Orfelin, Zaharija

(pen name of Z. Stefanovic). Born 1726 in Vukovar; died Jan. 19, 1785, in Novi Sad. Serbian educator, writer, and historian.

Orfelin worked as a schoolteacher and civil servant. He wrote in Russian Slavonic but sought to make the vernacular the language of literature. In this respect, he anticipated the work of D. Obradović and V. Karadzic. Orfelin used the Russian civil alphabet, which had been introduced in Russia under Peter I. He wrote patriotic and religious odes. In the narrative poems Sorrowful Lament … (1761) and The Lament of Serbia (1763), Orfelin expressed the Serbian people’s aspirations for national liberation. He also wrote the historical sketch The Life and Glorious Deeds … of Peter the Great (1772, books 1–2; translated in Russia, 1774). Slaveno-serbski magazin (Slavo-Serbian Journal), the first journal of the South Slavs, was published by Orfelin in Venice in 1768.