Room 5 – Jovan Jovanović Zmaj

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JOVAN JOVANOVIĆ ZMAJ

Jovan Jovanović Zmaj was born in Novi Sad in 1833 into a noble and respectable family. He was and remains, in the true sense of the word, people’s poet and, above all, a children’s poet.

His poems are an essential part of every boy and girl’s childhood from this region. The children here were fortunate enough to sleep, play, learn and grow up with numerous poems by Jovan Jovanović Zmaj that they knew by heart. That’s the reason behind his nickname – Uncle Jova Zmaj (Zmaj means dragon in Serbian). He is one of the most prolific poets of Serbian romanticism.

He graduated in law and then in medicine, and for the rest of his life, he was a doctor and a poet. He wrote with ease and drew inspiration from current happenings, as well as his private life.

The most significant of the Zmaj’s collections of poems are “Little Rosebuds” and “Faded Little Rosebuds”, the first about happy family life when he met his wife Ruža Ličanin, and the second about the pain for his loved ones when he lost his wife and five children. Only poetry remained, and he devoted his life to it, reflected in all kinds of lyricism, and wrote constantly: patriotic, thought-provoking, political, satirical, and humorous poems. He was the first writer in Serbian literature to create poetry for children. Jovan Jovanović Zmaj started and edited many literary, political and children’s magazines, including the famous “Marigold”. Zmaj (The Dragon) will become an integral part of his name from the moment he launched the satirical newspaper “Zmaj”.

He moved to Pančevo in 1871 with his family, where he worked as a municipal doctor, and at the same time published and edited the first fun-satirical-humorous newspaper in the town, called “Žiža”. The great calamity and sadness struck him in Pančevo when, after the loss of his four children, his great muse and love, his wife Ruža, died. She was buried in the Pančevo Orthodox Cemetery, where the monument erected in her honor is still today. The street next to this cemetery was named after her and is symbolically crossed with the street bearing the name of her husband, Uncle Jova Zmaj.

He was also an excellent translator from Hungarian, Russian, German, French, Latin, Polish and Czech and has translated into Serbian over a hundred poets. Nikola Tesla considered Zmaj the greatest Serbian poet. When the two greats met in Belgrade in 1897, the poet wrote lyrics to commemorate the scientist’s arrival in Serbia, which moved Tesla so much that he began to cry and kiss his hand. Upon his return to America, Tesla translated several of the Zmaj’s poems into English, so he was the first Serbian writer whose works were published there.

Jovan Jovanović Zmaj passed away in 1904 in Sremska Kamenica. In honor of the great poet, Zmaj’s children’s games are held every year in Novi Sad, many schools are named after him, including the elementary school in the center of Pančevo.

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