Jakov Ignjatović (Serbian Cyrillic: Јаков Игњатовић) (8th December 1822–5th July 1889) was a famous Serbian 19th century novelist and prose writer from Hungary. He also wrote in Hungarian.
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Jakov Ignjatović was born in Szentendre on 8 December 1822. He finished elementary school in Szentendre and studied at the Gymnasium in Vác, Esztergom and Pest. He enrolled in Law School at Pest, but left the university and joined the hussars. Later, he graduated law in Kecskemét, where he started his law practice in 1847 for a short time, but during the Hungarian revolution of 1848 he joined Hungarian forces in fighting against the Austrians. The revolution in Hungary let loose elements of discord which culminated in an abortive insurrection, and for a lenghtened period the Serbs in Hungary were prey to more than their wonted symptoms of disaffection and discord. Ignjatović sensed the ugly and shameful future that lay in store for the Serbs and Croats who rose up against Magyars under reactionary leaders. Yet Hungary's own democratic current was chocked off by the oppressive and chauvenistic intolerance of the Magyar leaders and unrestrained mobs. He was briefly arrested when the revolution was suppressed. After the Hungarian defeat, Ignjatović fled to Belgrade. There he worked as a journalist till 1850, and later, he traveled the world. He returned to Hungary in 1853 and took an active part in the cultural and political life of Serbs in Vojvodina. His efforts to secure equal educational privileges for the Slav and Romanian nationalities in the Austrian dominions brought him into disfavour with the German element. He was successively editor of Letopis Matice srpske (Serbian Annals), the Srpske novine (Serbian News), and the Nedeljni list (Weekend Magazine), between 1854 and 1856, and worked as a clerk in Sremski Karlovci and Novi Sad. He joined Svetozar Miletić's People's Party in its political fight against Austria and was member of the Hungarian diet twice. After the People's Party split with Hungary, he remained loyal to the Hungarian authorities, like Janos Damjanich and Sebo Vukovics, and unlike the majority of the Serbs living in Hungarian-occupied Serbian territory. And because of that, Ignjatović was seen as a traitor by his compatriots, and lived in isolation until death. This had a bad influence on his writing career, but he still managed to leave a literary legacy behind him just the same (among the Hungarians and Serbs alike).
Ignjatović turned to novel writing rather late, only in the last decades of his life. Perhaps influenced by the second half of the nineteenth century, then under the domination of science. The scientist was commonly believed to be in possession of the means whereby the riddle of the universe might be explained, and the whole future of humanity shaped. All the important writers of that time were under the irresistible spell of this prestige of science, and Ignjatović was no exception, each sought to utilize as much as possible the facts and theories of science, and to make of the novel or drama an instrument of scientific observation and discussion. The Realists purported to create a school of "applied literature". The ultimate goal of the school was, first, exact and almost photographic delineation of the accidents of modern life, and secondly, non-suppression of the essential features and functions of that life which are usually suppressed. There is no doubt that Jakov Ignjatović and Svetozar Marković belonged to this school.
Ignjatović was elected a member of the Serbian Royal Academy in 1888. He died like a vagrant in Novi Sad in 1899.
Ignjatović did not hesitate to draw largely on his own personal adventures and profess to portray human life, not as a fairy-tale, but as "stuff on which to try the soul's strength." Among Jakov Ignjatović's best novels are Vasa Rešpekt (Basil the Respectable), Večiti Mladoženja (The Eternal Groom), Patnica (A Burdened Woman), Trpen Spašen (The Suffered Saved), and Milan Nerandžić. All these novels form a prominent landmark in the development of Serbian prose fiction.
The plots of Ignjatović's novels are ingenious in conception and skillfully crafted. He has no pretentions to the brilliance of Gogol (with whom he's been often compared), but his amusing dialogue arises naturally out of the situation, and its wit is never strained.
Vasa Rešpekt (1875) opens with a praise of the town of Szentandre, the location in which this story is framed. The hero of the embedded story, Vasa Ognjan, leaves the town early, lives most of his life in perpetual poverty, and gets into conflict with the authorities, but distinguishes himself as somewhat of a daredevil in battles. In 1848, he fights on the Hungarian side, though not out of political conviction, and he asks to be transferred when he is supposed to fight his fellow Serbs.
If Vasa Rešpekt is a romantic story revolving around an identity crisis, Večiti mladoženja (1878) is a humerous story about two generations of Szendendre Serbs. The first describes in great detail the preparation and departure of a well-to-do merchant on a trip to Cracow fair of 1812; the second part is focused on his no-good sons who fight among themselves for the inheritance and finally waste it.
His characters are original, and the unexpected incidents and adventures in which they are mixed up are represented in an irrestably comic manner by a man who thoroughly understood the resources of the theatre as well. The spontaneity and verve with which his adventurous characters are drawn have suggested that in his favourite type he was describing himself and all those he knew around him, however intimately. The code of morals followed by these characters is open to criticism, but they are human and genial in their roguery, and compare far from unfavourably with the cynical creations of contemporary novels.
Novels:
Short stories:
Jovan Skerlić, Istorija Nove Srpske Književnosti / A History of New Serbian Literature (Belgrade, 1921), pages 366-373.