Zaharije Orfelin - Legacy

Legacy

Orfelin was one of the most notable representatives of the Serbian Baroque literature (although he worked in the first half of the 18th century, as Baroque trends in Serbian literature emerged in the late 17th century); yet his writings bear certain ideas of European Enlightenment and Rationalism. Through the whole of the 18th century, Serbian literature was mostly under the sway of Russia, or rather of the Russian Orthodox Church. As the Russo-Slavonic language was not readily understood by the Serbian reading public, its form used by the Serbs came under the influence of their living dialect and began soon to approach nearer to Serbian than to Russian. This artificial literary jargon was called Slaveno-Serbski, Slavo-Serbian. (In the 19th century it was eventually superseded by the modern Serbian language owing to the efforts and reforms of Vuk Karadžić). Of the Serbian authors who followed the Russian models it is worth to mention Zaharije Orfelin, Gligorije Trlajić (1766–1811), and Pavle Solarić (1781–1821).

In 1776 Orfelin's name appears in a lexicon of Austrian artists, Des Gelehte Osterisch by de Luca, where he is listed as both an engraver and a writer, elected as an academician in the newly-established Academy of Engraving in Vienna. He is the main character of a novel “Drugo Telo” by Milorad Pavić.