His democracy, in spite of his agrarian reforms, was very far from
that of Vuk, and far from that of a young noble of Croatia, Ljudevit
Gaj, who one evening in the drawing-room of Count Dra[vs]kovi['c]--the
same Count Dra[vs]kovi['c] who wrote in German, for such was the
spirit of the time, his Exhortation to Croatian Maidens that they
should be truly Croatian--well, in this gentleman's house at Zagreb
Ljudevit Gaj recites some verses he has written for a dowager. They
are in Slav. The audience is inclined to be amused. Of course they
know something of the language because, like Anastasius Gruen in the
Slovene country, they talk it to the servants. But among themselves in
Croatia the upper classes prefer to use Latin. There is no doubt, as
Count Louis Voinovi['c], a Yugoslav poet, has said, that this pursuit
of Latin brought into the Slav world much that is indispensable in
modern thought. It created among them an atmosphere of social
courtesy, which, according to Saint Francis of Assisi, is the sister
of Charity. It has humanized the Slav world and furnished it thus with
formidable weapons. But, on the other hand, it cast a veil over the
differences between the nations and caused people to be blind to their
own national genius. The Croat nobility, with few exceptions, were at
this time so much in harmony with the Magyar magnates, so anxious to
prevent their peasants from hearing the Marseillaise, that they would,
if need be, learn the Magyar language. But to use Slav in a
drawing-room! This was a new idea. They smiled good-naturedly; but
Gaj, with some other young men, some priests and some savants, founded
a literary brotherhood that was to become famous under the name of
"Danica." Famous also is an image he conceived. "The Southern Slavs,"
said he, in his programme of 1836, "are as a triangular lyre whose
extremities are at Scutari, Villach and Varna." He said there was a
time when the strings of this lyre resounded with harmonious sounds,
but that the winds in their fury have torn them. Styria, Carinthia,
Carniola, Croatia, Slavonia, Montenegro, Herzegovina, Serbia, Bulgaria
and Southern Hungary are these broken strings, which it is necessary
to repair. Let the people in these lands, he said, forget their
religious differences and remember that they are the children of one
mother. Let them write the same language. Gaj thus aimed at bringing
Vuk's reforms to bear upon the Latin characters with which the
Serbo-Croat language is written in Croatia. Before his party was
victorious it had to vanquish most determined opposition. Pamphlet was
hurled against pamphlet, grammar against grammar, Gaj and his men had
to overcome not only those who were the guardians of tradition, but
all those who thought it natural and proper that in syntax there
should be some difference between the Croat and the Serb. Yet now the
philologists are out and the poets; their business takes them between
the legs of the Great Powers, where they sometimes come to grief, but
they are striking all those fetters from their nation. Peter
Preradovi['c] is born in the Military Frontier and he dies an
Austrian General. At the beginning of his distinguished career he
could speak nothing but German, and it was in emotional German poetry
that he first expressed himself. But afterwards, carried away by the
new winds that were cleansing the Croat language and sweeping from it
the reproach of being a mere jargon for the servants, he became in his
"Putnik" (The Traveller) and "Braca" (The Brothers) the greatest poet
of the Croats. It is noteworthy that when this Austrian General writes
a drama he takes for his hero the old legendary hero of the Serbs,
Marko Kraljevi['c]. The Ban of Croatia, Ivan Mazurani['c], is a Latin
poet in his youth; but when this high official too comes under the
stirring influence of Gaj he dedicates himself to his own people and
composes in "The Death of Smail Aga"[40] a poem that among
Serbian-speaking people has become so much the property of all that
the poet has been lost in the shadow of his own work. Peasants who
sing fragments of it as they toil in the fields, and the minstrel, the
guslar, who chants it for them of an evening, believe that it is, like
their folk-songs, the anonymous production of the Serbian people.