Lukijan Mušicki

Luka Mušicki Лукијан Мушицки
Portrait by Novak Radonić, 1858
Born	(1777-01-27)27 January 1777 Temerin, Kingdom of Hungary
Died	15 March 1837(1837-03-15) (aged 60) Karlovac, Austrian Empire
Occupation(s)	Poet, archimandrite

Lukijan Mušicki (Serbian Cyrillic: Лукијан Мушицки, pronounced [lukǐjaːn muʃǐtskiː]; 27 January 1777 – 15 March 1837) was a Serbian Orthodox bishop, writer and poet. From 1828, he was a Serbian Orthodox bishop at Sremski Karlovci in the Austrian Empire until 1837. Mušicki is best remembered as the "first artistic poet in Serbian literature".^[1]

Biography

He was born as Luka Mušicki on 27 January 1777 in Temerin, Serbia,^[2] in Bačka County, to father Georgije and mother Anastazije.^[3] He comes from the Serbian family Čitaković, who moved to Bačka from the village Mušića in the Valjevo region. Even today, there are Donji Mušić and Gornji Mušić, after whom the family was named Mušićani. Most likely, some Austrian Slovak official changed it to the version Mušický.^[4] They settled on a wasteland near Subotica, and it was named after them. Later, the family moved to Temerin. He attended elementary school in Temerin with teacher Pavle Milenović, the famous krasnopista. He attended Serbian school for another year in Titel with his uncle, teacher Stevan Popović. Then he attended a German border guard school for two additional years.^[5] He graduated from high school in Novi Sad and Szegedin, and law and philosophy in Pest. After completing his studies, he became the administrator of the metropolitan office in Sremski Karlovci, a theology teacher, and, after becoming a monk in November 1802.^[6] archimandrite of the Šišatovac monastery. He received his monastic name from Metropolitan Stefan Stratimirović, after the Greek philosopher Lucian.^[7] He governed the Šišatovac monastery as archimandrite from 1812 - 1824. In 1823, he accepted the administration of the Upper Karlovci diocese and undertook intensive educational work to improve the education of his people. From 1828 until his death, he was the Bishop of Gornjo-Karlovac, with his seat first in Plaški, and from 1829 in Sremski Karlovci.^[8]

There were schools in German in the Austrian Military Frontier, and he opened the first schools in the Serbian language in Plaški (Glavno, 1824-1827), Škare, Zrmanja (Gračac), and Mutilić. As an archimandrite, he founded the Theological School in Plaški in 1824, where he taught science. As bishop of Gornjo-Karlovac, he transferred it to Karlovac in 1829, and in its place, in 1831, he founded the Preparatory Theological School in Plaški. Mušicki "brought out from it and sent out to the people young priests, established in Orthodoxy and conscious Serbs". He also arranged for Serbian children in German border schools to receive Serbian Orthodox catechisms.^[9] He founded a foundation with a capital of 7,000 forints at the Serbian Preparatory School in Karlovac. From which two female teacher trainees received 120 forints per year.^[10]

Cover page of the third book of the collection of poems by Lukijan Mušicki Stihotvorenija (1844)

The creation of the National Library of Serbia began in 1837, with the personal library of Lukijan Mušicki^[11]

The Poet

Jovan Skerlić describes Mušicki as the first (modern) artistic poet in Serbian literature. Mušicki published his verses in occasional booklets and in newspaper articles and magazines. His collected works, Lutan Mušicki's Stihotvoršl were published after his death in four books: the first two in Buda, in 1838 and 1840, the second two in Novi Sad, in 1844 and 1847.^[12]

Mušicki began to write early and introduced a new direction into Serbian poetry, the pseudo-classical one, which was spreading in Europe after the Restoration, evidently most prominent in Hungarian and Russian literature of the 18th century. As a poet, Mušicki belongs entirely to the classical school. When he was a student in Budapest, Hungarian literature had been swept by pseudo-classicism. Johann Ludwig von Schedius (1768-1847),^[13] a student of German philosophers, his professor of aesthetics and philosophy at the University of Pest, and a zealous supporter of classical art, had a great influence on his literary development. Mušicki received all his literary ideas from him. Guided in this direction, he especially studied Klopstock and the "German Horace" of Karl Wilhelm Ramler. He learned Latin and Greek fluently, and upon becoming a monk, took the name Lucian of Samosata. The preserved list of his library clearly shows how extensive and deep his literary and philosophical education was. There are not only all the major writers of Greek and Latin antiquity, but also modern ones, from the Germans: Herder, Hegel, Kant,  Mendelssohn, Klopstock, Goethe, Wieland, Schiller; from the French: Bossier, Moliere, Boileau, La Fontaine, Voltaire, Helvetius, Diderot, Condillac; from the English: Shakespeare, Goldsmith, Pope; from the Italians: Dante, Ariosto, Tasso, Boccaccio, Goldoni; from the Russians: Lomonosov, Derzhavin, Trediakovsky. Mušicki was certainly the most educated Serbian writer of his time.^[14]

Horace was his main model, and he knew De arte poetica by heart. He counts three poets among his "favorites": the "psalmist" David, Klopstock, then the celebrated German poet of the Messiah, and his "dear Horace", as he affectionately called him. He translates Horace's verses, in addition to those of Anacreon and Cato. At one point, he intended to translate all of Horace's poems, and he translated so much of him that Metropolitan Stefan Stratimirović threatened to excommunicate him from the church if he continued to translate a "heathen". As Horace, he is appropriate, writes flattering praises and dedications, and Jernej Kopitar writes to him on this occasion: "I wish you were as proud as Klopstock, and not as wooed as Horace and Virgil." ^[15]

Legacy

In 1828, at 51, Lukijan became a bishop. He was made the bishop of the Diocese of Upper Karlovci. He lived there for the rest of his life. He died as Bishop of Upper Karlovac in his home,^[16] where he rests in the Serbian cemetery in Sremski Karlovci, on 15 March 1837.^[17]He passed away at 60.

Lukijan Mušicki is best known for his classical poetry. He was a translator of many works from the Latin poet Horace. Most of his other writings included newspaper articles about literature. His poems are considered very important in Serbian literature from the 18th century. He was one of the first in his region to write in the vernacular, a trend of the times.

Lukijan Mušicki's collected poems and writings were published posthumously. They were called Lukijana Mušickog stihodvorenia. The first two books came out in Budapest in 1838 and 1840. Two more books were published in Novi Sad in 1844 and 1847. Mušicki is featured in a chapter in Jovan Skerlić's seminal work Istorija nove srpske književnosti, first published in 1914.^[18]

References

1. "JOVAN SKERLIĆ Istorija Nove Srpske Knjizevnosti".
2. name="#1">"Glasnik Istorijskog društva u Novi Sadu", Novi Sad 1937.
3. name="automatski generisano1">"Srbski narodni list", Budim 1845. godine
4. name="#1"
5. name="automatski generisano2">"Srpska Zora", Vienna 1876. godine
6. Milorad Pavić: Bio-bibliographic contributions about important writers. rastko.rs
7. "Serbian Dawn", Vienna 1876.
8. Cite web|url=https://www.eparhija-gornjokarlovacka.hr/old_site/Episkop-Musicki-c.htm%7Ctitle=Episkop Lukijan Musicki|website=www.eparhija-gornjokarlovacka.hr|access-date=30 January 2023
9. "Školski list", Sombor 1882
10. "Školski list", Sombor 1881
11. name="automatski generisano2"
12. "JOVAN SKERLIĆ Istorija Nove Srpske Knjizevnosti".
13. Piroska, Balogh (January 2019). "Anthropological aspects of Johann Ludwig Schedius's aesthetics". Changes in the image of man from the Enlightenment to the age of Romanticism, ed. by Dezső Gurka, Budapest, 2019.
14. "JOVAN SKERLIĆ Istorija Nove Srpske Knjizevnosti".
15. "JOVAN SKERLIĆ Istorija Nove Srpske Knjizevnosti".
16. name="automatski generisano1"
17. Rudolf Strohal, Grad Karlovac opisan i orisan, government publ. (Printed by M. Fogine), Karlovac, Lukijan Mušicki
18. "JOVAN SKERLIĆ Istorija Nove Srpske Knjizevnosti".

Further reading

• Milan Radeka (1958). About the Educational Efforts of Lukijan Mušicki: (accepted at the Meeting of 3-XII-1956).
• Vladimir Ćorović (1999). Lukijan Mušicki: studija iz srpske književnosti. Matica Srpska.
• Jovan Skerlić, Istorija nove srpske književnosti/The History of New Serbian Literature, Belgrade, 1914, 1921, pages 138–143; six pages dedicated to Lukijan Mušicki, poet, aesthete, translator, polyglot, and bishop.