In the thirteenth century Prince Rastko Nemanjic, later Saint Sava, turned Serbian culture toward the East; in the eighteenth the philosopher Dositej Obradovic turned it toward the West; and in the nineteenth the peasant genius Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic turned it toward itself. More than anyone else, he made his people realize that, in addition to their splendid heritage of high-medieval civilization, they also had a rich and humane folk culture of which any nation could be proud and that, after long centuries of declining Ottoman oppression, they were rejoining the West not as empty-handed barbarians but as an old and historically experienced people bringing to the world a gift of beauty and universal value.

Karadzic was born on 6 November 1787 in the village of Trsic, near the town of Loznica in Jadar in northwest Serbia. He was the sixth child of Stefan and Jegda Zrnic Karadzic, who had lost...