Draft:Stanka Glisic

Stanka Glišić also Stanka Glišićeva (Gradac, Raška, Serbia, 14 January 1859 - Belgrade, Serbia, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 16 March 1942), the sister of renowned Serbian writer Milovan Glišić, was one of the first modern Serbian female teachers, an acknowledged pedagogue remembered for her excellent knowledge of the Serbian language and extraordinary translations of contemporary Russian and French authors. She also gained a lasting place in the history of Serbian literature and culture.

Biography

Stanka was born in 1859 in the village of Gradac, near the city of Valjevo, and at the age of 10 with her widowed mother Jevrosima she moved to Valjevo after their family home was repossessed owing to debts that had pilled up after he father's premature death in 1865. Stamka had two older brothers Milivoje and Milovan Glišić, a famous Serbian writer.

Going from a village school to a city high school was something completely new for Stanka. During that period, brothers Milivoje and Milovan were already about to finish their university studies in Belgrade. Stanka took a liking to books, but poverty still took its toll. As soon as she finished her second year of high school, her mother ran out of money to keep her daughter in school.

Stanka could not come to terms with this. She immediately headed to the city municipality, where after a meeting with several councilmen they agreed to give her text books for free, A year later, her mother passed away, and Stanka, no alone, decide to leave Valjevo and move to Belgrade to be with her older brother Milovan.

Milovan had her enrol at the Belgrade Women's College. Strategically, Milovan took care of Stanka financially while guiding her in academia. In turn, she could always count on his literary recommendations, and he discreetly took suitable reading for her and made sure that she didn't fall for anything superficial or seductive material.

By 1876, Stanka had already graduated from college. She returned to Valjevo and after a two-year stint at a Teacher's College, she entered the classroom again, but this time as a teacher.

Ever since she took tenure at the Valjevo Womens Gymnasium, Stanka began to attract the attention of the auditors of the Ministry of Education. She temporarily taught first year students, but in terms of knowledge, she could match her wits with all the most highly-educated intellectuals of the time.

With a special affinity for foreign languages and literature, she mastered Russian, Italian, French and even began learning German. From there, she became well acquainted with the works of Gogol, Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Potapenko, Korolenko.

An auditor of the Ministry of Education presented her with an opportunity to return to the Belgrade, and in 1883 Stanka moved to the capital, where Tshe was also noticed by Katarina Milovuk.

At Milovuk's urging, Stanka took the teacher's exam and passed with flying colours. Stanka then received a full-time tenure as class teacher at the Women's High School in Belgrade. She first taught geography and only in 1893, she started teaching the Serbian language for the next three decades, until 1924, the year of her retirement

Stanka always believed that she could only work with children because she hated giving orders in a bureaucratic setting. Those were the reasons that she refused to head women's schools whenever offers were made her way (even by the Ministry of Education).

At the same time, Stanka revealed her modesty in whatever she devoted herself to. As a connoisseur of French and Russian literatures, she translated into Serbian not only works of the modern classics, but also children's literature. Her translations were published by literary magazines, however, in addition to the fact that her translations remained unsigned, Stanka Glišić refused to accept money for her work. When the First World War broke out, she temporarily left the classroom by force of circumstances, and turned her attention to reading foreign works and translating them while also learning German.

In 1929, she published a monograph Pozorišne igre za decu (Theatre Plays for Children), and in 1933 the monograph Moje uspomene (My Memoir). She collaborated with many newspapers and magazines, such as Srpski glasnik, Misli, Venac, Politika, but always refused compensation for her work.

She was against her pedagogical jubilee that was being marked by the Women's Movement (of which she was an integral part) and pointed out that her long career in education and teaching was an obligation, not an act to be rewarded. Nonetheless, the jubilee was celebrated in March 1925 when Stanka received the Order of Saint Sava.

Early on in her career, she chose to stay single and never marry nor have children, and live her entire life as an independent woman.

Stanka Glišić died in Belgrade during the height of German-occupation on 16 March 1942. She was 83.

Literature

For more details on Stanka Glišić’s life and work, see Maga Magazinović's, “Stanka Glišićeva,” in Srpkinja, njezin život i rad, njezin kulturni razvitak i njezina narodna umjetnost do danas (Sarajevo: Pijuković i drug, 1913), 70–71; Svetlana Tomić, Doprinosi nepoznate elite: Mogućnosti sasvim drugačije budućnosti (Belgrade: Alfa BK univerzitet, Fakultet za strane jezike, 2016), 53–85, 85–121.

References

• Adapted from Serbian Wikipedia.