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VATROSLAV JAGIĆ AND THE ADVANCEMENT OF SLAVISTICS IN THE 19TH CENTURY
Stjepan Damjanović
Sažetak
Ignatius
Jacobus. Ognjoslav and Vatroslav - the Croatian versions of Ignatius, first appeared
in his secondary school certificates. The latter name fully prevailed. Vinko,
his father, a cobbler and Ana née Kraljek, his mother, had six children, Vatroslav
being the eldest. Jagić attended primary school in Varaždin and completed secondary
education in Varaždin and Zagreb. He graduated from the University of Vienna
and received a degree in classical philology. In the course of his studies, he started
frequenting Slavic lectures given by Franc Mikloušič, whose influence prompted
him to take up writing about the issues in Slavic philology and closely observe literary
works on Slavistics, both in and out of the Slavic countries. From 1860 to 1870,
he taught classical philology at the Zagreb Gymnasium. The articles from that time
provide a framework for his future prominent works in Slavic studies. Despite his
youth, Jagić demonstrated a fascinating superiority in introducing the latest accomplishments
of genetic linguistics into Croatian philology, namely the works of
Bopp, Schleicher, Curtius, Buslaev, et al. In 1864, with his fellow researchers Josip
Torbar and Franjo Rački, he launched Književnik, the linguistic journal. They intended to show that Croatia has enough scientific potential to establish the
Academy of Sciences. The three volumes of their journal contained 1821 pages, of
which Jagić himself penned 437, or a quarter.
In 1866, at only 28, Jagić was elected as the youngest of the first 16 members of
the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts. By the decree of Ban Levin Rauch, he
was dismissed from his post and left the Zagreb Gymnasium. In 1871, he became a
professor at the Department of Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European languages
at Odessa University. In 1874, he became the very first professor of Slavic
studies in Berlin. Jagić held this post until 1880 when he moved again and became
a teacher at the University of Saint Petersburg. In 1866, he returned to Vienna to
replace Franc Mikloušič as the Chair of Slavic Philology. Jagić stayed there until
his retirement in 1908. He died in Vienna on 5th August 1923 and was buried in
Varaždin on 12th August.
If we wished to sum up the scientific credibility of Vatroslav Jagić, we could illustrate
it through the quote of Nina Aleksandrova Pogačnik. She declared that Jagić
was 'an outstanding philologist who shied from philologism, a scholar who put
evaluation ahead of description, historicity ahead of historicism, the literary history
thought ahead of bibliographical crossword puzzles and chronological sequences.'
Jagić had an inherent exploratory instinct, and through his extensive work, he
strove to replace the mythically perceived collective Slavic heritage with reliable
research of actual connections.
Ključne riječi
Vatroslav Jagić; philology, Slavistics; literary history; linguistics.
Hrčak ID:
326014
URI
Datum izdavanja:
31.12.2024.
Posjeta: 16 *