The Serbian Epic Ballads – An anthology

Dvojezična antologija srpskih epskih narodnih pesama donosi 21 pesmu prevedu na engleski jezik. Pesme je prevodilac, istaknuti engleski slavista Džefri Lok, podelio u sedam ciklusa. Knjiga pocinje pesmom “Ženidba cara Dušana”, a završava se pesmom “Pocetak bune protiv dahija.” Tri pesme su o Kosovskom boju (“Car Lazar i Carica Milica”, “Kosovka devojka”, “Stefan Music”), osam pesama o Kraljevicu Marku (“Marko Kraljevic i Musa Kesedžija”, “Oranje Marka Kraljevica”…), pet o hajducima (“Stari Vujadin”…). Neobican je i zadivljujuci prevod “Banovic Strahinje”. U knjizi se nalazi 50 reprodukcija u boji slika Đure Jakšica, Paje Jovanovica, Uroša Predica, Anastasa Jovanovica, Vladislava Titelbaha, Adama Stefanovica, Vesne Kneževic…

Nada Miloševic ?ordevic: „The author, Geoffrey N. W. Locke, has produced outstanding translations of twenty-five traditional Serbian national poems, mostly from the collections of Vuk Karadžic, arranged by historical subject-matter in accordance with Karadžic’s principles, from those of ancient times to those of the nineteenth-century Serbian Uprisings. Mr Locke has succeeded admirably in his aim of presenting a selection of ballads covering a wide historical range, in displaying the ideological, motivational, and stylistically-expressive richness of Serbian epic poetry, and in making clear how the process of composition, memorisation, development and repetition were both a catharsis and a special source of strenght and resolve to the Serbian people.“

Geoffrey Locke: „The epic poetry of Serbia constitutes the richest oral epic material in any single European language. Its value and appeal derive from the fact that, so far from being mere artificial recitation of obscure and half-forgotten tales of bygone ages (as is so much of the ‘folklore’ of most other European cultures, including the English) it is, on the contrary, the product of a continuous living tradition extending over the last several centuries.“