Narrative
The Life and Adventures of Dimitrije Obradović
Живот и прикљученија
Dositej Obradović · 1783
Synopsis
A child from the Banat loses his parents and goes to live with an uncle, who places him as an apprentice with craftsmen in Temišvar. Nourished on lives of saints, he believes himself called to sainthood and escapes to a monastery on the Fruška Gora, where he receives the habit and a new name. He soon leaves again, eager to learn elsewhere. The second part tells of his years of wandering and study, from Corfu and Smyrna to Vienna, Paris and London.
Context
The first part came out in 1783 from the Breitkopf presses in Leipzig, the very year in which the author published there his Lettre à Haralampije, the manifesto of his programme. An attempt to print his works at Shklov, in Russia, having failed, the second part appeared in Leipzig in 1788, with his Fables. The narrative leads his life up to his forty-third year, and each stage is an occasion for reflections on the need for schools and sciences and on the ignorance in which the monasteries kept their monks.
Who it is for
Two parts, in which the narrative is often interrupted by moral reflections. The language is that of eighteenth-century Serbian, and today's reader will get through it more easily in translation.
Prizes and reception
The best-known original work of its author, read today as an autobiography in the form of a novel of formation.