Elder Siluan

Siluan (14th century) was a Serbian monk and poet who lived and worked in Hilandar Monastery at Mount Athos in the Middle Ages. Very little is known about him. The mystical tradition of prayer known as hesychasm left a strong imprint in Serbian medieval literature and art, which is evident already in the works of Domentijan and Teodosije the Hilandarian, but most prominently in the writings of Danilo II, Archbishop of Serbs, Ephraem of Peć, Isaija the Monk and Siluan. Siluan is the author of hymns to Saint Sava and St. Simeon. History knows of two Serbian monks called Siluan, living two centuries apart, but researchers have been inclined to credit the 14th century Siluan with the authorship of "Verses for St. Simeon" and "Verses for Sava". The analyses of the two Old Serbian verbal ornaments, attributed to the 14th century monk, appear in the work of Roman Jakobson. "The regularity and symmetry are among the primordial needs of the human mind" repeats Jakobson after Poe and Beaudelaire in the "Retrospect" in "Selected Writings, Vol. 3: Poetry and Grammar and Grammar of Poetry" (Mouton Publishers, New York, 1981) in which he presented the fourteenth century Serbian monk Siluan as one of the most enlightened poets of his time. Siluan had an amazing ability to condense meditative philosophy into few words.

References

• Mateja Matejić and Dragan Milivojević, "An Anthology of Medieval Serbian Literature in English", Slavica Publishers, Inc., Columbus, Ohio, 1978, page 70
• Roman Jakobson, "Selected Writings, Vol. 3: Poetry and Grammar and Grammar of Poetry", Mouton Publishers, New York, 1981, pages 201-203