Jovan Pačić

Jovan Pačić (Baja, 6 November 1771 – Budapest, 4 December 1849) was a Serbian soldier, poet, writer, philologist, translator, illustrator and painter. He was the first Serb to translate Goethe.

Serb clothes in Bačka by Jovan Pačić

Biography

Jovan Pačić, born in 1771 in a small village of Baja where numerous Serbian authors and artists called home (Joakim Vujić, Bogoboj Atanacković, Mita Popović, painter Pavle Đurković and sculptor Dimitrije Popović). He went to a German and Hungarian school in Kalocsa. In 1792 or 1793, he joined the hussar regiment of the Austrian army and fought against the French. He took part in several battles of the War of the Fifth Coalition. Pačić was wounded at the great Battle of Wagram in 1812 when a sword cut through his mouth. He retired after a year of recuperation. As a retired cavalry captain, he moved to Novi Sad, and soon after settled in Győr in 1838. He published many verses in the Serbian Journal (Serbski letopis), Budapest couriers, the Serbian National News (Serbski narodni list) and magazines until 1842. Jovan Pačić turned to painting and poetry in his leisure. He primarily painted landscapes and genre art. He was praised by his contemporaries.

Pačić died in 1849 in a hotel owned by Jakov Ignjatović's uncle (Sima Ignjatović) in the ethnic quarter of Budapest known as Tabán. His neighbours at the time were poet Sima Milutinović Sarajlija and novelist Milovan Vidaković.

Literary works

He was a writer and poet whose activity was linked with the latter part of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century. He wrote Imenoslovo ili rečnik lićny imena razny naroda Slavenski ( A lexicon of names of various Slavic people) in collaboration with Ján Kollár, and published by Josif Milovuk (1793-1850) in Budapest in 1826; Sočinenija pesnosloska (1827); and Stojšićev Elikon ili Sredstvoukrašenja duše (1827). He translated the Hungarian songs and proverbs of Péter Beniczky, who lived in the early part of the 17th century.

Pačić's songs are about love, wine, combat, leaves, then there are elegies and epigrams. His verses are contemporary, modeled by the epoch in which he lived. His contemporaries were German poet Ernst Schulze, Hungarian poet Mihály Csokonai Vitéz and Serbian and Hungarian poet Mihailo Vitković. Some of his poetry closely resembles the enjamblement of the mannerist poetry of the second half of the sixteenth century, and Jovan Pačić, who best represents it, actually happens to be a late admirer of Giovanni della Casa, a poet of very licentious fancy. (Della Casa once presented a copy of erotic verse to the Pope, in mistake for a petition, and caused his own rise to greater preferment to be stunted).

Paintings

Most of Pačić's books and others were illustrated by the author himself, like the cover of Serb clothes in Bačka, a watercolor painting, part of his art book entitled Nošnje iz Bačke (National Costumes of Bačka).

References

• Jaša Ignjatović, Tri spisatelja Srpska (Danica, 1860)
• Vlad. Nikolić, Jovan Pačić (Brankovo Kolo, 1902)