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad, in May 2020. The participants are all young scholars from Serbia and Republika Srpska. The young scholars are here presenting their research to a wider international readership in the hope that this will help showcase Serbian scholarship and Serbian culture in the Anglophone world. The papers were all translated with the financial support of NASSS and edited by the Serbian Studies editorial team. The topic of Byzantium has gained prominence in Serbian letters, outside the confines of pure historical research: it has entered the cultural sphere where it is seen as a general context for Serbian medieval culture, whose echoes in contemporary Serbian poetry and other creative outputs are being traced in this special issue. I wish to thank the Editorial Board of Serbian Studies for giving me and my team of colleagues the opportunity to share our work with American members of NASSS and the international readership of the journal. [End Page i] Milan Gromović, Guest Editor University of Novi Sad Copyright © 2021 Serbian Studies

Charles Simic, American Poetry, and Serbian Critical Reception

A Serbian-born American poet, Charles Simic (1938), has been a staple of both American and Serbian poetic scenes for decades, though for different reasons. The paper examines the reception of Simic’s work in Serbian criticism, offering commentary on the translation of his poetry and its critical interpretation. Though Simic is undoubtedly part of American literary canon, and his work is informed by Modernist and Postmodernist American authors such as Williams, Stevens, or Ashbery, Serbian criticism has until very recently focused only on his origin and on the influence of his birth country on his work. By giving an overview of Simic’s major thematic and tonal elements placed within an American context, supported by numerous examples from his poems, we position him firmly within the American poetic tradition, while at the same time pointing out some elements of Serbian poetry relevant for his poetic development, like the influence of Popa, Tadić and Ristović. Shining a historical light on the reception of Simic’s poetry in Serbia, we uncover both the political and poetic reasons for the confusing inclusion of this American poet within Serbian culture.

Circles of Interpretation, Analytical Signposts. Criticism of the critical prose of A. B. Šimić

Poetry can do without the authorial aside. Yet, this is true for all literary genres. What happens, though, with poets’ critical pieces when these pieces – structured in order to highlight, in general theoretical terms, either an aesthetic phenomenon or a cluster of generic artistic features – surpass the realm of self-reflective ambitions of the poets themselves? In that case, we talk about a versatile or prolific author. The multi-directional nature of that agency, its dialectical essence, implies a possibility of autonomous existence of critical forms of expressing stances and judgments, independently of poets’ personal poetic standards. It is A. B. Šimić’s oeuvre that presents a fertile ground for discussing this complex issue of literary onto-theory: the history of reception of integral, that is, a separate study and evaluation of his poetry/ critical prose, proves in valid terms both uncertainty and arbitrariness in anti-theoretical approaches up to date to critical pieces of artists (in Serbian poetry, Šimić’s counterparts in this respect are poets Laza Kostić, Momčilo Nastasijević, and Miodrag Pavlović). This study tendency demands another segment of general discursive practice of literary critics be clarified. It is a constant conflict between principal interpretative concepts, so-called leading/major literary paradigms. With regard to this, the cognitive-logical power and aesthetic-critical integrity of the interpreter of the aforementioned relations come forward. Consequently, this is fully visible in the way A. B. Šimić’s status of critical prose changes in the Yugoslav and, in particular Croatian, literature of the 20th century.

Métaphysique du monde physique

Métaphysique du monde physique

The poet speaks to god: Christian religiosity in modern Serbian poetry

During the twentieth century Serbian poetry was in intensive dialogue with Christian religion, motives and symbols. In the first half of the century, the inspiration to the Christian religion is evident in the poetry of Jovan Ducic and Momcilo Nastasijevic. In the poetry of Momcilo Nastasijevic there are frequent motives from The Book of Revelation and the reference to Christian ethics. Jovan Ducic in the book Lirika (1943) gives a tragic and sublime vision of life, taking on numerous Christian motives. The renewal of the prayer tone in poetry after World War II will appear in Desanka Maksimovic?s collection Trazim pomilovanje (1964). The culmination of Christian religiosity in Serbian literature of the last century is found in the book Cetiri kanona (1996) by Ivan V. Lalic, in which the figure of the Virgin Mary is especially emphasized.

Contextual Prosodic Theory Applied to English-Serbian Poetic Translation

The paper focuses on two rival translations of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 129 into Serbo-Chroatian (Hlebec 1987). The translator provides Version A, which faithfully conveys the stylistic nuances of the original, and is aimed to be appreciated by a sensitive reading public, and Version B, which the translator calls “adulterated”, but believes to be more accessible to a wider audience. However, he feels that Version B is “somehow more likeable” (Hlebec, personal communication). This impression was shared by all seven educated native speakers of Serbian consulted, among whom were three third-year students of English. Using Contextual Prosodic Theory and the Corpus of Contemporary Serbian, the paper sets out to explain this impression. The results suggest that syntactic patterns in Version A, being closer to the English original than in Version B, may impede comprehension, and that certain lexical items may not chunk the same states of affairs in Serbian as their English equivalents do in English. A representative poetry corpus must be created in order to verify Hlebec’s view (personal communication) that syntax employed in Version A is characteristic of Serbian poetry and therefore appropriate in poetic translation.