Short stories
To Matins with Father for the First Time
Први пут с оцем на јутрење
Laza Lazarević · 1879
Synopsis
A man recounts what he saw at the age of nine in the house of his father, a wealthy merchant in a Serbian small town, dressed in the Turkish style, hard, taciturn, who gives his orders once and whom everyone fears. For some time the father has changed: he spends his nights gambling, wins, loses, comes home late, and the mother waits without saying anything. The son, who does not understand everything, watches what is falling apart around him, until the night when the mother keeps vigil with the children.
Context
The story first appeared without an author's name, in July and August 1879, in the Viennese review Srpska zora, under the title Les Cloches de l'église de N. The author took it up again, expanded it and gave it its present title in the only book he published in his lifetime, Six récits, in 1886. It is read as a moral and psychological short story: everything in it passes through the eyes of a child who only half understands. It was translated into French as early as 1918 in La Patrie serbe, then again in 2017.
Who it is for
A short story of a few dozen pages, told by a man remembering when he was nine. It is worth knowing that in the nineteenth century Serbian merchants still wore Turkish dress.
Prizes and reception
His author's most studied story, on the curricula of Serbian secondary schools and universities for a century.