The Anthems of East-Central Europe: Reflections on the History of a National Symbol 9781032332215, 9781032332239, 9781003318774

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Routledge Histories of Central and Eastern Europe

THE ANTHEMS OF EAST-CENTRAL EUROPE REFLECTIONS ON THE HISTORY OF A NATIONAL SYMBOL Csaba G. Kiss

The Anthems of East-Central Europe

This book juxtaposes national anthems of 13 countries from central Europe, with the aim of initiating a dialogue among the peoples of East-Central Europe. We tend to perceive a national anthem as a particular mirror, involuntarily reflecting an image of nation and homeland, but how does it represent the community for whom it sounds? To answer this question, the book deploys a comparative approach – anthems are presented in the light of those of neighbouring countries, with the conviction that one of the key features of true Europeanness is good relations between neighbours. The development trajectory of the modern nation is the context in which the book examines the history of such national symbols, alongside the symbolic content of poetry, images of the homeland and nation depicted in the anthems and the sometimes longer processes which led to the adoption and legal codification of current state symbols. The Anthems of East-Central Europe will be a great resource for researchers, journalists, college and university students, politicians trying to impact émigrés from this region and émigrés themselves. Csaba G. Kiss is an Emeritus professor at Eötvös Lóránd University, Budapest, Hungary, and is also a cultural historian and essayist. His fields of research include nationalisms in East-Central Europe, national symbols and myths. He is a visiting professor at University of Zagreb, Charles University (Prague) and University of Warsaw. He has published 23 books (scientific, popular works and memoirs), including 3 in Polish, 2 in Croatian and Understanding Central Europe: Nations and Stereotypes (2013) in English.

Routledge Histories of Central and Eastern Europe

The nations of Central and Eastern Europe experienced a time of momentous change in the period following the Second World War. The vast majority were subject to Communism and central planning while events such as the Hungarian uprising and Prague Spring stood out as key watershed moments against a distinct social, cultural and political backdrop. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, German reunification and the breakup of the Soviet Union, changes from the 1990s onwards have also been momentous, with countries adjusting to various capitalist realities. The volumes in this series will help shine a light on the experiences of this key geopolitical zone, with many lessons to be learned for the future. The Mentality of Partisans of the Polish Anti-Communist Underground 1944–1956 Mariusz Mazur Biopolitics in Central and Eastern Europe in the 20th Century Fearing for the Nation Edited by Barbara Klich-Kluczewska, Joachim von Puttkamer and Immo Rebitschek The Intellectual Foundations of Modern Ukraine The Nineteenth Century Andriy Zayarnyuk and Ostap Sereda Black Humor and the White Terror Béla Bodó The Anthems of East-Central Europe Reflections on the History of a National Symbol Csaba G. Kiss For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/Routledge-Histories-of-Central-and-Eastern-Europe/book-series/ CEE

The Anthems of East-Central Europe Reflections on the History of a National Symbol Csaba G. Kiss

First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Csaba G. Kiss The right of Csaba G. Kiss to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-33221-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-33223-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-31877-4 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003318774 Typeset in Times New Roman by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

“Where is my home? Where is my home? Waters murmur across the meadows, Pinewoods rustle upon the cliff-rocks, Bloom of spring shines in the orchard, Paradise on Earth to see!” First lines of the Czech anthem

Contents

Introduction: The Dialogue of Anthems

1

1 Nationalism and Nation-Building in East-Central Europe

6

2 National Symbols and Myths

19

3 The National Anthem

25

A literary genre and national symbol 25 Types of modern national anthems 27 The anthem’s role in national representation 29 4 Collective Symbols: Anthem Archetypes

31

5 The Poem-Symbols of National Representation

38

Selected texts 40 Texts in the context of their authors’ cultures 43 Classification of texts by their themes 55 Dynastic anthems 56 Revolutionary marches, “folk anthems” 57 Anthems glorifying the ideal landscape of the homeland 61 Anthems of the memory and value community 63 Between myth and history 64 6 The “Interaction” of Anthems

68

7 Images of Homeland and Nation in the Anthems

74

In the context of understanding the nation in East-Central Europe 74 Country, homeland, territory 74

viii  Contents Imagined Homelands 76 Religious and denominational identity in the anthems 80 Homelands by language and origin 81 The horizon of humanity 83 Features of the national self-image 83 The homeland as Eden, Arcadia and Canaan 83 The homeland as a tragic space 88 Adopted values, freedom vs. slavery 89 Images of self and enemy 90 Unity and dissension 91 8 National History and Its Heroes

94

9 Symbols of Space in the Anthems

102

10 Paths to the Rank of National Anthem

111

11 After the Second World War

120

Appendix: Anthems and National Symbol-Poems Bibliography Index

130 145 152

Introduction The Dialogue of Anthems

Whenever we are hearing or reading the anthem of another nation, our own national anthem springs to mind. They must be matched, compared. One judges the anthems of others as a member of a specific national community, forming an opinion about another, similar national community. We Hungarians see it through a Hungarian lens, built from the memory of our own past, our language and intellectual heritage. We are bound to arrive at the question of national self-definition, to the ultimate questions: “What is a nation? Can we speak of nation in the twenty-first century at all?” As the great twentieth-century Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert asked thoughtfully in his poem “Reflections on the Problem of the Nation”:1 I would like to know in the end where the indoctrination stops and the real connection begins Nowadays, European civilization is experiencing the re-emergence of the fundamental question raised first in the Age of Enlightenment: whether human culture can be defined as universal. Apparently our brave new world advances – particularly in its European spaces – towards homogenization in many respects. According to earlier conceptions, the birth of the community and the birth of the individual were interdependent and inseparable; today, however, some argue that all communities are merely virtual. Thus, the modern nation too would be conceptualized as an artificial construct which can be dismantled into pieces until nothing is left. But nations are not born from nothing, and they are not merely the products of modernization either: they rest on the underlying tradition of an ethno-linguistic community. Their coming into existence was necessarily accompanied by the ­creation of their specific symbols. Historical experience shows that – regardless of when they could achieve statehood – the national communities brought forth by the modern age have survived the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and none of them has ceased to exist. Due to the fact that we are defined in cultural and linguistic terms, with slight exaggeration, we perceive another nation as an undiscovered world. We are Magyars, and they are different. And this view does not characterize DOI: 10.4324/9781003318774-1

2  Introduction only us: this is how all individuals observe others through the figurative “windows” of their own nations. We are separated and connected by stereotypes in Central Europe too, which followed a different path to nationhood in the East than the West. In these parts, plans for the modern nation were often construed at the expense of neighbours, while the totalitarian great powers that subordinated these regions under their yoke strove to deepen these rifts. The main problem here, to evoke Hungarian essayist László Németh’s message from a distance of seven decades, is that we do not know each other – despite the fact that the peoples of this region were formed and fit together in the course of centuries of coexistence, of living side by side. The numerous similarities in our ways of thinking are also confirmed by our national symbols, including anthems. Relying on these national anthems, this volume aims to initiate a dialogue between the peoples of East-Central Europe. The anthems of 13 countries are juxtaposed, presented in each other’s mirrors – under the sign of the need for mutual discovery, with the conviction that one of the key features of true Europeanness is both narrowly and broadly interpreted good-neighbourliness. * We tend to perceive a national anthem as a peculiar mirror, involuntarily seeking the image of nation and homeland in it: how does it represent the community for whom it sounds? Certainly, the poem chosen as a symbol is not independent of the self-image constructed by a particular nation. This choice is obviously influenced through what kind of image that nation wants to see itself and be shown to others. It is a complex process since the text chosen as a symbol somehow also becomes a part of nation-building by inviting for identification, mediating certain values and implying certain forms of behaviour. The result is an interaction in which the national anthem is simultaneously the cause and the consequence. It is needed to create the modern nation and is also involved in the process itself. As the symbolic representation of the modern nation – its group identity (us) as different from others, other nations – aims to comprise particular, distinct features, it is evident that within the reception history of national anthems, we can often find interpretations which attribute exclusiveness to some literary symbol or symbolic content, as if the symbol in question would be related to the imagined national character seen as eternal. Consequently, as many argue, our anthem is unique in every respect, and it is solely characteristic of our own national community. This gave rise to beliefs that each national anthem has its own distinctive character which is incomparably different from the anthems of others. For example, it is well known that many Magyars consider the Hungarian anthem to be the most pessimistic hymn in the world. As the late Hungarian scholar Elemér Hankiss noted

Introduction 3 more than a generation ago, “No country has ever had a national anthem so vexed by guilt, with a voice of as much gloom or even despair as does our own.”2 Obviously, a nation elevates a poem to the rank of a collective symbol because it is deemed to reflect its auto-stereotypes – a kind of self-image with which the members of that community can identify. Let us see three brief characterizations of anthems, all of which emphasize the uniqueness of their own national symbols as opposed to or distinguished from the anthems of other nations. As Czech writer and literary historian Milada Součková points out in her study, “The Czech national anthem is not tuned to the thunder of marching steps, nor is its melody built upon majestic harmonies characteristic of some others of its kind. Words like tsar, expressions like enfants de la patrie or Gott erhalte are not to be found in its text.”3 A Hungarian literary historian gives the following description of the two major national poem-symbols for Magyars, Kölcsey’s “Hymn” (“Hymnus”) and Vörösmarty’s “Appeal” (“Szózat”): “The words of prayer and moral appeal, of historical self-reflection and national hope that does not hurt anyone – in the lasting formulation of the nation’s classical poets – were adopted as an anthem in Magyar hearts only.”4 A milestone in the reception history of the Croatian anthem is an essay by Antun Gustav Matoš published in 1910, where the famous poet defined the exceptionality of their national anthem as follows: “it is really characteristic of the Croatian soul that Mihanović’s Homeland is a wonderful country, our fair homeland with plains and highlands, clear skies and gentle nights, hot summers, swift streams, the rural life of harvesting and grazing, songs and village idyll rather than people and their nation. […] This song has neither militant nor denominational tones. It is a democratic work hymn, a genuine village march which holds that war is needed for self-defence only, and sees patriotism not as solidarity towards the nation but much more as solidarity felt for our country, the Croatian landscape.”5 Interestingly, the quoted lines not only state the distinctive character of the Czech, Hungarian and Croatian anthems, respectively, but – sometimes in unison – also contrast them with other national anthems. They systematically underline the peaceful and reflective nature as a carrier of moral ­message of their own anthem. According to our cited interpreters, these are the very traits that distinguish these anthems from the international average. Having read these quotes one after the other, however, it also becomes clear that elucidating parallels can be presumed in both interpretive g­ estures and the discussed anthems themselves. This work aims to provide an account, through comparative analysis, of the history of this national symbol in the East-Central European region. By way of introduction, I shall give an explanation for the three initial considerations of my research. The first point is related to one of the new – although by no means traditionless – discourses of nationalism studies: the one that focuses on the questions of national representation. Although I shall inquire into themes of the modern nation, my approach is not that of intellectual

4  Introduction history – despite the fact that I necessarily made use of the results of this research field. I would like to join aspirations which perceive the nation as a cultural phenomenon; I share the view that members of the modern national community are bound together by a cultural network. To put it in another way: the modern nation is a distinct system of signs. It is a compound of symbols, values and behavioural patterns, which takes shape historically. It is by no means a closed system and is relatively permanent, but some of its elements may be replaced; they can and do change. The distinct tradition-­ world and structure of this sign system is what distinguishes one cultural community from the other. We can use users this system through step by step socialization. This is a complex code since the sign system transmits “messages”; thus, it allows the individual members of the nation to identify with the community. The code incorporates both the repertory of signs and the rules for connecting those signs. I shall study the history of a national symbol that is a literary work in its original form. The text that “represents” the nation is a textual element of the cultural code. Obviously, on the one hand most of the authors did not have an anthem in mind when they wrote these poems; on the other hand, it was the result of a shorter or longer process that the poems were finally adopted by the respective communities as their national symbols, where the literary texts being set to music possibly played an important part. For national anthems, lyrics and melody are tightly intertwined. However, I cannot examine the musical aspects of anthems. My aim here is to present the symbolic content of East-Central European anthems and to trace the history of their adoption as national anthems. For the researchers of European nationalisms, it is a commonplace that in the countries of this region literature had a definitive role in forming the modern nation. In the absence of independent statehood, the so-called cultural phase of this process was particularly important. In these parts, writers – who were often also found in the frontline of national movements – took a significant role in creating and popularizing national symbols. Since the late nineteenth century, the national anthem – the most important element of a literary representation of the nation, one of the fundamental symbols of the modern state and nation whose role and function were shaped together with modern nation states – became increasingly crystallized. In most cases, several poems competed for this notable title. This introduction also compels me to present my definition of EastCentral Europe and why I have arrived at this concept. Here I only want to restate my hypothesis that, by focusing on the process of forming the modern nation, we can assume the existence of a distinct zone in the middle of our continent, more or less between the German and Russian linguistic areas (or, more precisely, aspirations for nationhood), where the conditions for creating the nation were similar in many respects. The objective of forming the modern nation arrived from the West in this part of the continent, and at numerous points it failed to meet the conditions of peoples living

Introduction 5 here in a dynastic imperial framework with no state sovereignty of their own, since the proportion of heterogeneous areas in both ethnic and religious terms was significant. It seemed that one could achieve the goal of the modern nation only at the expense of neighbours and/or minorities. These dilemmas and tensions commonly left their imprint in the texts of literary representation. The development trajectory of the modern nation is the context in which I shall examine the history of this national symbol and the symbolic content of poem texts, images of the homeland and nation depicted in the anthems and the sometimes shorter, sometimes longer process which led to the ­adoption and legal codification of the current state symbols.

Notes



1. Zbigniew Herbert, “Rozważania o problemie narodu,” in Studium przedmiotu (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1961). English translation by Alissa Valles in The Collected Poems: 1956–1998 (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 189. 2. Elemér Hankiss, “A bűntudatról mint társadalmi jelenségről,” in Diagnózisok (Budapest: Magvető, 1982), 206. 3. Milada Součková, “Locus amoenus: jeden z aspektů české národní tradice” (An aspect of national tradition), in Jií  Šubrt (ed.), Locus amoenus – misto líbezné symposium očeské hymně, 27. X. 1993, prepared by Ji  í K. Kroupa (Prague: KLP Koniasch Latin Press with Ústav pro klasickástudia AVR, 1994), 7. 4. Sándor Lukácsy, “A Hymnus és a Szózat”), in Hymnus–Szózat (Budapest: Zrínyi Nyomda Zrt., 1999). No page number. 5. Antun Gustav Matoš, “Lijepa naša,” Hrvatska Sloboda (Zagreb), No. 1–2 (1910): 113.

1

Nationalism and Nation-Building in East-Central Europe

The unavoidable question here is what we think East-Central Europe is – and why. However, I would rather avoid entering the maze of details for the centuries-old discourse on Central Europe or Eastern Europe. Obviously, depending on the viewpoints adopted, the history of the continent can be divided in various ways, and the questions of this geopolitical and civilizational division often interact with political considerations. For example, the imagination of our generation was strongly influenced by the East–West dichotomy emphasized in the official ideology of the time. It is also clear that the emerging conceptions of specific macro-regions are often no more than ideological constructs. Let us highlight here Larry Wolff’s seminal work, Inventing Eastern Europe,1 which convincingly proves that Eastern Europe as a category representing a different quality was in fact born in the eighteenth-century West, and can be basically considered an invention of the Enlightenment. According to Wolff, the project of the Enlightenment essentially went awry in Eastern Europe. Similarly, Central Europe is seen as a construct by Lonnie R. Johnson: “History in this part of the world is epic and tragic; small nations have frequently struggled against larger ones and have lost regularly. […] Central Europe is a dynamic historical concept, not a static spatial one…”2 We may also recall the definition from Milan Kundera’s seminal essay, which gave new impetus to the latest international discourse on Central Europe: “What is Central Europe? An uncertain zone of small nations between Russia and Germany. I underscore the words: small nation. […] the small nation is one whose very existence may be put in question at any moment; a small nation can disappear and it knows it.”3 In my opinion, the division of Europe’s history on the basis of different criteria delineates different zones. Adopting the logic of linguistics, perhaps we can speak of isoglosses, boundary lines between areas that outline the occurrence of identical linguistic phenomena. A lasting civilizational boundary between the zones of Western and Eastern Christianity can be certainly seen as such an isogloss. Although, as it can be discerned in the case of our own East-Central European zone, this boundary cannot be drawn with definite lines everywhere. There are significant transitional bands between the areas (for example, the zone of Greek Catholic Christians); moreover, DOI: 10.4324/9781003318774-2

Nationalism and Nation-Building in East-Central Europe 7 there are quite a few areas in our region that simultaneously host ­multiple religions. Naturally, the continent can also be divided by zones of the large language groups (Germanic, Romance, Slavic, Finno-Ugric). Political and social history may draw partly shifting borders by how far Western-type feudalism spread. Considering sixteenth-century refeudalization (the phenomenon of second serfdom), the Elbe River is seen as a dividing line. As to Hungary, Zsigmond Pál Pach’s studies highlighted significant differences in agrarian development east and west of the Elbe. Emil Niederhauser formed his own concept of East-Central Europe’s distinct development path in terms of historical belatedness decades ago. He dates the beginning of the distinct Eastern European path to the period between the sixth and tenth centuries.4 As seen above, Lonnie R. Johnson and Milan Kundera define small-nation Europe as a distinct zone. It is by no means accidental that one of the most prominent Central European nationalism researchers, Czech Miroslav Hroch, discusses the national movements of small nations in his first significant monograph.5 In addition to the Czech and Slovak movements, he also studied the national movements of the Lithuanian, Estonian, Norwegian and Flemish peoples. We must also remember that Hungarian historian István Hajnal supported the idea that “the working group of the historiography of small nations” should be formed in 1942 already!6 According to my hypothesis, the road to the evolution of the modern nation significantly diverged in East-Central Europe from the Western development path as well as from the emergence of the imperial Russian collective identity built on the ruler’s person and Orthodoxy (pravoslavie); thus, at least a sketchy summary of the general problematics of making the modern nation seems to be unavoidable. Professionals focusing on the phenomenon of nationalism as representatives of different disciplines (predominantly history, sociology, philosophy, cultural anthropology and political science) have been studying the questions of the evolution and nature of the modern nation from a great variety of perspectives, yet there is some kind of consensus in that they consider Western Europe the birthplace of modern nationalism. Hugh Seton-Watson designated two old “continuous” nations, the French and the British.7 Some decades ago, Hungarian-born Peter F. Sugar held a similar opinion: “Nationalism was born in western Europe as part of a general trend and with political meaning. Moving eastward its emphasis became cultural-linguistic in Germany, reverting, once again, to politics when it moved out of Germany into the lands of Slavs, Greeks, Turks, Romanians, and Magyars.”8 Focusing on the nationality question in the Age of Dualism, Polish historian Henryk Wereszycki concluded: “In the territory of the Habsburg Monarchy national revival took place as a consequence of direct and, more often, indirect effects which evolved in Western Europe in this domain.”9 Nowadays frequently quoted, Rogers Brubaker wrote the same a decade ago: “Europe was the birthplace of the nation-state and modern nationalism at the end of the eighteenth century, and it was supposed to be their graveyard at the end of the twentieth.”10 It should be

8  Nationalism and Nation-Building in East-Central Europe added immediately that the latter author refers to Europe as a whole, and since he also examines late-twentieth-century processes in his papers, he does not draw a dividing line for nationalism in civilizational and regional terms, seeing this phenomenon as universal. In 1944, Hans Kohn published The Idea of Nationalism, one of the classics of nationalism research. He makes a fundamental distinction between Western and Eastern national aspirations. In his opinion, the Western (English, French and American) model may be considered positive, integrating liberalism and nationalism; thus, it represents a community of law extended to all citizens, the nation of individuals as its members. On the other hand, he thought that the Eastern model (in Central and Eastern Europe and in Asia) supposes cultural collectivities and takes objective criteria as the basis for belonging, being organic and mystical by nature. Eastern nationalism arose not only later, but also at a more backward stage of social and political development. It should be observed that Kohn sees Central and Eastern Europe as a coherent territory – a view shared by many to date, as it will be shown later. This terminology prevailed even after the fall of communism and often can be found for both domestic and foreign authors. In fact, the macro-region thus defined is now applied to the entire post-communist region, ignoring the Russian imperial or state nationalism that has followed a peculiar development path. Ideologues and historians dealing with the primordial phenomenon and rise of the modern nation seemingly prefer to think in dichotomous schemes; thus, they often tend to describe two different ways of nation formation. The historians of the East-Central Europe adopted, for the longest period, German scholar Friedrich Meinecke’s 1907 distinction between the state-­ defined nation (Staatsnation) and culture-defined nation (Kulturnation); he saw the classic French version as originating in territorial-legal-political unity, which includes as members of the nation all who are the citizens of the given country, while the cultural-linguistic nation postulates communality on the basis of common origin, mother tongue and culture.11 During the past two decades, the number of historical, sociological and anthropological works discussing nationalism have grown at a dramatic pace, creating a labyrinth. New theories, definitions and metaphors of the modern nation phenomenon pop up almost every month. In the preface to his 2009 book that questions approaches conceiving the nation as a “historical accident” (Národy nejsou dílem náhody), Hroch notes that today’s scholars often aspire to be original in describing the nation; thus, they do not necessarily contribute to the clarification of this complex theme. The new wave of nationalism studies started – primarily in the Englishspeaking world – in the 1980s. Researchers built on hypotheses different from those of their predecessors. Yet the dichotomous model has survived in ever-newer varieties. Scholars often speak of the opposition of civic and ethnic types of nation, as if it were possible to grasp the contradictions of the nation concept only via binary oppositions. For example, Anthony D. Smith

Nationalism and Nation-Building in East-Central Europe 9 distinguished Western political nationalism on the one hand and Eastern ethnic nationalism on the other, as though there were two irreconcilable dimensions: those of politics and culture. In relation to this pair of often sharply contrasted models we should remember the conclusion drawn by Hungarian historian Jenő Szűcs, namely, that these variants of nation formation can be considered ideal types rather than polar opposites.12 To continue with the historians of our own region, Silesian Polish historian Józef Chlebowczyk apparently makes a more refined distinction than those of various Western European theorists. He repeated the gist of the Western European version of the nation formation process in that it had the awareness of belonging to the state-nation as a starting point. Historically evolved states had a standard language at an earlier stage; this process was much more complicated in the eastern part of Central Europe, where demands for the social and national emancipation of communities arose simultaneously.13 Moreover, it is East-Central Europe for which yet another model, with a similar distinction of two types, should be mentioned. The distinction between nations with and without history dates back to the nineteenth century. For example, the young Karl Marx used it to characterize the Hungary of 1848 and its national movements, as did the Austrian social democratic theorist Otto Bauer in the early twentieth century. According to this concept, there are historic nations which have a tradition of statehood and non-historic nations which exist only as ethnic communities. Scholars of nationalism agree that the modern nation was born with embourgeoisement and modernization, and that it had replaced earlier forms of loyalty (to a dynasty or church) and collective identities. Ernest Gellner argues that this change was a result of the transition from agrarian society to industrial society. For him, nationalism is an effort to have congruent political (state) and cultural (ethnic) boundaries. Thus, it is first of all the establishment of political legitimacy. As to the internationally invigorated nationalism research of recent decades, two trends are normally distinguished. One of these (represented first of all by Benedict Anderson and Eric J. Hobsbawm14) considers the modern nation a community that is constructed to fit the requirements of new conditions. These scholars argue that, in order to legitimize power, the collective identity of a new type must be “produced,” created through invented traditions, and to offer clear models of identification for citizens leaving the premodern world for the new conditions of modernity. Cultural elites, mass education, a common market and compulsory military service may have an important role in this. Anderson’s “imagined community” refers to the situation that emerged under circumstances of modern communications, when the sense of belonging may arise among people who are not acquainted. While Anderson speaks of imagined communities, the so-called primordialists (advocates of the idea that nations have ancient origins) draw attention to the inherent nature and ethnic roots, historical continuity of nationality. While necessarily greatly simplifying a multifaceted

10  Nationalism and Nation-Building in East-Central Europe and colourful image, I tend to believe the difference between the concepts of nationalism with constructivist and primordialist approaches to be irreconcilable when typology-­makers pose the question focusing on the contrast: Should the nation be seen to belong to the political or the cultural dimension of human existence? Is nation formation merely the result of economic, social and political changes brought about by modernity? It would be oversimplification and distortion to grasp the distinction between these two trends through the dichotomy of the concepts of political nation and cultural nation. For example, in the conceptions of Gellner and Anderson, the cultural factor plays an important role in creating the modern nation. I am disposed to adopt the view elaborated in several papers by Anthony D. Smith, labelled an “ethno-symbolist,” that in the eyes of quite a few “modernist” and “constructivist” researchers – mistakenly, he adds – a nation is a nation only if it forms a political community, possessing a political identity. Smith holds that the distinctive characteristics of an ethnic community are a common name, the myths of common origins and descent, common historical memories, common culture (language, customs or ­religion), and a sense of solidarity among members of the community.15 His findings have provided important inspiration in the course of my inquiries concerning national symbols, namely, anthems. In my opinion – which may be confirmed by numerous historical works – the modern nation has a long prehistory, which justifies that we should speak of the process of its evolution rather than its birth. Miroslav Hroch aptly notes the contradictory and mutually exclusive nature of the bipolar structure: “this categorical opposition implies fallacy through its very formulation: either an eternal nation or an artificially constructed nation.”16 It seems as if there were two different planes of phenomena; while the constructivist approach places emphasis on the political nature of the modern nation, the approach referring to roots tends to construe the nation as a cultural community. In my view, an inquiry into the dual nature of the modern nation – naturally, acknowledging the connections between the two dimensions – requires considering the components of this phenomenon from both aspects, without positing value difference between the two dimensions. For me the modern nation is a form of community which may be characterized by cultural and/or political identity. As Erika Harris writes, “nationalism reflects the relationship between two significant elements of human existence: culture and politics.”17 As to self-awareness or national identity, one can raise the question: What is its status? Is it merely symbolic or ontological? According to my hypothesis, both possible answers to this question are legitimate, and each marks a different path for those who intend to examine this phenomenon. Obviously, for the peoples of East-Central Europe who necessarily trod different paths in forming the political community, the nation has represented, over a relatively long period, unity of a primarily cultural nature,

Nationalism and Nation-Building in East-Central Europe 11 the community of memory and communication with a distinct, uniquely structured cultural background as its foundation. Now, let us consider some aspects for the demarcation of the zone of East-Central Europe, Central Europe or Europe In-Between. Friedrich Naumann’s concept of Central Europe (Mitteleuropa), proposed in the early years of the First World War, distinguished the union of German-speaking territories (as West-Central Europe) and the zone of small nations west of the Russian Empire (East-Central Europe or Zwischeneuropa/Europe In-Between). When, in the interwar period, Polish historian Oskar Halecki spoke of Eastern Europe, he meant the zone east of German territories, omitting Russia. After the First World War, Hungarian thinkers as Béla Bartók, Dezső Szabó or László Németh also referred to Eastern Europe as opposed to German Mitteleuropa.. This was what led to, for example, the establishment of a discrete department of the History of Eastern Europe at Pázmány Péter University (now Eötvös Lorand University) in Budapest. Obviously, after the Second World War, the ideological construct “two world systems” was eager to incorporate an Eastern Europe that also included Russia, the Soviet empire. Of course, the boundaries of historical zones in European history have undergone significant changes through various historical periods and by different assessment criteria. For example, Halecki – a historian forced to live in emigration – speaks about “the dualism of Central Europe,” its German and non-German parts.18 The French translation of Jenő Szűcs’s definitive historical essay, “Three Historical Regions of Europe: An Outline” (“Vázlat Európa három történeti régiójáról,” 1980) appeared under the title “Three Europes” (“Les trois Europes”). The core of his argumentation is that this “third” Europe (the historical kingdoms of Poland, Bohemia and Hungary) has a dual aspect: it became a part of Western Europe in the late Middle Ages but diverged from the main course of Western development from the sixteenth century onwards. Undoubtedly, Szűcs had a significant part in outlining a more sophisticated approach to the depiction of European history through the West-East dichotomy; his paper had been published in several languages relatively quickly. The following argument is quoted from the work of another emigrant Polish historian, Piotr S. Wandycz: “The term ‘East Central Europe’ is arbitrary. It arose out of a need to define a region that is neither wholly Western nor Eastern, but represents a ‘middle zone’ or ‘lands in between’ […] The expression ‘East Central Europe’ has been applied to the entire area between the Baltic, Adriatic, Aegean, and Black seas (flanked by ethnic German and Russian blocs), or some variations thereof, or to its ‘heartlands,’ to use Timothy Garton Ash’s phrase, that is, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary.”19 Similarly, George Schöpflin emphasizes transitory nature and frontier quality: “Central Europeanness appears in a number of broader fields. Thus the fact that Central Europe is a frontier between East and West has left its stamp on its character and it derives many of its qualities from this.”20

12  Nationalism and Nation-Building in East-Central Europe To return to our initial hypothesis, the road to forming the modern nation also draws a distinct isogloss within European history: the zone where transformation took place under more or less identical conditions and circumstances, bringing forth the modern nation of this region. It is roughly the area between the Russian and German-speaking territories: East-Central Europe is delineated by the Baltic, the Adriatric and the Black Sea. A notable description of the differences between Western and Central European nationalisms is presented by Nikša Stančić in a study summarizing Croatian national ideology. While “nation” denotes the political community of citizens with equal rights in the West, “this interpretation of the nation is opposed to the content that Central European nationalisms ascribe to this concept, since they have associated nation with ethnicity, thus Western scientific terminology and journalism normally avoid applying the notion of ‘nation’ to these nations; they are simply called ‘ethnic groups.’ The Croatian public often fails to comprehend this kind of terminological distinction.”21 Obviously, the polysemy of the concepts of nationalism and nation may cause numerous misunderstandings in the differing use of concepts in different linguistic communities. Nevertheless, the notion of the modern nation began to spread from Western Europe, and the political, economic, civilizational and mental preconditions for adopting this novelty were essentially different in East-Central Europe. Some doubts may also arise in terms of the extent to which the path trod by East-Central European nations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries can be compared to the history of the evolution of the nation in the Anglo-French tradition. In other words: can Western European nation formation be considered a model in all respects? According to French historian Jacques Rupnik, this could be the ideal objective for Central Europe: “The original paradox of Central European politics is the incongruity between its endorsement of Western civilization, political ideas and institutions, and the reality of that area’s social and economic development, as well as the complexities of its ethnic puzzle.”22 This implication, the association of social underdevelopment and ethnic diversity, is elucidating – the latter almost seems to be a constituent of backwardness. We return to the dilemma of the Age of Enlightenment: Is human culture universal, or is it specific to each cultural community? According to Brubaker, the realist and substantialist approaches to the nation have become obsolete. As he notes in his study, “there is the challenge posed by theories of rational action, with their relentless methodological individualism, to realist understandings of groupness.”23 Clearly, the cultural community of a nation is not a stable and permanent group, but there remains the unavoidable question: can social groups, collectivities be considered to be merely gatherings of individuals, or are they more than that? It seems that, more than two centuries later, we have to again face Herder’s considerations: namely, that humanity is made up of different cultural communities, each with its own particular historical identity and tradition. As Hungarian scholar Pál S. Varga concludes in his definitive

Nationalism and Nation-Building in East-Central Europe 13 synthesis exploring the nature of national literature, “Therefore in modern European civilization nations are the most comprehensive matrices of collective knowledge that sustains their societies. The structure and character of this collective knowledge is determined by the inherited knowledge carried by groups that become culturally homogenized within the modern nation.”24 Nation-building is a cultural process, since the modern nation itself can also be seen as a cultural sign system which is in constant flux: some of its elements become obsolete and the old is replaced the new. It is a common cultural code whose elaboration is a lengthy and in fact unfinishable process. First of all, the cultural signs and symbols of collectivity must be created and communicated to the target community of the nation-to-be. Miroslav Hroch synthesized the three phases of the development of national movements in a now-classic schema. During Phase A, a relatively narrow circle of activists begin to explore and raise awareness of linguistic, cultural and social attributes. In Phase B, new activists emerge in the nation-­building project to pursue increasingly successful patriotic agitation. Finally, in Phase C, the major part of the population adopts distinctive national values, and a mass movement is formed which permeates the full social structure.25 Polish scholar Józef Chlebowczyk distinguished a linguistic-cultural phase and a political phase. First, a linguistic standard is to be established, followed by the process of “nationalization” (unarodowianie), creating patriotism and the definition of national territory in the second phase.26 Now, let us see what researchers consider the most characteristic qualities of nation formation in East-Central Europe. One of the main features is the relationship with the state. According to Swiss historian Urs Altermatt, “In East-Central Europe national consciousness evolved outside or in opposition to the state. The national consciousness of specific nations was often fed by hostility towards the existing state because the state was seen as an oppressor.”27 Croatian historian Nikša Stančić lists the following factors to describe East-Central European nationalism: belated modernization, a moderately stratified society, undeveloped bourgeoisie, the important role of the nobility, and the fact that the nation was considered first of all a collectivity, one that is primarily a community of language and culture.28 National identity always included a sense of peril. As George Schöpflin points out, “Each and every nation in Central and Eastern Europe is beset by a deep fear about its survival. They see threats to their existence from their neighbours and, for that matter, in global trends.”29 Here too, the inaccuracy of the catch-all term Central and Eastern Europe should be highlighted again, since it is highly improbable that such fears ever uplifted Russian national identity. A substantial aspect is the often slightly schizophrenic nature of our nation concept; Nikša Stančić refers to this in arguing that national belonging as collective identity may become opposed to the individual’s value of liberty. Moreover, in East-Central Europe, literature as a part of culture had an exceptionally important role in creating the modern

14  Nationalism and Nation-Building in East-Central Europe nation. In the words of Vladimír Macura, “Homeland was literature, it was governed by the laws of rhetoric and poetics rather than politics.”30 Most scholars agree that in the eastern part of East-Central Europe, the following major factors played a role in forming the modern nation: awareness of a common ancestry, origin, language, political-territorial traditions and religious-denominational communion. We also have to consider which social strata provided the active core that starts to explore national tradition in the initial phase defined by Hroch. Four components deserve detailed explanations. Political-territorial tradition offered a useful support in locations with long-standing feudal preliminaries of state and territory (for Poles, Czechs, Hungarians and partly Croats) – despite the fact that, at the turn of the nineteenth century, numerous contradictions hindered drafting a plan for the nation-state. In 1795, the third partition of Poland took place. The Czech had no clear concept of a homeland since the Czech Provinces (Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia) constituted distinct legal entities within the Habsburg Empire, as Hungary and Transylvania were similarly connected through the ruler’s person only. A different territorial tradition was represented by regional frameworks (e.g., for the Romanian movement, Moldavia, Wallachia and Transylvania; for Slovenians, Carniola, the singular province with absolute Slovenian majority). This tradition was much thinner in the case of the peoples in the Balkans. Their feudal states ceased to exist at a relatively early point in time, in the Middle Ages; thus, their territory lacked permanence. On the other hand, the Slovak national movement in lack of a medieval statehood, sought a preliminary nation-state in Magna Moravia and the dominion of Palatine Máté Csák (Matúš Čák) in Upper Hungary. Since the possible boundaries of the “nation” were by no means clear, nation-builders, when drafting the homeland’s plan, often envisioned the ideal image of utopistic cultural integrations such as Ján Kollár’s Slávia based on Slavic reciprocity or the Illyria of Croatian ideologues. For the Slovak Kollár, writing in Czech, Slávia was a mythical concept; in his treaties and literary works he advocated the cultural reciprocity of Slavic peoples rather than promoting political unification. The Romantic vision of Illyria attempted to transform the origin myth of South Slav nations, inherited from humanists, into a plan for the nation-state. However, it can be generally concluded that every single homeland-­ design – whether it is founded on a historical territory of the country, a unit defined by estates or public law, or the reality of linguistic-cultural unity – had been set up at the expense of neighbours, cohabitants who spoke a different language. Should we draw them as layers of a map, we could clearly see their multiple intersections and the considerable extent of the areas which were claimed by multiple national movements. The spatial arrangement of various ethno-linguistic groups was usually characterized by their possession of a more or less traceable “core territory” where they formed an absolute majority as well as minority communities scattered across a large area. Besides the Slovak region in Upper Hungary, Slovak groups of

Nationalism and Nation-Building in East-Central Europe 15 various sizes also lived, for example, in the Great Hungarian Plain (down to the southern part of the Bačka/Bácska) and in the Transdanubian region. In addition to the central bloc of Poles, Polish diasporas lived, for example, in the east as far as Kiev. Outside the core territory of Croats, Croatian diasporas could be found throughout Western Transdanubia up to the vicinity of today’s Bratislava and Vienna. Besides the large bloc in the central part of Hungary (Transdanubia, the Great Plain and the southern part of Upper Hungary) and a smaller bloc in Szeklerland (Transylvania), Hungarian populations lived as minorities or diasporas in numerous areas. Following the “great migration” of Serbs in the late eighteenth century, in addition to their blocs in Serbia and Southern Hungary, diasporas were scattered along the Danube up to the Hungarian cities of Komárom and Győr and down to Kosovo in the south, where they lived as a minority. All of the above justify why the realities of ethnic origin and language were so significant for East-Central European nation-builders. Here the effect of the German Enlightenment and German national ideology in general deserve special emphasis. The starting point for Herder and other German thinkers gave an important impetus in this region too. The national movements adopted as their apparent proverb the formula by Wilhelm von Humboldt: “The real homeland is language” (“Die wahre Heimat ist eigentlich die Sprache”). Although the connection between language and ethnicity (nation) seems self-evident, it was not considered a simple issue, since often there were no clear-cut boundaries between different languages. It is also known that in the early nineteenth century a modern linguistic standard posed a problem for quite a few movements. Poles, Czechs and Hungarians had significant traditions of their native languages, which necessitated linguistic revival in their countries. For Serbs, Croats, Romanians, Slovenes and Slovaks, however, a potential norm of the national language was apparently more difficult to define. As Polish historian Maria Bobrownicka concluded, “Among the Slavs the literary language is quite often established by linguists or national ideologues through a decision made from above at a particular moment.”31 Thus, at Ľudovít Štúr’s initiative, through an agreement between (Evangelical) Lutheran and Catholic intellectuals in 1843, the Central Slovak dialect was codified as the Slovak literary language. This was a significant decision, because up to that point Slovaks had two literary languages: Lutherans used the so-called bibličtina (the Czech language of the late sixteenth-century Kralice Bible), while Catholics used the variety based on the West Slovak dialect. For the Croats, Ljudevit Gaj’s grammar and newspaper had definitive importance in their choice of the Štokavian dialect as a basis for the literary language in the mid-1830s; this allowed them to make an attempt at forming a common Croato-Serbian or Serbo-Croatian literary language from this dialect and the Serb standard created by Vuk Karadžić on the basis of the Serbian vernacular. This, however, despite all linguistic analogies, could not bridge the civilizational gap between the Croatian and Serbian cultures. In the course

16  Nationalism and Nation-Building in East-Central Europe of linguistic revival, Slovenes did not adopt the Croatian-Serbian literary language but instead evoked the tradition of a sixteenth-century translation of the Bible (by Primož Trubar), with a significant role played by France Prešeren’s powerful literary oeuvre. In the peoples of the former Byzantine Empire (Romanians, Serbs and Bulgars) a new linguistic norm had to be created in opposition to Church Slavonic. The aspirations of Romanian linguistic revival followed somewhat different paths in Transylvania (where the Greek Catholic elite raised awareness of the neo-Latin nature of the Romanian language) and the Danubian Principalities, with a stronger presence of Greek and reliance of French and Italian models. Among Albanians who differed in both confessional (Muslims, members of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Catholics) and linguistic terms (by the dialect spoken) the time for creating the norms of a common literary language came only at the turn of the twentieth century. Most researchers of nationalism (e.g., Benedict Anderson and Eric J. Hobsbawm) associate the emergence of this novel community with the phenomenon of modernization, saying that the earlier hierarchical-dynastic loyalty and ecclesiastical-religious identification is replaced by attachment to the modern nation. However, in East-Central Europe, religious identity had an important role in the process of nation formation too. As Józef Chlebowczyk writes, “In the territory of the East-Central Europe of our interest religious ties served as the bonding material and main network of peasant society in the initial period of national ties.”32 Twentieth-century Croatian writer Miroslav Krleža also highlights in a diary entry: “A hundred years ago our political and cultural consciousness was so rudimentary that religion was considered the utmost attribute of nationality, thus the distribution of people was defined by their denomination.”33 It is well known that the nineteenth-century Polish national movement was inseparable from the Catholic Church. Similarly, one cannot understand the process of forming the Serb nation without recognizing the national-cultural significance of the Serbian Orthodox Church. For Croatian nation formation, the fact that in 1852 the diocese of Zagreb became an archdiocese provided considerable opportunities; thus, an autonomous Croatian ecclesiastical district was established. Again, relocating the seat of the Lavantine diocese to Maribor/Marburg in 1859 gave impetus to the Slovene national movement in Lower Styria. We should also keep in mind that the “pioneers” (or, to use Hroch’s term, Vorkämpfer) of national movements included numerous pastors and church dignitaries. The activists of the initial phase were mainly writers, philologists and historians. They were the ones who outlined the image, attributes and traditions of the nation-to-be. In the next phase, broader strata were also involved. At that point the social status of participants is related to the structural properties of the society in question. The middle strata of Polish, Hungarian and partly Croatian nobility as well as Czech burghers and

Nationalism and Nation-Building in East-Central Europe 17 i­ntellectuals, Slovak Lutheran scholars or Serbian merchants and wealthy peasants played a significance role in national movements. In summary, the paradigm of nation formation in East-Central Europe can be described as follows. The ideal and objective of the modern nation followed Western models. This comprised both the demand for a political community and an imagined community with a linguistic-cultural basis. However, the political, social and economic conditions of East-Central Europe diverged in several points from the prerequisites for the new political framework of identity that evolved in the West. A significant proportion of the small and medium-sized peoples of this region lived in a multilingual environment (regions or cities). Each of these communities could count on a much smaller territory and population than the neighbouring German or Italian movements. In religious-denominational terms too, this region exhibited diversity. As a result, plans for the nation and homeland were often drawn at the expense of neighbours. The ethnic communities living here were parts of great dynastic empires; thus, the aspiration of a modern nation necessarily meant for them some alteration or defiance of the existing political framework. Obviously, this does not hold for the formation of the Russian nation which had a predominant imperial identity. The dual, political and cultural-linguistic nature of the modern nation in East-Central Europe often manifested in a contradictory symbiosis.

Notes

1. Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994). 2. Lonnie R. Johnson, Central Europe: Enemies, Neighbors, Friends (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 3–4. 3. Milan Kundera, “Un Occident kidnappé, ou La tragédie de l’Europe centrale,” Le Débat (Paris, November 1983), 15. 4. Emil Niederhauser, “Zur Frage der osteuropäischen Entwicklung,” Studia Slavica, No. 3–4 (1958), 359–371. 5. Miroslav Hroch, Die Vorkämpfer der nationalen Bewegung bei den kleinen Völkern Europas (Praha: Univerzita Karlova, 1968). 6. István Hajnal, “A kis nemzetek történetírásának munkaközösségéről,” Századok, Vol. 76 (1942), 133–165. 7. Hugh Seton-Watson, Nations and States (London: Methuen, 1977). 8. Peter F. Sugar, “External and Domestic Roots of Eastern European Nationalism,” in Peter F. Sugar and Ivo J. Lederer (eds.), Nationalism in Eastern Europe (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1969), 20. 9. Henryk Wereszycki, Pod berłem Habsburgów: Zagadnienia narodowościowe (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1975), 19. 10. Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism reframed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 1. 11. Friedrich Meinecke, Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat: Studien zur Genesis des deutschen Nationalstaates (München: Berlin, 1907). 12. Jenő Szűcs, Nemzet és történelem (Budapest: Gondolat, 1974), 287. 13. Józef Chlebowczyk, O prawie do bytu małych i młodych narodów (Warszawa– Kraków: Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1983), 19.

18  Nationalism and Nation-Building in East-Central Europe 14. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London and New York: Verso, 1983); Eric J. Hobsbawm, Nations and nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 15. Anthony D. Smith, “The Origins of Nations,” in Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny (eds.), Becoming National: A Reader (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996), 109–110. 16. Miroslav Hroch, Na prahu národní existence (Praha: Mladá fronta, 1999), 59 17. Erika Harris, Nationalism: Theories and Cases (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 4. 18. Oscar Halecki, The Limits and Divisions of European History (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1950), 127–129. 19. Piotr S. Wandycz, The Price of Freedom: A History of East Central Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 1. 20. George Schöpflin, “Central Europe: Definitions Old and New,” in George Schöpflin and Nancy Wood (eds.), In Search of Central Europe (Cambridge: Polity in Association with Basil Blackwell, 1989), 19. 21. Nikša Stančić, Hrvatska nacija i nacionalizam u 19. i 20. stoljeću (Zagreb: Barbat, 2002), 5. 22. Jacques Rupnik, The Other Europe: The Rise and Fall of Communism in East-Central Europe (New York: Pantheon Publishers, 1989), 13. 23. Brubaker, Nationalism reframed, 13. 24. Pál S. Varga, A nemzeti költészet csarnokai: A nemzeti irodalom fogalmi rendszerei a 19. századi magyar irodalomtörténeti gondolkolkodásban (Budapest: Balassi Kiadó, 2005), 72. 25. Miroslav Hroch, Die Vorkämpfer der nationalen Bewegung…, 22–26; idem, “From National Movement to the Fully-formed Nation: The Nation-building Process in Europe,” in Gopal Balakrishnan (ed.), Mapping the Nation (­London: Verso, 1996), 81. 26. Józef Chlebowczyk, O prawie do bytu małych i młodych narodów: kwestia narodowa i procesy narodotwórcze we wschodniej Europie środkowej w dobie kapitalizmu, od schyłku XVIII do początków XX w.PWN, Warszawa-­ Krakow, 1983, 40–51. 27. Urs Altermatt, Das Fanal von Sarajevo: Ethnonationalismus in Europa. (Zürich, 1996). Cited from the Polish edition: Sarajewo przestrzega. Znak, Kraków, 1998, 44. 28. Nikša Stančić, Hrvatska nacija i nacionalizam u 19. i 20. stoljeću (Zagreb: ­Barbat, 2002) 27–62 29. George Schöpflin, Nations, Identity, Power (London: Hurst, 2000), 125. 30. Vladimír Macura, “Krajiny hymny a krajina literatury,” in Locus amoenus– Místo líbezné (Praha: KLP, 1994), 48. 31. Maria Bobrownicka, Narkotyk mitu (Kraków: Universitas, 1996), 46. 32. Józef Chlebowczyk, O prawie do bytu małych i młodych narodów: kwes-tia ­narodowa i procesy narodotwórcze we wschodniej Europie środkowej wdobie kapitalizmu, od schyłku XVIII do początków XX w.PWN, Warszawa-Krakow, 1983, 258 33. Miroslav Krleža, “Apr. 1920,” Dnevnik 1918–22: Davni dani II (Sarajevo: NIŠP Oslobodenje, 1977).

2

National Symbols and Myths

From the perspective of cultural studies, the nation is a cultural community. It is a symbolic community whose members use the same code accepted by that collective; thus, the nation can be seen as a peculiar cultural sign system. This is a particular structure whose individual elements and building blocks may change and can belong to more than one community. However, the combination, arrangement or structure of these elements – signs and symbols – is specific to a single community. As Croatian scholar Nikola Skledar puts in his study, “Thus symbols constitute an important part of cultural and national identity, they have been salient factors in the life, retaining and reinforcing of various cultures and national-cultural identities, particular sociocultural and national communities since the living conditions and lifestyle of archaic and past communities, up to contemporary civilized societies, which speak about today’s man and his cultural and national identity, living conditions and problems through their own symbols.”1 A national culture differs from other cultural communities partly in the different local values and pattern of its individual elements and partly in the different functions of these building blocks. According to Polish sociologist Antonina Kłoskowska, each national culture can be described as a specific “cultural universe”: “This universe is understood as a fatherland in the symbolic sense, which is much broader than a strictly territorial reference. This universe is not an unchanging structure, nor is it a final state, but rather a process replete with transformations, albeit with a relatively constant core called the canon.”2 National symbols can be visual, verbal or iconic symbols of the national community, and can express its distinctive values, goals and historical consciousness. In their sociological paper Symbols of Hungarian National Identity (Magyarság-szimbólumok), Ágnes and Gábor Kapitány examined symbols that bind together Hungarians, focusing on features of everyday culture. They described the following groups of characteristics associated with the nation: colours, coats of arms, landscapes, climate, flora and fauna, cities, settlements, clothing, music, dances, architecture, vehicles, activities, food and drink, sports, mentality and political culture.3 In addition to the national anthem, a study by György Csepeli and Antal Örkény recounts DOI: 10.4324/9781003318774-3

20  National Symbols and Myths the following definitive national symbols: “The capital city, representative buildings of government, monuments, the national flag, distinct military uniforms, coats of arms, postal stamps, bank notes, visible border markings, and national holidays formed the stock of national symbolism which were to enhance not just the level of identification of citizens but to delineate and make the reality of nation visible to foreigners.”4 It is an important consideration that these symbols are involved in the communication between national cultures too. Naturally, in the case of strictly state symbols, different modes of legal regulation are also found. Constitutions usually define what the respective political community sees as its official symbols, mostly including the coat of arms, the flag (national colours), the anthem and national holidays. Here, a decision made in 2000 by the Constitutional Court of Hungary about the country’s national symbols should be recalled: “The concept of nation – as a community – has historical significance; it is relative in terms of time and territory. Nation has become closely linked to state power during the historical process of the formation of nation states. National symbols represent this historical process, and thus they have become the symbols of statehood. National symbols have the power of safeguarding and maintaining the concept of sovereignty at times when independent statehood is lost or restricted.”5 This decision is also very important, because it clearly refers to the process and period which preceded the existence of the sovereign nation-state. Of course, East-Central Europe has national communities that did not lose their independent statehood but instead achieved it only in the late twentieth century. As the excellent Slovak historian, the late Ľubomír Lipták, pointed out, “This question becomes even more difficult because in a country where national identity is not always congruent with belonging to a state the means of shaping and expressing collective identity are national and state symbols.”6 Therefore, it is clearly necessary to distinguish the colourful symbol-world of the cultural community from national/state symbols set by law. In a paper presenting the national symbols of his culture, Slovak historian Dušan Škvarna enumerates the factors that had a role in the identification process: “Its content and attributes were constituted by myths, legends, symbols, traditions, historical consciousness, relationship with the state, the image of neighbours and relations with them, among others. Symbols represented a truly integrative component of identity. They covered or, in fact, cancelled the social, regional and denominational differences within the ethnicity, consolidating the sense of collectivity and unity among its members.”7 French historian Anne-Marie Thiesse also includes in the list of these factors, for example, language, cultural monuments, folklore, the national landscape, a peculiar mentality, culinary characteristics, the emblematic animal (if any) and the heroes of national history who can be seen as exemplars.8 Naturally, myths as stories that “create” the nation had an important role. In line with the Romantic tradition, the mythology of the modern nation too tends to blur the difference between myth and history.

National Symbols and Myths 21 In the words of Anthony D. Smith, “communal history must be taught as a series of foundation and liberation myths and as a cult of heroes. Together, these make up the vision of the golden age that must inspire present regeneration.”9 Therefore, they are stories which provide an explanation of the origin, the descent of the respective community, the discovery of its homeland, heroes, fateful events, past glory and tragic defeats. In East-Central Europe, myths of origin and foundation were particularly important, since the nation was considered an entity of eternal existence, and it was by no means indifferent whether ancestry could be seen as more or less “noble.” The stories of founding ancestors are also linked to the national territory, the discovery of homeland. It was not accidental that the “Transylvanian School” of Romanian Enlightenment laid the foundations for the theory of Daco-Roman continuity, establishing Roman origin as the core of the national identity to be formed; the idea of Hun-Magyar kinship had a similar role in Hungarian tradition and the cult of the past. It was partly the prestige of ancient origin that made the advocates of Croatian national ideology rely on the heritage of the Roman province of Illyricum and identify themselves as the descendants of ancient Illyrians. The concept of Illyria seemed to be suitable for the vision of a future common South Slav homeland too. Founding heroes who conquered the homeland at the end of some adventurous journey emerged from medieval chronicles and folklore. Some of them date back to mythical prehistory, such as the forefather of the Czech (Bohemus) or Lech of Poles, who founded a city at the nest of the white eagle – the heraldic animal of the Piast dynasty. (Gniezno was the seat of the first Polish state. Folk etymology associated it with the Polish word ­gniazdo for “nest.”) One of the Croat chiefs (whose names are known from the writings of Constantine Porphyrogenitus) is called Horvat, while the sacred place of their settlement – called the “arrival” (dolazak) – is located at the Adriatic. Most peoples of our region reached their homeland through migration, but the Slovak foundation myth (elaborated by Ján Kollár) locates the cradle of Slavs – i.e., their primordial homeland – at the foot of the Tatras. They did not have to wander, since they lived in that land from time immemorial, before anyone else. Stories of past glory were indispensable because former greatness could be matched to a dreary present. For the Czechs, Magyars, Poles, Bosniaks and Serbs, this was the fourteenth century – the age of some of their great rulers: Charles IV of Bohemia, Casimir III the Great of Poland, Louis I the Great of Hungary, Tvrtko I of Bosnia and Tsar Dušan of Serbia. National consciousness could be strengthened by the memory of imperial greatness, unity and victories. Poles describe the sixteenth century as the “Golden Age,” the period when the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita) flourished. But a national movement could also consider struggles for independence as constituting this glory; for example, this is how Czechs could interpret the Hussite wars. Numerous peoples of our region saw defending

22  National Symbols and Myths Europe against conquerors from the East as their distinctive national mission, represented not only by the topos of antemurale christianitatis (Poles, Magyars, Croats) but also a rich folklore and literary works glorifying the fight against pagans (Serbs, Romanians, Bulgars, Montenegrins). Medieval capitals such as Prague, Buda and Cracow, the ruler’s seat (Prizren for the Serbs or Nitra for the “ancient” Slovak Prince Pribina), ecclesiastical centres (Gniezno, Esztergom, Ipek/Peć) or Ragusa/Dubrovnik for the Croats also appear as symbols of independent statehood. In some cases, it was not easy to find a historical antecedent for the desired nation-state, yet these aspirations ultimately succeeded: it was identified as the early medieval Great Caranthania by Slovenes and Moravia Magna, the country of Svatopluk, by Slovaks. Nineteenth-century nation-builders saw the fifteenth-century provincial lordship estate of the Counts of Celje/ Cilli as a Slovene country (the three golden stars of the family coat of arms had been incorporated into that of the Republic of Slovenia). However, the powerful lord of the region of the Váh/Vág River, Matúš Čák (Máté Csák), waging a war against Charles Robert (King Charles I of Hungary), became a Slovak ruler under the pen of Romantic poets. The national pantheons of Central European peoples include state-­founding rulers, “national” saints (St. Adalbert, St. Wenceslaus, St. Stephen, St. Sava or, in fact, Jan Hus in a similar role) as well as heroes of freedom, but poets have an equally prominent position (Mickiewicz, Petőfi, Botev, Eminescu). As daylight is always followed by night, light by shadow, the rise to greatness was bound to be followed by a tragic fall, fateful defeat in collective memory everywhere: it was represented by battles lost, such as Kosovo Polje (1389) for Serbs, Mohács (1526) for Magyars, White Mountain (1620) for Czechs and Maciejowice for Poles (there, the Polish army led by Kościuszko suffered a severe defeat in 1794, followed by the Third Partition of Poland). All national myths of East-Central Europe include the topos of the nation’s death, the threat of its destruction.10 It is really revelatory to discover that numerous East-Central European works of history and literary history used, over a long period, to describe the ages of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, the term “national revival” or renascence, probably borrowed from German (Czech národní obrození, Slovak národné obrodenie, Croatian and Serbian: nacionalni preporod). This metaphorical phrase denoted the “sleeping” nation in “torpor” which must be “awakened” so that it could “revive.” Therefore, the creation of the modern nation was interpreted as the restart of a process that was aborted, interrupted at some time, which also implied that the nation was seen as a phenomenon overarching historical periods. In describing the political myths of the modern age, Hungarian-born Swiss historian André Reszler argues that by this point myths of revolt had superseded myths of foundation: “From the seventeenth century onwards myths of revolt (a family of myths that includes myths of progress too) are closely linked to the change in modern sensibility, considering the future – the unknown, the humans of Promethean creativity to emerge – the singular

National Symbols and Myths 23 genuine transcendence.”11 In our region, most myths of revolt were born in the crucial phase of nation formation, and they were usually related to great wars of independence: the Polish Insurrection of 1794 led by Kościuszko, the First Serbian Uprising of 1804 and last but not least the “spring of nations” in 1848. The latter was seen by many East-Central European peoples as the moment of national “awakening” or “renewal.” National p ­ antheons – monuments, paintings and literary works – enumerate the heroes of 1848 from the Hungarian Kossuth to Croatian Jelačić and from the Slovak Štúr– Hurban–Hodža triad to Romanian Bălcescu. Here we should also emphasize two mythologems which, although they can also be found in many other cultural communities of Europe and the world, played and still can play a crucial role in the competition between nationalisms in our region. One of these is the fund of myths on territorial continuity (the first “arrival,” the taking of land before rivals, the stories of ancient continuity); the other is the frontier-bound sense of mission (the bastion of Europe, the bulwark of Christendom), the myths of the heroic-tragic space of borderlands. As to the role of national symbols in the past, we can conclude that the history of the coat of arms, rooted in the feudal age, preceded that of the national anthem by far. In most cases the national coat of arms originated in a dynastic coat of arms: the Czech lion of the Přemysl dynasty, the Polish silver/white eagle of the Piasts, the double-headed white eagle of Tsar Dušan, the double cross and red-silver stripes of the Hungarian Árpáds, the lion of medieval Bulgarian rulers, the buffalo head for Moldavia or the black eagle for Wallachia. Where people saw a part of the country as their distinct homeland, they “invented” their own coat of arms (in the Hobsbawmian sense, it was a truly invented tradition) via taking from the country’s common heritage, the part that they considered to be their own. For example, Slovaks claimed the double cross by partly relying on the legacy of Cyril and Methodius and partly identifying the triple mound (the symbols of mountains) as Upper Hungary. The colours of the national flag too usually originated in coats of arms. The tricolour design of the national flag owed its popularity to the exemplar of the French Revolution. These banners appeared during the revolutions of 1848–1849 in East-Central Europe. From then on, national movements adhered to these national symbols and used them whenever possible. Yet these symbols could obtain constitutional (legal) confirmation and appear in state representation only after the achievement of state sovereignty. It happened usually with some delay that national anthems gained adoption and legalization.

Notes

1. Nikola Skledar, “Etničnost i kultura,” in Jadranka Čačić-Kumpes (ed.), ­Kultura, etničnost, identitet (Zagreb: Institut za migracije i narodnosti; ­Naklada Jesenski i Turk; Hrvatsko sociološko društvo, 1999), 48.

24  National Symbols and Myths

2. Antonina Kłoskowska, National Cultures at the Grass-Root Level (Budapest: CEU Press, 2001), 32. 3. Ágnes Kapitány and Gábor Kapitány, Magyarság-szimbólumok (Budapest: Európai Folklór Központ, 1999). 4. György Csepeli and Antal Örkény, “The imagery of anthems in Europe,” in Nation, Ethnicity, Minority and Border: Contributions to an International ­Sociology (Gorizia, 1998), 38. 5. Constitutional Court of Hungary, “Decision 13/2000 on criticising national symbols,” quoted in Balázs Majtényi, A nemzetállam új ruhája (Budapest: Gondolat, 2007), 51. 6. Ľubomír Lipták, “Symboly národa a symboly štátu,” in Eduard Krekovič, Elena Mannová and Eva Krekovičová (eds.), Mýty naše slovenské (Bratislava: AE Press, 2005), 51. 7. Dušan Škvarna, Začiatky moderných slovenských symbolov: K v­ytváraniu národnej identity od konca 18. storočia do polovice 19. storočia (Banská Bystrica: Univerzita Mateja Bela, 2004), 2. 8. Anne-Marie Thiesse, La création des identités nationales – Europe 18–20 siècle (Paris: Points, 1999), 14. 9. Smith, “The Origins of Nations,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 12, No. 3, 121. 10. See my paper on this theme: “A sorsdöntő vereség mítoszai – Közép-európai változatok a nemzethalálra,” in Nyugaton innen – Keleten túl (Miskolc, 2000), 81–91. 11. André Reszler, Mythes politiques modernes (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1981), 210.

3

The National Anthem

A literary genre and national symbol The concept of the national anthem can be clarified in the discourses of both intellectual and literary history. However, the national anthem is also one of the symbols of the modern nation. Therefore, it can be viewed from the perspectives of both cultural anthropology and law. The decision of choosing the national anthem is normally based on some kind of consensus – which can also be called customary law – and it is often codified by the constitution, specifying the poet and the poem (or its selected stanzas) adopted as the national anthem of the country in question. Since we Hungarians adopted Ferenc Kölcsey’s “Hymn” (“Hymnus”) as our national anthem, I shall briefly describe the anthem as a literary genre and distinguish, to some extent, the literary genre and the national symbol. To begin with, the Hungarian case is by no means typical; it can be seen as exceptional. The history of the anthem as a literary genre dates back to antiquity. The Greek word hymnos denotes a song. Originally, it was used in a broader sense to denote a song of praise for heroes or, later, a song to gain the support of higher powers. The hymn is a religious song sung to worship God or other deities. Its closely related genre is the ode, whose object is less determined and can practically be anything. The hymn is an ancient form of cultic poetry. Mesopotamian hymns are the oldest ones, praising gods and rulers. Similarly, Egypt had hymns that glorified the divine king, and Pharaoh Akhenaton’s “Aten Hymn” is one of the finest examples of ancient world literature. In the Old Testament, this genre is represented by the psalms attributed to King David. The hymn is one of the oldest genres of ancient Greek literature (chronologically beginning with Homeric hymns of an epic style). We also know lyrical and liturgy-related hymns. Hymns were first incorporated into liturgy in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. In ancient Latin literature, Horace was considered the most significant hymnist. During the medieval period of Christianity in the Western church, the revival of this genre was attributed to St. Ambrose. Hymns have an important role in Christian culture, cultivated by, first of all, mystic St. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Francis of Assisi. The hymnody of the Reformation drew DOI: 10.4324/9781003318774-4

26  The National Anthem on the tradition of psalms – suffice it to mention Martin Luther’s influential praises. Subsequently the hymn became a popular genre of world literature too. Hymns were written by – to name only some of the great poets as examples – Novalis, Hölderlin and Shelley. The hymnic poetry of the ­modern age also draws on the antique tradition. In describing the literary genre of the hymn, a German lexicon of literature lists the following important characteristics: it begins with a summoning invocation, it has a hierarchical-vertical orientation, has a solemn tone and is characterized by a tripartite structure (invocation, epic middle part, closing request).1 It is elucidating to review international handbooks for some definitions of the national anthem, if not the complete range of them. Typically, these explanations merge, to some extent, the literary genre and the national symbol. “National anthem” does not always appear as a separate entry; sometimes it is presented simply as a type of hymn. For example, this stands for the Great Soviet Encyclopedia that puts a great emphasis on the “anthems” of social movements (e.g., Czech Hussite songs or Luther’s hymn “A Mighty Fortress” [“Ein feste Burg”], which became the emblem of Evangelical Lutherans). “State anthem” is a distinct category within this entry.2 While the English word anthem (from Greek antiphona) denotes a genre of church music, it is used to refer to the national songs, including the British “National Anthem.” The French Encyclopédie simply designates the national anthem as a patriotic song. Volume I of the Croat Encyclopedia (Hrvatska ­enciklopedija, Zagreb, 1996) defines it as a poem of praise that is accompanied by music. According to the definition in the German Brockhaus (2005), the national anthem is a patriotic song, mostly with a folk melody, and is often conceived as the expression of national and state consciousness. Volume VIII of the Italian Great Dictionary (Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, Torino, 1973) mentions the national anthem as a mere accessory of national representation. The literary genre of the hymn played a very important part in Polish Romanticism; sometimes it could be hardly distinguished from the song, and often it was the community of receivers and the function of the specific poem that determined whether it was considered a hymn or a song. Nevertheless, the encyclopedia of nineteenth-century Polish literary history (Obraz literatury polskiej 19. vieku) makes a distinction between narrowly interpreted prayer-like hymns to God and patriotic hymns (which also include religious or revolutionary elements) within the literary genre of the hymn.3 The anthem as a national symbol is a part of the collective symbol-world. It should be noted that anthems were/are created for provinces and regions as well as nations. For example, in the nineteenth century, the “Transylvania Song” (“Siebenbürgen, Land des Segens”) by Leopold Maximilian Moltke (1846) for the Transylvanian Saxons was seen by their community as a kind of nationality anthem. All the provinces of today’s federative Austria have their own anthems. (Naturally, this may partly be due to the fact that they had been principalities, separate provinces since the Middle Ages until the

The National Anthem 27 emergence of German unity.) The impact of anthems is greatly increased by their suitability for singing and their melody. In fact, no national anthem can be imagined without a musical form. In numerous cases texts that were not properly set to music fell out of the canon for the world of national symbols. The definitive phase in the cult of anthems usually begins when the text suitable for singing is incorporated in patriotic rites (festivities, commemorations, mass gatherings).

Types of modern national anthems Due to an inconsistent use of the word “anthem/hymn,” we should speak of modern anthems, as did Hungarian scholar Vilmos Voigt in his comprehensive review article.4 These are symbols which are involved in the process of forming the modern nation. Undoubtedly, songs that express collective identity, loyalty to the ruler or religious sentiments and church affiliations, as well as battle songs to heighten the fighting spirit or hymns that glorify “national” saints existed in periods preceding modernity, but these can be seen as merely the antecedents of the modern anthem. The Polish hymn “Mother of God” (“Bogurodzica”) to the Virgin Mary, for example, was probably created in the late fourteenth century, and it also gained a role in representing the state during the reign of the Jagiellonian dynasty, when, following a tradition, Polish troops sang it before the 1410 Battle of Grunwald (Tannenberg). However, modern anthems addressed and address different communities and serve to express different identities. As Michel Vovelle writes about the “La Marseillaise,” which “became the first modern national anthem”: “How … did this song, unlike the songs associated with various European monarchies in the Age of Absolutism, come to express the consciousness of a nation?”5 In fact, the history of state/national anthems also reveals the history of the evolution of the modern nation. Many argue that the prime modern European anthems are the dynastic British anthem (“God Save the King/Queen”) that sprang from a patriotic song of the 1740s and the “La Marseillaise” – this is certainly justifiable in terms of their exemplary nature and impact, but we should also keep in mind the anthem of the Low Countries/Netherlands, the “Wilhelmus,” which many considered the first modern national anthem. It was created during the struggles for freedom against the Spanish Empire (presumably between 1568 and 1572). In this Baroque poem, William of Nassau, Prince of Orange, the leader of the Dutch during the war of independence, speaks in the first person to list his titles, in both public law and symbolic terms, and declare his program. Hungarian historian and politician István Bibó, in his grand study, The Meaning of European Social Development (Az európai társadalomfejlődés értelme), demonstrates, through a brilliant analysis of the poem’s text, how the institutions of medieval freedom evolved into modern freedoms.6 Prince William refers to the liberties of the estates, loyalty to the homeland and speaks of his faith in God. Thus the poem was suitable for encouraging the

28  The National Anthem petty nobles (the “Beggars”) of the Low Countries to identify with their emerging free nation-state in the course of their struggles. Undoubtedly, the two major branches in the history of European national anthems stem from the dynastic British anthem, “God Save the King/Queen,” and the “folk anthem” “La Marseillaise,” respectively. Both had served as exemplars for the whole continent and even beyond for decades. They outline two possible interpretations of nation, homeland and the relationship between them, using different literary genres. The British anthem is a part of the nation’s common law; it has never been codified by Parliament or the monarch. The poem’s lyrical subject seeks God’s blessing for the kingdom in the solemn voice of the ode. In this text the homeland and the historical continuity of the imperial commonwealth constitute a fundamental value. The ruler embodies the homeland and the nation (naturally interpreted as a political community), the guarantee of law-abidance. “La Marseillaise,” created in 1792, is a call to arms addressing the sons of the fatherland; as it is known, Rouget de Lisle’s marching song was originally the “War Song of the Army of the Rhine” (“Chant de guerre pour l’armée du Rhin”). The lyrical subject addresses the members of the novel community, requesting strong identification with the homeland’s cause on their part. The filiations of both anthems in European culture are really elucidating. Due to the absence of state sovereignty, the example of “La Marseillaise” had a greater role in East-Central Europe. As mentioned earlier, in terms of its literary genre, the Hungarian case is the exception that proves the rule. The ode and the song (in their different varieties) were the most frequent among national anthems. Obviously, the literary tastes of the times and the traditions of national culture left their mark on the literary features of a specific emerging national anthem. The classification of national anthems by content follows the grouping proposed by Ulrich Ragozat, who distinguished three categories: first, the so-called royal anthems, solemnly tuned songs that glorify rulers and usually rest on religious foundations; second, the folk anthems, impulsive-aggressive songs with political or revolutionary motifs in their lyrics; and finally, the so-called country anthems, which are not national fighting songs but usually praise the natural beauty of the national landscape and the unique features of the nation.7 This grouping is certainly acceptable as a starting point, but it should be slightly modified in the case of East-Central European anthems. Here again, we should note the widespread contradiction that derives from the nation-formation process of this region, since for numerous peoples the duality of nation and state prevailed practically from the early nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. Although these nations had several anthems already, they lacked their own states. That is why the argumentation describing and categorizing national/state anthems is not always clear: quite often, national movements and the songs considered national anthems in public belief existed well before independent statehood. György Csepeli

The National Anthem 29 and Antal Örkény conclude in their aforementioned study that “national anthems can be regarded as paraphernalia of a state.”8 Naturally, this is partly true, but it can be applied only to periods when the given nation, ethnicity or cultural community had its own state. When Alfréd Hajós won the first Hungarian gold medal in swimming at the 1896 Olympic Games in Athens, the Greek Royal Military Band began to play the Austrian “Gotterhalte,” the anthem of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to honour the champion; the Hungarian delegation vehemently protested and, standing in a row in front of the champion’s podium, sang the Hungarian anthem. In East-Central Europe, the national anthem can by no means be attached to statehood exclusively. This fact also implies that several patriotic poems had competed for the rank of the national anthem – often for shorter or longer periods. In fact, in quite a few cases, some of these national communities “replaced” their anthems following certain political turns or changes in the form of state.

The anthem’s role in national representation Within the range of national symbols, the anthem belongs to literature in terms of its origin. Although it is a literary work, it can also function effectively in a musical form to fulfil its role in representing the nation. The first national anthem in East-Central Europe, the Polish anthem, was created in the late eighteenth century, and its appearance was closely attached to a specific situation in the history of the Polish nation that emerged in July 1797. The marching song of the Polish Legions, formed within the army of the French Republic in Italy, expressed the intention to regain national independence, and it conveyed the will and hope of Poles for almost 120 years, during successive wars of independence and their suppression; they did not come to terms with the loss of independence. This song transmitted the message to successive generations; thus, it continued to “build” the Polish nation at a time when it did not exist as a political community. An important milestone was reached when the anthem, performed as a song or a musical composition, could appear in public. This required native-language theatre, musical culture and national institutions of culture. In terms of political and social conditions, there were great differences between the peoples of East-Central Europe in the early nineteenth century. Some groups of elites – including aristocrats – within Polish, Czech, Hungarian and, to a lesser extent, Croatian societies effectively participated in supporting national cultures and creating their institutions (academies, national museums and theatres). For example, most of the anthems were performed first in a theatre or within the framework of a theatrical production: for example, the Czech anthem (Kde domov můj?), Ljudevit Gaj’s famous nation-awakening poem (Horvatov sloga i zjedienjenje), or Đordević’s Serbian anthem (Bože pravde) glorifying the king. In Hungary, when Erkel’s “Hymn” composition and Gábor Egressy’s musical adaptation

30  The National Anthem of Appeal were announced as competition winners, both premiered at the National Theatre in Pest. In the Southeastern European region and in the less developed conditions of societies with intellectual-peasant elites, the creation of national institutions of culture occurred somewhat later. It was typical, for example, that a permanent Serbian theatre was established earlier in Novi Sad/Újvidék (the Kingdom of Hungary) than in Belgrade. But sooner or later, national drama and opera emerged everywhere, and vernacular literature evolving under the sign of Romanticism began to spread content and symbols that generated national identity in increasingly broader circles. In the last decades of the nineteenth century the people of Southeastern Europe succeeded, one after the other, in achieving state independence: Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania became sovereign kingdoms recognized by the international community, while the independence of Montenegro was safeguarded by the great powers. Therefore, no obstacle remained to hinder the creation of national institutions of culture and the anthems of these nation-states, to serve as a part of the state protocol. In fact, through these achievements, they surpassed the nations of Central Europe. Although the Czech, Hungarian or Croatian anthems could be performed in public in the final decades of the AustroHungarian Empire (even the Polish anthem in Polish Galicia), their originating poems could be included in teaching materials or their melody could be played on the occasion of national holidays, these anthems could not become the vehicles of state representation yet.

Notes



1. Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft, II. Band. (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2000). 2. Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopedia (Third Edition), Vol. 6 (Moscow: Yoyo Media, 1971). 3. Marian Dziubiński, “Hymn,” in Obraz literatury polskiej XIX wieku (Kraków: Literatura krajova w okresie romantyzmu 1831-1863, 1975), 355. 4. Vilmos Voigt, “A Modern Himnuszok,” Vol. 2000, No. 3 (1995), 43–52. 5. Michel Vovelle, “La Marseillaise: War or Peace,” in Lawrence D. Kritzman (ed.), Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past. Vol. 3: Symbols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 29. 6. István Bibó, “The Meaning of European Social Development,” in Iván Zoltán Dénes (ed.), The Art of Peacemaking: Political Essays by István Bibó (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 426–429. 7. Ulrich Ragozat, Die Nationalhymnen der Welt: Ein kulturgeschichtliches Lexikon (Freiburg, 1982), 11; this classification is also adopted in a book about the Croatian anthem by Andrija Tomašek, “Lijepa naša”: Pripovjest o hrvatskoj himni (Zagreb: Muzički informativni centar, 1990), 15–18. 8. Csepeli and Örkény, “The Imagery of Anthems in Europe,” Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism, Vol. XXIV, No. 1–2 (1997), 38.

4

Collective Symbols Anthem Archetypes

In most national cultures, the anthem of the modern nation has antecedents, if not always direct ones. Thus, they should be called archetypes, for there existed earlier varieties of collective identity, as well as loyalty to the ruler, church and native land. Naturally, anthems (in the classic sense of the genre, as hymns attached to ecclesiastical life), songs of praise and battle – in both Latin and the vernacular – that constituted widely accepted symbols were created. In an age of seeking and planning the modern nation, the writers and composers experimenting with the potential expressions of the new collective sentiment evidently drew on this rich tradition. They were exploring both literary solutions of form and symbolic content. First of all, two important instances of heritage should be highlighted: the cult of “national” saints and the so-called “patriotic poetry.” The medieval cult of saints had, in numerous cases, a component that served as an exemplar of the close relationship between the respective saint and the country/homeland. In the Middle Ages, Czech prince St. Wenceslaus was considered the country’s patron. Other saints with similar significance were: state-founding St. Stephen for Hungarians; St. Wojciech (Adalbert), the martyr buried in Gniezno, and St. Stanisław (Stanislaus), the martyr Bishop of Kraków, for the Poles; and St. Sava, the founder of the Serbian church. In the countries of Latin Christianity, a great poetry of hymns emerged to praise the nation’s saints, and the peoples of Eastern Orthodox churches could draw on an equally rich heritage. For several peoples of Central Europe, the above-mentioned St. Adalbert, former Bishop of Prague, had an extremely important tradition-making impact because in the tenth century, he played a significant role in implanting Christianity in both Hungary and Poland. In keeping with tradition, the Bishop of Prague administered King Stephen of Hungary’s confirmation (even if he did not baptize him, as has been believed for a long time). Poland owes to Adalbert the establishment of the autonomous Polish ecclesiastical province seated in Gniezno. He set out from Poland on a mission to carry the gospel to the pagan Prussians of the Baltic and suffered martyrdom there in 997. Duke Bolesław the Brave purchased the bishop’s body from the Prussians to bury him in Gniezno, the ruler’s seat, and his tomb DOI: 10.4324/9781003318774-5

32  Collective Symbols has been a famous pilgrimage destination for centuries. Pilgrims from all parts of Poland, which was partitioned into three in the nineteenth century, travelled to Adalbert’s grave, his cult gaining a definite national following. Tradition associated Adalbert with the composition of the Polish-language Marian hymn “Mother of God” (“Bogurodzica”), ascribing authorship to him, which remained a typical imagined “fact” of Polish historical memory for a long time, although it has never been verified by philologists. The Polish prayer that begins with the words “Mother of God” was created in the second half of the thirteenth century and had its heyday in the fifteenth century, sung by Polish soldiers before important battles and at the coronation of Polish kings. The eminent chronicle-writer Jan Długosz described it as “the song of the homeland” (“carmen patrium”). Mother of God, Virgin, by God glorified Mary, From your son, our Lord, chosen mother, Mary! Win over for us, send to us.   Kyrie eleison. Son of God, for the sake of your Baptist, Hear our voices, fulfill man’s intentions. Hearken to the prayer that we offer, And deign to give us what we ask for: On earth, a pious sojourn, After life, heavenly residence.   Kyrie eleison. (Translated by Michael Mikoś) From the eighteenth century onwards, the cult of the Virgin Mary had a considerable role in spreading the modern national identity in Central Europe. Here we can take into account not only the tradition of the Hungarian Regnum Marianum but also the Marian cult among Croats and Slovenes. The motif of national communion clearly appeared in pilgrimages to Marian shrines at numerous places in the mid-nineteenth century. In addition to the epithet Patrona Hungariae, the title Regina Poloniae also emerged among Poles during the seventeenth-century Swedish Wars. In the more recent cult among Slovak Catholics (in 1927), the Virgin Mary, Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows, is the patroness of Slovakia as well as the Slovak people. Here we can also mention the well-known Hungarian patriotic-Catholic song that dates from the eighteenth century, beginning with the words “Our blessed Virgin Mary” (“Boldogasszony anyánk…”), which was popular in its folklorized form for centuries. The acrostic of the ten stanzas spells out the name of the supposed original author, Benedictine monk Bonifác Lancsics (1674–1737), who lived and worked in Pannonhalma from 1710. As Benedictine college teacher Jób Bánhegyi concluded in his literary history, “This chant became our national prayer and has sounded in our Catholic churches for centuries.”1 Due to Hungary’s denominational

Collective Symbols 33 divisions, it could obviously serve as a national symbol for Catholics. The Genevan Psalm 90, “O God, our help in ages past,/our hope for years to come,” was considered the key community symbol by members of the Hungarian Reformed church, traditionally also sung by Bocskai’s Haiduk (hajdú) soldiers before battles.2 At the beginnings of poetry in the Czech vernacular, we can find the eleventh-­c entury hymn of an anonymous author with the initial line “Lord, Have Mercy upon Us” (“Hospodine, pomiluj ny”). Charles IV incorporated the singing of this hymn into monarchic representation. Another important anthem archetype in Czech culture is the “Saint Wenceslaus Chorale”: O, Saint Wenceslaus, duke of the Czech land, our prince, pray for us to God, and the Holy Ghost. Kyrie eleison! However, the Czech nation-builders of the nineteenth-century aimed to lay foundations on the Hussite tradition; thus, they considered the Hussite war hymn with the incipit “Ye Soldiers of our God” to be an important symbol: Ye Soldiers of our God,    and of His law, Him ye shall pray to,    Him adore, And He shall crown the fight    with victory. In Slovak tradition, two seventeenth-century hymnals, Benedek Szöllősi’s Catholic Cantus Catholici (1655) and Tranoscius’s Lutheran Cithara Sanctorum (1636), played an important role in community-building. The Cantus Catholici nurtured the Marian cult; the preface to this hymn book refers to “the Apostles of the Slavs,” Cyril and Methodius (whom the Slovak national movement later considered “national” saints). The psalms translated and hymns written by the revered Georgius Tranoscius (Juraj Tranovský/Jiři Třanovský, 1592–1637) belong to the definitive tradition of Slovak literary and cultural heritage. Possibly composed in the late eighteenth century, the folk song “Nitra, dear Nitra” (“Nitra, milá Nitra”) constituted a collective symbol of the national movement as early as in the 1830s, and, according to Škvarna, among Slovaks it was the oldest hymn that functioned as a modern anthem.3 At the turn of the thirteenth century, Rastko of the Nemanja dynasty, known by his monastic name as Sava, became the first archbishop of the Serbian Church. In fact, his cult began after 1594, when his remains were

34  Collective Symbols burned and turned into ashes by the Turks near Belgrade. According to a book on the history of hymns by Milivoje Pavlović, the “Hymn to Saint Sava,” originally consisting of four stanzas and written in 1735 in Church Slavonic, is possibly the work of Metropolitan of Karlovci Jovan Georgijević.4 St. Sava has been the patron of Serbian schools since the early nineteenth century, and the singing of his hymn – with local variations in its text – was a part of school celebrations. Another important group of antecedents was created in the nineteenth-­ century genre of “patriotic poetry.” In the age of Romanticism, the lyric form, with a significant proportion of patriotic songs, had a definitive role in the literary cultures of Central Europe. The fundamental characteristic of this amorphous genre is that it served collective goals. The tradition of Slovak literary history defines “hymnic songs” (“hymnická pieseň”) as patriotic poems with a solemn tone, which are particularly characteristic of the age of national revival. With their proper pathos, these poems aim to awaken the sleeping nation. In the South Slav literary tradition is the genre of budnica. This word originally meant “a wake-up call” or, in patriotic poetry, a popular song that served to broadly arouse the national sentiment. Similarly, the Polish tradition has the pobudka (again, meaning “wake-up” or “alarm”). Another variety among the South Slavs is the even more forceful davorija (probably from the name of Davor, the god of war in Slavic mythology), that is, a battle song or march. Around 1848, patriotism was the most frequent theme in Slovene poetry.5 The most important goal of these poems is to mobilize, to foster intense emotional identification with the nation or, in brief, to create and popularize this modern collective identity. Of course, traditions go far back beyond the ages of the Enlightenment and Romanticism. In Hungarian culture these originated primarily from the so-called kuruc poetry, particularly its late period, represented by the “Rákóczi Song” (“Rákóczi-nóta,” dated circa 1730, a predecessor of various compositions of the “Rákóczy March”). It was disseminated in manuscript form, to first appear in print in the appendix of Free Voices (Szabad hangok), published by János Erdélyi in 1849. For the Polish people, one should mention the folklore of battles during the Confederation of Bar (1768–1772) and the soldier songs of the Kościuszko Insurrection. A unique attempt was made by Julian Niemcewicz (1757–1841) in his series of Historical Chants (Śpiewy historyczne, 1816) in 33 parts, which aimed to present the prominent figures of Polish history to the readers of his partitioned homeland. All over East-Central Europe, without exception, folk poetry was seen as an exemplar, since – adopting the Herderian idea – it was perceived as the crucial source of national culture; thus, the region-wide collection of folklore began in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Folk songs can be regarded as the antecedents of more recent collective symbols primarily in terms of poetic form or melody. In his study on Slovak folklore, literary historian Andrej Melicherčík describes “folk-inspired art songs,” associating

Collective Symbols 35 with this phenomenon the three major Slovak national poem-symbols: Janko Matúška’s anthem (Lightning over te Tatras), Karol Kuzmány’s ode a (Glory to the Noble) and Samo Tomášik’s song “Hey Slavs/Slovaks.”6 Of the homeland laudations of the Enlightenment, two characteristic East-Central European examples can be mentioned. One of these is Polish author Ignacy Krasicki’s (1735–1801) hymn to the homeland, “O Sacred Love of the Beloved Country” (“Święta miłości kochanej ojczyzny”) in two eightline stanzas, which he wrote in 1774 for the students of the reform-spirited School of Chivalry (Szkoła Rycerska) in Warsaw after the First Partition of Poland. The other poem is Valentin Vodnik’s (1758–1819) “Illyria Reborn” (“Ilirija oživljena”) from 1811, created in the era of the Napoleonic Illyrian Provinces (1809–1813) to depict the vision of a hopeful common home for South Slavs. In 1804, Dositej Obradović, an outstanding representative of the Serbian Enlightenment, was the first to hail the Serbian uprising in “A Poem for the Insurrection of the Serbs” (“Pesma na insurekciju Serbijanov,” also known by its first words as “Rise, O Serbia!”). According to Milivoje Pavlović, this poem should open all Serbian anthem histories.7 In the 1830s and 1840s, both Serbian and Croatian poetry included instances of such a patriotic song or budnica. A characteristic example of the davorija is a fighting song to encourage insurrection is Jovan Sterija Popović’s (1806– 1856) “Rise, Rise, Serb!” (“Ustaj, ustaj, Srbine”), which was originally performed in 1847 as a part of the author’s drama The Dream of Prince Marko. For the East-Central European national movements that gained momentum in the 1830s and 1840s, the revolutionary “La Marseillaise” mentioned in relation to the history of European anthems provided an important incentive, as French national symbols in general (e.g., the tricolour or the cockade) were seen as appealing examples in our region. Although “the song of Marseille” could not be published and popularized in the countries of the Habsburg Empire, it was known to their intellectual elites and appeared in several contemporary translations. A host of poems that aimed to arouse and awaken the nation were created with inspiration from the French revolutionary song (La Marseillaise) in this period. Quite a few of them became national poem-symbols (or ultimately national anthems). The above-mentioned difference between national and state symbols provides an explanation for the fact that the other archetype of European anthems, the British dynastic anthem “God Save the King/Queen,” had much fewer followers in the East-Central European region. Although the first version of “Gotterhalte,” with Leopold Haschka’s lyrics and Haydn’s immortal music, to glorify Emperor Francis I was created in 1797, as an imperial symbol it failed to become popular among the national movements striving to achieve autonomy. East-Central Europe has relatively few examples of the dynastic anthem. Signalling the forthcoming birth of the Romanian nation-state in 1859, Moldavia and Walachia elected the same

36  Collective Symbols prince, Alexandru Ioan Cuza. In 1862, an invitation was issued to compose the music of a princely march, and Eduard Hübsch’s melody won the competition. This melody was adopted in 1881 for Vasile Alecsandri’s anthem “Long live the King” (“Trăiască Regele”). It was first performed officially on the occasion of Carol I’s coronation in 1884. As to Serbia, Jovan Đorđević’s anthem “The God of Justice” appeared on stage in 1872 in the opera Prince Marko’s Sabre, to request blessings for the Serbian king and people. A different story – yet characteristic of East-Central Europe – is that of the anthem “God Save Poland” (“Boże coś Polskę”), with the opening line “Lord, who through ages protected Poland.” The anthem praised Tsar Alexander I, who was crowned as the King of Poland in 1816, but Alojzy Feliński’s poem relatively soon “dethroned” him through transforming it into the prayer for the homeland bereft of freedom. The patriotic poetry of East-Central European peoples, of course, was also seeking inspiration in world literature, including Greco-Roman classics (e.g., Tyrtaeus, Virgil, Ovid, Horace) as well as contemporary French (Béranger) and German (Herwegh, Freiligrath, Körner) literature, to mention a few examples. In the course of formulating the national self-image, the ideologues or the writers and poets of the national movements were obviously bound to face the question of where the boundaries of the nascent (renascent) nation were, or could be, in both linguistic and territorial terms. We can consider the title of the Czech anthem “Where Is My Home?” to be characteristic. Numerous poem-symbols in East-Central Europe aimed to answer this question via specific geographical names, natural borders, rivers, mountains and regions. These poems were inspired primarily by German poet Ernst Moritz Arndt’s poem written in 1813 during the Napoleonic Wars, “The German Fatherland” (“Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland?”).8 All through the first six stanzas, the lyrical subject repeatedly raises this question: what is the German’s fatherland? The answer initially lists German provinces, rivers, ethnic groups. Finally, the sixth stanza gives a clear explanation: the fatherland lies “wherever the German tongue is heard.” Thus, language is the true criterion of the nation. Another significant work of world literature which had an indirect influence on the hymnic poems of quite a few Slavic poets was also created by a German author: the poem “Mignon’s Song” (which begins with the words “Do you know the land”) from Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (Book III). The lyric conveys longing for the beautiful South; the idyllic landscape expresses the desire for home, the ideal homeland from the pen of those forming the national symbol. In the Czech territory, several versions of this song were created in the early nineteenth century. It can be related to a sonnet in Ján Kollár’s The Daughter of Sláva (Slávy dcéra), as well as the Czech and Croat anthems written by Josef Kajetán Tyl and Antun Mihanović, respectively.9

Collective Symbols 37

Notes

1. Jób Bánhegyi, A magyar irodalom története, Vol. I (Budapest: Szent István Társulat, 1929). The first written record of the chant’s text can be found in the 1715 hymnal of Demeter Szoszna, Benedictine monk of Pannonhalma. 2. Ildikó Gyarmati, Egyházi protokoll: Nagyegyházak protokoll és liturgiai szokásai (Budapest: Atheneum, 2000). 3. Škvarna, Začiatky moderných slovenských symbolov, Vydala Univerzita Mateja Bela v Banskej Bystrici, Fakulta humanitných vied, Banská Bystrica, 2004, 63. 4. Reference to research findings by Petar Momirović in Milivoje Pavlović, Knjiga o himni (Beograd: Decje novine, 1990), 145. 5. Franc Zadravec and Joże Pogačnik, Zgodovina slovenskego slovstva, Vol. 6 (Maribor: Obzorja, 1973), 109. 6. Andrej Melicherčík, “Slovenský folklór,” in Slovenská vlastiveda, Vol. II (­Bratislava: Slovenská academia vied a umenia, 1943), 282. 7. Milivoje Pavlović, Knjiga o himni: jugoslovenski narodi u himni i himna među narodima (Beograd: Novaja knjiga, 1984), 144. 8. István Fried’s remark in footnote 23 to his paper “Einige Besonderheiten der Anfänge der Romantik in Mittel- und Osteuropa,” in László Sziklay (ed.), Aufklärung und Nationen im Osten Europas (Budapest: Corvina, 1983), 372. 9. Vladimir Gudel, “Njemački utjecaji u hrvatskoj preporodnoj lirici,” Vijenac (Zagreb), No. 20 (1903), Vol. V 643.

5

The Poem-Symbols of National Representation

Every country or nation can have only one national anthem, which is usually sanctioned by public consensus. As we will see, this had been achieved in greatly differing ways. It was a process in two senses: on the one hand, it was the fundamental process of forming the nation, with the creation of national symbols as a crucial element or criterion; on the other hand, it was also a kind of race, so to speak, since in most cases several candidates competed for the noble title “national anthem.” Although it may seem effective to analyse only the texts that are today considered national anthems, I believe that this would provide a much vaguer picture: the presentation of the nation’s symbol-world as well as the features and values of its self-image. It would outline a much more fragmentary and less representative panorama if we took account only of the current anthems, rather than extending our inquiry to texts that are seen as national symbols in a broader sense. Therefore, I decided to also examine poems which functioned as national anthems earlier as well as poems which were, as symbols, worthy rivals to the poems which were ultimately adopted as national anthems. For there exists, in every national culture, a certain condensed or thick canon of symbols, including poems, that the community sees as having definitive significance. Naturally, as with other canons, this one is not unchangeable. The demarcation of this circle is always somewhat arbitrary. The poems in question were mostly created at the time of the rise of the modern nation, and it took a shorter or longer time for them to become incorporated into the canon. Historical and cultural events as well as outstanding political figures could also contribute to the “fixation” of various symbols. Education, the press and different churches could play a role in its widespread inculcation. It is extremely difficult to determine precisely the specific poems (and associated melodies) that fell into this circle. Obviously, a canon changes through the ages too; thus, it is not easy to reconstruct the three to five poems that were seen as the prime national symbols in a given period. And it would require sociological methods to define the ones that are today considered such prime symbols. Of course, the circle of texts to be taken into account for my own analysis can be arbitrarily narrowed or broadened. First of all, the starting point for selection criteria was how DOI: 10.4324/9781003318774-6

The Poem-Symbols of National Representation 39 important was the role the given poem and melody played in the definitive, nineteenth-century phase of nation formation. Similar endeavours also had to face the dilemmas of text selection. It could not be avoided by the editors of The National Anthems of Europe In-Between, an anthology of poems and related commentary published in Paris in 1993.1 In this case the French researchers considered Finland, the Baltic countries as well as Ukraine and Belarus to be parts of Europe In-Between. The editors are somewhat inconsistent in examining multiple poems for some countries and a single poem for others. Let me give some specific examples to demonstrate how varied even selection criteria were. Polish national symbols are represented by the “Dąbrowski Mazurka” and “God Save Poland,” Gustaw Ehrenberg’s 1836 poem “When the Nation Took to the Field” (Gdy naród do boju) and Maria Konopnicka’s 1908 poem “The Oath” (“Rota”). Slovak symbols also include the adaptation of the Czech anthem, Janko Matúška’s anthem and Samo Tomášik’s march “Hey Slovaks.” Hungarian anthems are represented by Kölcsey’s “Hymn” and Vörösmarty’s “Appeal.” As for the symbols of Romanian culture, along with the old royal anthem we can find the official anthems of the Communist era as well as Mureşanu’s current state anthem in this French volume. The Bulgarian national symbols included are “Maritsa Rushes” (“Shumi Maritsa”) and “Dear Homeland” (“Mila Rodino”) and “Proud Ancient Balkan Mountains” (“Gorda Stara planina”), the latter with its 1964 version, in the modified form suited to requirements. These are just a few examples to highlight the dilemmas awaiting all those who attempt to present the full range of definitive poem-symbols. We have to answer the following questions: (1) Is there some kind of consensus within the given national culture on the content of the canon? (2) Should we insist on the criterion that all nations have to be represented by the same number of texts? (3) We also have to decide which poem texts should be taken into account: the original poem or some later version (which often significantly differs from the first one)? In summary, we can say that historiography, comprehensive studies and collective memory had more or less crystallized the canon of the crucial poem-symbols by the turn of the twenty-first century. In 1994, Slovak researcher Miloš Kovačka clearly designated three poems: “Slovak national revival created three extremely powerful and enduring hymnic songs: Tomášik’s Hey natives – Hey Slavs – Hey Slovaks (Hej, rodáci – Hej, Slované – Hej, Slováci), Matúška’s Lightning Over the Tatras (Ponad Tatrou – Nad Tatrou sa blýska), and Kuzmány’s Glory to the Noble, well known as Who burns for truth (Sláva šľachetným – Kto za pravdu horí).”2 Dušan Škvarna’s work on national symbols highlights two hymnic songs, “Hey Slovaks” and “Lightning Over the Tatras,” and adds Kuzmány’s ode third.3 The list compiled by Poles is much longer (as it was in the French publication mentioned above). In his monograph discussing the historic role of the Polish anthem, Wojciech Jerzy Podgórski mentions, besides the “Dąbrowski Mazurka,” six other poems set to music which ran for the title of national

40  The Poem-Symbols of National Representation anthem. The historical trajectory connected the series of Polish wars of independence from the late eighteenth century to the birth of independent Poland – from Krasicki’s hymn to the fatherland to the famous march of the Piłsudski legions.4 Slovenian tradition includes two anthems: Simon Jenko’s march, entitled “Forward, flag of Slava/glory!” (“Naprej, zastava slave”), and France Prešeren’s famous wine song “A Toast” (“Zdravljica”), chosen as its national symbol by the newly independent Republic of Slovenia. In the course of my analysis, I arrived at the somewhat arbitrary solution that below I shall attempt to describe, for each national culture, the image of the nation and the symbol-world reflected in the two or three poems that belong to the narrowest canon. The following comparative analysis takes the original texts as its starting point. The changes made to these poems and reasons given for these modifications or additions will be discussed in separate sections.

Selected texts Albanian Bosnian

Bulgarian

Croat

Asdreni (Aleksandër Stavre Drenova) Dino Dervišhalidović Dušan Šestić and Benjamin Isović Nikola Zhivkov and Ivan Vazov Tsvetan Radoslavov

Antun Mihanović Ljudevit Gaj

Czech Czech, Slovak and Slav Hungarian

Josef Kajetán Tyl Samo Tomášik

Ferenc Kölcsey Mihály Vörösmarty Sándor Petőfi Macedonian Vlado Maleski

“Hymn to the Flag”

“Himni i flamurit”

“You Are One and Only” “Intermezzo”

“Jedna si jedina”

1995

“Intermeco”

2009

“Maritsa Rushes” “Shumi Maritsa”

1907–1912

1876–1912

“Dear Motherland,” or “Proud Ancient Balkan Mountains” “Croatian Homeland,” or “Our Beautiful Homeland” “Croatia Is Not Yet Lost” “Where Is My Home?” “Hey, Slavs”/ “Hey, Slovaks”

“Mila Rodino”/“Gorda Stara planina”

1885

“Lijepa naša domovino”

1835

“Još Hrvatska ni propala” “Kde domov můj?”

1835

“Hej, Slované”/ “Hej, Slováci”

1834

“Hymn” “Appeal”

“Hymnus” “Szózat”

1823 1836

“National Song” “Today Over Macedonia”

“Nemzeti dal” “Denes nad Makedonija”

1848 1941

1834

The Poem-Symbols of National Representation 41 Montenegrin Jovan Sundečić Prince Nikola PetrovićNjegoš Polish

Alojzy Feliński

Józef Wybicki

Romanian

Serbian Slovakian

Slovenian

Maria Konopnicka Andrei Mureşanu

To Our Beautiful Montenegro” “There, Over There”

Ubavoj nam Crnoj Gori” “Onamo, namo”

1865

“Oh, Bright Dawn of May” “God Save Poland”/“Hymn” “God Save Poland”/“A Prayer for the Homeland” (folk variant) “Song of the Polish Legions in Italy,” “Dąbrowski Mazurka,” “Poland Is Not Yet Lost,” or “Poland Has Not Yet Died/ Perished” “The Oath”

“Oj, svijetla majska zoro” “Boże coś Polskę”/ Hymn “Boże coś Polskę”/ “Modlitwa za ojczyznę”

2004

“Jeszcze Polska nie umarła”

1797

“Rota”

1908

“Un Răsunet/,” “Deșteaptă-te, române” “Deșteptarea României,” “Imnul regal,” “Trăiască regele”

1848

“Bože pravde”

1872

“Nad Tatrou sa błýska” “Sláva šľachetným”

1844

“Zdravljica” “Naprej zastava slave”

1844 1860

“An Echo,” or “Awaken Thee, Romanian” Vasile “Romania’s Alecsandri Awakening,” “The Royal Anthem,” or “Long Live the King” Jovan Đorđević “The God of Justice” Janko Matúška “Lightning Over the Tatras” Karol Kuzmány “Glory to the Noble” France Prešeren “A Toast” Simon Jenko “Forward, flag of Glory/Slava!”

1867

1816 1861

1848 1866

1846

We should first examine the chronology of poem origins, since it reflects relatively well the phase differences between national movements in EastCentral Europe. Beginning with the Polish anthem, this timeline almost precisely plots the “long” nineteenth century. The lyrics and melody of “Poland Has Not Yet Died” were created in 1797, followed by the text and music of the Albanian anthem in 1907, which was first performed publicly in 1912

42  The Poem-Symbols of National Representation to celebrate the country’s newly gained independence. The Macedonian anthem, written during the Second World War, diverges from this line. Between these two temporal poles, two major phases of convergence can be more or less distinguished. One of these falls in the 1830s–1840s, roughly representing the efflorescence of “national revival.” This is a time when the order of the Holy Alliance loosened and national movements in EastCentral Europe, primarily in the countries of the Habsburg Empire, entered a new phase. These were the promising years that preceded March 1848, when the cause of national language use made progress, and the important institutions and grassroots organizations of national culture emerged. Those engaged in nation-building were also scholars and literary figures, and their aspirations gathered an audience. Symbols that expressed identity were indispensable for “awakening” this responsive environment, for laying the foundations of its national consciousness so that the ritual for the cult of the modern nation could take shape – so that it would become possible to listen to the symbolic songs of the nation at the theatre and sing them together on festive occasions. It was by no means accidental that – almost crowning this era – the revolutions of 1848 played the important role of creating and consolidating symbols in the countries of the Habsburg Empire. National colours were turned into cockades, badges and banners, to be used in mass gatherings and by revolutionary troops. Soldier songs, marches and national prayers were created, including poems that have been considered definitive symbols to date. The second phase can be defined as the three decades from the 1860s to the 1890s. Again, it is not accidental that the anthems of several Balkan peoples were created in this period. The Serb national uprising that broke out in the early nineteenth century initiated a decades-long process. The relatively independent principality gained its sovereignty only when the last Turkish military units, seen as merely symbolic, left Belgrade in 1867. Carol (Charles) of Hohenzollern became the king of unified Romania (from the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia) in 1866. An unsuccessful Bulgarian uprising breaks out in 1876, and the autonomous Bulgarian principality is created as a result of the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish war in the Balkans. The last of the Balkan nations that rose against the Ottoman Empire, Albania became an independent country in 1912. Both Bulgaria and Serbia had territorial claims in Macedonia, and Tito’s Yugoslav partisan movement conceived the newly formed South Slav state on a federal basis, with Macedonia as an independent republic. This gave rise to the construction of the Macedonian linguistic norms and national symbols during the Second World War. The overwhelming majority of poems can be classified into the literary movement of Romanticism. Wybicki and Feliński wrote during Age of Enlightenment. Both “Dąbrowski Mazurka” and “God Save Poland” clearly reflected the connection with the two anthems that are seen as European archetypes: “La Marseillaise” and “God Save the King/Queen.” “Poland

The Poem-Symbols of National Representation 43 has not yet died” was written only five years after “La Marseillaise,” and the lyrical subject speaks in the plural; the song is sung by the soldiers of the Polish Legion departing to liberate their homeland. “God Save the King/ Queen,” which takes the form of a prayer seeking God’s blessings for the king and fatherland, fits smoothly into the line of dynastic anthems, including the first national or state anthems of Romania, Montenegro and Serbia. These are prayers to God for the ruler embodying the nation and for the homeland. As to literary form, another, larger group of poems can be categorized into the genre of the patriotic song, while the ode is also a frequent genre. In quite a few cases, a direct link between these songs and folk songs can be discerned, and Prešeren’s “A Toast” relates to the literary tradition of the Anacreontic drinking song. Naturally, each poem can be conceived as a particular intertextual junction of universal and national cultures.

Texts in the context of their authors’ cultures The authors of anthems or poem-symbols are all, without exception, seminal figures of their national cultures. In line with East-Central European traditions, they are “nation-builders” in the broadest sense of this word. Such an author is often a writer, a politician, an ideologue and a polymath intellectual committed to the nation’s cause in one person, with quite a few renowned literary classics, some even recorded in the canon of world literature. All of them are figures in their nation’s cultural history who had a prominent role in creating the modern nation. Although the names of some of them fell back into a lower rank in handbooks by the early twenty-­ first century due to changes in the literary canon or historical memory, they played a decisive role in shaping their nations’ collective identities. Of course, their activities should be examined in the context of their own age, taking into account not only their literary oeuvre but also their political and cultural work. Some of them were also members of parliament, heads of state, high-ranking officials, leading figures of the national movement or prominent journalists. The process of the cultural creation of the modern nation can be traced through describing the anthem-writers’ paths and roles in the national culture as a peculiar cross-section of this process. Naturally, there were significant differences between them depending on the specific people or country. Although the basic structural dissimilarities between Western Europe and East-Central Europe (in terms of embourgeoisement, the Industrial Revolution, economic development or linguistic and ethnic diversity) are justly emphasized in historical works, quite a few important items in the program of the modern nation seem to show backwardness of a lower degree in the late eighteenth century. The impact of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution and German Romanticism – particularly Herder’s reception, which deserves a separate chapter – were obviously felt in the

44  The Poem-Symbols of National Representation East-Central European region, but this does not mean the radical abolition of distinctive local traditions at all. One could instead speak of an organic development and path-seeking. The nation-builders of East-Central Europe aimed to find answers that better suited domestic endowments. The contradiction between the imperial unity of dynastic states and communities existing on a linguistic-cultural basis posed the most difficult question. The similarity and difference of this situation can be best seen when it is compared to the French example. In 1789, approximately half of France’s population had native tongues different from French. “The historical realization of France is, in fact, a long and methodical destruction of national entities of other races within the territorial Hexagon,” writes Robert Lafont in his overview of the past of various ethnic groups.5 That is, by the time the final phase of linguistic unification began during the revolution, non-French ethnic groups had lost even their provincial framework; they were left without either a native tongue of adequate prestige or nation-building intellectuals in considerable numbers. In the zone of Europe In-Between, this occurred in a radically different way, when Joseph II’s attempt at linguistic unification (his language decree of 1784) provoked wide resistance across the Habsburg Empire and gave impetus to the national movements which were then still in the bud. At the same time in Poland, the Constitution of May 3, 1791 referred to the citizens of the state (obywatel) and – although according to this fundamental law which had brought about definitive reforms, the landed nobility could retain some of its important privileges – the term “citizen” was applicable to all residents of the country, irrespective of their native tongue or denomination. According to the prominent representative of the Polish Enlightenment, Hugo Kołłątaj, no-one was to be Lithuanian, Volhynian, Podolian, Kievan, Ruthenian but everyone was to be Polish – in the sense of political unity. However, this independent Polish state had only a few years before it was completely partitioned. In Hungary, the question of Hungarian (Magyar) as the official language first appeared on the agenda of the 1790–1791 Diet, which passed a law declaring that Hungary was a free and independent state to be governed only by its own statutes (Act X of 1791). Again, this aspiration would point to the French nation state as a model, but Hungary had feudal provincial traditions, and aspirations on the part of denominational or linguistic communities began to emerge at this time too. This is the first time when language use became a subject of dispute, because the Croatian deputies of the joint assembly aimed to reinstate Latin as the language of administration. This was also a period for the political and cultural antecedents of nation formation among non-Hungarians. Thus, for example, the 1790 clergy-led congress of Serbs living in Hungary, held in Temesvár/Temišvar, petitioned the monarch for the establishment of Serbian territorial self-governance within the country and for setting up a separate Serbian chancery. Similar examples: Anton Bernolák published important works on the Slovak language and orthography between 1787

The Poem-Symbols of National Representation 45 and 1791, while in 1791, Romanians of Transylvania filed a supplication to the emperor, Supplex Libellus Valachorum, in which they requested to be recognized as the fourth natio in Transylvania. In summary, we can say about the background to the processes of nation formation in East-Central Europe that the crucial definitive conditions were historical and political events, the aim of creating the modern national language and artistic and intellectual movements. The political events include the consequences of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Vienna,; the two attempts at creating a constrained Polish statehood in the early nineteenth century, the First Serbian Uprising in 1804, the Greek insurrection for freedom (1821–1829) and the Polish war of independence (1830–1831) and last but not least the Springtime of Peoples. Later on the Polish uprising in 1863 as well as the struggle of Balkan peoples against the Ottoman Empire, including the Balkan Wars in the early twentieth century. The role of grammars and dictionaries, linguists and language reformers in the first phase of nation-building cannot be underestimated. Samuel Bogumił Linde’s six-volume dictionary of the Polish language (1807–1814); grammars by Czech Josef Dobrovský, Slovenian Jernej Kopitar and Serbian Vuk Karadžić; as well as the activities of language reformers like Hungarian Ferenc Kazinczy or Czech Josef Jungmann had an enormous significance in their own national movements. Political aspirations were also shaped by Ljudevit Gaj’s work on the foundations of Croatian orthography, since a literary language built on the Štokavian dialect carried the potential of a common Croato-Serbian norm; on the other hand, the 1843 choice of Slovak intellectuals of a literary language based on the Central Slovak dialect allowed them to take a distinct path diverging from that of the Czech. The Romantic concept of national language developed under Herder’s influence had a great impact throughout the East-Central European region. Unlike in Western Europe, the literature of Romanticism here focused on the community and the nation rather than the individual. Writers addressed the public as speakers for these communities. They played a particularly important role in creating and popularizing the symbols of national consciousness. These messianic poets were ready to perform the task of the prophet of the nation and its freedom. In the nineteenth century we can specify two periods when a series of poems belonging to the canon of the symbol-world appeared in EastCentral Europe: one of these is the period 1820–1850; the other includes the last third of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. These intervals more or less outline the temporal map of nation formation, the network through which the modern nation was formed and spread from the west towards the southeast, from Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia to independent Romania, Serbia and Montenegro in the making. For Poland, the last decades of the eighteenth century brought about the period of simultaneous large-scale reforms and national tragedies. The last Polish king, Stanisław August Poniatowski, came to the throne

46  The Poem-Symbols of National Representation in 1764, with the approval of Tsarina Catherine II. A generous supporter of Enlightenment culture and an advocate of modernizing education, the king proved to be indecisive and wavering in his political decisions. The efflorescence of Polish culture began at this time, with the Grand Theatre of Warsaw (the first national theatre in East-Central Europe) opening its gates with a public performance in 1765, the beginnings of modern press in Polish and the appearance of high-standard journals. A freedom fight launched in 1768 by the so-called Confederation of Bar aimed to counteract strengthening Russian influence, but the guerrilla war evolving throughout the country was finally crushed by the tsarina’s army in 1771. Then, in 1773, the First Partition of Poland between neighbouring great powers occurred. Significant political reforms were initiated only when the Sejm convened in 1788, established by the Constitution that was passed on May 3, 1791. However, this was only effective for 16 months, because in 1793 the Second Partition took place, with Kościuszko’s war of independence in response. After the suppression of this fight for freedom in 1795, Poland was erased from the political map of Europe. An important player of these years was Józef Wybicki (1747–1822), a landed noble who came from the Baltic Sea littoral to be a politician, poet and dramatist. Interwar literary historian Ignacy Chrzanowski introduced Wybicki in a nutshell as follows: “In different areas of his work for the fatherland he permanently inscribed his name into the memory of the grateful nation. His participation in the Bar Confederation, the work on Andrzej Zamoyski’s Code, the delegation of cities during the Four-Year Sejm, the Kościuszko Uprising, forming the Legions and organizing the Duchy of Warsaw – all this endows him with a constant and decent name in the history of politics.”6 Wybicki wrote historical dramas and comedies, political pamphlets, three librettos for the opera, and his memoirs are also valuable as both documents and literary works. He managed to flee Poland and went from Paris to Lombardy to participate in the organization of the Polish legions. There he also wrote the “Dąbrowski Mazurka.” He held high-ranking state offices in the Duchy of Warsaw and then in 1815 the so-called Congress Kingdom. He devoted the last years of his life to literary activities. The author of the other Polish anthem, Alojzy Feliński (1771–1820) was a member of the next generation. He began his career as a Piarist monk and served as one of the secretaries for the chief commander during the war of independence led by Kościuszko. Feliński left the Piarist order to start a family and manage his estate. From 1815, he lived in Warsaw and became engaged in the literary life of the capital. In this last phase of the Polish Enlightenment, Feliński, based on his poetic and dramatic works, was considered an eminent representative of Classicism. In the year of high hopes, 1816 he published his hymn known as “God Save Poland” to honour the tsar-king, Alexander I. His tragedy Barbara Radziwiłłówna, staged in 1817, achieved great success. In this play, set in the sixteenth-century “Golden Age” of Poland, contemporaries witnessed the revival of the old glory of

The Poem-Symbols of National Representation 47 Jagiellonian rulers. From 1818 Feliński worked as a teacher at the famous Krzemieniec Lyceum of Volhynia. In terms of the conditions and opportunities of nation formation, the case of Poland, its reform attempts, wars of independence and defeats forced the generations who grew up in the spirit of the Enlightenment to face the dilemma of whether it is possible for the nation to exist without a state. Numerous contemporaries – not only among Poles – interpreted the Third Partition and the country’s disappearance from the political map as if the Polish nation had vanished from the stage of history. Although the Congress Kingdom could sustain the hope that there existed some kind of Polish statehood (as held by Feliński, for example), after 1820, Poles could experience the efforts of the Russian imperial authorities to curb Polish autonomy, and this was the main reason for complementing and modifying the lyrics of the dynastic anthem. Later, the insurrection of 1830–1831 proved to be the event that radically transformed, in line with the principles of Romanticism, the Polish concept of the nation: it became centred on language and culture rather than the state, regardless of the fact that the intention to restore the homeland of the period preceding the First Partition remained a fundamental aspiration of the various political factions within the national movement. The source of the Romantic – and not only Hungarian – vision of the nation’s death is undoubtedly the hard fact that Poland was abolished in 1795 and, equally important, that the 1831 war of independence had been crushed. In a poem that also had a great impact on later generations, published in 1809 under the title “Hymn to God” (“Hymn do Boga”), Jan Paweł Woronicz depicted “the corpse of the fatherland soaking in spilt blood.” There are many shared features between the two Polish poets and the two Hungarians Kölcsey and Vörösmarty, in terms of social origin. These parallels speak for themselves; we can find some similarities even in their political and cultural roles. However, they clearly represent another generation, with a differing historical context too. Taking as a starting point the years when Kölcsey’s “Hymn” was written and published (1823, 1828), we can see that, relative to the increasingly stricter conditions of the contemporary Congress Kingdom, hopeful processes began in Hungary. This was the first phase of the Reform Era, when – with Kölcsey’s important contribution – Romanticism triumphed in literature; the first steps of bourgeois development were encouraging and the dissemination of the Hungarian language advanced. The fundamental institutions of national culture (museums, academies of sciences) are created. The potential solutions to the serf question were discussed by the Diet in increasingly serious forms. Until his resignation in 1835, the author of “Hymn” was an eminent figure of the reform camp in the assembly. The chronology of the history of Hungarian literature traditionally marks the beginning of the Age of Romanticism with Vörösmarty’s 1825 epic Zalán’s Flight (Zalán futása). The author of “Appeal” is not only an eminent figure in literary life but also a crucial actor in public life. The critical debate designated as the Pyrker strife in

48  The Poem-Symbols of National Representation literary history clearly indicated the commitment of Hungary’s national formation to the Hungarian language. In 1830, it was unacceptable for the young generation that someone producing works in German could become a Hungarian writer. Bishop of Eger Johann Ladislaus Pyrker’s Germanlanguage epic (Perlen der heiligen Vorzeit) is expelled from Hungarian literature. The years when “Hymn” and “Appeal” were set to music (1843, 1844) clearly opened a new phase of the Hungarian movement towards the modern nation, when aspirations to build a national community had much stronger echoes in society than earlier, the country’s capital became a Hungarian cultural centre, journals were published and the Magyar Theatre of Pest (a precursor of Hungary’s National Theatre) opened in 1837. Having arrived from the Slovak countryside to Bohemia’s capital in November 1834, the young Lutheran pastor Samo Tomášik heard only German words in the inner city of Prague. By that time, the Czech national movement had already started. Miroslav Hroch argues that in the period 1815–1830 the true foundations of the successful rise of the Czech nation were created.7 The Old Czech manuscripts discovered in 1819 and 1820 by librarian Václav Hanka (Rukopis královédvorský and Rukopis zelenohorský, the so-called Dvůr Králové/Königinhof and Zelená Hora/Grünberg manuscripts) – which later turned out to be forgeries – encouraged contemporaries with the old glory of Czech history. In literature, Pest-based Lutheran pastor Ján Kollár’s The Daughter of Sláva/Glory, a sonnet cycle (published first in 1824) that contributed to creating national mythology, had a great impact. They boosted self-consciousness, the belief that the Czech language and culture could be able rivals to their German counterparts. It became clear that the national movement would not adopt the concept of a bilingual Bohemus nation but instead took the linguistic community as its starting point. In 1831, an important institution of cultural patronage, the Czech Matica, was established in Prague, and František Palacký officially became Bohemia’s historiographer. Although the vast majority of the political and economic elites of Czech provinces and urban burghers spoke German as their native tongue, the number of those who participated in Czech-language cultural life gradually increased, while more and more active young intellectuals of bourgeois origin became engaged in various forms of action in the national movement. Thus – although it was a novelty but by no means an appalling event – in December 1834, the above-mentioned Czech-language performance took place in the Estates Theatre, in the heart of Prague. Josef Kajetán Tyl, born in 1808, was a representative of this dynamic young generation. He came from the social group of artisans and craftspeople, which gave most of the Czech nation-builders. He was a multitalented agent of the national movement. Tyl edited a Czech paper in Prague, which still had a German majority, and he organized Czech-language theatrical performances. His historical dramas focused on figures of national history such as Jan Hus and the heroic Hussite military leader Žižka. His short stories and articles (“Bohemian Walks”) depicted the beauty of the homeland’s cities

The Poem-Symbols of National Representation 49 and landscapes to readers. His popular newspaper articles also placed great emphasis on praise for patriotism and the beauty of the Czech language. In June 1848, Tyl participated in the revolution of Prague, which lasted for a few days only; then he focused on literary activities until his death in 1856. Compared to its Hungarian and Czech counterparts, the Croat national movement was somewhat delayed. In fact, it began in the early 1830s. Its representatives included more people who came from the intelligentsia and bourgeoisie than in the cases of Hungarians or Poles, but some of them were of noble or aristocratic descent. The grand poem by Catholic priest Pavao Štoos, “The Picture of the Homeland at the Beginning of the Year 1831” (“Kip domovine vu početku leta 1831”), a critical stock-taking of the situation of Croats, can be seen as a symbolic overture. The following year, Count Janko Drašković’s Dissertation (whose original long baroque title included the word “discourse”) appeared; it was a political pamphlet prepared for the Hungarian Diet, the most comprehensive summary of the aspirations of the national movement, which proposed as a starting point the idea of the unity of speakers of Croatian on the one hand and the historical and public-law traditions of the “Triune Kingdom” on the other. Returning from his studies in Vienna, Graz and Pest to Zagreb in 1831, 22-year-old Ljudevit Gaj, who had already published his epochal orthography in the previous year, became a real driving force of the Croat national movement. He was a language reformer, poet and journalist in one person, an excellent organizer, a contact-builder and a charismatic personality. He had the privilege to launch, in 1835, the first Croatian newspaper (Novine Horvatzke) and its literary supplement (Danica). Gaj was the advocate of Illyrianism, the idea of South Slav unity, and he was seeking supporters for his grandiose plans in both Russia and among Polish émigrés. In 1842 the Croat Matica (Matica ilirska/hrvatska) was founded in Zagreb. Following Gaj’s initially successful actions, Vienna banned the use of the name Illyrian in 1843. He tried to gain financial and political support for his movement in various, sometimes dubious ways. He played an important part in the election of Jelačić as governor (ban) of Croatia in the spring of 1848. However, Gaj had to resign from the frontline of politics because of a corruption affair. In the era of neo-absolutism, he edited the official newspaper but remained under police surveillance. After the Bach era, Gaj failed to return to politics and died in solitude in 1872. Antun Mihanović (1796–1861) also published his poem “Croatian Homeland” (“Horvatska domovina”) in Gaj’s paper. He was not engaged directly in the national movement; his life took a course diverging from the paths of his younger contemporaries. Following studies in Zagreb and Vienna, Mihanović was a military judge in the Italian provinces of the Habsburg Empire. Then, from 1823 he served in the governor’s office in Fiume/Rijeka. As an envoy of the port town, he participated in the 1825–1827 Diet of Pressburg/Pozsony. Studying his activities in this period, Imre Ress concluded that some of Mihanović’s statements can be characterized by Hungarus patriotism.8 From a young age he showed great interest

50  The Poem-Symbols of National Representation in the diachronic study of the Croatian language and literature. Mihanović sent his poem, which was later adopted as the national anthem, from Fiume/ Rijeka to the editors in Zagreb. In 1836 he was appointed the Belgrade consul of the Habsburg Empire. He served as a diplomat in Thessaloniki, Smyrna, Istanbul and Bucharest until 1858. After his retirement he lived in Novi Dvori, Zagorje until his death. The Slovak national movement had to confront two basic dilemmas. One of these was the question of linguistic standard, with the related problem of finding a common denominator for the Catholic and (Evangelical) Lutheran parts of the nation. The other dilemma was self-definition in opposition to a strengthening Hungarian nationalism. Among the representatives of the Slovak intellectual elite, the majority was made up of Lutherans, who still wrote in biblical Czech in the 1830s, which posed an obstacle to the spread of literature. The idea of Slavic unity became – in a considerable part under Kollár’s influence – an important component of national identity. Clearly, Slovak ideologues perceived the nation primarily as a linguistic-cultural community. A leading figure of the national movement, Karol Kuzmány (1806–1866) was a student of the Evangelical Lyceum in Pressburg/Pozsony/ Bratislava. Having completed his studies, Kuzmány chose to become a pastor and served as such first in Zvolen/Zólyom, then, from 1832, in Banská Bystrica/Besztercebánya. He launched a literary journal, still in the Czech language, entitled Hronka. His literary works can be placed on the continuum from Classicism to Romanticism, his epic works and religious poetry put him in a ground-breaking role in Slovak literature. Published during the revolutionary times of 1848 and later in the 1860s, his lyrical poems were inspired by love of freedom and the values of Slovak patriotism. In the autumn of 1849, he was appointed professor at the Evangelical theological faculty of Vienna University. Later, in 1860, he was chosen as a superintendent of the Evangelical district established according to the Emperor’s Protestant Patent. He also acted as the first vice-president of the cultural association Matica Slovenská, founded in 1863, in Turčiansky Svätý Martin/ Turócszentmárton. Samo Tomášik (1813–1887), the author of “Hey Slavs/Hey Slovaks,” was 21 years old in 1834, when he arrived in Prague. Born in Gemer/Gömör County, he studied at the famous Evangelical Lyceum in Kežmarok/Késmárk and Berlin University. Treading the typical path of Slovak intellectuals, he completed studies in Evangelical Lutheran theology to become a pastor in Chyžné/Hizsnyó of Gemer. As his famous Slavic anthem was written first in biblical Czech (its Slovak-language variant was published in 1838 only), a part of his poetry also belongs to this tradition. His Slovak lyrics evoke the landscape of his native country and popular culture (mythology). In the second half of the nineteenth century, many of his poems were set to music and sung. His historical prose often drew on Gemer-related topics, and he wrote his novels on the kuruc era (the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) with a documentary focus, highlighting the role of the Slovak people in the

The Poem-Symbols of National Representation 51 past in the common homeland. Although Janko Matúška (1821–1877) of Dolný Kubín/Alsókubin was only eight years younger than Tomášik, it is as he belonged to another generation, since he could have been Štúr’s student in the Evangelical Lyceum of Pozsony/Bratislava between 1839 and 1844. As a form of protest, he not only wrote the poem “Lightning Over the Tatras” (“Nad Tatrou sa blýska”) but also left the lyceum. In 1848, he attempted to organize an uprising in Orava/Árva County. In the Bach era, following the revolution, he was a state official in Trstená and Dolný Kubín. Matúška began his writing career as a student at the Bratislava Lyceum. As a poet, he is clearly a representative of Romanticism, writing his verse, epic poems and ballads in the tone of folk poetry. The ethnic community of Slovenes lived in several provinces of the Habsburg Empire (Carniola, Styria, Carinthia, the Austrian Littoral, Gorizia and Gradisca). Carniola was the province where they formed the absolute majority, and Carniolan language was considered as a synonym of the Slovenian language. Political fragmentation, great dialectal differences and the fact that the proportion of Slovenes in urban elites was very low hindered the emergence of the national movement. Their aspirations gained momentum from Jernej Kopitar’s grammar (1808) and education in the native tongue introduced in the Illyrian Provinces established by Napoleon. France Prešeren (1800–1849) had an extremely important role in the adoption and dissemination of a distinct Slovene literary language. Considering the significance of his literary oeuvre, it is no exaggeration to say that he was a world-class representative of European Romanticism. Of peasant origin, Prešeren became an intellectual, educated under the tutelage of his Catholic priest uncle. He completed secondary grammar school in Ljubljana and studied law in Vienna. He began to write poems in German and Slovene while still living in the Kaiserstadt. The fledgling poet was encouraged by Kopitar. After his return home, he could find employment only as a law apprentice in the Upper Carniolan town of Kranj. The first almanac in Slovene, published in 1830, had great significance in his rise as a poet. His Wreath of Sonnets is a superb classical gem of national literature. His epic entitled Baptism on the Savica (Krst pri Savici) can be interpreted as a story of founding the nation, since it is about the fight of pagan Slovenes against the Christians, which ends in the protagonists being Christianized. The volume of his collected poems could be published only in 1847 when he was already an independent lawyer. Prešeren’s life was characterized by struggles and hardships all along, and he was truly recognized only after his death. The author of the other poem-symbol of Slovenes, Simon Jenko (1835– 1869) belongs to the next generation. He was a prose writer and lyricist, and is seen as the poet of the transition from Romanticism and Realism. His melodious poems of a simple structure reflect folk poetry; thus, his romances and ballads became popular. His elegiac lyrics resound with the sorrow of the Slovene people. In many respects, for Jenko too, Vienna served as the podium from which he could address the Slovene world.

52  The Poem-Symbols of National Representation As mentioned earlier, the revolutions of 1848 had a particularly important role in creating and popularizing national symbols. Mobilizing poems, marches could be played at popular assemblies or festive occasions, because censorship came to an end in the provinces of the Habsburg Empire. This was the period when some poems could really make history – as did Petőfi’s “National Song” on March 15 in Pest and it spread within days throughout the country, like wildfire. In the same spring, the unabridged version of Prešeren’s “A Toast” and Kuzmány’s ode “Glory to the Noble” (“Slava šľachetným”) were published. From the fire of East-Central European revolutions, there emerged two poems that rose to the canon of Romanian national consciousness: Vasile Alecsandri’s “Long live the King” (“Trăiască regele”) and Andrei Mureşanu’s “An Echo” (“Un Răsunet), also known by its first line as “Awaken thee, Romanian.” The year 1848 was highly significant for the Romanian national movement too. Revolutions broke out in both Moldavia and Wallachia, then spheres of influence in the Russian and Turkish empires. Aspirations to achieve democratic freedoms, a solution to the problem of serfdom and the unification of Danubian Principalities had not succeeded. In Iaşi, the revolution lasted for a few days only, and its leaders fled the country. In Bucharest the movement was much better organized; the prince of Wallachia had to come to terms with the establishment of a liberal government. Underlying these events with varying success there were the contradicting interests of different social groups and the intentions of neighbouring great powers. Civic reforms included the definition of the country’s national colours: blue, yellow, and red. The invasion of Bucharest by Turkish troops on September 25 put an end to Wallachia’s revolution. In Transylvania, the Romanian national movement disapproved the union of Hungary and Transylvania, articulating their requests at the large-scale mass rally in Blaj (Hungarian: Balázsfalva) on May 15: namely, to have Romania recognized as a nation. During the next Blaj assembly in September, the tone was much more radical, and an armed uprising against the Hungarian government began in the Transylvanian Metaliferi Mountains. Vasile Alecsandri (1818–1890) came from a Moldavian gentry family, and soon after he completed his studies (five years in Paris) and returned to his home country, he became a key figure of cultural life at an early age as an editor and a member of the board of directors for the National Theatre in Iaşi. He participated in the Moldavian Revolution, then fled the country as many others did. Later he was actively engaged in efforts to unify the Danubian Principalities. From 1860 onward, he was seen as an eminent authority in Romania’s cultural life. Alecsandri edited journals and published a collection of folk poetry. He was considered a classic poet and playwright in his lifetime. Transylvanian Andrei Mureşanu (1816–1863) had a more modest position in the canon of Romanian cultural history. He was acknowledged as a poet, essayist and translator. He studied philosophy and Greek Catholic theology in Iaşi and lived in Braşov/Kronstadt in 1838–1850. Mureşanu participated

The Poem-Symbols of National Representation 53 in the Romanian national movement, and his “Awaken thee, Romanian!” became the marching song of Transylvanian rebels. “By this ode, which is the truest expression of Rumanian aspirations and sentiments in that age, he at once became one of the most famous among the leading sons of the nations,” wrote Valér Branisce, Hungary’s Romanian literary historian in 1891.9 The possibilities of Serb nation-formation were largely defined by the fact that the Serb ethnic community lived partly in the Ottoman Empire, and partly in Hungary, within the Habsburg Empire. The tradition of the Serb church had a crucial importance for the collective identity. The above mentioned 1790 Congress of Temesvár/Temišvar aimed to transform the autonomy of the Serb church into Serbian territorial self-governance. Later in the Ottoman Empire, the struggle for independence that broke out in 1804 brought about autonomy in 1815, creating the core of the would-be nationstate of Serbs. Karadžić’s grammar and collection of folk poetry prepared the ground for the creation of the modern literary language and the cultivation of historical memory (first of all, the Kosovo myth). In the Principality of Serbia, interior minister Garašanin proposed his Draft Plan in 1844, outlining the vision of Greater Serbia that would encompass all South Slavic nations. The Serbs of Hungary claimed territorial autonomy (voivodeship) in 1848, then waged an armed rebellion against the Hungarian government. However, the Banat of Temes and the Serbian Voivodeship created by the Austrian government after the Hungarian war of independence in 1849 were not designed to satisfy the demands of the Serb movement. The next milestone on Serbia’s route to independence came in 1867, when the last Turkish outpost left Belgrade. Montenegro had a peculiar position due to the fact that it could rely on medieval antecedents of statehood (Zeta) and proved to be effective in centuries-old struggles against the Ottoman Empire in the hard terrain of its mountainous region. From the late eighteenth century, Montenegrin bishop-princes more or less managed to secure their country’s autonomy. Serb and Montenegrin identity – with slight simplification – is a peculiar mixture of symbiosis and separation. For example, Prince-Bishop Petar Petrović-Njegoš’s 1847 historical play/heroic epic The Mountain Wreath (Gorski vijenac) is considered a classic work of nineteenth-century Serbian literature. National mythology centred on medieval glory (Tsar Dušan’s empire) and the cult of Kosovo (as the site of past greatness and tragic defeat). This was also mediated by the Serbian church as a national institution as well as the epics published by Karadžić. Perhaps it was not completely accidental that the Montenegrin and Serbian poems achieving the rank of anthem were incorporated into state representation. The author of the first official Montenegrin anthem, Jovan Sundečić (1825– 1900) was born in Bosnia. He studied with the Franciscans in Dalmatia, then completed his studies in Eastern Orthodox theology. He served as a pastor, identified himself as a Slav, and tirelessly worked on understanding

54  The Poem-Symbols of National Representation Serbs and Croats, travelling throughout the South Slav lands and publishing his not-too-original poems in several journals. Later he became a secretary to Prince Nikola in Cetinje and retired from this post. A selection of his poems was published in 1889 by the Croat Matica. Contemporaries held Prince Nikola Petrović-Njegoš (1841–1921), the successor of Sundečić, to be a more significant poet than the author of the official anthem. His biography reveals much about the history of his hapless little country in the mountains. He began to write poems at age 17, was an excellent orator and also penned plays. His poem “There, over there” (“Onamo, namo”) gained popularity throughout the Serb world. At age 20, he came to the throne and for decades – as both the chief commander of the Montenegrin troops and a diplomat – succeeded in expanding the territory of his homeland. He envisioned the future of Montenegro as the Serb Piedmont.10 However, after Petar Karađorđević became king as Peter I of Serbia, Russia clearly saw Serbia as its chief ally in the region. Prince Nikola assumed the title of king during the celebration of his jubilee as a ruler. In the First World War, Montenegro sided with Serbia to participate in battles, but due to the invasion of the Austro-Hungarian troops, the king and the government were forced to leave the country on January 19, 1916 and the army fell apart. At the end of the war the Great National Assembly of the Serb People in Montenegro dethroned King Nikola under accusations of treason and declared unification with “brotherly Serbia.” The king died in exile in France. Montenegro became again a distinct public-law entity in the second Yugoslav state. In 2006 it was decided through a referendum that the country would chose to be fully independent. The author of the Serbian royal anthem, Jovan Đorđević (1826–1900) was born in Zenta/Senta, Hungary. In 1848 he was a student in Pest, gaining personal experience on the Magyar–Serb conflict and mutual understanding. In 1852 he acted as the secretary of the Serb Matica in Pest and later worked as a teacher in Novi Sad/Újvidék. He had close contacts with quite a few representatives of Hungarian literature. He was the founder of the first Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad between 1863 and 1868. Prince Mihailo Obrenović invited him to Belgrade to be the director of the National Theatre. For a short time, he also occupied the position of Serbian Minister of Education. He wrote numerous plays and was celebrated by his contemporaries as “the father of Serbian theatre.” Beginning in the early 1870s, new Bulgarian independence movements were organized. Their members – those at home and émigrés alike – increasingly agreed that the crucial objective was to achieve independence. In the spring of 1876, a hasty revolt was soon crushed by the Turks, and revolutionary Hristo Botev, the poet turned national icon for Bulgars, also lost his life. The rise of an autonomous Bulgarian principality was provided only by the Treaty of San Stefano that concluded the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. The author of “Maritsa Rushes” (“Shumi Maritsa”), Nikola Atanasov Zhivkov (1847–1901) was a teacher and multifarious literary figure. In 1876,

The Poem-Symbols of National Representation 55 he fought in the Serbo-Turkish War, the Macedonian revolutionary movement and the Russo-Turkish War. In the newly independent Bulgaria, he worked as a head teacher and penned dramas, comedies and textbooks. A classic of Bulgarian literature, Ivan Vazov transformed Zhivkov’s march of a few lines into a poem in 1912, inspired by Bulgarian triumphs during the First Balkan War. Tsvetan Radoslavov (1863–1931), who composed the lyrics and melody of “Proud Ancient Balkan Mountains” (“Gorda Stara planina”), studied at the faculties of the arts in Leipzig, Prague and Vienna. He wrote this song, later adopted as the national anthem, as a student when, hearing the news about the war, he hurriedly returned home. He worked as a grammar schoolteacher in various Bulgarian cities (e.g., Ruse and Sofia), and played a significant role in different areas of cultural life. Polish poet and prosaist Maria Konopnicka (1842–1910) belongs to authors of poem-symbols who were born in the twentieth century. Following her troubled youth, she became noted as an eminent author of Polish literature from the 1880s. Based on her short stories depicting the social problems of the village and the struggle for retaining national identity, she was seen as a representative of Realism, called “positivism” in Poland. Konopnicka also did significant work as an editor and translator. She was considered a living legend at the turn of the twentieth century. The author of the Albanian anthem, Asdreni (1872–1947) was originally called Aleksandër Stavri. In 1899 he left his homeland to study at the university in Bucharest. He returned home for a short time, then lived in Romania until his death. He is one of the major representatives of the Albanian literary revival and also did important work for national culture as an editor and popular educator. Among the authors of the texts discussed here, Macedonian Vlado Maleski (1919–1985) is the only one who is part of post-Second World War cultural history. During this period, the network of Macedonian cultural and mass communication institutions was established and the Macedonian literary language was consolidated. Maleski personally had a significant role in these developments both as an actor of cultural policy and a prosaist. He wrote the poem “Today over Macedonia” (“Denes nad Makedonija”) in his hometown, Struga, and later fought in Tito’s partisan war. After the end of the war, he held significant offices in cultural policy and diplomacy.

Classification of texts by their themes Our starting point here is the three thematic groups described by Ulrich Ragozat: dynastic or royal anthems, mobilizing revolutionary marches (folk anthems) and songs that praise the homeland as the ideal landscape. Looking at the range of selected texts, we can justly feel that some of them are hard to squeeze into these three categories; on the other hand, there are national anthems which could be put into more than one category. Possibly,

56  The Poem-Symbols of National Representation a fourth group should be introduced for anthems that glorify the nation as a specific community of memory and value – for example, Kölcsey’s “Hymn,” Kuzmány’s “Glory to the Noble,” Prince Nikola Petrović-Njegoš’s “There, over there” and Vörösmarty’s “Appeal.” One would really try hard to force “A Toast” into any of the categories. The verse was written in 1844 but published in 1848 only. This song of the love of homeland and freedom also expresses the bucolic mood of the Slovene landscape. Of course, the beauty of the homeland appears in dynastic anthems and the poems of memory communities as well as in nation-awakening songs too. Dynastic anthems This is the type that can be best demarcated. An anthem that glorifies a dynasty or king needs first of all a ruler, an independent country. It is by no means accidental that we can find only a few royal anthems in East-Central Europe. One of them asked for blessings for the ruler, but only for a short time, as its text, popular to date, was modified to symbolically dethrone the monarch. This is Alojzy Feliński’s above-mentioned “God Save Poland.” In the spring of 1816, preparations were made in Warsaw to commemorate the first anniversary of Tsar Alexander’s coronation as the King of Poland. The so-called Congress Kingdom, a form of personal union (providing for a liberal constitution and a separate Polish army), gave hope to the Poles. In the same year, issue 58 of the Gazeta Warszawska announced the news that Alojzy Feliński was inspired by the British “God Save the King” to write a hymn for the anniversary in a similar spirit, and the lyrics were also published by the paper.11 The Grand Duke Constantine (brother of the tsar-king) expressed his satisfaction on this occasion. The prayer to God expresses gratitude to the Creator for protecting Poland “through ages… Veiling her in power and glory’s light, And guarded her… from all the mishaps.” At the end of each stanza, the chorus ask the Lord’s blessing for the king: “To Your high altars we bring humble pleas,/Save our King, o Lord, we beg on our knees!” Within less than six months, Antoni Gorecki’s poem “Hymn to God for the Preservation of Freedom” (“Hymn do Boga o zachowaniu wolności”) was published, polemizing the refrain of Feliński’s hymn. Thus, when “God Save Poland” became widespread and folklorized, it was complemented with two stanzas from Gorecki’s poem. The most important was the change of the plea in the refrain: “Return our free Homeland to us, Lord!” This variant was printed in the collection Patriotic Songs published during the 1830 insurrection. Here I cannot endeavour to recite the colourful history of this popular hymn. Its translation appeared first in Hungary in the 1860s, during the 1863 Polish uprising. The fate of “God Save Poland” is a unique and revelatory case within the history of East-Central European anthems. The Romanian royal anthem, Vasile Alecsandri’s poem, was created in 1881. The six-strophe poem praises King Carol of Hohenzollern. The lyrical

The Poem-Symbols of National Representation 57 subject asks the Lord to bless the Romanian crown and to hold his protecting hand over the Romanian land. Montenegro was able to preserve its independence for centuries at a cost of bloody battles against the Ottoman Empire. Jovan Sundečić’s hymn “To Our Beautiful Montenegro” (“Ubavoj nam Crnoj Gori”) was published in 1865. This asks God to bless Prince Nikola and his home in a simple style, practically listing best wishes for the ruler and the homeland. It was solemnly declared to be the state anthem in 1870, but it was soon surpassed in popularity by the poem “There, over there,” written by Prince Nikola. Another dynastic anthem is Jovan Đorđević’s “God of Justice,” which was first performed on August 10, 1872 as a part of the writer’s Serbian patriotic-historical drama Prince Marko’s Sabre (Markova sablja) at the National Theatre in Belgrade. At this time Milan, cousin of the murdered Prince Mihailo Obrenović, decided to seize power in Serbia. In the last scene of the play, Serbs gather around the picture of the young ruler and a fairy announces the hymn to the prince. When the Kingdom of Serbia and Milan as its king were proclaimed in 1882, the author slightly modified the poem text, removing one stanza and adding three new ones. Decades later, after a change of dynasty, the modified text would ask for a blessing for King Peter I, Petar Karađorđević. Revolutionary marches, “folk anthems” Most of these can be linked to the tradition of “La Marseillaise” and are folk anthems in the sense that they address the community and sound a strongly mobilizing call to this national community and its homeland. The topoi of this call and “awakening” are often related to specific historical events. Typically, numerous East-Central European patriotic poems and anthems received the epithet “La Marseillaise”; one of these is Serbian Jovan Sterija Popović’s poem “Rise, rise, Serb!” (“Ustaj, ustaj, Srbine!”), which was written in 1846 and became a mobilizing battle song in the southern territories of the Kingdom of Hungary in 1848. Ljudevit Gaj’s poem “Croatia is not yet lost” (“Još Horvatska ni propala”) and Andrei Mureşanu’s “Awaken Thee, Romanian” are also included in literary histories and handbooks, while Simon Jenko’s march “Forward, flag of Glory/Slava” was called the Slovene “La Marseillaise.” Undeniably, the earliest of these is the Polish “Dąbrowski Mazurka” of 1797. Although the exact date of its creation is unknown, it can be seen as a symbolic moment. The conditions and history of creating national anthems and poem-symbols have been incorporated into national mythology over the century or two – it is certainly the case from the perspective of later generations, with an established cult of these symbols which are already included in national rituals, political and social celebrations, historical anniversaries and socialization within the family, school or church. They are described in textbooks and became the subject of numerous legends and

58  The Poem-Symbols of National Representation historiographies. Seemingly, collective memory tends to focus particularly on the mythical time, place and circumstances of the origin or birth of the text that became nationally sacralized and the attached melody. The creation history of an anthem often gave rise to a whole narrative: how the poet put it on paper, how its melody was born, when it was introduced to an audience, when the national public adopted it as its anthem, etc. Of course, in a sense this is an “invented” and cultivated tradition, since at the time of writing, few poets could imagine that what they put down on paper would become the national anthem. The first line of the Polish anthem that became a European byword – originally “Poland has not yet died,” soon modified as “Poland is not yet lost” – was usually interpreted by both contemporaries and successive generations in the negative form as a response to the Third Partition of the country. It aimed, in an indirect form, to refute the phrase “Finis Poloniae,” invented by Prussian propaganda and attributed to Kościuszko (these words were allegedly uttered by the supreme Commander when he was taken prisoner by the Russians on October 10, 1794 in the Battle of Maciejowice).12 “Poland has not yet died/So long as we are alive,” sing the soldiers of the Polish legions. Józef Wybicki’s marching song was created between July 15 and 21, 1797 in the city of Reggio nell’Emilia in northern Italy. Most Polish researchers agree on this.13 I put special emphasis on this fact because Hungarian scholar Éva Ring’s study on Wybicki places the date of creation as the autumn of 1796.14 Undoubtedly, Polish conspirators also relied on Hungarian connections, but it is a somewhat hurried assumption to directly associate this with the birth of the Polish anthem – even if there were plans for the Polish legions to cross the Adriatic and Hungary on their route to Galicia. According to historical sources, on July 7 Józef Wybicki arrived from Paris in Reggio, where he was accommodated next to General Dąbrowski’s headquarters, and he left the city on July 20. During those days, several festivities were held in Reggio with the march of Polish legionaries. The song “Poland Has Not Yet Died” was possibly sung first on one of these occasions. In October 1834, the young Lutheran pastor Samo Tomášik set out from Chyžné/Hizsnyó, Gemer/Gömör County on a study tour through Prague to Germany. In the Bohemian capital, he met eminent figures of intellectual life. He was dispirited to hear German words more frequently than Czech everywhere. In his memoirs written in the 1880s, he recalled how “Hey, Slavs/Slovaks!” was created. He was tormented by the vision that the Czech language might disappear from the metropolis of the Western Slavs. “I was immersed in such thoughts when the well-known song came to my mind: ‘Poland is not yet lost, so long as we live’ – and this melody seems to rip the strophes of my song, ‘Hey, Slavs!’ out of my heart. I go upstairs from the street to my room, light a candle and pencil the three verses into my diary – the song is completed.”15 In the original manuscript the text bears the title “On Slavdom” (“Na Slovany”) and begins with the Czech address

The Poem-Symbols of National Representation 59 “Hei, Slowáci!”; it was first published in this form in 1838 in Fejérpataky’s Calendar, and later became popular in its Slovak variant. In keeping with tradition, it was sung on April 24, 1836, at the memorable “national” excursion of Bratislava Lutheran Lyceum students in Devín/Dévény.16 In June 1848, on the occasion of the Congress of Slavic peoples of the Habsburg Empire in Prague, the song’s translations in several Slavic languages were published, as it was seen as a common symbol of Slavdom. Ljudevit Gaj’s poem “Croatia Is Not Yet Lost” was first published in print in 1835. A whole little legend has been created on the circumstances of its birth. According to the author’s recollections, conveyed by others to posterity, in the winter of 1833 Gaj was travelling in a sleigh from Zagreb to Samobor when he heard the sounds of a fiddle and a bass from a peasant cottage, which inspired him to write the poem. Nikša Stančić proves through a brilliant historical and philological investigation that the poem must have been written in several parts.17 According to the hypothesis proposed by the Croatian researcher, the first stanza and the melody were probably created circa February 10, 1832.18 Gaj completed his law studies at the university of Pest in 1831. Here he could possibly hear first “Poland is not yet lost” from those who fled their homeland after the Polish war of independence (although it is possible that he heard it from Hungarians, since the Polish “battle song” began to spread through manuscript hymnals in Hungary relatively early), and chose the song’s paraphrase as the first line of the Croatian poem. The song achieved true popularity at the German theatre in Zagreb, at the premiere of Joseph Schweigert’s play Die Magdalenen-Grotte bei Ogulin19 on February 7, 1835, where it was performed to the melody composed by Ferdo Livadić. According to contemporary recollections, it had to be repeated ten times during the performance.20 As a background to Gaj’s poem, there also was the rising phase of the national movement, when a broader social strata of nobles, burghers and intellectuals emerged, which was open to adopt the ideas of the modern nation. The history of “Lightning Over the Tatras” begins at the Lutheran Lyceum in Bratislava/Pozsony. Matúška probably put it on paper in January or February 1844,21 when the leading figure of the Slovak national movement, Ľudovít Štúr, working as a substitute professor, was suspended by the Lutheran presbyterate. Štúr formed an important workshop, laying the foundation of the national ideology at the lyceum’s department of so-called Czecho-Slovak literature. The decision of his suspension, concluding a prolonged investigation, greatly disappointed students with Slovak national sentiments, who began to boycott lectures beginning in January and vehemently discussed the events at the student chambers and taverns of Bratislava/Pozsony. Finally, 22 students decided to leave the city and continue to study in Levoča/Lőcse. As Michal Miloslav Hodža wrote in his German-language pamphlet published in Prague four years later: “Slovak youth departed from Pressburg in the gravest winter, with sadness in their souls caused by the brutal removal of their mentor, complaining

60  The Poem-Symbols of National Representation about this injustice and the unspeakable pain it caused in the heart-­breaking and melancholic song ‘There is lightning over the Tatras, thunders loudly sound’…”22 It was sung with guitar accompaniment to the melody of the well-known folk song “She Dug a Well” (“Kopala studienku,” collected by Béla Bartók), and became widely popular in 1848–1849, when this song, with its brisk rhythm, was sung at mass gatherings and by rebels who were called to arms to fight the Hungarian government. Matúška’s poem was first published anonymously, and its author remained unknown for a long time, until he was finally identified after the First World War. The Springtime of Peoples represented a real breakthrough, a new phase in East-Central European national movements as well as in the use and spread of national symbols. Sándor Petőfi’s “National Song” (“Nemzeti dal”) is an igniter and symbol of March 15 in Pest. The Romanian national movements of Moldavia and Transylvania have similar important poem-symbols sacralized by historical memory. Undoubtedly, one of these is Vasile Alecsandri’s ode, written in the spring of 1848, on the eve of the Moldavian revolution, entitled “Romania’s Awakening” (“Deșteptarea României,” originally “To Romanians” [“Către români”]). Across its ten stanzas, the poet chants the words of freedom and encourages the Romanian people to combat tyranny, addressing Romanians as a community of origin. The Moldavian poet fled Iaşi to arrive in Braşov/ Kronstadt (Transylvania), where his seminal poem was published on May 24 and disseminated on handbills.23 An answer came to this poem in the form of “An Echo” by Andrei Mureşanu, with the incipit “Awaken thee, Romanian” and a similar ten-stanza structure (one more was added later) – similar to Petőfi’s “Rise, Magyar” – which became the marching song of Romanian uprisers in Transylvania. Parallels between the two Romanian poems are clearly visible in terms of tone and keywords too. Nevertheless, the Transylvanian poet’s composition has a deeper memory-community dimension, plotting a thick Romanian historical narrative for its audience. The Slovene “La Marseillaise,” Simon Jenko’s poem “Forward, flag of Glory/Slava” was created in 1860 in Vienna. In fact, it is the common work of two 25-year-old youths, a poet and a composer. They also shared the family name Jenko, but they were only namesakes. Davorin had a fine musical career, he composed not only the first Slovenian anthem but also the score of the later Serbian anthem authored by Đorđević. The work of the two Jenkos was first performed in public at the concert of the Slovene Singing Society on October 22, 1860, on the occasion of adopting the October Diploma. This fiery march, which mobilized for the defence of the homeland and actually resembled the French model, soon became popular among Viennese Slovenes and other Slavic peoples of the Habsburg Monarchy. The text of the poem was first published on December 1, 1860 in a Slovene journal in Klagenfurt/Celovec. For numerous peoples of East-Central Europe, the second half of the nineteenth century and even the beginning of the twentieth century represented

The Poem-Symbols of National Representation 61 aspirations for national emancipation. The spring of patriotic poetry was far from running dry. In fact, to a certain degree it was nurtured by literary historicism and the demand for redefining national identity. The conceptual tool set and discourse of national poem-symbols had not changed much. And, of course, the “phase delay” of some national movements, deriving from specific historical and social conditions, should also be kept in mind. In April 1876, the Bulgarian uprising broke out and was crushed by the Turkish army relatively soon due to poor organization and betrayal. Some months later, the Serbo-Turkish War began, with the participation of Bulgarian volunteers. At that time the first Bulgarian national anthem, “Maritsa rushes” (“Shumi Maritsa”) – more precisely, an eight-line song about the blood-red river that aimed to call soldiers to arms – was born. Its text and music are related to the name of the teacher Nikola Atanasov Zhivkov, who wrote this short poem in the city of Ploieşti, Romania. In 1912, during the victories of the First Balkan War, it was complemented and rewritten by Ivan Vazov. Among Albanians divided in confessional, regional and dialectal terms, the national movement was formed relatively late and slowly. In a comprehensive study, Hungarian historian Emil Palotás writes about the end of the nineteenth century: “Political organizations were yet to emerge, the movement focused on the cultural issues of national development, but still failed to reach a notable change even in their solution.”24 Armed struggles for independence began in the 1910s, and finally the events of the 1912 Balkan War and the decision of great powers allowed Albania to appear on the map of Europe as an autonomous state. The national anthem written by Asdreni, living in Romania, dates from 1907. Its music was composed by the poet’s Romanian friend, Ciprian Porumbescu. The poem expresses the feeling of attachment to and the imperative of fighting for the homeland by glorifying the consecrated national flag. The complicated process of making the Macedonian nation took a new turn during the Second World War, when it became clear that the second Yugoslav state would have a federal structure, and it would also incorporate Macedonia as a republic. In late December 1941 Vlado Maleski wrote the song – both text and music – “Today over Macedonia” in his hometown, Struga. It was first sung by youths marching to the partisan war, and it soon became popular. Initially, in June 1943 it was published in print in a collection of Macedonian national-liberation songs. This optimistic battle song proclaims the birth of free Macedonia. Anthems glorifying the ideal landscape of the homeland If this group of anthems is based on the criterion that the whole poem should be a laudation of the country as a landscape of unique beauty, then only a few anthems can be classified under this label. These are the poems which glorify countries or cities, echoing the antique rhetorical tradition, to represent

62  The Poem-Symbols of National Representation the homeland primarily as a locus amoenus (pleasant place or pleasance). Naturally, the topoi of the home/native land seen as a consecrated space can be also found in other groups of anthems; however, it is the prime organizing principle for the poems discussed under this label. First of all, this group includes Tyl’s Czech and Mihanović’s Croat anthems, and the Bulgarian anthem written by Tsvetan Radoslavov may also be seen to belong to this type. To present the image of the homeland, these poems draw primarily on the topos-set of three rhetorical traditions. Looking at the features of homelands represented as the ideal landscape, we can discern the characteristics of the biblical Eden Canaan, the land flowing with milk and honey, and the Arcadia of Greco-Roman mythology. I shall return to these topoi in describing national self-­image, to discuss them together with the similar elements of other anthems. Chronologically, the first in this group is the Czech anthem written by Josef Kajetán Tyl, “Where Is My Home?” On December 21, 1834, a Czechlanguage performance was announced at the Estates Theatre in Prague – which can be seen as extraordinary rather than usual at that time, although it was already clear in these years that the Czech national movement entered a new phase. Scientific and artistic life brought forth a new generation which was much more consequent than its predecessors in representing the idea of national identity based on the mother tongue. This generation included Tyl, whose folk play Fidlovačka was set on the outskirts of Prague. On the December day above, Fidlovačka premiered at the elegant inner-city theatre (which hosted the premiere of Mozart’s Don Giovanni in 1787). The main question raised in the play, set during the celebration of the Prague cobblers’ guild, is the struggle for the Czech language. The song that later became the national anthem was performed in Act IV, Scene 7. The author of the play’s music was Tyl’s good friend, František Škroup (the composer of the first Czech opera). The Biedermeier-styled song sung by the blind fiddler partly owed its success to the fact that it was performed by the popular bass Karel Strakatý, which launched it on the road to popularity. A few months later, on March 14, 1835, Antun Mihanović’s poem “Croatian Homeland” (“Hrvatska domovina”) was published in Zagreb. It appeared at a time when the Croat national movement gained momentum, in a new organ, the weekly supplement Danica of the newspaper Novine Hrvatske, founded by Gaj early in the same year – which published “Croatia Is Not Yet Lost” in February. Mihanović sent his poem from Fiume/Rijeka, where he served in the governor’s office. During his decades-long service as an official and politician (he represented the port town as an envoy at the 1825–1827 Diet), he never failed to cultivate the traditions of Croatian culture and language. In his poem, which is also referred to with its first line as “Our beautiful homeland” (“Lijepa naśa domovina”), the homeland appears in images that resemble the Arcadia of Antiquity, characterized by diverse landscapes, including mountains, plains, industrious peasants, shepherds and scenes of joyful festivities. It is represented in a tone that somewhat differs from contemporary patriotic and combative nation-­awakening poems.

The Poem-Symbols of National Representation 63 Mihanović’s verse became extremely important for contemporary Croatian culture because it adopted Gaj’s new orthography. “If the Croatian people take the road towards becoming a modern European nation with the Novine and the Danica, then novel Croatian literature can be said to begin with Croatian Homeland, no doubt the best poem in the first volume of the Danica,” writes Mihanović monographer Jelena Očak.25 However, it took longer for the Croatian public to adopt the poem as its prime national symbol in the early 1890s. Tsvetan Radoslavov created the text and music of his patriotic song “Proud Ancient Balkan Mountains” (“Gorda Stara planina”) in 1885. It glorifies Bulgaria’s geographic landscapes – the Danube, Thrace, the Pirin – and the Bulgarian love of the homeland. The refrain describes the “Dear Motherland” (“Mila Rodino,” another common reference to this poem) as an “earthly paradise.” The Bulgarian name of the Balkan Mountains, Stara Planina, is included in the title as well as the first line of the poem. The mountain range has an important role in Bulgarian identity; as Maria Todorova writes, “the Bulgarians share in all the frustrations of being Balkan, and yet they are the only ones who seriously consider their Balkanness, probably because of the fact that the Balkan range lies entirely on their territory. There is no other Balkan literature that has dedicated such eulogies to the Balkans as the Bulgarian; in fact, there is no other where it even figures as an object.”26 France Prešeren’s “A Toast,” presenting images of grape harvest in the Slovene landscape, also seems to be akin to anthems of this type. In his wine song, the poet elevates the beautiful maids of the harvesting community and the lads representing hope of freedom to the universal vision of brotherhood and benignity. Anthems of the memory and value community In a subset of East-Central European national anthems the national community is represented first of all as a community of memory. Of course, the sense of a common past as the definitive basis of solidarity can be found in poems besides the ones discussed in this section. For example, Wybicki’s Polish and Mureşanu’s Romanian anthems also include the memory of a common past and historic heroes as an important factor. But we can hypothesize another type, hard to put into any other group, with the common feature that in the associated poems the memory and value of community are considered as the crucial bond of the nation. For Prešeren, as seen above, love of the homeland and universal brotherhood are such values, as truth, freedom and patriotism are for the Slovak Kuzmány, or patriotism and the memory of struggles for freedom are for Hungarian Kölcsey and Vörösmarty as well as Montenegrin Prince Nikola Petrović-Njegoš. On January 22, 1823, Ferenc Kölcsey put the poem “Hymn” on paper in solitude in Szatmárcseke. It was published in late 1828. At the time the poem was written, the Hungarian political class, the nobility was really vexed, since

64  The Poem-Symbols of National Representation in those autumn and winter months several county assemblies rejected to comply with King Francis I’s decrees that the Hungarian nobility saw as illegal. Kölcsey’s “Hymn” hails the anniversary, the new year. Sándor Csorba draws attention to its connections with calendars that were highly popular at the time: “Thus the date when his poem was created, January 22, should be seen not only as a date but also as the beginning of the astronomical year…”27 On July 2, 1844 the “Hymn,” set to music by Ferenc Erkel, was the winner of a competition initiated by the National Theatre and premiered at that same theatre. It was first performed at a public festive event at the shipbuilding factory in Óbuda, to become popular in a broader circle during the war of independence. Vörösmarty wrote his “Appeal” in 1836 – the year of dissolving the Reform Diet of 1832–1836, when the youth leaders of the assembly were arrested on the order of the ruler and the Palatine prohibited the dissemination of country assembly reports entitled Törvényhatósági Tudósítások, which gave rise to wide-scale protests against these illegal measures. In February 1838, “Appeal” has its first public performance at the Magyar Theatre of Pest, where, set to music by Béni Egressy, was also submitted to a competition launched by the National Theatre. It was first staged there on May 10, 1843 In 1846, the Slovak Lutheran pastor of Banská Bystrica/Besztercebánya, Karol Kuzmány, put an ode on paper, initially entitled “The Glory of Honour” (“Sláva statočností”). In 1848, on the eve of revolutionary events, he published this poem in issue 92 of the paper Orol Tatranský, slightly modifying its title: “Glory to the Noble” (“Sláva šľachetným”). In the early 1840s, Kuzmány wrote numerous religious songs of praise, continuing the Tranoscius tradition in the style of biblical psalms. The ideal homeland of his ode represents common values. Its hero is an idealized image with features resembling those of Christ: a messianic figure who can show compassion to the poor and is ready to sacrifice his life for freedom, homeland and faith. Here we must note that for Kuzmány, this homeland was probably the shared Kingdom of Hungary in 1846 and in early 1848. In 1867, Montenegrin Prince Nikola Petrović-Njegoš (Nicholas I) wrote his poem “There, over there” (“Onamo, namo”). Its music was composed by the conductor of his court in Cetinje, borrowing the melody of a Garibaldi song. This song soon became popular and was seen by the public in both Serbia and Montenegro, the small country of mountains, as a national anthem. Here the desired homeland is made up of the myths that left the deepest impressions in Serb-Montenegrin history: Tsar Dušan’s glory and the tragic Battle of Kosovo, or the great ruler’s home in Prizren and the “Serb battlefield” – the memory of shared historical fate.

Between myth and history One more possible distinction between anthems is worth considering. As Maria Delaperrière writes in a commentary on Polish anthems, “With the coming of nation-states anthems are desacralized and enter history: one of

The Poem-Symbols of National Representation 65 the best-known examples is undoubtedly the Marseillaise. They often refer to a specific historical moment and they are witness to the fact that the story of the events in question becomes a part of consciousness. Yet due to their ritual nature they ultimately mythicize the nation. We can say that their timelessness is external. European anthems oscillate between these two extremes: the sacralized, the timeless comes to serve history, and vice versa, history transforms into something mythical existing beyond time, which represents the perpetuity of the nation.”28 This observation is applicable to national symbols in general, since they are in some way “invented”; thus, they appear in history (of course, their sources or antecedents are never indifferent) and, having entered their function, they are gradually incorporated into national mythology, developing their own narrative structure. Their appropriation becomes a part of the process which allows individuals to form their national identity. If we aim to arrange the national anthems of East-Central Europe around the two poles above, it is obvious that songs which glorify rulers – who, according to tradition, came to the throne by the Grace of God – inherently imply timelessness due to their sacral nature. The same is true for anthems that praise the ideal – and eternal – landscape of the homeland as well as those that conceive the nation as a value and memory community. On the other hand, marching songs that encourage revolt or uprising and nation-awakening poems generally respond to a specific historical situation and, as seen above, the moment of their birth is connected to that particular historical context or, in fact, they can even have a role in shaping history (as in the case of Wybicki’s “Dąbrowski Mazurka” or Petőfi’s “National Song”). When they are adopted by the community as national symbols, their cult is created, and both types assume sacral nature. From this point, we can only discuss the composition, similarities or differences of elements of content used for symbolization. Such a symbol must be inevitably adopted and ritually used in order to form the modern nation. At the same time, these poem-symbols themselves are involved in making the modern nation because they help to articulate the national self-image – and potentially one or more enemy images too.

Notes

1. Hymnes nationaux de l’Europe médiane. Centre d’études des civilisations de l’Europe Centrale et du Sud-Est. Cahier N. 9 (Paris: INALCO, 1993), 168. 2. Miloš Kovačka, “Matúškova Nad Tatrou sa blýska – piesen štúrovského exodu,” in Nad Tatrou sa błýska (Bratislava: Veda, 1994), 19. 3. Škvarna, Začiatky moderných slovenských symbolov, Vydala Univerzita Mateja Bela v Banskej Bystrici Fakulta humanitných vied, Banská Bystrica, 2004, 63. 4. Wojciech Jerzy Podgórski, Pieśń Ojczyzny pełna (Warszawa: Wydawnictvwo Sejmowe, 1994), 187. 5. Robert Lafont, “Sur le problème national en France: aperçu historique,” Temps Modernes (Août-Septembre 1973), Vol. 28, 29.

66  The Poem-Symbols of National Representation







6. Ignacy Chrzanowski, “Nasz hymn narodowy (Pieśń legionów), 1922,” in Optymizm i pesymizm polski: Studia z historii kultury (Warszawa: PWN, 1971), 250. 7. Hroch, Na prahu národni existence, Vydavateľstvo Mladá fronta, 2001,233. 8. Imre Ress, “Fiumei követek az 1825–1827. évi pozsonyi országgyűlésen,” in idem, Kapcsolatok és keresztutak: Horvátok, szerbek, bosnyákok a nemzetállam vonzásában (Budapest: L’Harmattan, 2004), 43. 9. Valér Branisce, Muresianu András: Tanulmány az erdélyi irodalom köréből (Budapest: Rózsa K. és neje, 1891), 10. 10. József [Jożef] Bajza, Crnogorsko pitanje – A montenegrói kérdés (Újvidék/Novi Sad: Fórum, [1927] 2006), 344. 11. Bogdan Zakrzewski, “Boże, coś Polskę” Alojzego Felińskiego (Wroclaw– Warszawa: Ossolineum, 1987), 10. 12. An entire study was devoted to refuting these words put in Kościuszko’s mouth by Józef Tretiak, Finis Poloniae! Historia legendy Maciejowskiej i jej rozwiązanie (Kraków: Kraroska Spolka Wydawnicza, 1921), 94. 13. Suffice it to mention the works Roman Kaleta, Oświeceni i sentymentalni (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1971); Jan Pachoński, Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła: W 175-lecie powstania polskiego hymnu narodowego (Gdańsk: Ossolineum, 1972); Dioniza Wawrzykowska-Wierciochowa, Mazurek Dąbrowskiego (Warszawa: Ministerstwo Obrony Narodowej, 1974); Stanislaw Hadyna, Droga do hymnu (Warszawa: Pax, 1976); Wojciech Jerzy Podgórski, Pieśń Ojczyzny pełna (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Sejmowe, 1994); Władysław Zajewski, Józef Wybicki (Toruń, 2004). 14. Éva Ring, “Nincs még veszve Lengyelország…! (Józef Wybicki, a Dąbrowski-induló szerzője),” in Gábor Klaniczay, János Poór and Éva Ring (eds.), A felvilágosodás jegyében: Tanulmányok H. Balázs Éva 70. születésnapjára (Budapest: ELTE, 1985), 228. 15. Quoted from a study by Rudo Brtáň, “Všeslovanská hymna,” in Slovensko-­ slovanské literárne vzťahy a kontakty (Bratislava: Veda, 1979), 124. 16. Rudo Brtáň, “Poľská povstalecká pieseň v medzislovanských kontaktoch,” in Slovensko-slovanské literárne vzťahy a kontakty, 105. 17. Nikša Stančić, Još Hrvatska ni propala (Zagreb: Globus, 1988), 62–83. 18. Ibid., 82. 19. A commemorative play for the 1813 siege of Głogów, where the French were defeated by Croatian troops from the Military Frontier fighting in the Austrian army. 20. Stančić, Još Hrvatska ni propala, 169. 21. Milan Pišút, “Janko Matúška – tvorca piesne Nad Tatrou sa blýska,” in Romantizmus v slovenskej literatúre (Bratislava: Pravda, 1974), 396–406; see also Brtáň, “Všeslovanská hymna,” 120–121. 22. Michal Miloslav Hodža, Der Slowak: Beiträge zur Beleuchtung der slawischen Frage in Ungarn (Prag, 1848). Quoted from the Slovak edition, “Slovák: Prispevky k objasneniu slovanskej otázky v Uhorsku,” in Ján V. Ormis (ed.), O reč a národ: Slovenské národné obrany z rokov 1832–1848 (Bratislava: SAW, 1973), 762. 23. Ilie Radu-Nandra, “Imnurile de stat ale României,” Excelsior, No. 8 (1995), 54. 24. Emil Palotás, A nemzetállamiság alternatívái a Balkánon a 19. század végén – 20. század elején (Budapest: MTA Történettudományi Intézet, 1999), 18. 25. Jelena Očak, Antun Mihanović (Zagreb: Globus, 1998), 164. 26. Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, [1997] 2009), 54.

The Poem-Symbols of National Representation 67 27. Sándor Csorba, “Nemzeti himnuszunk európai vonásai,” in idem (ed.), Válogatás a XX. század Hymnus-értelmezéseiből (Fehérgyarmat: Kölcsey Társaság, 1997), 111. 28. Maria Delaperrière, “Hymne national ou nation mythifiée,” in Hymnes Nationaux de l’Europe médiane – Cahiers du centre d’études des civilisations de l’Europe centrale et du Sud-Est, n° 1 (Paris, 1993), 43.

6

The “Interaction” of Anthems

The national anthem is a unique symbol; obviously, a country/nation can have only one anthem, which must be, according to the criteria of the national self-image, peculiar to that nation. Nevertheless, the comparative study of national anthems soon reveals the many parallels and connections that exist between them – evidently, since they have to fulfil the same role to represent and praise the homeland and the nation. They have to prove, through effective arguments – or, according to rhetorical requirements, even in occasional poems that glorify cities or provinces – the endowments of the homeland in question, the beauty of its landscapes, the excellence of its past and the virtues of its inhabitants. Just as the process of nation-­ building always prescribed the creation of this symbol, inspirative models were sought among both the classics of antiquity and cultures with other languages. Anthems that were created earlier and had been adopted and were in use for a time – first of all, the two European archetypes, the British royal anthem and “La Marseillaise” – provided examples with their literary form, the content of their text and their melody for other national-cultural communities. For example, a dynastic anthem must include, in some form, the request of blessing for the ruler representing the homeland/nation. This tradition – as well as that of the “folk anthem” – was continued in EastCentral Europe, as mentioned earlier. For this region, too, we can speak of a rich network of national anthems, the frequent borrowing of models, the adaptation of some elements, and the “career” of certain anthems in other cultures. People living in the same framework of an imperial state could be aware of each other’s national symbols, which spread quickly, especially during significant historical events. The cultural exchange among Slavic peoples was extremely thick in this respect, too, since linguistic proximity allowed poems and songs which could serve as models for creating their own national symbol to be introduced quickly. On the other hand, the program of Slavic reciprocity made such affinity-seeking, the building of a common Slavic intellectual homeland, almost compulsory. Thus, some peoples used the anthems of others as their own national symbols. In the revolutionary year 1848, at the Prague congress of the Slavic peoples of the Habsburg Empire, Samo Tomášik’s march with the opening “Hey, DOI: 10.4324/9781003318774-7

The “Interaction” of Anthems 69 Slavs” – its translations into the respective native languages – was tacitly adopted as a common Slavic symbol. “Poland has not yet perished” is not only the first modern anthem in EastCentral Europe; it also has rather varied histories of effect and reception. Its popularity in Poland began back in the Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw (1807–1815), but it reached the apex, both at home and abroad, during the 1830–1831 War of Independence and in the following years. The monographer of this anthem writes, “Due to its success, the Dąbrowski Mazurka was included in Polish songbooks and the repertory of émigré circles in the days of the November Uprising. The memoirs, diaries and opinion pieces of those who fled the country frequently recall the singing of the Mazurka…”1 It sounded in military camps, during festivities and Wybicki’s poem also gave rise to several paraphrases. New stanzas were added, and Dąbrowski’s name was often replaced in the refrain by those of the generals of the War of Independence. This is the time when the Polish national symbol began its career abroad, with the great international reverberations of the uprising. Émigrés carried it, it was translated into multiple languages and it became known across the continent. Mickiewicz did not exaggerate in Pan Tadeusz – his epic poem published in Paris in 1834, which now belongs to the heart of the national literary canon – when he referred to Wybicki’s march as “the song which is to-day famous all over the world.” As in Hungary, the participants of the Polish uprising who fled their homeland were accepted with great sympathy in Germany, France and other countries. These émigrés enjoyed intense interest on the part of the Slavic peoples of the Habsburg Empire, especially among members of the younger generation who formed the intellectual world of the modern nation. In many places the “Polish cause” had significant literary reverberations; for example, in German poetry the concept of the Polenlied, sympathetic to the Poles, emerged. The “Polish question” played an important part in Hungary’s political life during the Age of Reform, and the Polish theme was also fashionable in the Hungarian literature of this era. “Poland Has Not Yet Perished” was first published in Hungarian in manuscript songbooks of the 1830s.2 It was probably brought to Hungary by émigrés. Numerous cities in Hungary and Transylvania expressed their sympathy to the Polish War of Independence. Ljudevit Gaj heard the famous march first in 1831 in Pest and carried the memory of the poem – particularly its first line – and the melody from there to Croatia.3 Thus, the idea of the nation-awakening poem “Croatia is not yet lost” derives from the Polish-friendly environment in Hungary. The ambiguous Croatian attitude to the Polish cause can be perceived in the fact that the first delegate of Croatia to the 1833 Diet, Janko Drašković, did not support the motion in favour of Poles proposed by the representatives of Bars County.4 As already mentioned, Samo Tomášik was also inspired by the Polish anthem and its melody when he began to compose the song “On Slavdom” (“Na Slovany”), originally written in Czech. We know about the young

70  The “Interaction” of Anthems Slovak Lutheran pastor that he left the lyceum in Kežmarok/Késmárk in 1829–1830 to study in Cracow, which then existed as a city-state. Thus, he had direct experience in Polish language and culture. The first Slavic translation of Tomášik’ poem appeared in 1837 in Zagreb; a Croatian version (without the translator’s name) was printed together with the Czech original in the weekly supplement Danica of Gaj’s paper.5 It was published in Serbian and translated by Pavle Stamatović in 1839 in Novi Sad.6 Until 1860, Slovenes considered the Slovene variant of “Hey, Slavs” their national symbol. Decades later, a version of the poem in Serbian (and Croatian) was created which was then, in 1945, adopted by the second Yugoslav state as to adopt the federation’s state anthem. In 1840 Handrij Zejler, the poet of Sorbs, a small West Slav nation, published his Sorbian adaptation of the Polish anthem, entitled “Sorbs have not yet perished” (“Hišće Serbstwo njezhubjene”), in Bautzen. The Slovene translation of Tomášik’s Slavic anthem was performed by a Slovene choir in the theatre of Ljubljana on May 30, 1848. A highlight of the popularity of “Hey, Slavs” was at the Slavic Congress in Prague that began on June 2, 1848. At this brief conference of the Slavic peoples of the Habsburg Empire, delegates and interested parties enthusiastically sang the pan-Slav song, which was also translated into Polish for the occasion. In literary history, Slavistics tend to emphasize the connection between Slavic literatures, starting out primarily from the fact of genealogical relationship between their languages. For example, Rudo Brtáň discusses the reception of “Dąbrowski Mazurka” in a Slavic environment and the similar features of the poems written by Wybicki, Gaj and Tomášik from this perspective: “All three songs are characterized by similarities in melody and rhythm, which shows that their creation is inseparably intertwined with musical motifs.”7 The monographer of the Polish anthem quotes Bronisław Chlebowski’s conclusion from two of his literary histories from the interwar period: “for existing peoples bereft of political existence, the mazurka Poland is not yet lost offered the truth of utmost importance that our song had a part in rousing and strengthening their own national sentiment and emancipatory aspirations, and for some of them it became a model of the national anthem… Wybicki did not assume that, due to both its lyrics and melody, this mazurka would spread throughout Slavdom as a whole… that it would be so definitive in the history of Slavs and gain so much significance, regardless of the influence and will of the Poles themselves.”8 “Poland Has Not Yet Perished” also inspired Ukrainian poet Pavlo Chubynsky (1839–1884), who in 1862 put to paper the poem “Ukraine Has Not Yet Perished” (“Shche ne vmerla Ukraina”), expressing the important contents of Ukrainian identity (with reference to national territory and the Cossack heritage). This poem became the prime national symbol of Ukrainians in Galicia by the end of the nineteenth century. Both “Dąbrowski Mazurka” and “God Save Poland” enjoyed great popularity in Hungary too. In fact, these two songs should be complemented

The “Interaction” of Anthems 71 with a third song, the “Polish Hymn” (with the first line “A Pole will never be a slave” [“Polak nie sługa”]), which the Hungarian public also perceived as a Polish national symbol, an anthem.9 István Csapláros demonstrated that this song, which enumerates the characteristics of different nations, praises Poles’ love of freedom in the refrain and has been well-known in Hungary since the Reform Era, is in fact of Polish origin.10 On the other hand, the “Dąbrowski Mazurka,” which spread in different Hungarian variants starting in the 1830s, was mentioned as the “battle song” of the Poles in Hungarian songbooks. This popularity derived from the unbroken friendship with Poles primarily from the Age of Reform to the late nineteenth century and beyond. “God Save Poland” was published in multiple variants in 1860–1861, and at the turn of the twentieth century Hungarians perceived it as the Polish national anthem.11 The reception history of these songs in Hungary clearly shows that their effect and spread were not limited exclusively to the range of peoples with Slavic languages. Tyl’s Czech anthem (Kde domov můj?) was also widely popular among Slavic peoples; for example, Slovenes adopted it as one of their national symbols in the mid-nineteenth century. In 1837, when Mihanović worked as a consul in Belgrade, his Croatian anthem’s Serbian variant appeared, and in 1881 it was also published in Slovene in Ljubljana. Of Hungarian national symbols, the reception history of “Appeal” (“Szózat”) is the richest and most intriguing.12 Understandably, this book tackles the poem’s reception in East-Central Europe only. It proves the similarity of the cultural codes of the nations in this region that the adaptation of Vörösmarty’s poem could spread throughout the Czech setting by addressing the Czech rather than the Magyar. For them, it carried a message similar to its meaning in Hungary. According to Zuzana Adamová’s research, the 1860 “Český Szózat” was translated by Gyula Sárosy, who had been relocated to České Budějovice for several months that year. Despite the servile and at times clumsy translation, it circulated in the Czech setting in manuscript form. The translator adopted the Czech cultural code at some points: he replaced Árpád with forefathers and Hunyad with Warriors of God (from the Hussite song “Ktož jsú boží bojovníci”).13 Later multiple paraphrases of the “Czechized” “Appeal” were created, one, for example, bearing the title “Patriotic Song” (“Vlastenecká”), complete with the melody of “Hey, Slavs.” The eminent Czech writer and poet Jan Neruda, as a conclusion to his obituary of István Széchenyi published in the journal Posel z Prahy (1860, no. 5), presented a faithful translation of “Appeal” (based on its German translation). Thus the lyrical subject of this Czech variant, true to the original, addressed the Magyar rather than the Czech. As for translations into Slovak, no less than two variants of “Appeal” were published after 1860, in the translations of Michal Mácsay and Jakub Grajchmann. The translation of Mácsay, an advocate of the HungaroSlavic idea, gave rise to an interesting dispute in the contemporary Slovak press. I shall not describe this debate here, since Rudolf Chmel had already

72  The “Interaction” of Anthems presented the two variants and compared them in detail.14 What is really elucidating in terms of symbolism is that the two Slovak translators used different words for the Hungarian noun magyar: Mácsay chose Uhor, while Grajchmann wrote Maďar. At that time the Slovak national movement already drew a clear distinction between Uhor (for all inhabitants of the Kingdom of Hungary) and Maďar (for ethnic Magyars who spoke Hungarian as their mother tongue). Therefore Mácsay’s translation also included the Slovaks of the common homeland in the group addressed by “Appeal,” while Grajchmann understood the call for immovable patriotism as a message to ethnic Hungarians, Magyars only. In the years following 1860, tension and desire for freedom intensified in Polish society, forced to live in multiple empires, with historical commemorations and demonstrations, and Poles also tended to see themselves as the addressees of the message of Vörösmarty’s “Appeal.”15 Petőfi’s “National Song” became widely known throughout the country relatively soon after March 15.16 Naturally, the representatives of non-Hungarians living in Hungary also attended different popular rallies organized on the great day of the revolution in Pest. It is most likely that this group included a young man called Ján Botto, who was studying in Pest in the autumn of 1847 to become an engineer-surveyor. Botto, later an eminent representative of Slovak Romanticism, recreated Petőfi’s poem in Slovak, possibly between March 15 and the Slovak popular assembly of May 10 in Liptovský Svätý Mikuláš. Although one could think that it was a translation, this variant, entitled “March” (“Pochod”), clearly addresses the Slovak: “Rise, Slovak, your homeland calls!” (“Hor’ sa, Slovák, čuj otčinu!”). Botto’s rewording was circulated, under different titles, on handbills at the time. Recoding created a substantial difference between Petőfi’s original poem and its paraphrase: the Slovak poet included the image of the Kriváň peak as the symbol of the Slovak people. Andrei Mureşanu’s Romanian anthem (Un Răsunet) was inspired by the Romanian popular assembly in Blaj/Balázsfalva, held on May 15, 1848. Here again, it is likely that Petőfi’s poem was known to the Romanian poet. Regardless of the differences between the objectives of national movements or the tensions and conflicts between the nationalisms of this region, the similarities and connections between symbol-making aspirations can be confirmed by a rich body of materials, as we have seen in the examples of national poem-symbols enumerated above.

Notes

1. Wojciech Jerzy Podgórski, Pieśń Ojczyzny pełna (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Sejmowe, 1994), 74. 2. István Csapláros, “Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła w literaturze węgierskiej,” Kurier Polsko-Węgierski (Budapest, 1947); idem, “Polskie hymny i pieśni żołnierskie,” in Przyjaciele w biedzie: Związki polsko-węgierskie w okresie niewoli 1772–1918 (Warszawa: Studio Emka, 2004), 135–136.

The “Interaction” of Anthems 73



3. Nikša Stančić. Gajeva “Još Horvatska ni propala” iz 1832–33: Ideologija Ljudevita Gaja u pripremnom razdoblju hrvatskog narodnog preporoda (Zagreb: ­Globus,1989), 150. 4. Endre Kovács, A lengyel kérdés a reformkori Magyarországon (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1959), 174. 5. Rudolf Brtáň: Všeslovanská hymna. In: Rudolf Brtán: Slovensko-slovanské literárne vzťahy a kontakty (Bratislava: Veda, 1979), 120. 6. Milivoje Pavlović, Knjiga o himni: jugoslovenski narodi u himni i himna među narodima (Beograd: Nova knjiga, 1984), 45. 7. Brtáň, “Všeslovanská hymna,” 111. 8. Bronislaw Chlebowski, Literatura polska (1795–1905) (Lwów–Warszawa– Kraków, 1923). Quoted from Dioniza Wawrzykowska-Wierciochowa, Mazurek Dąbrowskiego: Dzieje polskiego hymnu narodowego (Warszawa: Ministerstwo Obrony Narodowej, 1982, Third Edition), 238. 9. Both the “Polish Hymn” (Lengyel hymnus) and “Dąbrowski’s Mazurka” (“Jeszcze Polska”) are included in multiple editions of the anthology Hatszáz magyar nemzeti dal (Budapest: Méhner Vilmos kiadása, n.d.), 597–598. 10. István Csapláros, “Búsul a lengyel… – Polak nie sługa, nie zna co to pany,” in Przyjaciele w biedzie: Związki polsko-węgierskie w okresie niewoli 1772–1918 (Warszawa: Studio Emka, 2004), 419–433. 11. Ibid., 137–138. 12. István Csekey, A Szózat és a Nagyvilág (Budapest: Cserépfalvi, 1940). 13. Zuzana Adamová, “A Szózat cseh fordításai,” Világirodalmi Figyelő, No. 1 (1960), Vol. 6, 439–442. 14. Rudolf Chmel, Literatúry v kontaktoch (Bratislava: SAV, 1972), 145–156; idem, Literárne vzťahy slovensko-maďarské (Martin: Osveta, 1973), 361–363. 15. István Csapláros, “A Szózat szerepe az 1860–1862. évi lengyel hazafias mozgalmakban,” Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények, Vol. 78, No. 5–6 (1974), 661–667. 16. For a more detailed account, see my essay entitled “A Nemzeti dal közép-­ európai kontextusban,” in Nyugaton innen – Keleten túl (Miskolc: Felsőmagya­ rország, 2000), 133–143.

7

Images of Homeland and Nation in the Anthems

In the context of understanding the nation in East-Central Europe Country, homeland, territory “Where Is My Home?” Nothing can capture more tellingly what was perhaps the most important question of East-Central European nation-­ builders, which they asked themselves and addressed to their potential national community, than the title and first line of the Czech anthem. We can also translate the original title as “Where Is My Homeland?” The ­ideologues of this region sought the answer to this unavoidable question in many different ways – because they had to articulate and decide on the territory that could be considered the homeland, and to explain the grounds for their choice. Of course, the answer that can be given here is also related to another fundamental question, namely, who belongs to the community, the nation. Returning to the criteria for the concept of the nation, we should ask whether the homeland is where its territory is demarcated by some political borders, state/provincial borders or where members of the same cultural-­ linguistic community live. On first approach, it seems as if images of the homeland and nation projected in anthems and poem-symbols could be basically divided into two groups. One of these groups presumably takes the tradition of the historical country – with clear-cut political borders – as a starting point, while the other defines the area of the homeland within which the common language is spoken. However, the picture is much more complex. The texts discussed in this book reflect the transformation of the concept of the homeland during the Age of Enlightenment to include all citizens of the specific country as well as the dilemmas concerning the objective of the modern nation or the intention to reconcile the political and linguistic-cultural frameworks, which could be achieved only through overcoming their contradictions. First, let us see the concepts of the country that can be found in the selected texts. The first lines of both Wybicki’s and Feliński’s versions of the Polish anthem include the word “Poland” (Polska). The Polish homeland of DOI: 10.4324/9781003318774-8

Images of Homeland and Nation in the Anthems 75 “God Save Poland” is clearly the country, the fatherland (ojczyzna) and the Polish land, since the first variant glorifies Tsar Alexander I crowned as the King of Poland, and it could obviously be understood by receivers as both the historical Polish-Lithuanian state preceding the First Partition (1772) and the so-called Congress Kingdom established in 1815. The lyrical subject requests the ruler to give back to this new country its ancient splendour. Two concepts of Poland are condensed in the first two lines of “Dąbrowski Mazurka.” First of all, the proverbial first words deny that Poland perished due to the partitions because, as legionaries sing far from their homeland, “Poland is not yet lost while we live” – that is, we are this homeland. In an 1842 lecture held at Collège de France of Paris, Mickiewicz defined this as an epochal conceptual change: “The famous song of the Polish Legions begins with lines that express the new history: Poland has not perished yet As long as we live. These words mean that people who have in them what constitutes the essence of a nation can prolong the existence of their country regardless of its political circumstances and may even strive to make it real again. […] the Polish idea of the fatherland is not bound to the concept of territory. It was the first time when the entire nation was seen as a pilgrim – a nation that found itself among foreign peoples.”1 Even if we assume that the great Polish bard views Polish identity in line with the thought-world of Romanticism characteristic after the 1830–1831 uprising, he does not start out from the political framework of the country, Wybicki’s poem clearly shows that it projects this new collective identity, for if the legions succeed in freeing the fatherland, then they will be, so to say, Polish and unify with the nation (as expressed in the second stanza of the official “Mazurka”). Therefore, it is the nation, not the state, that has primacy. Dynastic anthems seem to reflect a simpler concept of the homeland, since they are about an independent country and its ruler. Thus, in his Romanian royal anthem, Vasile Alecsandri writes about the Romanian country (ţară română) and homeland (patria), while Sundečić’s poem, which also refers to the homeland (otadžbina), begins with the invocation of Montenegro. Only a later version of Đorđević’s Serbian anthem includes the term “Serbian countries” (srpske zemlje). As it was probably clear to contemporary readers, in Kölcsey’s “Hymn,” “haza” (homeland) means the historical country, which is also reflected in traditional geographical topoi (the Carpathians, the Tisza and Danube ­r ivers). Moreover, the homeland is also understood as the past and common fate of this country. The national concept of the Hungarian poet cannot be linked to the community of state either. For whom the lyrical subject of his poem asks God’s blessing is the Magyar, the people as such. While the speaker who undertakes to mediate between God and the people, the poet

76  Images of Homeland and Nation in the Anthems himself,2 talks as a member of the community of origin that corresponds to the nobility’s myth of Hun–Magyar kinship, the exact meaning of “people” for Kölcsey would be hard to reconstruct. We can assume that he did not wish to exclude “tax-paying people” from this community concept. But the question remains: what was the place, if it had a place at all, of linguistic nationalism in Kölcsey’s concept of the nation? Does “Magyar” refer exclusively to people who speak Hungarian as their native tongue? As to the nation concept of Vörösmarty’s poem, István Fried gives the following conclusive explanation: “The nation concept of Appeal encompasses geographical territory, collectively experienced history and forms of action with different motives but identical objectives, and it can be discerned only in its modality and intertextuality, i.e., references to Hungarian literature, that it diverged from the (Hungarian and, generally, Central European) Enlightenment view of the nation.”3 Karol Kuzmány’s ode “Glory to the Noble” is a good example of the complex, multi-layered concepts of homeland and nation that can be found in our poem-symbols. This poem explicitly defines two concepts of the nation: one for humanity, the entire humankind, and another for the homeland (vlasť), which today’s Slovak readers perhaps evidently understand as Slovakia. However, in 1846, when Kuzmány wrote this poem, or on April 4, 1848, when it was published, for this homeland presumably meant the Kingdom of Hungary, the shared historic country, for the poet. Hungarus patriotism can be still detected in Slovak patriotic poems created in the spring of 1848. Initially, the Slovak national movement also claimed territorial autonomy within the borders of this country. But it must be remembered that the poem’s first line (“Who burns for truth”) evokes Jan Hus, who was part of the domestic Protestant tradition, while for Slovak Evangelical Lutherans it also represented a connection with the Czech intellectual heritage, the tradition of the biblical Czech language that had been used for centuries. Therefore, the elements of the cultural code still refer indirectly to two ­communities, Slovak Lutherans and Czech-Slovak unity. Imagined homelands Symbolic homeland-taking was part and parcel of the process of forming national consciousness, bringing forth ever newer virtual maps, defined by geographical elements, of the spatial extent of the homeland during the nineteenth century. I shall illustrate this aspiration through a limited number of telling, emblematic examples. The third stanza of the eighteenth-­ century Serbian “Hymn to Saint Sava” reads: “From all sides, all Serbs,/ From the sea to the Danube.” Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz’s historical song on King Bolesław the Brave (1816) reveals that, having expelled the Czechs and the Germans, the Polish ruler had “iron posts set up in the rivers Dnieper, Ossa and Saale” to mark Poland’s boundaries. In his 1818 poem “An Ode to the Czech Language” Antonín Jaroslav Puchmajer depicts the

Images of Homeland and Nation in the Anthems 77 Czech homeland – inhabited by non-Czechs as well – through rivers (the Elbe, Vltava/Moldau and Ohře), the Giant Mountains (Krkonoše) and cities (Cheb, Budějovice, Jihlava). Planning for a somewhat broader area than the ethnic territory, Slovak Samo Chalupka outlined his imagined homeland as follows: “Gorgeous land – its borders washed by Danube strong,/And the rocky Tatra, like a wall runs round along” (Mor ho!, 1864). For Petőfi and other Hungarian poets too, we can also find references to the Hungarian empire whose shores were once washed by three seas. Poems selected as symbols of the nation often describe visions of a state-nation and imagined, desired or planned homelands. Of course, some of these are countries which had certain traditions of public law and territory. It is worth studying the different contents of the homeland images enshrined in the Croatian, Czech, Slovene and Slovak anthems from this perspective. In 1835, Mihanović titled his poem “Croatian Homeland” (Hrvatska domovina). At that time the Ban-governed Croatia (Hrvatska) had a relatively modest territory. In the early nineteenth century, the area where Croatian was spoken belonged to different state or political units, and the military frontier was also managed by a distinct administration. Therefore, interpreters of this poem who set out primarily from the historical and public-­law traditions of the national movement tend to identify the territory described by the poet as the Croatian homeland with the so-called Triune Kingdom (of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia) that corresponded to the movement’s program. This homeland is by no means identical to the great South Slav homeland of the Illyrian movement that often appeared only as an obscure vision. However, Mihanović failed to define exactly how far this Croatian homeland would extend. Thus, it could also be understood as a broader area. In 1896, for example, the excellent prose writer Ksaver Šandor Gjalski described the space of the poem’s homeland as follows: “From all this we can feel mainly the powerful patriotism which is not confined to the narrower native land pettily or to the narrowly set political boundaries of the kingdom torn apart by historical misfortune but dares to look to the far horizon, once lit by the shining crown of Tomislav and Zvonimir…” 4 It is absolutely clear that the objective is supra-regional national unity, which can be demonstrated primarily by the poet’s choice of language, since Mihanović, who came from Kajkavian-speaking northwest Croatia, followed Gaj’s grammar and wrote his poem in the Štokavian dialect, chosen for the new, standardized literary language. Therefore the text of the Croatian anthem gave receivers some leeway in what they saw as the homeland. Frequently, there were significant differences between the ambiguity of the homeland space, the intention to form the nation, desires and the public-law tradition of territory. As Vladimír Macura writes in his comprehensive monograph on the culture of the Czech National Revival: “Since the space in which ‘national culture’ could evolve had no real boundaries, this directly encouraged them to draw an ideal divide, which allowed them to look beyond the confined space of existing

78  Images of Homeland and Nation in the Anthems conditions.”5 The Croatian and Czech anthems also project such imagery of the ideal homeland. Its boundaries are blurred; they do not demarcate clearly a specific geographical area or country. These homelands exist outside or, more precisely, above real space: they depict hopes and desires for contemporaries. In seeking the source of ideas for the thought-world shaping the ideal homeland, first of all we should mention Ján Kollár. The influential ideologue of Slavic unity or “reciprocity” drafted the concept of a fictitious pan-Slav nation and language in his literary works (for e­ xample, his sonnet cycle interwoven within an epic framework, The Daughter of Slava, 1824, 1832) and studies. For him, the fact of cultural-linguistic community rather than political unity was the decisive factor. As he wrote in one of his sonnets: “Grant not the soil on which we dwell the sacred name of fatherland. The true fatherland, which none can misuse, of which none can rob us … we carry in our hearts.”6 It is not accidental that Slavia is the icon for the common homeland of the Slavs in the anthems of multiple EastCentral European Slavic peoples. But let us return to the two above-mentioned homelands depicted as an ideal image: in terms of being more suitable for geographic identification, the Croatian anthem seems to be more specific than its Czech counterpart, since it includes some rivers that have symbolic value. Both contemporaries and their successors strove – and strive – to identify the landscapes depicted in poems with real geographical regions. In Croatia, they repeatedly raised the question how it could happen that a poem written in Fiume/Rijeka fails to mention the sea, and whether the landscape evoked in this poem could be identified with the poet’s native land, Zagorje. Similarly, in Czechia, successive generations have attempted to define the specific geographical landscape that appears in Tyl’s poem. The name of the Czech low mountain range, which has also been called the Bohemian Paradise since the 1870s, is presumably related to Czech Romanticism and the national anthem (as its text states, the Czech land is “Paradise on Earth”). Later, I am going to return to the characteristics and symbolic content of these two ideal homelands. Here, I shall point only to the Czech poem’s implicit concept of the nation. At the end of the first stanza, the lyrical subject of Tyl’s poem designates the Czech land (česká země, where the Czech word země more or less corresponds to the German das Land, meaning both country and province) as his homeland. Now, in 1834 this was by no means an unambiguous concept in several respects, since according to public-law tradition, Moravia and Silesia as well as Bohemia were the provinces of the Crown of St. Wenceslaus; thus, the poet probably wanted to write about the country of Czechs as an imagined homeland rather than a real one. The closing of the Czech anthem’s second stanza gives a clear answer to the initial rhetorical question: That is the glorious race of Czechs – Among the Czechs, my home!

Images of Homeland and Nation in the Anthems 79 That is, the “homeland” refers to Czechs exclusively: it is made up of the Czech people or ethnicity. Consequently, roughly one-third of the population of the “Czech” provinces, the native speakers of German, do not belong to this homeland. The name of the country, the homeland, is also clearly specified in the following poems: Ljudevit Gaj’s “Croatia Is Not Yet Lost,” Janko Matúška’s “Lightning Over the Tatras,” France Prešeren’s “A Toast” and Vasile Alecsandri’s “Romania’s Awakening.” Important differences should be kept in mind in the course of their possible interpretation, yet the common feature of these countries is that none of them existed as a unified, independent state when the related poem was created. Gaj’s poem was originally entitled “Croats’ Concord and Unification.” The song of Croatian awakening can be seen as the programmatic poem of Illyrianism that defines the homeland as the community of South Slavs. It calls to the national dance of kolo all sons of the “old country” (a concept not clarified by the poem) from Lika, Krbava, Carniola, Styria, Slavonia, Serbia, Istria and Dalmatia – that is, all Croats, Slovenes and Serbs. Slovak Matúška’s poem includes the concept “Slovensko” which, of course, cannot be mechanically translated as “Slovakia.” Poet Ferenc Baranyi found a good solution when he wrote “Slovak Land” (Szlovákföld) in the poem’s Hungarian version, since there was no such territorial unit or public-law concept as Slovakia when the poem was created. In 1844 Slovensko (the word itself was born in the early nineteenth century) meant both a loosely defined area, the Slovak region of then-Upper Hungary and Slovakdom as an ethnicity. In the second stanza of his poem, Slovene Prešeren raises his glass in honour of “our land and nation” (našo nam deželo), where the word dežela means both country and province – more or less in the sense that corresponds to the German Land. The next line clarifies that this refers to the inhabitants of Carniola (this Austrian hereditary province with an absolute Slovene majority is, by the way, the poet’s native land), since Prešeren asks for God’s blessing for “all Slovenes” (ves slovenski svet), and in the third strophe mentions “our dear realm,” the Slovene homeland (Slovencov dom). The aim of Unified Slovenia (in the form of this name planned for the country in the making), still within the framework of the Habsburg Empire, first appears on the banner of a faction of the Slovene national movement in the spring of 1848,7 at about the same time when Prešeren’s poem is first published. Alecsandri’s poem awakens Romania; as Lucian Boia notes in his work discussing Romanian historical consciousness, “we may notice the absence, until well into the nineteenth century, of a modern generic term for the whole territory occupied by Romanians.”8 The image of the country-to-be envisioned by the poet can be inferred from the geographical names in the eighth strophe, for the lyrical subject calls on Romanian brothers to revolt, to join hands over the then borders dividing the Romanian people (the Milcov River separated Moldavia from Wallachia, while the Carpathians disconnected the Romanians of Transylvania from Moldova and Wallachia).

80  Images of Homeland and Nation in the Anthems Since the poems above depicted, in a certain sense, virtual, imagined national homelands, we cannot ignore references to the broadest virtual homeland or Slavia either. The above-mentioned idea of Slavic reciprocity appeared in the thinking of the Romantic generation, and the very fact that these national movements were vulnerable, uncertain and relatively weak made this common cultural homeland of the Slavs, conceivable from the Elbe to the Urals, attractive. It should be added that Kollár and others strove to rescue the word “Slav” from the etymology they felt to be derisive – namely, that it could be associated with the Latin word sclavus (“slave”); in contrast, they suggested that it could be derived from the Slavic word for “glory” (sláva). Janko Matúška assured Slovaks that “Mother Glory/Sláva is alive,” while Ljudevit Gaj concluded in the ninth stanza that the new allCroat alliance would be lauded by the grandchildren of grandchildren and “the Slav nation as a whole” (slavski narod ves). In the fourth strophe of his poem, Prešeren calls on the children of Glory (the goddess Sláva, Slavia) to unite. In 1860 Simon Jenko raises high the flag of glory (Slavdom) in his march, changing the initial capital letter of the word to its lowercase counterpart (slava), in order perhaps to evade the censors of the time. Religious and denominational identity in the anthems In Western Europe, the modern nation is clearly a secularized community. In East-Central Europe, a somewhat similar tendency can be described, but – as noted above about the distinctive characteristics of nation-building in this region – the ecclesiastical intelligentsia had a significant role in forming this national identity. In the course of creating the symbols of the nation, ideologues and writers alike heavily drew on religious tradition. National and religious identities became more closely intertwined in East-Central Europe than in the West. Moreover, another relationship should be considered: this connection evolved in different ways among peoples which belong to the spheres of Eastern and Western Christianity. Besides, it should also be noted that there were differences between cultures in which the ideology of the modern nation related to the tradition of a specific religion or denomination (Polish and Croatian Catholics, Serbian Orthodox Church) and those where the idea of the nation was articulated in two denominational variants (Hungarians and Slovaks). In the case of the Polish nation-­ making, we should also mention the important fact that two of the great powers partitioning Poland – Russia and Prussia – had state religions that differed from Polish Catholicism. Dynastic anthems (the old Romanian, Serb and one of the Montenegrin anthems) request God’s blessing for the homeland and its representative ruler. It should be noted that all three peoples were influenced by Byzantine Eastern orthodox Christianity where the highest ranks of secular and ecclesiastical power traditionally intertwined. Besides these hymns, prayers to God also include the initially dynastic, later modified “God Save Poland”

Images of Homeland and Nation in the Anthems 81 and Kölcsey’s “Hymn.” The image of God in anthems that seek blessing for the nation or homeland recalls, in some respect, that of the God who guides, punishes and defends His people in the Old Testament. Elucidating parallels between these anthems can be detected in terms of both religious argumentation and the poet’s role (in both cases the lyrical subject is a kind of mediator or speaker for the national cause), which will be discussed in greater detail later. Of East-Central European anthem-writers, only Romanian Mureşanu identifies his people with Christendom. The poet evokes centuries of struggles against Turks as an important component of the Romanian sense of mission. However, his message also places emphasis on the role of religious identity in the present: “Priests, lead with your crucifixes, for our army is Christian…” Samo Tomášik and Karol Kuzmány are attached through strong ties to the Slovak Lutheran tradition. In his ode, Kuzmány promises heaven for the “noble” and hell for the evil with the moral pathos of religious, hymnic poetry. Tomášik’s poem includes, as reported speech, a ­frequently quoted passage of the New Testament, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31) – this argument aims to confirm the goal of preserving the mother tongue. Another line refers to Martin Luther’s famous confessional hymn, the international symbol of Evangelical Lutheran identity, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” (Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott): “Yet we stand like castle walls…” Homelands by language and origin Samo Tomášik’s above-mentioned poem “Hey, Slavs/Hey, Slovaks,” created in 1834,9 addresses Slavs or, in its later version, Slovaks. National belonging is clearly a product of common language. And it is a gift of God; the argumentation refers to natural law, the objective criterion of language: O Slavs, our Slavic language still lives So long as our true hearts for our nation beats. […] God entrusted us with the gift of language, our master of thunder, No-one on this earth may tear it asunder. It was by no means accidental that Tomášik’s poem became so popular among Slavic peoples in the cultural phase of nation formation. It had been translated into the languages of participants at the 1848 Prague Congress of Slavic peoples of the Habsburg Empire. After the Second World War, the second Yugoslav state also adopted it as its federal anthem. The birth of standardized literary language is closely related to the question of the nation defined by a common language. National anthems as poem-symbols are important signposts of this process. Prešeren’s poetic oeuvre had a definitive role in that Slovenes formed a distinct literary

82  Images of Homeland and Nation in the Anthems language standard instead of adopting the Croato-Serb or Serbo-Croat standards. The East-Central European region has two anthems whose birth almost coincides with the establishment of the corresponding new, unified linguistic norm: the poems “Croatian Homeland” by Antun Mihanović and “Lightning Over the Tatras” by Janko Matúška. A speaker of the Kajkavian dialect, Mihanović became a pioneer of the new linguistic norm and orthography – as already mentioned in another respect – with his poem in 1835. Naturally, this pointed the way to a unified Croatian literature and nation. For one should know that over preceding centuries, significant literature had been created in all three Croatian dialects (Kajkavian, Štokavian and Čakavian), while the implementation of the goal of a modern nation demanded linguistic standardization. A decisive event for the Slovak national movement was the 1843 agreement of Hlboké, whereby Slovak intellectuals decided to adopt the Central Slovak dialect as the basis for the new literary language. Thus, they discarded denominational bilingualism, deriving from the fact that Lutherans wrote in the Czech language of the Kralice Bible printed in the late sixteenth century, while Catholics used a language based on the West Slovak dialect. This decision (in which Ľudovít Štúr had a key role) had substantial historical-­political consequences, since it also split with the idea of a supposed Czech-Slovak linguistic (and national) unity. Janko Matúška’s anthem is one of the first works written in the new Slovak literary language. In 1834, another Lutheran, Samo Tomášik, wrote the first version of “Hey, Slavs” in Czech; it was printed in Slovak later. In 1846, Kuzmány put his ode on paper in “Štúr’s language” (štúrovčina). As late as in the early twentieth century, Maria Konopnicka was compelled to speak up against the discrimination against Poles in Poznań and its vicinity, then under German occupation, in her poem entitled “The Oath”: “We shall not abandon the land of our ancestors!/We shall not let our speech be buried!” Besides language, another objective criterion of the nation is common ancestry or consanguinity. Kölcsey refers to forefathers, the community of origin; for him the definitive factor is descent rather than brotherhood, often emphasized by poems that have been chosen as national symbols. Brothers and the family are frequently mentioned in national anthems: these are important, key words of patriotic poetry. In a strophe of Wybicki’s Polish anthem that resembles a folk song, a father in tears says to his daughter that the drums of their approaching soldier sons can be heard already. The mother figure often appears as an allegory of the homeland, for example, in the poems by Mihanović, Prešeren, Alecsandri and Mureşanu. Both the Croat Gaj and the Slovene Prešeren include “dear brothers” in their poems; Slovak Matúška mentions the “dear family”; the lyrical subject in Mihanović’s poem turns to his brothers when the nation faces a challenging situation; Romanian Alecsandri also addresses his Romanian people as brothers, that is, all “the offspring of the same tribe”; and the nation is a community of siblings in the poem by Serbian Đorđević as well as in the

Images of Homeland and Nation in the Anthems 83 Bulgarian “Maritsa Rushes,” with additions by Vazov. Another important word of patriotic poetry was “rod”/ “ród” (Croatian, Slovak, and Serbian rod and Polish ród refer to race, a community of common blood). The author of the Serbian anthem seeks blessings for the ruler and this community (the Serbian race). The horizon of humanity During the period of nation formation when most anthems were created, the goal of “renascence” or revival and liberation of nations was usually not set in opposition to the freedom of humanity as a whole. This universal horizon is present in several texts discussed herein – as a superior instance to which we can appeal in our case, as does the lyrical subject of Vörösmarty’s poem: “O greater world of human beings!/To you we bravely cry…” Mihanović asks the Sava River to be his envoy for the national cause: “Wherever you’re murmuring, tell the world:/That a Croat loves his home…” Slovak Kuzmány’s ode pays tribute not only to those who are ready to burn for truth on a sacrificial pyre but also for those “who sacrifice their lives for the rights of humanity.” The seventh stanza of the Prešeren’s poem should be highlighted not only because this strophe is sung as the national anthem but because it carries an exceptional message: the lyrical subject proposes a toast to the peoples awaiting the day when “no strife shall hold its sway” in the world, and all fellow earthlings (kindred) will not be foes but good neighbours, even across frontiers.

Features of the national self-image The homeland as Eden, Arcadia and Canaan In self-images formed for the cultural community of the nation, the space of the homeland may be not only a distinct political space demarcated by state borders but a native land, a consecrated landscape. The poems analysed here played an important role in drafting, consolidating and disseminating the national self-image. As to these ideal landscapes, they are seen by the respective communities as a sacred space, the promised land. They can be conceived as the sacred space described by Mircea Eliade: a cosmos that traditional societies distinguish and perceive as separate from the outside world.10 The homeland has to be arrived at, has to be occupied – not only physically but also virtually, in order to create, from the conditions of chaos, one’s own organized world, the sacralized national cosmos. As Petőfi writes, “I am a Magyar. My homeland is the loveliest/Within the vast stretch of five continents./A perfect microcosm” (emphasis added). It is not accidental that Kölcsey describes the place of homeland-taking as sacred (“To the sacred peak of the Carpathians/You our forefathers guided”), since this elevates the historical event to cosmogonic rite.

84  Images of Homeland and Nation in the Anthems Quite a few details, motifs and topoi of the East-Central European poem-symbols describe this homeland, this consecrated space as some kind of Eden, the ideal country of a past golden age that must be recreated, an Arcadia of the native land. A slightly simplified observation here may be that, in some of the texts discussed, the image of the homeland is represented using the topos-set of three rhetorical traditions. In the traits of homelands depicted as an ideal landscape or consecrated space, we can discern the characteristics of the biblical Eden, Canaan, the land “flowing with milk and honey,” and the Arcadia of Greco-Roman mythology – in the sense as it was formulated by Schiller in his essay On Naive and Sentimental Poetry: “All peoples who possess a history have a paradise, a state of innocence, a golden age.”11 It does not matter whether they mourn the lost Paradise, imagining the ideal state of existence at the beginning of time as a golden age or paradise, or conceive this ideal state to be attained at the end of time as the actual fulfilment of history. Often these two conceptions are intertwined, and it can be easily understood that hopes for the future tend to gain more emphasis if we see them as a desire for the return of the state that existed once but is now lost. Using the imagery of the earthly paradise, the promised land, an Arcadia emanating delight and harmony, national anthems paint the features of an ideal homeland. A glimpse at the once-happy primordial state or supposed golden age sends a message about the future to contemporaries, projecting the attractive image of the nation-state to be created, which often sheds a sharp, revelatory light onto the dreary reality of the present. The topos of the earthly paradise or Eden12 can be found in multiple poem-symbols. Tyl’s Czech anthem is in its entirety the laudation of an Edenic landscape. In line with Schillerian thinking, it refers to a lost paradise that once existed and a hopeful future homeland at the same time. The first strophe of this poem, consisting of 14 lines only, describes the beauty of the homeland through the traditional topoi of the biblical Eden and the ideal landscape (Ideallandschaft). The image of the ideal home landscape depicted in this Czech song of Biedermeier mood can be related to the pictures of idyllic gardens and other pleasant places widespread in the fine arts of the time. Paradise is represented as a “pleasance” (locus amoenus),13 a garden with a wealth of trees, flowers and a murmuring spring. According to Ernst Robert Curtius, the motifs of the ideal landscape which became permanent elements in a long chain of tradition are “the place of heart’s desire, beautiful with perpetual spring, as the scene of a blessed life after death; the lovely miniature landscape which combines tree, spring, and grass; the wood with various species of trees; the carpet of flowers.”14 All of these can be found in Tyl’s poem; the poet speaks of an orchard, a spring, a meadow and an intimately known landscape. The conclusion is this description: “Paradise on Earth to see!” In the second strophe, this argumentation continues when the lyrical subject points to the consecrated nature of this space, resembling the biblical Paradise (since it is the presence of the Creator that makes this

Images of Homeland and Nation in the Anthems 85 locality exquisite), the landscape in which God “takes pleasure.” The poem’s present-tense verbs imply mythical eternity. Life-giving waters, pinewoods, cliff rocks and flowers also evoke the image of eternal spring – a time which does not follow a linear path into a certain direction but remains motionless or perhaps moves along a circular path. Past and future are intertwined in this time dimension. The nation, “the glorious race of Czechs” exists in this beautiful landscape with the promise of a ceaselessly recurring spring. As nature revives repeatedly, so can the Czech nation – this was the message of the song in Tyl’s folk play for contemporary listeners. For here is the earthly paradise of the Czech landscape and here is the strength that defies ruin. In discussing the image of the Czech homeland as an ideal landscape, we should consider Vladimír Macura’s remark that this song in Tyl’s Fidlovačka heralds the appearance of a blind man, as if the Czech land set forth as an analogy to the blind John Milton’s Paradise Lost would be “merely an ideal paradisiacal country that will never be glimpsed, not only because it is a blind man who creates it in his imagination, but because a blind man speaks about a ‘paradise visible’ (na pohled)” (emphasis added).15 The image of the landscape appears in vague outlines only, as if its reality could be perceived by the ear rather than the eye: “Waters murmur across the meadows,/ Pinewoods rustle upon the cliff-rocks…” Thus the native land, the Czech homeland is much more a paradise of the imagination or desires, an idyll of dreams than a reality that can be experienced. It is a Garden of Eden similar to the one created by God for the first human couple, from which they were expelled because of their sin, which made them long for an otherworldly heaven. Therefore, Bohemia described as an earthly paradise is not an existing reality but rather a lost Eden and a mirage appearing on the horizon of the future at the same time – a homeland imagined as ideal whose vision defies petty reality. The present reality of the Bohemia is very different: the magnates speak German, the industrialists have no respect for the Czech language either. In summary, we can say that the homeland of this poem cannot be identified with any specific Czech landscape – that is why it can be applied to all: the Czech land presented with paradisiacal attributes is the picture of an imaginary nation-state. The homeland of Tyl’s poem belongs to the realm of imagination. Its reality is an ideal reality, yet in the minds of “nation-awakeners” and the awakening national public, this is by no means a fact without effect or consequences. The metaphor of the earthly paradise as it is applied to the homeland can also be found in the national poem-symbol of the smallest Slavic population, Sorbs living in Germany (Lausitz/Lusatia). In the first decades of the nineteenth century, this West Slav ethnic group also started to build their modern nation. A significant literary representative of this movement was Handrij Zejler (1804–1872), who wrote the poem entitled “Beautiful Lusatia” (“Na Serbsku Lužicu” or “Rjana Lužica,” 1827), considered to be a national symbol. The poet describes the homeland, the beautiful province as “the paradise of my merry dreams.”

86  Images of Homeland and Nation in the Anthems In the fourth stanza of Vasile Alecsandri’s Romanian royal anthem, hailing the homeland, he refers to this fatherland as the “happy heaven on Earth.” The refrain of Bulgarian Radoslavov’s anthem addresses the homeland as “Dear native land,/you earthly paradise.” Similarly, Mihanović’s Croatian anthem depicts the homeland as an idyllic landscape; although it cannot be identified with any specific region. Scholars who attempt to analyse it regularly refer to the assumption that the description of this landscape may be mostly related to Croatian Zagorje (the hilly region northwest of Zagreb). As a literary historian of the early twentieth century wrote: “They assume that the poem’s landscape is a reflection of the natural beauty of Zagorje, yet it is by no means region-specific: it encapsulates all Croatian landscapes and the entire nation. The poet used it to capture everything that cannot be torn from us as long as we exist as a nation, that can revive or awaken our patriotism again and again…”16 “Croatian Homeland” (also known by its first line as “Our beautiful homeland”) is the closest to the tradition of symbols related to Arcadia. Antun Gustav Matoš, an eminent figure of Croatian poetry comparable to Hungarian poet Endre Ady, wrote about this poem in 1910: “it is very characteristic of the Croatian soul that Mihanović’s homeland is not so much about human beings, the people as a beautiful country, but our gracious native land with plains and mountains, clear sky, mild nights, hot summer, fast waters, harvest and the peaceful country life of pastures, songs and village idylls.”17 The symbols of Arcadia in the ancient Greek world and the fundamental elements of its mythological-literary tradition include the venues and events of an idyllic, nature-bound and joyous pastoral life and, last but not least, shepherds themselves, who cultivate poetry and music and represent youth and love. Mihanović’s “Croatian Homeland” is a national microcosm which implies totality through its diverse geographical features and the harmony of regions that complement each other (“Beloved, wherever you are plain,/ Beloved, wherever you are mountain!”). The lyrical subject is a representative of Croatdom, who initiates a dialogue with the homeland, addressed in the second person as the irreplaceable native land. The Croatian Arcadia evolves before the receiver’s eyes through the story depicted in four images. After the first stanza addressing the homeland, the second strophe describes the human and natural environment. Then comes the praise for work in the fields, and the next picture shows the evening merry-making. Croatian folklore is expressed by a musical instrument called the tamburica and the kolo dance. The fifth stanza paints a battle scene, and in this fight the nation’s freedom (or slavery) is at stake. Readiness to make a sacrifice for the homeland is the prerequisite for sustaining this Arcadian harmony. Naturally, the colours of the Croatian Arcadia also resemble Canaan, since this is a fertile land (“Sickles are reaping, scythes sweeping,/Old man is busy, counting sheaves”); in fact, images of a homeland “flowing with milk and honey” can be found in two national anthems only: the Hungarian

Images of Homeland and Nation in the Anthems 87 “Hymn” and Prešeren’s drinking song. Although it is not discussed in detail by this book, here we can add Leopold Maximilian Moltke’s (1819–1884) “Transylvania Song” (Siebenbürgenlied), which was considered a national symbol by the Transylvanian Saxons and fits well among the literary symbols of nation formation in East-Central Europe in terms of its creation date (1846). Kölcsey’s “Hymn” uses the customary geographical symbols of Hungary to depict the microcosm of the homeland’s consecrated space. In praising the country, the poet draws on the accessories of the Canaan topos – of humanist origin – when he describes the fertility of the country through two of its characteristic “products”: You on the Cumanian plains Spread our cornfields blowing, Sprinkled Tokay’s purple vines With your nectar glowing. For Kölcsey – as for his numerous predecessors across centuries – the symbolic power of wheat and vine (bread and wine) that originates in ancient times can be utilized to evoke the image of a fertile Hungary. This Canaan is not merely an imagined national landscape; we can spot the real places of the sacred space, the national cosmos, elements of the country image that are well-known at home and abroad, the wheat-producing Hungarian Plain and the wine-giving Tokay. The Hungary described corresponds to the concept of Canaan “flowing with milk and honey,” of the promised land. The above-mentioned Transylvania Song also paints the consecrated homeland: “Transylvania, land of blessing” (Siebenbürgen, Land des Segens). To give an idea of its fertility and richness, the poet enumerates the following attributes: “land of gold and grape nectar,” “open fields,” “green cradle.” As to its literary genre, Prešeren’s “Toast” relates to the tradition of the Anacreontic drinking song. The hillside and the vineyard of the poem’s opening picture appear with the features of Arcadia and Canaan. The natural beauty, exceptional harmony and vintage mood of this landscape all evoke the imagined ideal Slovene homeland: The vintage, friends, is over, And here sweet wine makes, once again, Sad eyes and hearts recover, Puts fire into every vein, Drowns dull care Everywhere And summons hope out of despair. For receivers, the picture of the fertile vineyard may conjure up the idea that this is a consecrated landscape. There are several examples in the Old

88  Images of Homeland and Nation in the Anthems Testament where the chosen people are likened to a vine planted by God and Israel is described as God’s vineyard (Isaiah 5:1–7; Psalm 80:9–16). The homeland as a tragic space The visions of national tragedies, suffering, decay, disasters and the nation’s death often appear in the self-definition or self-image of nations in EastCentral Europe. In interpreting these tragedies, emphasis is placed on the heroic endeavour in a hopeless struggle, the acceptance of the victim’s role under the sign of some superior value (Christianity, Europe, national independence, the freedom of peoples). Hungarians tend to perceive the great poet’s, Vörösmarty’s vision of “a death of fortitude” and the grave where a great nation fell to an exceptionally tragic Hungarian fate. Yet this kind of vision was not unique in this part of Europe. Wybicki’s march – in the first version of its text – responds to the partition of the country, the ominous proverb “Finis Poloniae” with “Poland has not yet perished,” while “God Save Poland” – its versions by Feliński and Gorecki as well as its folklorized variant – speaks of the martyr-­fatherland, Poles who have lost their freedom and shed rivers of tears and blood. The messianism of Polish Romanticism articulated the topos of “Poland as the Christ of nations” in seminal literary works (first of all, Mickiewicz’s Forefathers’ Eve, Part III), which synthesized the tragedy of death by self-sacrifice and the hope of resurrection. A tragic space with images of the nation’s suffering, destruction and decline, the loss of freedom – the opposition of past greatness and present doom – can be found in most of these national anthems. In Prince Nikola’s poem “There, over there” the glory of Tsar Dušan’s country is offset by the defeat in the Battle of Kosovo. “Lashed the clouds with lightning bolts,/Thunderstrokes amazing” – these lines from Kölcsey’s “Hymn” also demonstrate that images of a thunderstorm can be found in many of our texts. It is well-known that the storm is a theophanic symbol: it signifies divine intervention when cosmic energies are unleashed, putting an end to something; thus a new epoch begins. “There is lightning over the Tatras,” reads the first line of the Slovak anthem. The poem implies that this plight must be survived, for when the storm passes, the thunder can be inspiring, awakening, helping Slovakdom to be triumphant. Similarly, the biblical images of the roaring storm in Samo Tomášik’s poem suggest a trial, a fateful event for the nation: “Rocks disrupting, oaks uprooting, shaking earth’s foundation…” In Mihanović’s poem, the delight of the Croatian Arcadia is followed in the fifth stanza by the storm’s heroic landscape as a mysterious vision. Mythical time, the timeless time of tranquillity, is suddenly interrupted by an ominous voice: “Is it fog that hides the Una?/Isn’t that our people’s awful screams?/Who prays for death?/The freeborn, or the slaves?” The Una River is the borderline between Croatia and Bosnia; it separated the region called Turkish Croatia (which was also a

Images of Homeland and Nation in the Anthems 89 part of Croatia during the Middle Ages) from the mother country in the early nineteenth century. Thus brothers, Croats lived on the opposite bank of the Una too. The poem aims to highlight the tension deriving from the unresolved national question, and this dramatic situation is counterposed to the peaceful, idyllic Arcadia of former stanzas – as if history challenged myth at this point. Again, the sacrifice offered for the protection of the homeland and the freedom of the nation and brothers is a prerequisite of restoring harmony. In the second strophe of Tyl’s poem, we can read about the strength that defies ruin; this subtle yet clear allusion, emerging from the harmony of the song’s tranquil, idyllic landscape, referred to the assimilation struggle of the Czech nationality, and was well-understood by contemporaries, since the key message of the author’s play was to strengthen the authority of the Czech language. In his prayer, Đorđević expresses his gratitude to the Creator: “God of Justice, Thou who saved us/when in deepest bondage cast…” The image of tragic fight also appears in the symbolic poem of the Bulgarians, since the nation’s emblematic river, the Maritsa, is stained with the blood of the fallen. Similarly, Asdreni’s Albanian anthem includes the motif of the nation’s destruction: “For God has told the world, proclaiming:/The nations of the earth shall wane,/And yet will live, will thrive Albania.” The alarming images of perishing and the nation’s death aim to force the national community to face the lessons of tragedies, yet even the most pessimistic poems attempted to send a message of a hopeful future. Adopted values, freedom vs. slavery It is really elucidating to identify the values referred to in the selected texts, the properties they use to characterize their community and the features they project for this community. We can find beliefs and value judgments in the anthems, the intention to establish the national self-image, the image possessing positive traits that can be presented to their own community and the outer world is clearly visible. As for all kinds of collective identity, the national one too has the necessary element of adopting unity; thus, it is no wonder that these poems so often request identification and patriotism. As seen above, the Croatian poet sends this message through the Sava River: “a Croat loves his home.” Patriotism is related to values such as truth, justice and honour (Kuzmány, Đorđević); perseverance and fidelity (Tomášik, Vörösmarty); equality, happiness and reconciliation (Prešeren); courage and fighting spirit (Wybicki, Matúška). In the lines of “Maritsa Rushes” Bulgarians proudly proclaim: “We are the nation, our pride, liberation, / And dear fatherland till death shall defend.” Mihanović’s Croats are characterized by “Clear sky, clear forehead,” while Tyl’s anthem describes Czechs as “Quiet souls in agile frames,/Of clear mind, vigorous and prospering…” The praise for fighting spirit and bravery is sounded primarily by revolutionary marches, since this fight has an exceptionally high stake: national

90  Images of Homeland and Nation in the Anthems independence, slavery or freedom. It is not just the Hungarian Petőfi who highlights historical importance; we can also hear Polish legionaries shout, “Enough of this captivity!/We have the scythes of Racławice,/Kościuszko, if God wills.” Alecsandri heralds the coming of a new epoch: “There, the proud day of freedom shines at last in the clear sky!” Mureşanu speaks – very much like Petőfi – about a similar awakening: “Awaken thee, Romanian, from your sleep of death/Into which you have been sunk by barbaric tyrants…”18 According to the Polish and Hungarian national self-perception and as a continuation of the nobility’s “Golden Freedom,” love of liberty is a key feature of the self-image, as reflected in the folklorized version of “God Save Poland,” in which the martyrs of battles opened the gate to freedom, while for Hungary, Vörösmarty concludes: “Freedom! your bloodied flag they bore…” Images of self and enemy It is known in social psychology that a community, the so-called in-group, usually defines itself in opposition to another community (an out-group). As the national community separates or demarcates its own territory in the phase of creation or construction to define its homeland, it counterposes the images of its own collective to those of other national communities. This may seem a slightly exaggerated statement: every nation can determine its own identity in contrast with the image(s) of other nation(s). Autostereotypes and hetero-stereotypes mutually presuppose each other. Here the above-mentioned question arises again in relation to language: Can we know exactly where the boundaries of our own community are and who is included? Is it only the criterion of language that counts? Is it possible to leave one community and enter into another? It is elucidating to enumerate the images of the enemy in different national anthems. Some of them make only general reference to these images (for example, in Prešeren’s poem: “Let thunder out of heaven/Strike down and smite our wanton foe!”), while others merely allude to adversaries – yet contemporary communities of receivers had no doubt about to what and whom the poet referred. The Polish “Dąbrowski Mazurka” clearly describes the chief enemies of Poles: the German and the Muscovite (Moskal). Mureşanu mentions the crescent and the knout. Konopnicka has these harsh words for the enemy in “The Oath”: “The German won’t spit in our face,/Nor Germanise our children…” However, other poems prefer to articulate this indirectly, speaking of historical enemies (for the Hungarian Kölcsey, the Mongol and the Ottoman, though contemporaries, could understand the lines referring to King Matthias’s occupation of Vienna not only as an allusion to past glory). While the mood of the Czech anthem seems to be mild, it is clear that Czechs defy ruin, that is, the threat of assimilation; these self-conscious Czechs confront Germans as well as those Czechs who fail to adopt Czech identity. “The very ideological basis of this work is the struggle of the Czech against the non-Czech, where self-conscious Czechs

Images of Homeland and Nation in the Anthems 91 fight degenerate Czechs.”19 The mythologem of so-called “degenerates” or “deviates” has a fundamental significance in numerous national self-images of East-Central Europe, for example, “Turcophiles” for Serbs, “Magyarones” for Croats and Slovaks, “Italophiles” (talijanaš) for the Croats of Istria and Dalmatia, or “Germanophiles” (nemškutar) for Slovenes. The degenerate type of the Slovak odrodilec is a definitive element of the national self-image: they are the ones who deny their origin and mother tongue; thus, they are cursed in the last line of Samo Tomášik’s anthem: May the earth engulf the traitor from our ranks deserting. The first stanza of Janko Matúška’s poem includes the line “Let us stop them, brothers” (zastavme ich bratia), where “them” should be understood as the enemies of “us” Slovaks. However, the text does not define precisely who belongs to this group. From the known circumstances of the poem’s creation, we can infer that they can be the enemies of the Slovak national movement in the broadest sense or, more specifically, the officials of the Lutheran church who suspended Ľudovít Štúr (poet, journalist and leader of the Slovak national revival movement) from his post in late 1843. Of course, we cannot exclude that this “them” may also refer to Hungarians in general. In the last stanza of the Croatian anthem, two rivers, the Sava and the Danube, are juxtaposed: “Flow, fast Sava, flow,/Nor you, Danube, lose your power…” Initially, I also failed to notice that, although this is normally accepted as the faithful translation of the text, Mihanović’s peculiar use of words slightly diverges from the regular use. For here, the poet wrote Niť ti Dunaj silu gubi instead of the standard Niť ti Dunaj silu ne gubi; thus, it should be understood as, “Nor you, Danube lessen the Sava’s power.”20 This may mean some degree of opposition, provided that the Sava is a metaphor of Croatia and the Danube of Hungary. The topos has an important Croatian literary archetype: in Pavao Štoos’s grand poem depicting Croatia (The Picture of the Homeland at the Beginning of the Year 1831) the Danube figures as a catfish threatening the Sava river. Contemporaries could obviously perceive the tensions between the two national movements in the opposition of the two rivers. In “Romania’s Awakening,” Alecsandri condemns foreign oppression (“Do you let the foreigner rule eternally?”), while in his ode Mureşanu scorns centuries of slavery and the threat of the yatagan and the crescent. In the anthem with the first line “There, over there,” Prince Nikola PetrovićNjegoš promises to take revenge in the spirit of Montenegrin fighting traditions: “I’ll dull my sabre’s edge/On the ribs of the Turks…” Unity and dissension In the historical consciousness of East-Central European peoples, generally the thought of unity occupied a central position in the period of nation formation, and with it the lashing of dissension and complaining about the lack

92  Images of Homeland and Nation in the Anthems of national unity too. “As a privileged form of unity, the nation began to be seen (especially by the Romantics of the nineteenth century) as the very key and the end of the whole historical process,” writes Lucian Boia in relation to Romanian historical myths.21 Political fragmentation at the time was one obstacle to the desired unified nation-state; the other one was the national curse of “discord”: “Worse, O country, ‘gainst your breast/Rose your own sons often,” writes Kölcsey. Now, let us see the Serbs’ almost proverbial self-characterization. Their oral tradition provides the following interpretation, in both positive and negative forms, for the four instances of the Cyrillic letter C (Latin S) in the national coat of arms (which originally represented firesteels whose shape resembles the letter C): “only unity saves the Serbs” (Samo sloga Srbina spasava) or “Serb slays Serb with a sabre” (Srbin Srbina sabljom sekava). It is not accidental that so many national poem-symbols of this region complain about the absence of unity – those of Romanian Alecsandri and Mureşanu as well as Croatian Gaj, who entitled his poem “Croats’ Concord and Unification.” In the fifth stanza of the Polish “Dąbrowski Mazurka” we can read: “Concord will be the watchword of all/And so will be our fatherland.” In the last strophe of his poem, Gaj once more gives an emphatic summary of his message: “Long live our concord,/Long live all true Slavs!” Unity and concord also constitute central values in the Serbian Đorđević’s anthem; in the third stanza the poet asks God: Bind in closest links our kindred Teach the love that will not fail, May the loathed fiend of discord Never in our ranks prevail. In Asdreni’s Albanian anthem, the national flag (as a symbol that is particularly important for Albanians, since tradition relates the double-headed black eagle appearing on the flag to the legendary figure of Skanderbeg) also symbolizes the unity of Albanians. The lyrical subject calls on the members of the nation to gather around this flag: Around the flag we are united, With one will and one desire, A sacred oath are now proclaiming For our salvation to aspire.

Notes

1. Adam Mickiewicz, Literatura słowiańska, Second Course, Lecture XXI (26 April 1842), in Dzieła wszystkie, Tom IX (Warszawa: Wyd. “Czytelnik”, 1955), 335–336. 2. “His personality is now confined to a singular role: the act of mediation between God and nation,” as it is aptly stated by Ferenc Kulin, Közelítések a reformkorhoz (Budapest: Magvető Kiadó, 1986), 98.

Images of Homeland and Nation in the Anthems 93







3. István Fried, “Vörösmarty Mihály „nemzet”-fogalmához,” in András A. Gergely (ed.), A nemzet antropológiája: Hofer Tamás köszöntése (Budapest: Új Mandátum, 2002), 32. 4. Ksaver Šandor Gjalski, “Antun Mihanović,” Vienac, Vol. XXVIII, No. 24 (1896), 372. 5. Vladimír Macura, Znamení zrodu: České národní obrození jako kulturní typ (Jinočany: H+H, 1995), 141. 6. Ján Kollár, Slávy dcéra, Sonnet 253, in Dielo I: Básne (Bratislava: Slovensky Tatran, 2001), 166. 7. Slovenija was first mentioned as the homeland of Slovenes by poet Jovan Vesel Koseski in his 1844 ode to Emperor Ferdinand. Cf. Peter Vodopivec, Od Pohlinove Slovnice do samostajne države (Ljubljana: Modrijan zalozba, 2007), 49. 8. Lucian Boia, History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness (Budapest: CEU Press, 2001), 34. 9. This poem, originally written in 1834 in the so-called biblical Czech (­bibličtina), was entitled Na Slovany (On Slavdom); it was first published in Slovak with the first line “Hej, Slováci!” (Hey, Slovaks!) in the 1838 Nový i Starý Wlastenecký Kalendár, 38. 10. Mircea Eliade, “Sacred Space and Making the World Sacred,” in The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (New York: A Harvest Book, ­Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1963), 20–65. 11. Friedrich Schiller, “On naive and sentimental poetry,” in H. B. Nisbet (ed.), German Aesthetic and Literary Criticism: Winckelmann, Lessing, Hamann, Herder, Schiller, Goethe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 180–232. 12. The biblical Eden originally meant “a garden planted in a barren plain.” Cf. István Hamar, Az ember a teremtett világ élén (Budapest: Private Publication, 1989), 24. 13. This was also chosen as the title of a scientific symposium on the Czech anthem: Locus amoenus – Místo líbezné: Symposium o české hymně, 27. X. 1993 (Praha: Akademia Vied, 1994). 14. Ernst Robert Curtius, Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter (Bern: A. Francke AG, 1948), 192. 15. Vladimír Macura, Český sen (Praha: Lidove Noviny, 1998), 48. 16. Branko Vodnik (Drechsler), “Antun Mihanović,” Hrvatsko Kolo (Zagreb), Vol. 6, (1910), 23. 17. Antun Gustav Matoš, “Lijepa naša,” Hrvatska Sloboda (Zagreb), Vol. 3, no. 117 (1910), 113. 18. In the late nineteenth century, Romanian literary historians (Valer Branisce, Ioan Raţiu) hypothesized a direct connection between the poems written by Petőfi and Mureşanu. In May 1848, the Romanian poet probably knew his Hungarian peer’s poem. 19. Tvůrčí cesta Josefa Kajetána Tyla (Praha: Státni nakl krásné literatury a umení, 1961), 72. 20. Ocak, Jelena, Antun Mihanović (Zagreb: Nakladni zavod Globus, 1998), 172. 21. Boia, History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness (Budapest: CEU Press, 2001), 129.

8

National History and Its Heroes

“History is the foremost book of the nation in which it can see its past, present and future. A nation without history is merely a barbaric people, and a people that has lost the religion of its memories is certainly doomed.” These are characteristic words that refer to the book of the nation, a story that can be recited. The quotation derives from Nicolae Bălcescu, the seminal figure of Romanian history and national ideology.1 Literary works that have become national symbols – though not all of them and not to the same degree – obviously wrote much on the pages of this book; they include numerous reflections on the past and historical path of the given community. In fact, it is no exaggeration to conclude that some of them made significant contributions to forming the canon of national memory. Below I shall enumerate first, narratives of national history condensed into anthems, then the “hero stories” embedded in the analysed texts, in order to describe the figures of the national pantheon who appear in the poems. One thing must be necessarily emphasized: my aim here is to track the symbolic representation of national history rather than its “depiction” (if it is possible at all) – in other words, the “imagined communities” that can be reconstructed from the selected texts. The creation of the national history’s grand narrative was part and parcel of forming the modern nation. As it is articulated in a paper by Anthony D. Smith, “communal history must be taught as a series of foundation and liberation myths and as a cult of heroes. Together, these make up the vision of the golden age that must inspire present regeneration.”2 Again, we can speak of mutual presupposition: in the course of “constructing” the nation there was a need to create symbols and establish the national paradigm of history. Symbols, especially historical personalities that had a definitive role, can be seen as junctures of the historical process. In order to make the past of this new collective suitable for narration, the political-territorial or linguisticethnic frameworks which provided an opportunity to narrate the timeless “nation,” a phenomenon held to overarch historical periods, had to be taken into account. The narrative of the modern nation had to be extended backwards into the past and forwards from the present to open towards a possible future; that is, the history of the community had to be imagined DOI: 10.4324/9781003318774-9

National History and Its Heroes 95 as a process, in the form of an array of events connected through causal relations – a process which begins with the emergence of this collective from the mythical timeless mist of the beginnings: it enters history through a symbolic foundation story or homeland-taking and remains once and for all a national community which – in its former, supposed primordial state – may correspond to the very ideal which nation-builders aim to achieve. Historiographers played a significant role in this past-making throughout the continent. During the nineteenth century, historiography more or less became a distinct discipline in East-Central Europe too. Literature had perhaps an even more important, substantial mediating role in creating an image of the past for broadening national movements. The national paradigm of history often became public treasure through literary works that could spark great emotional effect, strongly facilitating the integration of the collective. The poem-symbols of the nation also included historical ­narratives, often in a condensed form, which – after they had become archetypes for the community – can be justifiably called myths. Naturally, in the anthems of East-Central Europe, the homeland is often represented by the habitual topos of patriotic poetry and the nation’s historical narrative, with the words of Mihanović’s poem, “Our Fathers’ Ancient Glory.” Or it can be the place where, as proclaimed in Vörösmarty’s “Appeal,” “The suffering of a thousand years/Calls us to live or die!” In the selected texts, two narratives can be distinguished relatively well: one of these is historical continuity represented by events and persons (and it is elucidating to compare the crucial links that ensure bondage for different nations), while the other is the opposition of the rise and the fall (the nation’s prime and perishing), history’s unity conceived in terms of this duality. For Mureşanu, the community of origin as a starting point is related to Emperor Trajan, who represents Roman ancestry, while for Kölcsey this community in the form of Hun–Magyar kinship, is reflected in the phrase “Bendegúz’s sons.” The author of the Romanian anthem continues the array beginning with the Roman emperor with medieval and early modern princes of Wallachia and Moldavia – including, by no means accidentally, Michael the Brave, the central figure of national mythology, who briefly became (in 1600) the ruler of Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania at the same time. According to Romanian historian Lucian Boia, in the Romanian collective consciousness Michael the Brave appears as a symbolic bridge between Dacia Traiana and modern Romania.3 In Kölcsey’s “Hymn,” narration begins with the arrival or homeland-taking, continuing with victorious battles against the Turks and with King Matthias seizing Vienna; then come a series of national tragedies. Some of those who analysed this poem pointed out that, although this narration does not follow a chronological logic, reception history that studies the poem as a national symbol tends to decipher such a narrative.4 In Vörösmarty’s “Appeal,” the two pillars of the historical narrative are represented by Árpád and Hunyadi, who are first of all the symbolic figures of battles for the homeland and

96  National History and Its Heroes freedom – this past, if not entirely hopeless, involved ceaseless struggles and suffering. The “historical narrative” of the “Dąbrowski Mazurka” essentially encapsulates a series of Polish struggles for freedom: Hetman Stefan Czarniecki (1599–1665) liberated his fatherland from Swedish occupation in the seventeenth century, Tadeusz Kościuszko (1746–1817) started his war of independence three years before the poem was written, and General Jan Henryk Dąbrowski (1755–1818) was the commander of the legionaries singing Wybicki’s song in 1797. In the twentieth-century Macedonian anthem, Vlado Maleski recalls the memory of the most important foundation myth for the homeland, the so-called Kruševo Republic. In 1903, a significant uprising against the Turks (known as the Ilinden rebellion) broke out in the Macedonian territory. In the course of creating the historical memory of the Kruševo Republic this event, was seen as a decisive antecedent. The fight for freedom (keeping in mind that rebels tended to assume Bulgarian identity, or at least imagined their future in a Bulgarian framework) constitutes an important part of Macedonian historical memory, as reflected in the fact that August 2 is now the day for the celebration of independence. In his poem “There, over there” Montenegrin poet-prince Nikola contrasts the age of Serbian glory, Tsar Dušan’s country, with the tragic defeat in the Battle of Kosovo. The glorious past calls the poet speaking in the lyric back to there, to the place where the highest and lowest points coincide: There, over there … beyond those hills, Ruined lies, they say, my Emperor’s palace; there, they say, Once heroes had gathered. In the concluding part of the poem, the image of former greatness is almost offset by the “Serb fields”: the fateful Battle of Kosovo and its martyr-heroes. The opposition of glory and decline, of greatness and ruin and the division of the national past along a tragic caesura into periods of light and darkness are a characteristic mythologem for East-Central European nations. It is typical, for example, that the era following the 1620 Battle of White Mountain, which became a national tragedy in Czech historical memory, was described as the “Dark Age” for a long time. Here the coalescence of past glory and tragic fall (or perhaps sacrifice, “a death of fortitude”) and their relationship becomes important; their analysis, national self-investigation – and self-­ criticism – in the age of “revival” (as historians describe it) was held to be indispensable by the creators of national ideology. The first strophe of “God Save Poland” is about the centuries of the homeland’s greatness, glory and brightness. A similar structure of narration (alternating periods of “blessing” and “punishment”) can be found in Kölcsey’s Hungarian “Hymn.” The two parts are not symmetrical, the discussion of periods and consequences of “punishment” is twice longer than the other part.

National History and Its Heroes 97 Though not the major structural unit of the poem, a typical image reflects this opposition in Ljudevit Gaj’s “Croatia is not yet lost” too: “The grace of the once glorious Homeland/has been devastated,/cruelly destroyed/ by the treachery and wickedness of her sons.” In addition, the “historical” dimension of national anthems also includes symbolic content represented by historical figures, heroes appearing in the poems. The group of (no matter how few) “national heroes” who correspond to mythological categories in these texts constitutes a distinctive “statuary” or small national pantheon. This constellation mediates important messages to the expected/emerging community of the modern nation. It relates to events of the past, performs a certain selection in the world of historical figures, and serves as an exemplar for contemporaries. As the stories of heroes constitute an important chapter of classical mythology, the creation of this national pantheon or Valhalla is a similarly crucial motive of the modern national mythology. As Ernest Renan said in his famous 1882 lecture on the nation, “Of all cults, that of the ancestors is the most legitimate, for the ancestors have made us what we are. A heroic past, great men, glory (by which I understand genuine glory), this is the social capital upon which one bases a national idea.”5 In the nineteenth century the art movements of, first, Romanticism, then Historicism preferred to construct “halls” of national heroes in various branches of the arts and in public spaces. Spectacular examples of such pantheons are the arcaded Slavín (the place of glory), built in 1889, at the Vyšehrad cemetery in Prague, where the great personages of the nation rest, or the statuary in Heroes’ Square of Budapest (1896), with the equestrian sculptures of the seven chieftains in the forefront and Hungarian rulers in the two parts of the colonnade behind them. This list may include the Wawel Cathedral of Cracow, with tombs of rulers and the great poets of the nation (Mickiewicz, Słowacki). A somewhat smaller group of memorials is at the famous Zrinski/Zrínyi Square or Zrinjevac of Zagreb, with busts of outstanding historical and cultural personages (e.g., poet and viceroy of Croatia Ivan Mažuranić or the hero of Kőszeg, Nikola Jurišić/Miklós Jurisics). It was always the actual canon of cultural memory that determined who could enter this pantheon. Obviously, this canon is usually closely related to its creation date, the requirements for national symbolism of the given era. In spite of the fact that their figures were taken from “objective” history, the pantheons of national history belong to a time outside history – a time that does not occur or pass in a certain direction, but instead embraces past, present and future; in other words, these pantheons actually exist in mythical time. Like their relatives in classical Greco-Roman mythology, the heroes of national mythology are figures between the transcendent and earthly realms. They are mythicized personalities who reflect the effect of otherworldly forces influencing human history in the form of human traits and acts. Archetypes or “primordial images” – symbols expressing behaviour patterns that determine relationships within the family or community – are

98  National History and Its Heroes the protective father, the self-sacrificing sibling, the man who provides a home for the family and homeland for the nation, the homemaker mother, the forebears (fathers or mothers) of the race or tribe (nation), the hero who conquests and defends the new homeland, and so on. Actually, all cultural and political communities need such myths, which are embodied in persons, the kin of Greek heroes. As Lucian Boia writes in relation to Romanian historical myths, “Exceptional figures, mediators between gods and people, between people and destiny, or between people and history, have imposed themselves from the beginning of the human adventure down to the present day, even in the most efficient and apparently sceptical technological and democratic societies. No community can dispense with ‘heroes’ and ‘saviors’, either in contemporary life or in the commemoration of historical tradition.”6 The rulers of dynastic anthems are – so to say, “officially” – included in the national pantheon. Nevertheless, we have to argue that their features are drawn rather faintly in the selected texts. Although the poet glorifies the homeland through the person or dynasty of the ruler, embodying the country and the nation, the poems present an image of the homeland or the nation that is much more nuanced than that of the ruler. In many respects Alojzy Feliński’s hymn (“God Save Poland”), whose original version requests God’s blessing for Tsar Alexander, crowned as King of Poland, can be seen as special. As to the Polish reception history of the text, it should be noted that later many interpreters considered the poem’s loyal tone and the fact that it pictured the Tsar as “the angel of peace” as signs of subservience or even betrayal. However, the context of the poem’s creation, the Polish state of mind at the time, must not be ignored. For Napoleon, who initially raised hopes, disappointed the Poles when he created the Duchy of Warsaw in a relatively small part of historical Polish territories. After prolonged wars many awaited peace, and Tsar Alexander established a Kingdom of Poland with a liberal constitution and independent army. Thus, for some years after 1815, a considerable part of Polish society found the decision at the Congress of Vienna to be acceptable and promising for the future. The situation changed after 1820, when the tsar’s power aimed to curb the rights deriving from Polish autonomy forcibly, in more and more areas. It is known that this was the time when new stanzas and a modified refrain were added to the text of the popular hymn. Jovan Sundečić’s Montenegrin anthem can be seen as best wishes to Prince Nikola rather than his praise. In 1866, Carol of Hohenzollern became Romania’s ruler (initially as prince, from 1881 onward as king), and he is hailed by the poet in his anthem without being named personally. The poet’s prayer requests God not only to protect the Romanian crown but seeks God’s blessing, with at least the same emphasis, for the homeland, the country of Romanians. As to Jovan Đorđević’s Serbian royal anthem, it is notable that the change in historical conditions forced the poet to change the name of the ruler for whom he

National History and Its Heroes 99 requested blessings – we could say that a picture, to be replaced by another, was removed from the middle of the national pantheon. Returning to national heroes themselves, only a smaller part of the selected texts named historical figures specifically: Wybicki’s Polish anthem, the Hungarian poems of Kölcsey and Vörösmarty, Mureşanu’s Romanian anthem, the Montenegrin poem by Prince Nikola Petrović-Njegoš and Vlado Maleski’s Macedonian anthem. Their presentation can be elucidating not only in terms of who is included in these small national pantheons, which can be seen as representative from a certain perspective; it is also interesting which of the key cultic heroes in national memory are missing from these pantheons. In the triptych of the “Dąbrowski Mazurka,” we can see images of liberating heroes. Hetman Stefan Czarniecki was a hero of seventeenth-­ century wars of independence against the Swedes, with numerous military victories ascribed to his name, commemorated by successive generations as a perseverant commander who was ready to sacrifice his own life. Tadeusz Kościuszko was the leader of the uprising named after him, who achieved a significant victory over the tsar’s troops at Racławice in April 1794. Peasants storming the enemy with scythes played an important role in this triumph, and later this fact became a part of Polish historical memory as a symbol of the people’s solidarity. The last stanza of the anthem refers to this possibility: the popular uprising would have an important role in continuing the fight for freedom within the borders of the homeland. The Polish anthem is a march written for the commander of the Polish legions in Italy, General Jan Henryk Dąbrowski, clearly with the present and future in mind. The general was an organizer of these military units, the march was related to the actual situation and actual commands; the Polish soldiers stationed in Italy prepared for battle with the conviction that they would have an opportunity to participate in Poland’s liberation. What is unique about Wybicki’s anthem is that its heroes include Napoleon, since his victories and his fight against Austria gave hope and served as an exemplar for the Polish legions fighting by his side in Italy. Polish poems that became national symbols do not name either “founding” rulers or the kings of the sixteenth-century Golden Age – which is probably partly the result of chance, since the representation of this theme in patriotic poetry is rich, but it can be partly due to the poem’s future-oriented nature. If Bendegúz refers to a community of origin, Hun–Magyar kinship in Kölcsey’s “Hymn,” then homeland-taking marks the beginning of historical time. Only two persons appear in the poem. Both of them belong to the glorious period of the Hungarian past: Prince Árpád and King Matthias. A question concerning the totality of this pantheon (which, of course, is by no means related to the rhetoric or aesthetic qualities of the poem) could obviously point to the absence of St. Stephen in the first place. This may not only be explained by the poet’s being a Calvinist, but also by the tradition of the definite cults of the conquest and Árpád within nobility resistance, which continued in the Reform Era. Vörösmarty also mentioned two historical heroes as definitive symbols: Árpád and Hunyadi.

100  National History and Its Heroes The first figure in the national pantheon of “Awaken thee, Romanian!” is Emperor Trajan (53–117 CE), who extended the boundaries of the Roman Empire to the Danube during the Dacian Wars (101–107 CE). Trajan was the hero of the foundation myth, the embodiment of Roman origin in the collective memory of Romanians. In terms of historical chronology, the next figure in this pantheon follows with a considerable delay. In the words of Lucian Boia, “it is not the founders so much as the voivodes, who illustrated the history of the principalities in their age of glory, who are placed in the highest levels of the pantheon.”7 The poem lists the names of Michael, Stephen and – in the plural – the Corvins. Voivode Michael of Wallachia waged a victorious war against the Turks in 1419, while the relatively long rule of Moldavian Voivode Stephen the Great (1457–1504) brought a period of efflorescence to his country. The two princes mentioned together with the Corvins (obviously, János Hunyadi and King Matthias) represented the myth of the “three Romanian countries” (Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania) belonging together, becoming increasingly popular over the nineteenth century. On the other hand, the figure of Voivode Mihai Viteazul/Michael the Brave (1557–1601) symbolized Romanian unity, the prefiguration of the imagined nation-state, since in 1600, for a short period, he was the ruler of all three principalities, and his death (the fact that he was killed on the order of General Basta) could be interpreted as martyrdom, a tragedy that prevented the unification of the nation. The desired homeland appearing in Montenegrin Prince Nikola PetrovićNjegoš’s poem is actually a memento of Serbian-Montenegrin history or, as mentioned earlier, of the eras of both glory and fall. The lyrical subject speaks of the ruins of the onetime “Emperor’s palace,” a place he feels to be his home too: Prizren – the city which is known as the royal seat of Tsar Dušan, the embodiment of the heyday of Serbian history. Another mythical place in the poem is the famous Dečani Monastery, an exceptional masterpiece of medieval Serbian architecture. This landscape also holds the “Serb fields” of battles, where “the old man” Jug fell – Jug Bogdan and his sons, the nine brothers Jugović. The site of the tragic battle, Kosovo Polje is not named specifically in the poem, but the above-mentioned symbols refer to it, a clear message for all Montenegrin or Serbian receivers. In the last stanza, we can read the name of another Serbian hero, Miloš Obilić – the Serb who deceived the Turks by pretending to defect and then managed to sneak into Sultan Murad’s tent and kill him. The Macedonian anthem is a good example of or addendum to twentieth-­ century nation-building, since the Republic of Macedonia established in the federative framework of the second Yugoslav state after the Second World War allowed the Macedonian nation to be formed. In 1945, based on the Southwest Macedonian dialect, which is the most distant from the Serbian and Bulgarian languages, a new alphabet and standardized spelling system were created. Vlado Maleski’s anthem “Today over Macedonia” also includes, besides its encouraging sentences, the myth of the country’s

National History and Its Heroes 101 founder. The third strophe of the poem list the names of the key leaders of the 1903 uprising and the so-called Kruševo Republic: Gotse Delchev, Pitu Guli, Dame Gruev and Jan Sandanski.

Notes



1. Werner Bahner, Nicolae Bălcescu (1819–1852): Ein rumänischer revolutionärer Demokrat im Kampf für soziale und nationale Befreiung (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1970), 13. 2. Anthony D. Smith, The ethnic origins of nations (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1986), 121. 3. Lucian Boia, History and myth in Romanian consciousness (Budapest: CEU Press, 1997), 192. 4. Szilárd Borbély justifiably argued that “…the interpretation of the text had naturally incorporated its function in the present, the representation of existence as a state and nation, while these assumptions fail to consider that the poem was by no means created to fulfil this representative function – it had reached this status over time and in relation to other texts.” – A “Vanitatum vanitas” szövegvilágáról (Fehérgyarmat: Kölcsey Társaság, 1995), 37. 5. Emest Renan, “What is a nation?,” in Homi K. Bhabha (ed.), Nation and ­Narration (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), 19. 6. Boia, History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness, 189. 7. Ibid., 192.

9

Symbols of Space in the Anthems

Check thou thy steps, for the places are sacred, wherever thou turnest. —Ján Kollár, Prologue to “The Daughter of Sláva” (translated by Paul Selver)

As seen in the section describing the ideal image of nation and homeland, spatial perceptions may have an important role in the texts, mediating symbolic content. In its own way, geography can also contribute to the discursive creation and consolidation of identity. The topography and hydrography of the country’s or nation’s territory may be particularly suitable as a group of phenomena carrying national self-identity. The images that nations form about themselves incorporate certain spatial elements: the consecrated places sacralized by collective memory. Below, I shall examine the geographical “mythology” of our poem-­ symbols. Like the Jewry of the Old Testament or the Greeks of Antiquity, quite a few nations of the East-Central European region have rich “repositories” of “sacred” waters and mountains. As mentioned above, the nation itself can be seen as a peculiar cosmos, an “organized space” that is distinct from the external “surrounding chaos.” Thus East-Central European nations also have mountains like Zion and Olympus or rivers like the Jordan and the Nile. The sacralization of certain elements of space was a part and parcel of the path to the modern nation. Evidently, “ready-made materials” could not be used here; the planners of the modern nation – including writers and poets – had to start from the endowments of the space of the real homeland (or a territory, a region that would hopefully become the homeland) and the stories that were attached to the world of these lands by collective memory. Before we could scrutinize each element of this geographical mythology, we should attempt to identify the sites of memory in the anthems with the underlying fateful events of history that led to their creation (e.g., the above-mentioned places of glory and fall). When speaking about a site of memory, we adopt here the concept introduced by Pierre Nora (lieu de mémoire), but obviously in its narrower sense, in topographical terms. In a certain respect “national landscape” is DOI: 10.4324/9781003318774-10

Symbols of Space in the Anthems 103 a different category, since in this case nation-builders wanted to discern the distinctive features of the nation – on a pars pro toto basis – in a specific region of the country; in the course of this selection, they obviously considered geographical-ethnic and mental properties, or perhaps historical aspects. Whatever the result, it can be evidently seen as a construct; the landscape and the related community were imagined on the basis of particular characteristics. What may be especially interesting here is the kind of building blocks that were used by the authors of our texts and the features of the image formed in this way. In relation to sites of memory, we can start out from the fact that space is not homogeneous; this map includes both profane and sacralized places, which mutually presuppose and negate one another. Every national culture has such a sacral map, which shows the places where the homeland was seized, founding the state, triumphs and defeats, famous forts, sacred cities, ancient political and religious centres and the birthplaces of political and cultural heroes. Relatively few of these “sites of memory” can be found in our anthems. As it is known, Wybicki’s Polish march was created in Northern Italy, and its legionaries sing that they march “from Italy to Poland,” which clearly refers to the “pilgrimage” conceived by Mickiewicz, a forced journey outside the homeland (if not through the desert), while the (Baltic) sea and Poznań signify the stations of the War of Independence led by the hetman who defeated the Swedes. The “scythes of Racławice” refers to a historical event: on April 4, 1794, Polish troops defeated the Russian army in a battle fought near the village of Racławice, and scythe-wielding peasant soldiers of the Polish popular uprising had an important role in victory. For Kölcsey, naturally, the sacred peak of the Carpathians marks the place of homeland-taking, while “the proud forts of Vienna” evoke, in addition to King Matthias’s conquest, rich symbolic content for the receiver – everything that has been accumulated over centuries about the Kaiserstadt in Hungarian collective memory. As already mentioned, the old capital of the Serbs, the former seat of Tsar Dušan, Prizren and the Dečani Monastery, is mentioned by Prince Nikola Petrović-Njegoš in his poem (“Gorski vijenac – The Mountain Wreath”). These are in fact the “sites of memory” for the Montenegrin–Serbian past. In a groundbreaking study analysing the Great Hungarian Plain (Alföld) as a national landscape, Réka Albert observes, “It is a peerless spatial representation.”1 This is distinguished by its synthetic nature, since it combines several elements, imagoes and tools suitable for conveying emotions in the same image. Not all East-Central European cultures could bring forth a national landscape like the Alföld – with well-known attributes and a nuanced image developed in the fine arts. The homeland depicted as an ideal landscape was discussed previously; here, I would like to simply recall that homelands appearing as an earthly paradise or Eden do not elevate a specific region or area to the rank of national symbol; instead, these images, consciously abstracted apart from individual landscape features,

104  Symbols of Space in the Anthems aim to present some kind of totality and are likely to imply the unity of the homeland too, with references to national belonging that overarch distinct provinces. The ideal image of the “abstract” homeland that surpasses the particularities of different lands and regions appears, for example, in Josef Kajetán Tyl’s Czech anthem (“Kde domov můj?”). For Slovak culture, the symbolism of the Tatras and the “uplands” – the mountainous region in general – has great significance. Upper Hungary (Horné Uhorsko, Horná zem, Horniaky) appears as a separate homeland of Slovaks within the country. When the Slovak national movement adopted a coat of arms in 1848, it was by no means accidental that the part of the Kingdom of Hungary’s coat of arms that was chosen as the Slovak symbol was the one with the triple mound. This element had sustained since the Baroque period the “explanation” that it symbolized the three country-wide mountain ranges: the Tatra, Fatra and Mátra Mountains (certainly because of their rhyming names). For Slovaks, the Tatras can be rightly seen as a national landscape, since in the age of Romanticism the term Tatransko (“Tatra-land”) was created as a synonym for the Slovak Land, the region populated by Slovaks, who often called themselves the sons of the Tatras. This mountain range had a great significance in developing national identity; as Slovak historian Ľubomír Lipták wrote in one of his last papers: “The Tatras was discovered and elevated into the role of the representative of Slovakdom and the Slovak Land (Slovensko) in the first half of the nineteenth century.”2 It is particularly elucidating that neither Slovak folk poetry nor folktales attribute such a supra-regional significance to this mountain range. Lipták also concludes that the Danube, for example, is a much more general geographical symbol in Slovak folklore, even in regions that are distant from the river. Ján Kollár had a definitive role in creating the cult of the Tatras; he is the originator of the idea that this mountain range could be the cradle and centre of Slavdom; thus, it was seen as the primordial homeland. The first line of Matúška’s anthem, “Lightning Over the Tatras,” evokes not only the mountain range, but also the national landscape of Slovaks. It is a symbol that expresses their destiny and traits; the Tatras actually stand for their entire homeland. In Montenegrin Prince Nikola’s poem “There, over there,” this national landscape is clearly Kosovo Polje, the cradle of the medieval Serbian state. And then there is Prizren, once the ruler’s seat, the “Serbian Constantinople,” and the Dečani Monastery as the symbol of the Serbian Church. It is the rich reservoir of Serbian and Serbo-Montenegrin identity, a tradition that has been sustained for centuries through heroic epics and church mediation. The lyrical subject longs to return there, the land of former glory, where the great tsar’s palace now “ruined lies,” and there are the “Serb fields” of battle too, which urge revenge against the Turks even after 500 years have passed. The third symbol that can be interpreted as a national landscape is found in Bulgarian Tsvetan Radoslavov’s anthem, originally entitled “Proud Ancient Balkan Mountains” (“Gorda Stara planina”), which became

Symbols of Space in the Anthems 105 popular as “Dear Motherland” (“Mila Rodino”). The union of the two titles – the one from the refrain’s first line and the original – itself can be perceived as a symbol. It should also be noted that the Bulgarian name for the Balkan Mountains is Stara Planina (Old Mountain), and it is the geographical backbone of the country. We should cite Maria Todorova’s insightful remark: “In all languages, with two exceptions, Balkan is used with an emotional ingredient varying from neutral to derogative. The first exception is Turkish where Balkan does not have the pejorative component; the second is Bulgarian, which has all the range from negative through neutral to positive.”3 In Bulgarian collective memory, Stara Planina is a protective-­sheltering landscape with forests and mountains, the land of outlaws. Rebellions against Turkish rule started out from here; the two main peaks of the mountain range were named after freedom fighters who are now national icons, Vasil Levski and Hristo Botev. It is worth making a brief detour to another national landscape, which does not appear in poems that are considered national symbols. But it is ascribed a crucial role in presenting Romanian identity. In a certain respect, Romanian writer and cultural philosopher Lucian Blaga’s theory of the “Mioritic space” (spaţiul mioritic), developed in the interwar period, can be seen as a national landscape; it attempts to explain the symbolic subconscious contents ascribed to the soul of the Romanian people from the emblematic folk ballad “The Ewe Lamb” (“Mioriţa”). Through a thorough analysis, Hungarian historian Ambrus Miskolczy described the sources of the idea-world of the Romanian thinker and possible interpretations of the myth of the Mioritic space.4 Lucian Blaga’s key concept is the plai (the slope of a hill covered with meadows, the uplands) as a characteristic of the Romanian landscape, a kind of undulation between hills and valleys. As he writes, “This is therefore the space that the ancestral Romanian spirit most deeply identifies itself with – and it is about this spatial horizon that we still store vague paradisaic memories in some tear-moistened corner of our hearts long after we have stopped actually living on the plai […] Let us call this spatial horizon – raised and indefinitely undulating, and endowed with the specific accents of a certain sense of destiny – the Mioritic space.”5 Mountains are the symbols of permanence, solidity, unapproachability and eternity. We can find the concept of “sacred mountain” in the cultures of numerous nations. These mountains – such as the Greek Olympus or Parnassus, the biblical Mount Sinai and the hill of Jerusalem, Zion – ­generally indicate the closeness to transcendence and signify a connection with the divine sphere. Naturally, sacred mountains entered the national symbol-world of East-Central European cultures too. As Czech cultural historian Eduard Maur puts it: “The nineteenth century brought about not only the generally accepted Romantic aesthetic ideal of the picturesque mountainous landscape, with the unreachable exemplar of the Alpine landscape, but assigned further meanings to some mountains, particularly certain summits and solitary peaks, which made them even more attractive.

106  Symbols of Space in the Anthems It turned them into national symbols, by transforming them into realms of historical memory or sites of national myths.”6 A mountainous area as such can be a national landscape, the homeland proper, as seen above for Slovaks: for them the Tatras are a symbol of perseverance, they are a church and protective fort, the world of shepherds, who are also considered a national symbol. At the same time, their savage nature makes this area a native land where humans have to struggle for their lives. Of the peaks of the High Tatras, first of all, the Kriváň has a symbolic significance, as heard in the Slovak anthem: “Firs are still growing on the slopes of Kriváň…” The literary cult of the Tatras was especially rich in the age of Romanticism. On August 16, 1841, the representatives of the Slovak national movement, led by Ľudovít Štúr and Michal M. Hodža, set out on a tradition-making excursion to the Kriváň. Coincidentally, Vörösmarty’s Hungarian epigram “On the Kriváň” (“A Krivánon”) was written at about the same time. In a surviving contemporary copy of Janko Matúška’s poem we can read the title: The Slovaks of Prešporok, Future Citizens of Levoča.7 This remark refers to the students who departed from Prešporok (today Bratislava) and headed towards the Tatras, the true Slovak land. As Hungarian art historian Katalin Keserü noted, “The Carpathians as a mountain range that encircles thus defines Hungary’s territory had been imprinted in collective consciousness through nineteenth-century interest in history and nature, and the popularization of resulting knowledge of history and nature.”8 Hungarian collective memory ascribed a symbolic meaning to the mountain range of the Carpathians – the Tatras were seen only as a part of it or at most one piece of the triple mound in the coat of arms. In Kölcsey’s “Hymn,” it is the location of homeland-taking, while, together with the two “country-wide” rivers, it is also the geographical metaphor for the homeland as a whole. For Hungarians, the wreath of the Carpathians meant the complete historical country (thus the term “Carpathian Basin” became a synonym of the homeland). On the other hand, as Lucian Boia argues, while it is true from a Romanian perspective that the “vertebral column” of the Carpathians ensures a unitary national territory, according to a different approach – and here Boia refers to historian Alexandru D. Xenopol – this mountain range is responsible for the division of the national space rather than ensuring the unity of Romanians.9 This mountain range can be found in the poems of both Vasile Alecsandri (“Romania’s Awakening”) and Andrei Mureşanu (“Awaken thee, Romanian”). In both cases the Carpathians separate “Romanian brothers”; thus they pose an obstacle that should be overcome to achieve national unity. In Jovan Sundečić’s Montenegrin anthem, the “proud hills” appear as the key attribute of the country; in Vlado Maleski’s Macedonian anthem, forests constitute a fundamental element of the country image (“The Macedonian woods resoundingly sing”); and Tsvetan Radoslavov’s Bulgarian anthem mentions, in addition to Stara Planina, the Pirin Mountains, the region of Bulgaria that is next to and historically related to Macedonia. Typically,

Symbols of Space in the Anthems 107 some settlements in this area were named after the leaders of the 1903 Macedonian uprising (Gotse Delchev and Sandanski). Water is one of the element symbols; it has an ambivalent nature as a principium of destructive and creative forces at the same time. It is seen as the source of life, while it can also threaten us with a fatal flood. The river can be a symbol of human existence and destiny as it is meandering at a varying pace from its birthplace, the source, towards its destination, the sea, where its life comes to an end. It is a symbol of constant change and fertility. However, the river is not just a symbol of individual existence and destiny; it allowed and still allows us to “read” the characteristics of communities and the distinctive features of images of countries, homelands and nations. The sea is the place of primeval unity and birth, the symbol of the universe and the world’s end. It moves perpetually and embodies chaos and cosmos simultaneously. Our poems “use” all of these elements as national symbols in peculiar ways. The world of national symbols in East-Central Europe also includes one or more seas – for example, on the desire-maps of national glory or greatness (once Poland stretched from sea to sea, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and the shores of the medieval Hungarian Empire were washed by “three seas”). Since most of our peoples are typically continental, it should not come as a surprise that our anthems rarely depict the sea. The Polish “Dąbrowski Mazurka” mentions it only as the supplement of a historical reference. Responding to public demand, the sea, an integral part of the country image, was integrated in to the Croatian anthem only later. When discussing the possibilities for waters to become a national symbol, the literary cult of the national river should be highlighted. Although it cannot be found in every culture (obviously, this symbol needs proper geographical endowments to develop), it is an important form of spatial symbolism – a river which is suitable for representing the country and/or the nation as a whole. It flows through the homeland, so to speak, connects and unifies its lands, and its catchment area overlaps a considerable part of the country’s territory. Thus, it can be identified, on the basis of its various qualities, with the nation. One such river is the Tisza, which could be said, in the old country, to originate in Hungary and also to end its course in Hungary, while it also flows through the Alföld, the national landscape. To a certain degree, it can also be applied to describe Hungarian national character. When interpreting Petőfi’s classical poem “The Tisza River” (“A Tisza”), one cannot ignore that the image of the gentle and calm river that may suddenly transform into a raging flood corresponds to the trait, considered a national property, that Magyars can endure for long but, when they finally had enough, they will unleash their fury. The Polish Vistula River is a similar country-symbol, originating in the Silesian Beskids, passing through the two capitals, Cracow and Warsaw, and then reaching the Baltic Sea at a third major city, Gdańsk. Flowing across the country, it connects the mountainous world with the plain and the sea. In the nineteenth-century partitioned state of Poland, it linked the

108  Symbols of Space in the Anthems three territories of occupation: Galicia, Russian Poland and Prussia. Thus it could also be a symbol of virtual national unity. The Vistula, the “Queen of Polish Rivers,” has a richly elaborated image in Polish tradition. For Czechs, the national symbol is not the biggest river of the country, the Elbe, but rather the Vltava, which passes through the centre of the country and Prague, since it originates in Šumava, South Bohemia and – like the Tisza once did in Hungary – ends its course in the heart of the country, not far from the sacred Czech mountain, the Řip. The Váh River is seen as a Slovak symbol of fate, since it starts out from below the Tatras, considered the cradle of Slovakdom, and enters the Danube, which the Slovak nation-awakeners wished to see as the southern border of the dreamt-up Slovak Land (Slovensko). Romantic poets held that the troublesome course of the Váh, breaking through mountains, expressed the hardships of Slovak lot. A remark on Polish literature by Polish literary historian Jacek Kolbuszewski, quoted here from his study on the l­iterary symbolism of rivers, can be seen as applicable, mutatis mutandis, to the entire East-Central European region: “Therefore the emotional behaviour of the Romantic generation in relation to rivers seems to recall the geopolitical and national consciousness of this period. As this geopolitical awareness drew Poland’s historical borders with reference to the river, the poet’s identification with the homeland occurred first of all through the presentation of ‘national rivers’ in a similar way.”10 The second stanza of Wybicki’s Polish anthem specifies the hopeful victorious arrival, with reference to two national rivers of Poland: “We’ll cross the Vistula, we’ll cross the Warta…” The order of the rivers refers to the concept of the war of liberation that Polish troops would proceed through Galicia, that is, they could cross the Vistula on their way from the south to the north. The Vistula as a “national river” is the metaphor for the Polish homeland as a whole, while the Warta is the river of a major historical region of Great Poland (with Poznań as its centre, where Hetman Czarniecki also arrived from the sea). In Kölcsey’s “Hymn,” the Tisza and the Danube are the two emblematic rivers of Hungary and the symbols, alongside the Carpathians, of the entire homeland. Of course, it should be added that, according to the traditional river metaphor of Hungary, it is the country of four rivers (as in Kölcsey’s “Zrínyi’s Second Song”), which resembles antique and biblical traditions, and the silver stripes in Hungary’s coat of arms have been seen as the symbols of these four rivers since the sixteenth century (see e.g, the works by István Werbőczy and Miklós Oláh). In the original version of Antun Mihanović’s poem “Our beautiful homeland,” we can find only rivers as geographical symbols. One of these is a border river: enshrined in fog and mystery, the Una foreshadows the tragic fate of the nation. The cry heard from the opposite bank of the river is the scream of Croats, Croat brothers who live detached from the homeland in the Ottoman Empire. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the region on the other side of the Una was called Turkish Croatia; in the Middle Ages,

Symbols of Space in the Anthems 109 it was conceived as a territory that belonged to Croatia. The Milcov River, which marks the border between Wallachia and Moldavia, has a similar function in the two Romanian nation-awakening poems. Alecsandri’s poem includes one more small river of this kind: the Molna, whose short section was the border between Moldavia and Bukovina. These waters are the symbols of national fragmentation, the lack of unity, since the Romanian brothers of the two countries have to reach out across the river to shake hands. Mureşanu’s Romanian anthem also mentions the Danube as the river of which Romanians were robbed; it would be needed for the national unity envisioned by the poet. It should be noted that nation-builders conceived the virtual Romanian space as a territory bordered by three great rivers. As Lucian Boia writes, “The unitary geography of the Romanian people, which has continued to the present day, was elaborated in the nineteenth century in the image of a perfect, almost circular space bounded by three great waterways – the Danube, the Dniester, and the Tisza – a space supported and solidified by the vertebral column of the Carpathians which passes right across it. In the Romanian version, mountains unite while ­r ivers divide.”11 Two other rivers in the Croatian anthem are the Sava and the Danube. The prime geographical symbols of Croatdom include the Sava; Zagreb is located in the valley of this river (in fact, today it separates different districts of the city), and since it flows through both Slovene and Serbian territories, it can also refer to the close relationship between these three South Slav peoples. The lyrical subject entrusts an important message to the Sava, asking the personified river to tell everyone it passes “That a Croat loves his home. . . ” The Danube may refer to the relationship with the greater world, including Hungary, as well as the northeastern borderland of the Croatian homeland between Ilok/Újlak and Petrovaradin/Pétervárad. For Bulgarians, “Maritsa Rushes” is one of the most important poem-­ symbols to date. Its original four-line version was a military march during the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War, which liberated Bulgarians. Nikola Zhivkov’s short poem evoked the bloodstained Maritsa River as a “widow,” fiercely wounded (the word “river” is also a feminine noun in the Bulgarian language), referring specifically to the 1876 Bulgarian uprising, when blood covered the valley of the river. The Maritsa becomes a symbol of tragic Bulgarian fate. The river (the largest in the Balkans) that crosses Thrace has a significant tradition in world literature and is called the Evros by ancient Greek historians such as Herodotus and Thucydides, as well as Virgil in his Georgics. After 1878, the leading Bulgarian newspaper was published under the title Maritsa. In Tsvetan Radoslavov’s anthem, the blue (or, more precisely, bluish grey: sinei) Danube is mentioned alongside the emblematic Pirin Mountains and Thrace. The Danube can be found in multiple national poem-symbols and anthems of East-Central Europe, specifically in the Hungarian, Croatian, Romanian and Bulgarian anthems. It is a definitive, important symbol in all of these poems, with varying symbolic content,

110  Symbols of Space in the Anthems of course, and a common symbol of East-Central Europe, which is richly represented in folk poetry and the region’s literary cultures. Here the words of the Hungarian poet Endre Ady from his “Confessions of the Danube” (“A Duna vallomása”) spring to mind – a bitter prophecy on the eve of the First World War: The Danube’s banks are a sad lightning rod For half-people, semi-nationlets, Created for a pillory of shame. Where wings are clipped, where the tired sun sets Into a dusk of deathly silhouettes. “It was ordained so, it will never change,” Muttered old Danube’s chilly white foam. And through those wretched little countries stretched That old good-for-nothing, quite at home. And laughed, and ran away into the gloam. (Translated by Zsuzsanna Ozsváth and Frederick Turner)

Notes

1. Réka Albert, “Le paysage national: de l’émotion à la ‘pensée’ nationale et inversement,” in András A. Gergely (ed.), A nemzet antropológiája (Budapest: Új Mandátum, 2002), 90. 2. Ľubomír Lipták, “Tatry v slovenskom povedomí,” Slovenský Národopis, Vol. 49, No. 2 (2001), 146. 3. Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (New York-Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 32. 4. Ambrus Miskolczy, Lélek és titok: “A mioritikus tér” mítosza avagy Lucian Blaga eszmevilágáról (Budapest: Kortárs Kiadó, 1994), 126. 5. “From The Mioritic Space (1936),” translated by Anda Ţeodorescu, in Angela Botez, R. T. Allen and Henrieta Anişoara Şerban (eds.), Lucian Blaga: Selected Philosophical Extracts (Wilmington, DE: Vernon Press, 2018), 135. 6. Eduard Maur, Pamĕť hor (Praha: Havran, 2006), 11. 7. Miloš Kovačka, “Matúškova Nad Tatrou sa blýska – pieseň štúrovského exodu,” in Nad Tatrou sa błýska (Bratislava: Veda, 1994), 24. 8. Katalin Keserü, “Hegyek és mítoszok, avagy a hegyek változó jelentése a magyar művészetben,” in Levente Pap and Zsuzsa Tapodi (eds.), Közösség, kultúra, identitás (Kolozsvár: Scientia, 2006), 215. 9. Boia, History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness (Budapest: CEU Press, 2001), 132. 10. Jacek Kolbuszewski, “Szczęście wiosłem wyliczane – Motyw rzeki w myśleniu symbolicznym i literaturze,” in Rzeki (kultura, cywilizacja, historia), 1 (Katowice: Naukowe, 1992), 52. 11. Boia, History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness, 132.

10 Paths to the Rank of National Anthem

How does a poem-song become the national anthem? It has been implied several times that the road from the creation of the poem later adopted as the anthem to its gaining the honorary title was usually long. Obviously, it was even longer in the East-Central European region, since the absence of an independent nation-state prevented the poem-song seen as a national symbol from being incorporated into official state representation. We should also keep in mind that, compared to the coat of arms and the flag of the country, the anthem – in the whole of Europe – entered the group of “official” national symbols sanctioned by law, the constitution, relatively late. For example, during the preparatory negotiations for the 1868 Hungarian-Croatian Settlement, the Croat party placed emphasis on the claim that the symbols of the public-­ law independence of Croatia-Slavonia, such as the coat of arms and the flag, could be lawfully used – but they failed to raise the issue of the anthem. According to customary international law, a state, as a distinct ­political entity, has one coat of arms, one flag and one anthem. It is known that the Austrian and Hungarian public-law interpretations of the AustroHungarian Empire differed; according to the oft-quoted anecdotal formula, it was considered a federal state by the Austrians and a federation of states by the Hungarians – thus the latter side always had some tensions and resentment with respect to symbols and strove to emphasize their own independent statehood. It is reflected in the Hungarian “reception history” of the Austrian hymn to the emperor, the “Gotterhalte.” It is hard to identify those who prepared its Hungarian version, since the poets who translated it into Hungarian were despised and the Hungarian sentiment of independence was hurt whenever the “Gotterhalte” had an exclusive role on festive occasions. We must not forget that in the nineteenth century – as described above – the public in almost all communities adopted multiple poems as national symbols, which often led to a kind of competition or rivalry between these poems; political options, historical events and changes in collective memory influenced which of these was finally adopted, and the final decision was frequently made relatively late. The question of national anthems had been more or less settled in East-Central Europe after the First World War ended, with the emergence of new states. DOI: 10.4324/9781003318774-11

112  Paths to the Rank of National Anthem In this respect, the period following the Second World War and Communist dictatorship did not bring about significant changes in all of these countries – though there is no doubt that, as the Hungarian writer Vilmos Voigt concludes, “the histories of most national (or highly significant) anthems are quite complicated, loaded with unexpected turns…”1 I shall discuss these decades and the post-1989 developments in a separate chapter later. How can the road to the adoption of the anthem be concisely characterized? What kind of criteria should we consider in describing this process? Which factors promoted or prevented the selection and adoption of this national symbol? This is a complex process, from the point when the poem and the melody are created, to when it is made public through its acceptance by national public opinion, to a kind of “sacralization” up to legal regulation and its inclusion in the constitution. A peculiar interplay between political, historical, social and cultural factors was needed for the poem to earn the rank of national anthem. First of all, it should be noted again that the cultural phase of nation formation involves the articulation of the national self-image, the “search” for or “invention” of national symbols as well as their popularization and dissemination. Jelena Očak, the monographer of Mihanović, writes with a slight scepticism about his poem: “This song is a good example of political aggressivity and narrow-mindedness, since from the very beginning Croatian Homeland was seen less as a literary work than a means to be used in the Croat nation’s fight for its independence.”2 During this process, the particular poem inevitably becomes a national symbol, with all of its consequences; this context cannot be ignored by the interpreters, however much they regret that the poem is turned into a means often used for political purposes. A range of cultural institutions (from the theatre to musical ensembles and choirs), civil society, the press, education (textbooks) and last but not least the historical context (e.g., the revolutions of 1848 or the end of the First World War) could greatly foster the adoption of the national symbol. In this respect we can speak of the history of the cult of the poems in question. A cult can play an important role in integrating the community. Its practice requires activity, and mass events, festivities and commemorations all offer an opportunity to cultivate it. The singing of songs seen as national symbols often became a rite and a part of festivities. Of course, there were significant differences between these opportunities for various cultures depending on circumstances. Let us consider, for example, that Slovaks and Slovenes could establish their national theatres only after the First World War. Differences were also great in terms of education and textbooks. A peculiar case of such cult may be a counter-cult: for some of the national symbols, public performance was not permitted or advisable and for some reason the state power saw them as dangerous or perhaps even banned them. As to political background, it is a fundamental question when and under what kind of socioeconomic and cultural conditions a specific people or

Paths to the Rank of National Anthem 113 community could create its nation-state. This determines the possibilities of national symbols to be a part of state representation in order to popularize the state cult of the national anthem through official institutions. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Serbia, Romania, Montenegro and Bulgaria achieved – in several phases – their independent states, confirmed by international guarantees. In these countries, effective national anthems could be created with state approval. The situation was different in Hungary, which can be seen as a quasi–nation-state, or Croatia, which existed as an associated country of Hungary. The demand for legal confirmation rose in Hungary’s public opinion at the turn of twentieth century. At the 1903 assembly, member of parliament László Rátkay submitted a draft law on the anthem of the unified Hungarian nation, the adoption of Kölcsey’s “Hymn” as an official national symbol, but it failed to result in an effective law. In terms of conquering the public, it seemed to provide a better chance that the would-be national anthem was first performed on the stage: the different relationship with the receivers ensured that it could spread more easily. From this perspective, Tyl’s Czech anthem, Gaj’s “Croatia is not yet lost” and the Serbian royal anthem had a significant head start in comparison to, say, Kölcsey’s Hungarian “Hymn” or Mihanović’s “Croatian Homeland.” In the latter case, the date when the poem was set to music may mark the beginning of when it became popular. The first divide within the history of the cult of East-Central European national anthems can be drawn at 1848–1849, while the second phase ends at around the end of the First World War. It was especially the Historicism of the 1880s and 1890s (jubilee commemorations, exhibitions, celebrations or the Millennium in Hungary) that highlighted national symbols, including anthems. The third phase can be dated from the end of the First World War. The period up to 1848 can be seen as only the beginning of the anthem cult: although the poems and their melodies had been already created, they could only reach a relatively small audience. At this time our national poem-­ symbols – alongside other literary, art and head start scientific works – were laying the foundations in the process of nation-building. Of the five or six poems which have a significant symbolic role in Polish tradition, two were clearly in the centre of the canon. “Dąbrowski Mazurka” owed its significant popularity to the period of the Napoleonic Wars, the existence of Polish troops and the state in the years of the Duchy of Warsaw (1807–1815). But it was already sung in Galicia, a part of the Austrian Empire, in the late eighteenth century, and the post-1815 Congress Kingdom did not discard it either, Grand Duke Constantine (the son of tsar-­k ing Alexander, viceroy of Poland) sometimes had it played at military parades. The song achieved great popularity during the 1830–1831 war of independence. Wybicki’s famous march had myriad modified versions adapted to the occasion and date. After the war of independence, Polish émigrés introduced it to the whole of Europe. This is an aspect that belongs

114  Paths to the Rank of National Anthem to the connection between national cultures, which I mentioned briefly in Chapter 6. Mickiewicz’s classical epic poem, Pan Tadeusz (1834), with the important motif of Wybicki’s march, had a great role in the transmission of Polish tradition. Upon his return home, young Tadeusz, rambling from room to room inside the mansion, sounds the musical clock in its wooden case so that he could hear “Dąbrowski’s old mazurka.” And in the final Book XII of this work, people gathered to celebrate in 1812 the troops liberating Lithuania and sing the marching song together with the Polish soldiers. In the nineteenth century “God Save Poland” (its version transformed to praise the fatherland) could be an able rival to Wybicki’s march, since at a time when Poland was missing from the political map of Europe, the folklorized version of the hymn written by Feliński and Gorecki prayed for the free fatherland, while it also represented an important component of Polish national consciousness: Catholic identity. The fact that Kölcsey’s “Hymn” and Vörösmarty’s “Appeal” were set to music was significant in their rise to the rank of national symbols. Both musical compositions were created for competitions organized by the National Theatre. In April 1843, the jury announced Béni Egressy as the winner for the melody of “Appeal”; then, in April 1844, Ferenc Erkel won for the musical adaptation of “Hymn.” Cultural history also records the first public “performance” of “Hymn” on August 10, 1844 at the Óbuda Shipyard, during the ceremonial launch of the steamboat Széchenyi. This way these two Hungarian poems set out on their triumphal march to become national anthems in the most promising years of the Reform Era. Reasons for why Petőfi’s “National Song” had not become a national symbol with a similar impact should be obviously sought in the lack of a musical adaptation that is easy to sing. Of theatrical premieres, Tyl’s poem should be mentioned. As mentioned above, it was a great success already when it was first performed as a part of Tyl’s folk play by famous singer Karel Strakatý on December 21, 1834. Similarly, it was the stage that popularized Ljudevit Gaj’s nation-­awakening poem “Croatia Is Not Yet Lost,” since it premiered at the German theatre in Zagreb as an intermezzo in Joseph Schweigert’s patriotic play with a Croatian theme (Die Magdalenen-Grotte bei Ogulin) on February 7, 1835 and, according to contemporary recollections, it had to be repeated ten times during the performance.3 The Czech anthem’s popularity increased significantly because several versions were created, and it became an indispensable part of patriotic gatherings and the inauguration of memorials. In fact, it had no real rival, since Czechs were likely to believe Tomášik’s all-Slav anthem to be praising Slavic unity rather than Czech identity. Due to its various imitations, Tyl’s popular song created its own rivals. The cult of Gaj’s poem in Croatia was still unbroken in 1848 and in the era of neo-­absolutism, but later its influence began to decline and increasingly appeared in memory as a historical document of the age of Illyrianism. The historic events of 1848–1849 actually meant the first appearance of the modern nation in East-Central Europe. Petőfi’s poem sparked a revolution

Paths to the Rank of National Anthem 115 in Pest, while the odes of Romanians Alecsandri and Mureşanu were considered the “awakeners” of Moldavia and the Romanians of Transylvania. The Slovene Prešeren’s Toast was also published free of censorship. At the 1848 Slavic Congress in Prague, Samo Tomášik’s march with the first words “Hey, Slavs” animated participants – each group through a version in their native tongue – who gathered in the city from all corners of the Habsburg Empire (and from other places as well). This poem circulated on handbills among the Slovaks of Upper Hungary. Slovak Lutheran pastor Karol Kuzmány’s ode “Glory to the Noble” was also published in April 1848. It is elucidating to observe that the authors of the three key Slovak poem-symbols came from the Lutheran intelligentsia. However, the history of the cult of these symbols proves that this is the very period when the – formerly really sharp (even in terms of the literary language preferred!) – Protestant–Catholic differences within the Slovak intelligentsia begin to gradually reach a balance, and the three poems are increasingly interpreted as supra-denominational national messages. The Bach era and successive years in the Habsburg Empire appear in the history of our national symbols as the period when they are preserved and passed on, and in many cases the gestures of resistance and protest were linked to their being sung in public. The Hungarian “Hymn” was first sung on May 18, 1856 at the inauguration of Kölcsey’s tomb in Szatmárcseke. In 1859, on the eve of St. John of Nepomuk’s Day the police dispersed the Czech university students singing Tyl’s anthem on the quayside of the Vltava.4 Counter-cults created by the state have a particularly long history; for example, following the Polish uprisings, Wybicki’s march, like other Polish patriotic poems that became important symbols, was undesirable in the tsar’s empire. Meanwhile, Austrian authorities tried to expunge songs that recalled the revolutionary events from collective memory. These songs were usually sung at social celebrations, commemorations and leisure activities; thus their cult slowly spread. Mihanović’s poem was regularly sung by the students of Zagreb in the 1860s. The Slovene Simon Jenko wrote “Forward, Flag of Glory/Slava!” in Vienna, and after his namesake (Davorin Jenko) set it to music, its career began among the Slovenes and Slavs of the Kaiserstadt. In 1885, with the aid of Slavophile English journalist Alfred Lloyd Hardy, the English translation of the Slovene march was published in London in support for South Slav independence aspirations. “Hey, Slovaks” was an indispensable piece at Slovak patriotic gatherings. In the late nineteenth century, Tomášik’s poem was considered the prime national symbol among Slovaks. Numerous literary works and memoirs recorded the sacred moment when the song was first sung: “Folk music started to play, and Pitya’s bow could set fire to hearts with the great national anthem: ‘Hey, Slovaks! our beloved Slovak language still survives’…” read the pages of Ondrej Seberíny’s novel Slovaks and Freedom.5 Anniversary commemorations – of the poet’s birth or death or the jubilee of the poem’s creation – pose ever-newer opportunities to create the

116  Paths to the Rank of National Anthem foundation for the cult of our national symbols. A large-scale celebration was held in Prague to commemorate the 50th anniversary of “Hey, Slavs (Hey, Slovaks).” Numerous Slavic peoples sent their delegates to the Czech capital on this occasion. The central celebration was held on November 25, 1884, and several speakers highlighted the significance of Slavic unity and the merits of Tomášik. During the 1891 national exhibition organized by the Croatian-Slavonian Economic Association in Zagreb, Mihanović’s anthem was performed as a chorale on several festive occasions. This is the beginning of the qualitatively new phase of its adoption as a definitive national symbol. Its popularity was further increased when, in 1893, Croats who gathered at the unveiling of the Gundulić monument in Ragusa/Dubrovnik sang this song. Then the position of “Our Beautiful Homeland” was consolidated by the 1896 commemoration held in Zagreb to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the poet’s birth. A peculiar case in the history of Central European nationalisms is that of Bosnian Muslims or Bosniaks.6 The period following the 1878 occupation within the framework of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had a great role in creating the symbols of the modern nation. During these years, the symbols of Bosnia-Herzegovina, its provincial coat of arms and the colours of its flag were crystallized. Forced to face the challenges posed by the two emerging national movements, those of Serbs and Croats, Bosniaks had to seek the foundations of their identity under new circumstances, since they did not belong to the Ottoman Empire any longer. In the context of the Serbian and Croatian languages, which were very close to their own, it was their religion that could provide a basis for their identity. Besides, they could only look back on the distant memory of medieval Bosnia and the role they played in the Turkish empire. Thus, compared to the average Central European, the Bosniak “national awakening” began with a relative delay in the late nineteenth century. Multifarious writer, historian and politician Safvet-beg Bašagić (1870–1934) was an eminent representative of this movement. It is worth quoting two stanzas from his 1892 poem entitled “What is a Bosniak?” (“Šta je Bošnjak?”):7 What is a Bosniak? One small branch of the great Slav tree. But there, into his proud forehead carved The bloodstained legend of their heroic fight What is a Bosniak? Glory is his name Worshipped by the world in fame Once upon a time feared in Stambul, Vienna, Kosovo and fair Buda Castle… The history of the Polish anthem is plotted by an almost uncountable number of adaptations, imitations and varieties which were created in ever-newer

Paths to the Rank of National Anthem 117 historical contexts. When Piłsudski’s legions were formed in Galicia in 1914, they sang the marching song, of course, with their commander’s name associated with it. In the years of the First World War, when Polish hopes of the revival of their fatherland arose, disputes began about which candidate should be the Polish anthem. On May 3, 1916, Warsaw, which was occupied by Central Powers, held a commemoration of the 1791 constitution. During performances at the city’s Grand Theatre and Novelty Theatre the orchestra had to repeat the “Dąbrowski Mazurka” several times, and the audience rose to sing along.8 In the last years of the First World War, national symbols referred to desires for a nation-state and independence aspirations. When, in June 1917, Tyl’s play had another premiere at Vinohrady Theatre in Prague, the audience rose to join in singing the song of the blind fiddler.9 Meanwhile in Zagreb, in the Croatian Sabor’s historic session of October 29, 1918, the declaration of secession from the Kingdom of Hungary and the Austrian Empire was read, and representatives rose to sing Mihanović’s “Our Beautiful Homeland.” In Hungary, which lost a large part of its territories and almost a third of its Hungarian-speaking population after 1920, no one questioned the status of the country’s anthem. However, successor states often prohibited, through various regulations, the public singing of Kölcsey’s “Hymn” – even in churches. In the interwar period, the new states and reborn Poland aimed to consolidate the state anthem in a legal form. This was not necessary in Romania, which kept its royal anthem, while Montenegro lost its independence within the new South Slav state. Bulgaria and Albania did not change their anthems adopted before the First World War either. Czechoslovakia’s new state-national symbol was made up of two songs: Tyl’s “Where Is My Home?” and Matuška’s “Lightning over the Tatras,” which was codified in the decrees of, first the Ministry of Defence, then the Ministry of Education.10 Since Matúška’s poem was published in the mid-nineteenth century without reference to the poet’s name, the time came for philologists to clarify who the author might be. According to the ideology of the first South Slav state, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was the homeland of a “nation of three tribes.” The state anthem was formed in line with this idea, from three parts: the first stanza of Đorđević’s Serbian anthem was followed by the first strophes of Mihanović’s Croatian and Jenko’s Slovene anthems, respectively. In Poland, the circular, which prescribes for schools the four-stanza version of Wybicki’s anthem, was issued by the Ministry of Religion and Public Education only in 1926, while another circular of the Ministry of Interior declared it to be the state anthem in 1927.11 As mentioned, the popularity of the Polish and Czech anthems, was also significantly boosted by folklorization and a great number of adaptations and imitations. To a certain degree, perhaps, the “Dąbrowski Mazurka” can be compared to the Hungarian “Kossuth Song” (“Kossuth-nóta”): many variants were created, with the names of the first generals replaced

118  Paths to the Rank of National Anthem by new commanders during ever-newer wars of independence, and their basically folklorized texts were adjusted to actual circumstances. In the case of the Czech anthem, we can speak of a great number of “apocryphal” texts; a recently published volume includes a total of 66 versions.12 That is why the “canonization” of the anthem was necessary; thus, in April 1919 Czechoslovakia’s Ministry of Education and Public Culture forbade any arbitrary change to the anthem’s text.13 As Maria Delaperrière writes in her study on anthems: “A hymn that has prevailed over centuries is a witness to the cultural continuity of a people, while its change reflects the moment when this continuity is interrupted.”14 The original texts of East-Central European anthems have been frequently changed. There are fewer poem-symbols which have existed with the same text since their creation. Modifications could be made for various reasons and in various ways: in linguistic or stylistic terms, to make it easier to sing, due to a change in specific circumstances or to complement the poem’s symbolism for content-related reasons. The now-proverbial first line of the “Dąbrowski Mazurka” was modified as early as 1806: “has not yet died” (nie umarła) was replaced with “is not yet lost/has not yet perished” (nie zginęła); other changes were of a stylistic nature. The original fourth and sixth stanzas were omitted from the current official version. These modifications are not recent; obviously, under certain circumstances, images of the enemy (German, Muscovite) and the rejection of slavery were not found to be relevant any longer. Changes in the text of the Croatian anthem posed a complicated set of questions, since dialectal adjustments and stylistic modifications were necessary, while the Croat public raised the content-related demand that the poem’s symbolism should reflect the totality of the country’s landscapes, particularly the sea. Sometimes politics attempted to intrude into the formulation of the text’s final version.15 The first linguistic-stylistic modifications were made in the 1860s, while the Drava, then the sea were also added to the Sava in the late nineteenth century. Both modifications of Matúška’s Slovak anthem relate to aspects of content. In the fourth stanza, the poet urged fellow students at the lyceum in 1844 as follows: “Who walks as a Slovak, let him throw away his books/And stand among us.” This request lost its relevance because it did not refer to leaving school any longer, so the line was modified as, “Who feels to be a Slovak, let him take a sabre/And stand among us.” In 1872, Jovan Đorđević asked God’s blessing for Serbian Prince Milan Obrenović in his anthem. Ten years later, when Serbia was already a kingdom, the poet rewrote his poem slightly, omitting the second stanza and adding three new ones. The result was the country’s official anthem and naturally included “king” instead of “prince” in its last line. In 1903, after King Alexander Obrenović and his wife were assassinated by officers, Petar Karađorđević came to the throne as King Peter I. For a time, the country had no state anthem, although a competition was launched for potential

Paths to the Rank of National Anthem 119 candidates. In 1909 Đorđević’s, anthem is reinstated, with a modified text of the blessing: “King Peter, God preserve/The Serb people prays to you…”16 Of course, the state anthem was changed frequently. This usually happened after the Second World War, when changes occurred in the form of states, political systems or requirements for the national anthem. These will be discussed in the next chapter.

Notes

1. Voigt, “A modern himnuszok,” 2000, Vol. 3 (1995), 51. 2. Jelena Očak, Antun Mihanović, Nakladni zavod Globus, Zagreb,1998, 201. 3. Stančić, Još Hrvatska ni propala (Zagreb: Globus, 1989), 17. 4. Jiří Rak, “O čem se vlastné zpívá v naší hymne?” Dĕjiny a současnost (Praha), No. 6 (1994), 27. 5. Ondrej Seberíny, Slováci a sloboda: Pravda a poézia (1886). New edition: Dielo. Zväzok I (Nadlak: Vydavatelstvo Ivan Krasko, 1996), 50. 6. For a recent study that provides the most thorough summary of this, see Imre Ress, “A bosnyák nemzettudat fejlődése,” in Kapcsolatok és keresztutak (Budapest: L’Harmattan, 2004), 254–273. 7. Ibid., 254. 8. Wawrzykowska-Wierciochowa, Mazurek Dąbrowskiego, Wydawnictwo ­Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej, Warszava, 1974, 360. 9. Kde domov můj – Státní hymna České republiky v promĕnách doby (Praha: Úrad vlady, 2008), 39. 10. Rak, “O čem se vlastné zpívá v naší hymne?” 29. 11. Wawrzykowska-Wierciochowa, Mazurek Dąbrowskiego, 387. 12. Kde domov můj: Varianty a parafráze (Praha: Paseka, 2006). 13. Rak, “O čem se vlastné zpívá v naší hymne?” 29. 14. Maria Delaperrière, “Hymne national ou nation mythifiée,” in Hymnes nationaux de l’Europe Médiane, 43. 15. For detailed accounts of changes to the lyrics, see Tomašek, “Lijepa nasa,” pripovijest o hrvatskoj himni Muzički informativni centar, Zagreb (1990): 66–70; Očak, Antun Mihanović. 16. Pavlović, Knjiga o himni (Belgrade: Nova knijga, 1984), 175.

11 After the Second World War

To what extent national anthems were affected by the significant political changes in East-Central Europe that occurred after 1945 and 1989? Both historical dates represent milestones with respect to national anthems. I shall discuss the recent history of East-Central European anthems in two parts: first, from the Second World War to the decisive year of the transition, 1989, then from 1989 to the present day. The radical transformation of the nation’s symbol-world can be generally linked to the introduction of Communist dictatorship. The East-Central European region exhibited many similarities with respect to the lot of national symbols in this period, whose beginning can be dated – with the exception of Yugoslavia – as 1947–1948. At this point we can include the perspective of the postcolonial approach in the discussion, for dictatorship arrived mostly with foreign bayonets, and a metaphor system reflecting colonial existence emerged in the realm of national symbols. In the larger part of this region, Communist totalitarianism was equal to the suspension of national independence. Some of the national symbols were removed and modified, and new ones were created. This gave rise to the practice that on official festive occasions so-called internationalist symbols (“The Internationale,” which referred to the international Communist movement, the red flag, the red star, and the hammer and sickle) were placed next to – or in front of – the national emblems. The liturgy of state celebrations and events normally required that not only the national anthem but “The Internationale” and, in fact, often the anthem of the Soviet Union be played. According to the official argumentation, “The Internationale” represented the universal nature of the global Communist movement, but this “internationalism” often involved the decisive motive of loyalty to the Soviet Union. The relationship between self-declared universal Communist ideology and the national symbols of Soviet satellite states is an illuminating story. The new symbols of “people’s democracies” were expected to reflect the radical dissociation from the past, emphasize allegiance to the Soviet Union and, in line with ideological slogans, to signify the “worker-­p easant” nature of the proletarian dictatorship’s state. New state coat of arms, national anthems and holidays were created; although there were significant differences in DOI: 10.4324/9781003318774-12

After the Second World War 121 how various countries developed their symbolism, there was a general tendency to adopt Soviet patterns and repress their own national traditions. As a result, a strange situation sometimes emerged within the societies of this region, which resembled nineteenth-century conditions: certain national symbols were deemed to be undesirable by state power. On the other hand, as a form of protest against the totalitarian dictatorship and foreign oppression, symbols which drew a one-sided official interpretation and were sidelined or occasionally prohibited frequently re-emerged. While the situation could differ by country, the basic circumstances – especially in the initial period – were similar; thus, it is difficult to say whether it was accidental or not that, for example, in Hungary, the new coat of arms and national holiday had nothing in common with the country’s traditions. What is surprising here is that “Hymn” by Kölcsey and Erkel could be retained as a state symbol. It is a well-known story that communist leader Mátyás Rákosi personally asked writer Gyula Illyés and composer Zoltán Kodály to create a new anthem, but both of them turned the request down. Considering the history of the most recent phase of national anthems, the countries of this region can be grouped primarily on the basis whether they have preserved the traditional anthem, chose a new text as the national symbol, or modified the existing text during the decades of dictatorship which essentially lasted until 1989. A change in the form of state could obviously draw a caesura, since it would have been hard to retain a royal anthem in a republic. On the other hand, the phase following the fall of Communism is intriguing because, with independence, the theme of national identity re-emerged in all of these countries. I cannot agree with the view, rather widespread in Western political science, that this was some kind of freezer effect, i.e., that nationalism frozen by Communist dictatorship melted and escaped in the new situation. In the final decades of dictatorship, we could witness – primarily in Ceauşescu’s Romania and Zhivkov’s Bulgaria – the emergence of extremist nation-state chauvinism in the policies, ideology and propaganda of the state. On the other hand, it is undeniable that after 1989, old national symbols were reinstated in numerous places, carrying stereotypes that were believed to be forgotten. In most countries, vehement debates in public opinion and political life accompanied the selection and codification of symbols to be canonized; this period also brought about new constitutions in many places, which usually included the anthem as one of the national symbols in almost all countries. The situation that ensued after the Yugoslav Wars and the breakup of the second Yugoslav state, which urged the newly independent countries to choose or create their anthems, is another story. In 1945 renascent Yugoslavia began to change its form of state on the very first day following the end of the war. The first government of the second Yugoslav state was formed on March 7, 1945, and on November 29 the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia was proclaimed with six constituent republics (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia

122  After the Second World War and Slovenia). At the founding session of the federal parliament, representatives and cabinet members alike sang “Hey, Slavs,” the traditional anthem of Slavic unity, which fulfilled the role of the national anthem in Tito’s army of partisans already during the war. Therefore, it became the state anthem spontaneously rather than through official, legal confirmation.1 It was probably a matter of chance in most cases whether the status of the national anthem became uncertain or not. For example, Hungary retained its traditional anthem, and we can speak of a continuous tradition in the cases of the Polish and Czech national symbols too. The propriety of the anthems written by Wybicki and Tyl was not questioned at all; unlike in Hungary, no doubts emerged even after 1948. Although the Slovak anthem was preserved as the second part of the Czechoslovak anthem, here we should point to the textual change in the first stanza, where the student departing his school (the lyrical subject) asks his peers (and the receivers, the nation): “Let us stop, brothers” – for this version was thought to be more suitable than the original (“Let us stop them, brothers”), perhaps because they did not intend to hurt the feelings of neighbouring Hungary, which was already a member of the same “peace camp” at that time. Then in 1967 philological research (studies by Pavol Vongrej and Milan Varsík)2 verified that “Let us stop them” was the original wording, but this version could be reinstated in the anthem only after 1989. In Poland, the moral authority of the Catholic Church significantly increased after Communists came to power, and “God Save Poland” fulfilled a role somewhat similar to its function during the nineteenth-century partition of the country. Thus, the version of the refrain’s prayer which Poles chose to sing in churches was the one from the period of partitions, “Return our free Homeland to us, Lord!” rather than “Bless our free Homeland, Lord!” A change in the form of state almost naturally brought about changing the anthem in Romania. The Romanian People’s Republic had a particularly interesting anthem history in the Communist era. In 1948, “The Anthem of the Romanian People’s Republic” was adopted, with lyrics by Aurel Baranga (“Broken chains are left behind” – “Zdrobite cătuşe în urmă rămîn”) and melody by Matei Socor. Its slogan-like sentences summarized the official ideology of this era in propagandistic wording. The refrain glorified the new Romanian republic, the homeland of workers, peasants, intellectuals and soldiers. In 1953, a new anthem was adopted (“We Glorify Thee, Romania” – “Te slăvim Românie pămînt părintesc”), with its text written by Eugen Frunza and Dan Deşliu, while the composer remained the same, Matei Socor.3 This poem already included more aspects of a national anthem. The invocation touts the glory of Romania as the land of ancestors, but it also includes praise for the eternal fraternal relations with the liberating Soviet people. The text boasts of crushing the enemy and raising the flag of the fatherland towards glory. With a shift in the political situation, as Romania’s foreign policy slightly diverged from the line of scrupulous loyalty to the Soviet Union, a new anthem was needed again. After 1966 the

After the Second World War 123 first version of Ciprian Porumbescu’s famous poem “Three Colours” (“Trei culori,” based on the patriotic song “Tricorolul”) serves as the anthem. (Porumbescu also composed its melody.) The five-stanza poem praises the beauty and significance of the three national colours (blue, yellow and red) as well as the greatness of Romanian identity, and already reflects the change in the form of state when speaking of a “Socialist homeland.” In 1977, this poem was expanded, and its text was also modified at some points. Rumour has it that these modifications were supervised by the dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu himself, and in fact, he proposed some of the changes. In this version a separate strophe glorifies the party and socialism-building workers, while the poet wishes eternal life for splendid Romania so that it would shine as star in the sky of communism. As for Yugoslavia, the country’s new anthem had been sought for decades; while “Hey, Slavs” could fulfil the role of a state anthem, it was seen as temporary by the public, politicians and artists alike. From 1946 onwards, competitions for the lyrics and melody of a new Yugoslav anthem were announced several times, but no consensus was reached on a federal anthem. Actually, on November 25, 1988, the federal parliament passed a resolution on adopting “Hey, Slavs” as the anthem of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The Constitution of 1974 provided significant rights for the member republics of the country (in fact, for the two autonomous provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina too), and the new public-law status allowed member republics to create their own symbols. A republican anthem was specified only by the Socialist Republic of Croatia in its fundamental law: in keeping with tradition, Mihanović’s poem “Our beautiful homeland” became this symbol. After Communists came to power in Bulgaria in 1946, the country’s national anthem was changed, but the song “Hail to the Republic” (“Republiko nasha, zdravey”) was seen as temporary. Following a Soviet model, the new anthem “Dear Bulgaria” (“Balgariyo mila”) was adopted in 1951. Then, in 1964 a well-known and popular national poem-symbol was chosen for this purpose, Tsvetan Radoslavov’s 1885 poem “Proud Ancient Balkan Mountains” (“Gorda Stara planina”), also known from its refrain incipit as “Dear Motherland” (“Mila Rodino”). However, its traditional text was modified in line with the ideological requirements of the dictatorship; thus, the poem’s last stanza ensures Bulgarian brothers that Moscow is their ally and the great party will lead them into a victorious battle. It is difficult to determine precisely when the historic events that disintegrated Communist dictatorship in East-Central Europe began – or at least the date after which the process became irreversible. When discussing national symbols, it is also necessary to examine antecedents. Social resistance to dictatorship, which initially manifested in civil frameworks and various opposition movements – in more or less covert forms – held the representatives of power responsible not only for the lack of democratic freedoms but for the country’s independence and the representation of national

124  After the Second World War interests. In most cases, power of a totalitarian nature overlapped with political dependence on a foreign state, which could be felt in many aspects of the world of symbols. The use of symbols by these states also reflected that so-called people’s democracies aimed to legitimize the existence of the Warsaw Treaty Organization formed in 1955, i.e., the presence of the Soviet army at the level of symbols. In Poland, a supplement to the Constitution of 1976 that incorporated loyalty to the Soviet Union into the fundamental law triggered widespread protest among intellectuals. The symbolic forms of opposition had a great significance for opposition movements; suffice it to mention the example of traditional national holidays, such as May 3 for Poles (commemorating the Constitution of 1791) or March 15 for Hungarians. The protest movements of the 1980s – first in Poland, then in Hungary – preferred to use classical nineteenth-century national symbols that referred to independence. On August 31, 1980, when the agreement between the workers’ strike committee and the government was signed in Gdańsk, the workers of the shipyard spontaneously began to sing the hymn “God Save Poland.” During the martial law introduced with Jaruzelski’s coup on December 13, 1981, this hymn had a significant cult, above all at church events (for example, at the end of masses celebrated by martyr priest Jerzy Popiełuszko), with a refrain that alluded to independence (“Return our free Homeland to us, Lord”). In Hungary it was a part of the liturgy of actions organized by the democratic movements that, in keeping with traditions, the event opened by singing “Hymn” and closed by singing “Appeal.” Large-scale demonstrations against dictatorship in Czechoslovakia began in the second half of November 1989. In most cases the “programme” of mass rallies included the Czechoslovak anthem; as the Hungarian daily Magyar Hírlap reported, “Two hundred thousand people sang the anthem in Wenceslas Square.”4 The Czech and Slovak anthems significantly differ in terms of literary form, tone and melody, and the two were usually separated by a short pause. During a demonstration in Bratislava, famous actor Milan Kňažko (who served as a minister several times in Slovakia after 1990) raised the question of the two versions of the Slovak anthem’s text; he proposed a return to the above-mentioned “Let us stop them.” First of all, this “them” – as we know from the context of the poem’s creation – could be understood as a reference to the enemies of the Slovak movement. The second philological question concerned who “them” might really be. The definitive democratic movement Public Against Violence (Verejnosť proti násiliu) suggested that the poem’s word oni (“them,” persons) should be preferably replaced with ony (“those,” not persons; in the poem this may be understood as natural forces). Literary historian Peter Zajac, who participated in these events, explains this interpretation with the gentle, violence-free, “velvet” nature of the mass movement.5 The Republic of Romania adopted a nineteenth-century patriotic poem as its new national anthem as a result of events that occurred in

After the Second World War 125 the revolutionary days of December 1989. When an increasing number Romanian citizens joined the demonstration organized at Reformed pastor László Tőkés’s parish house in Timişoara/Temesvár to protect him from the Communist secret police Securitate, Andrei Mureşanu’s song beginning, “Awaken thee, Romanian” was performed several times. Its timeliness derived first of all from the initial words about awakening the nation from its “sleep of death/Into which you have been sunk by barbaric tyrants…” From this day, singing “Awaken thee, Romanian” became an indispensable part of protests that spread like wildfire throughout the country. After the fall of Communism, patriotic poems that had been consigned to oblivion for decades in this region re-emerged, one after the other. A range of national and regional poem-symbols (of varying genre and quality) became popular again throughout East-Central Europe, from Poland to Romania. One such example from Hungary can be the recent cult of the re-emerged “Szekler Anthem” (“Székely himnusz”) created in 1921 by writer György Csanády and composer Kálmán Mihalik. With slight simplification, East-Central European anthems can be categorized – in terms of their post-1989 history, continuity and changes – into three types. In multiple cases, there was no doubt about what the country’s anthem would be under the changed circumstances, since we can speak of a long-standing and continuous tradition, which was not interrupted even in the severest years of Communism. In other countries – as seen in the Romanian example – a classical patriotic poem was “rediscovered” and chosen as the national anthem. The third group includes countries that – partly due to political changes (e.g., Montenegro’s separation from Serbia) – decided only recently on what should be considered the national anthem. The second and third types clearly represent the interruption of continuity. Although this schema is slightly simplifying, it can really that some distinctive characteristics of this region’s past are more or less reflected in the history of such a fundamental national symbol: the uncertainty of state/national identities and the many contradictions of federal states that emerged in the region. It may be mostly but perhaps not entirely accidental where the issue of the national anthems was loaded with uncertainty. Of course selecting, sometimes discarding and at other times reinstating national symbols became timely again after a period when the state had an extremely strong intention to alter or rewrite historical memory. It is evident that, for example, Romania did not wish to use the symbols of the Ceauşescu era after 1989. Undoubtedly, the anthems of Poland, Hungary and Czechia can be assigned to the first type. The role of Wybicki’s march was not questioned in the Communist period either; all that happened was – as mentioned above – the removal of the third and sixth stanzas from the official, canonized version in line with earlier traditions (they were also omitted in the age of the Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw). After 1989, the anthem was codified in the Constitution for the first time; national symbols are defined in

126  After the Second World War Chapter 10, Article 103 of the Polish Constitution, passed on April 23, 1992, declaring that “Dąbrowski’s Mazurka shall be the national anthem of the Republic of Poland.” This had been confirmed by the 1997 Constitution, accepted as a result of a referendum (Chapter I, Article 28, point 3). After the splitting of Czechoslovakia in 1993, the Czech Republic understandably retained “Where Is My Home?” as the country’s anthem. The Constitution of the Czech Republic (Chapter I, Article 14) lists national symbols, including the state anthem, without reference to the specific poem. In Slovakia, a debate on the national anthem began before the split. Some participants proposed that two other poem-symbols of long-standing tradition (“Hey, Slovaks” and “Glory to the Noble”) could also be “nominated.” In the summer of 1992, for example, the daily Slovenský Národ cast its vote for “Hey, Slovaks.”6 Finally, in the new Constitution, the fundamental law of the new Slovak state specified (in Chapter I, Article 9, paragraph 4) the first two stanzas of Janko Matúška’s “Lightning Over the Tatras” as the state anthem. Similarly, Croatia had no doubt about preserving its traditional national symbol. National symbols are defined by the Constitution adopted on December 22, 1990, Chapter II (Basic Provisions), Article 11: “The anthem of the Republic of Croatia is Lijepa naša domovino.” In the case of national anthems that fall into the second type, it is in fact collective memory that is recreated and continuity restored. In Romania and Slovenia, traditional national symbols received the status of national anthem. The aim of symbolic relaunch could be sensed as an underlying motive for this decision. It was important for these countries to split with the preceding period and emphasize their independent statehoods. The decision also depended on what kind of rivals the selected anthem had to compete with. As seen above, Romania’s anthems frequently changed, the new anthem was actually adopted in December 1989, and the revolting people’s decision was later sanctioned by political power, which slightly resembles the case of “La Marseillaise.” In a decree dated January 24, 1990, the National Salvation Front proclaimed Andrei Mureşanu’s 1848 marching song to be the national anthem. After 1989, the decision on the Bulgarian national anthem was accompanied by disputes. Many argued for “Martisa Rushes” because they had a strong aversion to Tsvetan Radoslavov’s anthem, rewritten to meet the requirements of the regime. At the same time, it was undoubtable that “Dear Motherland” also enjoyed popularity. Finally, they chose to simply remove the strophes added during the Communist era from Radoslavov’s poem. The new Bulgarian Constitution passed on July 12, 1991 (Chapter 10, Article 168) decreed that the anthem of the Republic of Bulgaria was the song entitled “Dear Motherland” (“Mila Rodino”). In 1988 Slovenia – still a member republic of Yugoslavia – could progress at the same pace as Poland and Hungary in several respects. In February 1989, on the occasion of the Prešeren Day in Ljubljana, the poet’s “A Toast” was performed as the national anthem.7 In spring of the same year,

After the Second World War 127 the reform Communist leadership and parliament took resolute steps towards democratic changes and the greater autonomy of the country. In March, all three houses of the Slovene parliament approved a motion to supplement the Constitution, which proposed “A Toast” as the national anthem of the republic. The figure of this poet is itself a national symbol for Slovene c­ ollective identity. His poem was popular among Communist Slovene partisans during the Second World War, and the text’s reference to Slavic unity could also be interpreted in terms of Yugoslav unity. As a result, this decision caused some confusion later. However, its nineteenth-­ century opponent, Simon Jenko’s fighting march, could not be a rival to “A Toast” in terms of either aesthetic qualities or content. During the last session of the pre-­democratic parliament on March 29, 1990 in Ljubljana, the law on the anthem was passed, and representatives rose from their seats to sing the seventh stanza of Prešeren’s poem. Most Slovene people, stepping for the first time in their history on the path to independent statehood, were ready to adopt the poem written by “the nation’s poet” as the anthem because this lyric, representing the democratic spirit of nineteenth-century “Young Europe,” carries the important values of good neighbourhood and freedom extended to all peoples, including neighbours. This decision has not been altered by the Republic of Slovenia to date. In all parts of the former Yugoslavia, with the exception of Croatia and Slovenia, the selection of the anthem posed a problem. Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina had opted out of this choice for a considerable period of time. In Serbia, the traditional dynastic anthem was not found to be suitable, while “March on the Drina” (“Marš na Drinu”) – whose melody was composed by Stanislav Binički, conductor of the royal guard, for the soldiers of the Serbian army after their victory over AustroHungarian troops in August 1914 – was cultivated as a peculiar national symbol. This musical composition became extremely popular when a film with the same title was created in 1965, and young poet Miloje Popović wrote a poem in the manner of nineteenth-century patriotic poems based on the composition.8 However, in the years of the so-called Little Yugoslavia, the issue of the national anthem could not be resolved. Although it was debated by parliament on several occasions, no agreement had been reached. “Hey, Slavs” remained the national anthem of the smaller federal state. Only Montenegro’s separation changed this situation. In August 2004, the Serbian parliament passed a resolution that Đorđević’s old dynastic anthem (the version which seeks blessing for “Serbian lands and the Serbian race” rather than the king) should be considered the symbol of the state. Macedonia made a parliamentary decision on its anthem on April 14, 1989, when it was still a Yugoslav member republic. As a point in laws supplementing the Constitution reads, “The anthem of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia is ‘Today over Macedonia’.” Vlado Maleski’s short four-­strophe poem was created amidst the partisan struggles of the Second World War, during the night of 1941 New Year’s Eve at the poet’s house in Struga.9

128  After the Second World War The lyric praises the beauty of Macedonian lands and the memory of the so-called Kruševo Republic (the 1903 uprising). This poem has remained the anthem of the independent Republic of Macedonia. Bosnia-Herzegovina failed to reach a compromise on national symbols for a long time. In November 1995, as a result of a competition launched by the government, the song “You Are One and Only” (“Jedna si jedina”), composed by Dino Merlin (a popular pop singer born in 1962 as Dino Dervišhalidović) on the basis of a well-known Bosniak folk song, was adopted as the anthem. The short poem consisting of four stanzas praises, in simple and straightforward phrases, the “thousand-year-old land” (from the sea to the Sava, and from the Drina to the Una). Since the different nations of the country could not agree on national symbols, on the recommendation of the European Union, the symbols of Bosnia-Herzegovina were changed in February 1998 (the country’s current coat of arms and national flag were created at this time). Since Dino Merlin’s anthem had not been accepted by either the Serb or the Croat community, parliament declared in February 1999 a composition without lyrics (Dušan Šestić’s “Intermezzo”) to be the national anthem. In the period from June 30 to October 1, 2008 a competition was held for the creation of BosniaHerzegovina’s new anthem. The winner was a four-strophe poem written by Dušan Šestić and Benjamin Isović with unchanged melody. This anthem too resembles folk songs, and its final strophe places a strong emphasis on unity and the common future. It was adopted as the country’s anthem in February 2009. Montenegro’s popular anthem, traditionally seen as a national symbol, Prince Nikola Petrović-Njegoš’s poem entitled “There, over there” evokes common Montenegrin-Serbian history. Thus, the country chose another song for its anthem upon regaining its independence. During the debate on the Constitution, only the Serbian representatives stood by “There, over There” ; some political forces preferred Sundečić’s anthem.10 Finally, the adapted version of a folk song recorded in the nineteenth century, “Oh, bright dawn of May” (“Oj svijetla majska zoro”) was adopted as a national symbol. This has been the official state anthem since Montenegro regained independence (June 3, 2006). * When in the mid-2000s I endeavoured to trace the history of East-Central European anthems up to the turn of the millennium, I felt that the history of these national anthems would somehow come to rest. However, as the canon (be it that of collective memory, historical myths or a branch of the arts) and national identity itself are in constant motion, the actual position can never be considered the final one. All we can say is that to date, or more precisely, until the end of the year 2010, the history of East-Central European anthems followed the trajectory described in this book.

After the Second World War 129

Notes

1. Milivoje Pavlović, Knjiga o himni: jugoslovenski narodi u himni i himna među narodima (Belgrade: Nova knjuga, 1984), 65. 2. Pavol Vongrej, “Nad Tatrou sa błýska – prvý zápis a jeho kontaminácie,” ­Kulturný Život 1967, no. 16; Milan Varsík, “Tak vznikla naša hymna,” in Dotyky s minulosťou (Martin: Osveta, 1988). 3. These two anthems have been translated into Hungarian. Baranga’s poem, translated by Jenő Kiss, was also published in Hungarian in his Válogatott versek és műfordítások Állami Könyvkiadó (Bukarest, 1949). 4. Magyar Hírlap, November 21, 1989, 1. 5. Peter Zajac, “Stredoeurópské hymny,” Slovensky Národopis (Bratislava), Vol. 50, No. 2 (2002), 194–200. 6. Slovenský Národ (Bratislava), July 7, 1992. 7. Eliza Gerner, U sjeni stoljeća koje odlazi (Zagreb: Hena com, 1999), 188. 8. Pavlović, Knjiga o himni, 179. 9. Tvoreštvoto na Vlado Maleski: Materijali od simpoziumot, održan vo Struga od 20 do 22 maj 1998, edited by Vele Smilevski (Skopje: Institut za makedonske literature, 1999). 10. Jovan B. Markuš, Grbovi, zastave i himne u Istoriji Crne Gore (Cetinje: ­Svetigora, 2007).

Appendix Anthems and National Symbol-Poems

A selection of texts in their original languages and English When designating national symbols, constitutions often confine their descriptions of the anthems to identifying the poets and their specific poems; in some cases they also indicate the one or more strophes of these poems that are considered official symbols. This book discusses the history and motif-world of East-Central European anthems, particularly their role in the development of the modern nation, thus it presents their unabridged original texts and available English translations. As demonstrated by the analysis above, in multiple cases the initial lyrics went through minor or major modifications. Therefore most of the English versions below do not fulfil the requirements of poetic translation, since they aim to emphasize the content-related aspects of the original texts. Albania Asdreni (Aleksandër Stavre Drenova) Himni i Flamurit

Hymn to the Flag

Rreth flamurit të përbashkuar, Me një dëshirë dhe një qëllim, Të gjithë Atij duke iu betuar, Të lidhim besën për shpëtim.

Around our flag we are united, With one will and one desire, A sacred oath are now proclaiming For our salvation to aspire.

Prej lufte veç ay largohet, Që është lindur tradhëtor, Kush është burrë nuk friksohet, Po vdes, po vdes si një dëshmor.

May only those avoid the struggle, Those who are traitors to our laws, Undaunted is a hero through and through, He dies a martyr to the cause.

Në dorë armët do ťi mbajmë, Të mbrojmë Atdheun në çdo vend, Të drejtat tona ne s’i ndajmë, Këtu armiqtë s’kanë vend.

With weapons in our hands a-brandished, We will defend our fatherland, Our sacred rights we’ll not relinquish, The foe has no place in our land. (Continued)

Appendix 131 Se Zoti vet e tha me gojë, Që kombe shuhen përmbi dhe, Po Shqipëria do të rrojë, Për te, për te luftojmë ne.

For God has told the world, proclaiming: The nations of the earth shall wane, And yet will live, will thrive Albania. For her our fight won’t be in vain.

Bosnia-Herzegovina Dušan Šestić and Benjamin Isović Intermeco (2009)

Intermezzo

Ti si svjetlost duše Vječne vatre plam Majko naša zemljo, Bosno Tebi pripadam

You are the light of the soul eternal flame of fire Mother of ours, o country To you we belong.

U srcu su tvoje Rijeke, planine Plavo more Bosne i Hercegovine

In the heart, are what are yours Rivers, mountains The blue sea Of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Ponosna i slavna Zemljo predaka Živjećeš u srcu našem Dov’jeka

Proud and glorious Land of ancestors You will live in our hearts Evermore

Pokoljenja tvoja Kazuju jedno: Mi idemo u budućnost Zajedno!

Your offspring Show up as one: We go into the future Together!

Bulgaria Tsvetan Tsvetkov Radoslavov Мила Родино

Dear Motherland

Горда Стара планина, до ней Дунава синей, слънце Тракия огрява, над Пирина пламеней.

Proud ancient Balkan Mountains, next to them the Danube blue, the sun on Thrace shines, above Pirin glowing.

Припев Мила Родино, ти си земен рай, твойта хубост, твойта прелест, ах, те нямат край.

Chorus Dear native land, you earthly paradise, your beauty and your charm, ah, they never end. (Continued)

132  Appendix Паднаха борци безчет за народа наш любим, майко, дай ни мъжка сила пътя им да продължим.

Fell countless fighters for our dear nation Mother, give strength to us men their path let us follow.

Croatia Antun Mihanović Horvatska domovina

Croatian Homeland

Lijepa naša domovino, Oj junačka zemljo mila, Stare slave djedovino, Da bi vazda čestna bila! Mila, kano si nam slavna, Mila si nam ti jedina, Mila, kuda si nam ravna, Mila, kuda si planina!

Our beautiful homeland, O so fearless and gracious, Our father’s ancient glory, May you be happy forever. Beloved, how glorious you are, You are beloved, our only one, Beloved, wherever you are plain, Beloved, wherever you are mountain!

Vedro nebo, vedro čelo, Blaga persa, blage noći, Toplo ljeto, toplo djelo, Bistre vode, bistre oči: Vele gore, veli ljudi, Rujna lica, rujna vina, Silni gromi, silni udi; – To je naša domovina!

Clear sky, clear forehead, Gentle people, mild nights, Hot summer, hard work, Clear waters, clear eyes: Great mountains, great people, Red faces, red vines, Mighty thunders, mighty limbs; – This is our homeland!

Ženju serpi, mašu kose, Djed se žuri, snope broji, Škriplju vozi, brašno nose, Snaša preduć malo doji: Pase marha, rog se čuje, Oj, oj zvenči, oj u tmine, K ognju star i mlad šetuje; – Evo t’ naške domovine!

Sickles are reaping, scythes sweeping, Old man is busy, counting sheaves, Carriages are creaking, carrying flour, Bride knits and breastfeeds a child; Cattle are grazing, horn is heard, Oh oh it rings, oh into darkness, To the fire, youth and elders are going; – Here’s our homeland!

Luč iz mraka dalko sija, Po veseloj livadici, Pjesme glasno brjeg odbija, Ljubmi poje k tamburici: Kolo vode, živo kolo, I na berdu, i v dolini, Plešu mladji sve okolo; – Mi smo, pobre, v domovini!

Light in the dark shines far, All over cheerful meadow, Songs are loudly echoed by hills, Lovers are singing to tamburica: They dance the kolo, lively kolo, On the hill, and in the valley, Youth is dancing all around; – We are, my friend, in homeland! (Continued)

Appendix 133 Magla, štoli Unu skriva? Ni l’ to našiu jauk turobni? Tko si moleć smert naziva? Il slobodni, il su robni? „Rat je, bratjo, rat junaci, Pušku hvataj, sablju paši, Sedlaj konjče, hajd pješaci, Slava budi gdi su naši”!

Is it the fog that hides the Una? Isn’t that our people’s awful screams? Who prays for death? The freeborn, or the slaves? “It is war, brothers, war, heroes, Grab your rifle, take a saber, Saddle your horses, let’s go infantrymen, There be glory, where ours are!”

Buči bura, magla projde, – Puca zora, tmina bježi, – Tuga mine, radost dojde, – Zdravo slobost, – dušman leži! Veseli se, tužna mati Padoše ti verli sini, Ko junaci, ko Horvati, Ljaše kervcu domovini!

Gales roar, fog is lifting, – Dawn breaks, darkness runs, – Sorrow fades, joy arrives, – Hello freedom, – enemy lays! Be joyful, sad mother, Your brave sons have fallen, Like heroes, like Croats, Shedding blood for homeland!

Teci, Sava hitra, teci Nit ti Dunaj silu gubi, Kud li šumiš, svjetu reci: Da svog doma Horvat ljubi, Dok mu njive sunce grije, Dok mu hrastje bura vije, Dok mu mertve grob sakrije, Dok mu živo serdce bije!

Flow, fast Sava, flow, Nor you Danube, lose your power, Wherever you’re murmuring, tell the world: That a Croat loves his home, Whilst the sun warms his fields, Whilst winds lash his oak trees, Whilst graves cover his fallen, Whilst his living heart is beating.

Czechia Josef Kajetán Tyl Kde domov můj?

Where Is My Home?

Kde domov můj? Kde domov můj? Voda hučí po lučinách, bory šumí po skalinách, v sadě skví se jara květ, zemský ráj to na pohled! A to je ta krásná země, země česká, domov můj, země česká, domov můj!

Where is my home? Where is my home? Waters murmur across the meadows, Pinewoods rustle upon the cliff-rocks, Bloom of spring shines in the orchard, Paradise on Earth to see! And that is the beautiful land, Czech land, my home, Czech land, my home!

Kde domov můj? Kde domov můj? V kraji znáš-li bohumilém duše útlé v těle čilém, mysl jasnou, znik a zdar, a tu sílu, vzdoru zmar: to je Čechů slavné plémě – mezi Čechy – domov můj, mezi Čechy – domov můj!

Where is my home? Where is my home? If, in the heavenly land, you have met Quiet souls in agile frames, Of clear mind, vigorous and prospering, And with a strength that frustrates all defiance, That is the glorious race of Czechs – Among the Czechs, my home, Among the Czechs, my home!

134  Appendix Hungary Kölcsey Ferenc Hymnus (1823) A magyar nép zivataros századaiból

Ferenc Kölcsey Hymn From the stormy centuries of the Hungarian people

Isten, áldd meg a magyart Jó kedvvel, bőséggel, Nyújts feléje védő kart, Ha küzd ellenséggel; Bal sors akit régen tép, Hozz rá víg esztendőt, Megbünhödte már e nép A multat s jövendőt!

Grant each Magyar soul, O Lord, Blessings in profusion; Lend your arm of love and ward In dark war’s confusion. Bring a year of joy at last To our wounded nation, That for future as for past Has done expiation!

Őseinket felhozád Kárpát szent bércére, Általad nyert szép hazát Bendegúznak vére. S merre zúgnak habjai Tiszának, Dunának, Árpád hős magzatjai Felvirágozának.

To your cragged Carpathians You our fathers guided; And to Bendegúz’s sons Homeland sweet you ceded. And where Tisza, Duna foam, Roaring in their gorges, Árpád’s seed bursts into bloom From heroic forges.

Értünk Kunság mezein Ért kalászt lengettél, Tokaj szőlővesszein Nektárt csepegtettél. Zászlónk gyakran plántálád Vad török sáncára, S nyögte Mátyás bús hadát Bécsnek büszke vára.

You on the Cumanian plains Spread our cornfields blowing, Sprinkled Tokay’s purple vines With your nectar glowing. O’er the wild Turk’s trench you tied Oft our planted banner; Under Matthias’ grim troops sighed The proud forts of Vienna.

Hajh, de bűneink miatt Gyúlt harag kebledben, S elsújtád villámidat Dörgő fellegedben; Most rabló mongol nyilát Zúgattad felettünk, Majd töröktől rabigát Vállainkra vettünk.

Ah, but wrath upon our faults In your bosom blazing, Lashed the clouds with lightning bolts, Thunderstrokes amazing; Now the ravening Mongol’s shaft You let howl upon us, Now, yoked like a beast of draft, Turkish masters own us. (Continued)

Appendix 135 Hányszor zengett ajkain Ozmán vad népének Vert hadunk csonthalmain Győzedelmi ének! Hányszor támadt tenfiad, Szép hazám, kebledre, S lettél magzatod miatt Magzatod hamvvedre!

Oft indeed upon the tongue Of the Osman heathens Clanged their harsh victory-song O’er our bone-heaped legions! Worse, O country, ’gainst your breast Rose your own sons often, You, by your seed’s rebel quest, Turned your own seed’s coffin.

Bújt az üldözött s felé Kard nyúl barlangjában, Szerte nézett, s nem lelé Honját a hazában. Bércre hág, és völgybe száll, Bú s kétség mellette, Vérözön lábainál, S lángtenger felette.

In a cave the fugitive Fled the sword that sought him; Nowhere sees he home to live In the land that wrought him. Up the cliffs and down the dales Doubt and sorrow dog him; At his feet a blood-tide flails, Fiery seas befog him.

Vár állott, most kőhalom; Kedv s öröm röpkedtek, Halálhörgés, siralom Zajlik már helyettek. S ah, szabadság nem virúl A holtnak véréből, Kínzó rabság könnye hull Árvánk hő szeméből!

In this fortress, now heaped stones, Where once joy went winging, Lamentation, rattled bones Are the only singing. Dead men’s blood feeds not the free Flower of our achieving; Hot tears fall from the yoke-tree Of our orphans’ grieving!

Szánd meg, Isten, a magyart, Kit vészek hányának, Nyújts feléje védő kart Tengerén kínjának. Bal sors akit régen tép, Hozz rá víg esztendőt, Megbünhödte már e nép A multat s jövendőt!

Pity Magyar souls, O Lord, Racked to dissolution, Stretch your arm, of love and guard O’er their pain’s dark ocean. Bring a year of joy at last To your wounded nation, That for future, as for past, Has done expiation! (Translated by Zsuzsanna Ozsváth and Frederick Turner)

Macedonia Vlado Maleski Денес над Македонија

Today over Macedonia

Денес над Македонија се раѓа, ново сонце на слободата! Старо младо машко и женско, на нозе се кренало!

Today over Macedonia is born the new sun of liberty. The Macedonians fight for their own rights! (Continued)

136  Appendix Горите Македонски шумно пеат, нови песни, нови весници! Македонците се борат, за своите правдини!

The Macedonian woods resoundly sing new songs and news! Macedonia liberated lives in liberty!

Одново сега знамето се вее, (Од гроб станаа славните ѕидари) на Крушовската република! На Гоце Делчев, Питу Гули, Карев, Влахов, Сандански

Now once again the flag flutters, (From the grave will rise again the famous builders) Of the Kruševo Republic Gotse Delchev, Pitu Guli Dame Gruev, Sandanski!

Не плачи Македонијо мајко мила, Крени глава гордо високо, Македонија слободна, слободна ќе живее!

Do not cry, dear mother Macedonia, Raise your head proudly high, Old, young, men, and women, have risen to their feet.

Montenegro Oj svijetla majska zoro

Oh, bright dawn of May

Oj svijetla majska zoro, Majko naša Crna Goro, Sinovi smo tvog stijenja I čuvari tvog poštenja.

Oh, bright dawn of May. Our mother Montenegro. We are sons of your rocks And keepers of your honesty

Volimo vas, brda tvrda, I stravične vaše klance, Koji nikad ne poznaše Sramotnoga ropstva lance.

We love you, the rocky hills And your awesome gorges That never came to know The chains of shameful slavery.

Dok lovćenskoj našoj misli Naša sloga daje krila, Biće gorda, biće slavna Domovina naša mila.

While our unity gives wings to our Lovćen cause, Proud shall be, celebrated will be Our dear homeland.

Rijeka će naših vala, Uskačući u dva mora, Glas nositi okeanu, Da je vječna Crna Gora.

A river of our waves, Jumping into two seas, Will bear voice to the ocean, May eternal be our Montenegro!

Appendix 137 Poland Józef Wybicki Pieśń legionów polkskich we włoszech

Song of the Polish Legions in Italy

Jeszcze Polska nie umarła, Kiedy my żyjemy Co nam obca moc wydarła, Szablą odbijemy. Marsz, marsz, Dąbrowski Do Polski z ziemi włoskiej Za twoim przewodem Złączym się z narodem

Poland has not yet died, So long as we still live. What foreign power has seized from us, We shall recapture with a sabre. March, march, Dąbrowski, From Italy to Poland. Under your command We shall rejoin the nation.

Jak Czarniecki do Poznania Wracał się przez morze Dla ojczyzny ratowania Po szwedzkim rozbiorze. Marsz, marsz…

Like Czarniecki to Poznań Returned across the sea To save his homeland After the Swedish partition. March, march…

Przejdziem Wisłę, przejdziem Wartę Będziem Polakami Dał nam przykład Bonaparte Jak zwyciężać mamy Marsz, marsz…

We’ll cross the Vistula, we’ll cross the Warta, We shall be Polish. Bonaparte has set us the example Of how we should prevail. March, march…

Niemiec, Moskal nie osiędzie, Gdy jąwszy pałasza, Hasłem wszystkich zgoda będzie I ojczyzna nasza Marsz, marsz…

The German nor the Muscovite will settle When, with a broadsword in hand, “Concord” will be the watchword of all And so will be our fatherland. March, march…

Już tam ojciec do swej Basi Mówi zapłakany Słuchaj jeno, pono nasi Biją w tarabany Marsz, marsz…

A father, in tears, Says to his Basia Listen, our boys are said To be beating the tarabans. March, march…

Na to wszystkich jedne głosy Dosyć tej niewoli Mamy racławickie kosy Kościuszkę Bóg pozwoli. Marsz, marsz…

All exclaim in unison, “Enough of this captivity!” We have the scythes of Racławice, Kościuszko, if God wills. March, march…

Andrei Mureşanu Un răsunet

An Echo

Deşteaptă-te, Române! din somnul cel de moarte, În care te-adânciră barbarii de tirani Acum ori niciodată croieşte-ţi altă soartă, La care să se-nchine şi cruzii tăi duşmani.

Awaken thee, Romanian, from your sleep of death Into which you have been sunk by barbaric tyrants Now or never, make a new fate for yourself, To which even your cruel enemies will bow.

Acum ori niciodată să dăm dovezi în lume Că-n aste mâni mai curge un sânge de roman, Şi că-n a noastre piepturi păstrăm cu fală-un nume Triumfător în lupte, un nume de Traian.

Now or never, let us give proof to the world That in these veins Roman blood still flows, That in our chests we hold a name with pride, Victorious in battles, the name of Trajan!

Înalță-ți lata frunte și caută-n giur de tine, Cum stau ca brazi în munte voinici sute de mii; Un glas ei mai așteaptă și sar ca lupi în stâne, Bătrâni, bărbați, juni, tineri, din munți și din câmpii!

Raise your strong brow and gaze around you As trees on a mountain, hundreds of thousands of strong men stand; Just waiting for a voice to pounce like wolves on sheep, Elders, men, youths, boys, from the mountains and from the plains.

Priviţi, măreţe umbre, Mihai, Ştefan, Corvine, Româna naţiune, ai voştri strănepoţi, Cu braţele armate, cu focul vostru-n vine, „Viaţa-n libertate ori moarte” strigă toţi. Pre voi vă nimiciră a pizmei răutate Și oarba neunire la Milcov și Carpați Dar noi, pătrunși la suflet de sfânta libertate, Jurăm că vom da mâna, să fim pururea frați.

Behold, great shadows, Michael, Stephen, Corvinus The Romanian Nation, your great-grandchildren, With weapons in their arms, with your fire in their veins, “Life in freedom or death!” shout all. You were vanquished by the evils of your envy And by your blind disunity, at Milcov and the Carpathians But we, whose souls were pierced by holy liberty, Swear that forever in brotherhood will join. (Continued)

138  Appendix

Romania

A widowed mother from the time of Michael the Great Claims from her sons today a helping hand, And with tears in her eyes curses whomsoever, In such great peril, a traitor would become.

De fulgere să piară, de trăsnet și pucioasă, Oricare s-ar retrage din gloriosul loc, Când patria sau mama, cu inima duioasă, Va cere ca să trecem prin sabie și foc.

Of thunder and of brimstone should they perish Anyone who would flee the glorious place When our land or our mother, with a sorrowful heart, Will ask us to cross through swords and blazing fire.

N-ajunse iataganul barbarei semilune, A cărui plăgi fatale și azi le mai simțim; Acum se vâră cnuta în vetrele străbune, Dar martor ne e Domnul că vii nu o primim.

Didn’t we have enough of the yatagan of the barbaric crescent Whose fatal wounds we still feel today? Now the knout is intruding in our ancestral homes, But the Lord is our witness that we shall not accept it alive.

N-ajunse despotismul cu-ntreaga lui orbie, Al cărui jug din seculi ca vitele-l purtăm; Acum se-ncearcă cruzii, în oarba lor trufie, Să ne răpească limba, dar morți numai o dăm.

Didn’t we have enough of the blinded despotism, Whose yoke, like cattle, for centuries we have carried? Now the cruel ones are trying, in their blind arrogance, To take away our language, but only dead will we surrender it.

Români din patru unghiuri, acum ori niciodată Uniți-vă în cuget, uniți-vă-n simțiri. Strigați în lumea largă că Dunărea-i furată Prin intrigă și silă, viclene uneltiri.

Romanians from the four corners, now or never Unite in thought, unite in feeling Proclaim to the wide world that the Danube is stolen Through intrigue and coercion, sly machinations.

Preoţi, cu crucea-n frunte căci oastea e creştină, Deviza-i libertate şi scopul ei preasfânt. Murim mai bine-n luptă, cu glorie deplină, Decât să fim sclavi iarăşi în vechiul nost’ pământ.

Priests, lead with your crucifixes, for our army is Christian, The motto is Liberty and its goal is holy, Better to die in battle, in full glory, Than to once again be slaves upon our ancient ground!

Appendix 139

O mamă văduvită de la Mihai cel Mare Pretinde de la fii-și azi mână d-ajutori, Și blastămă cu lacrămi în ochi pe orișicare, În astfel de pericul s-ar face vânzători.

140  Appendix Serbia Jovan Đorđević1 Боже правде

The God of Justice

Боже правде, ти што спасе од пропасти досад нас, чуј и од сад наше гласе и од сад нам буди спас.

God of Justice; Thou who saved us when in deepest bondage cast, Hear Thy Serbian children’s voices, Be our help as in the past.

Моћном руком води, брани будућности српске брод, Боже спаси, Боже xрани, српске земље, српски род!

With Thy mighty hand sustain us, Still our rugged pathway trace; God, our hope; protect and cherish, Serbian lands and the Serbian race!

Сложи српску браћу драгу на свак дичан славан рад, слога биће пораз врагу а најјачи српству град.

Bind in closest links our kindred Teach the love that will not fail, May the loathed fiend of discord Never in our ranks prevail.

Нек на српској блиста грани братске слоге златан плод, Боже спаси, Боже xрани српске земље, српски род!

Let the golden fruits of union Our young tree of freedom grace; God, our Master! Guide and prosper, Serbian lands and the Serbian race!

Нек на српско ведро чело твог не падне гнева гром Благослови Србу село поље, њиву, град и дом!

Lord! Avert from us Thy vengeance, Thunder of Thy dreaded ire; Bless each Serbian town and hamlet, Mountain, meadow, hearth and spire!

Кад наступе борбе дани к’ победи му води ход Боже спаси, Боже xрани српске земље, српски род!

When our host goes forth to battle Death or victory to embrace God of armies! Be our leader, Strengthen then the Serbian race!

Из мрачнога сину гроба српске славе нови сјај настало је ново доба Нову срећу, Боже дај!

On our sepulchre of ages Breaks the resurrection morn, From the slough of direst slavery Serbia anew is born.

Отаџбину српску брани пет вековне борбе плод Боже спаси, Боже брани моли ти се српски род!

Through five hundred years of durance We have knelt before Thy face, All our kin, O God! Deliver, Thus entreats the Serbian race!

The anthem of Slavs and Slovaks2 Hey, Slovaks

Hej, Slováci! ešte naša slovenská reč žije, dokiaľ naše verné srdce za náš národ bije: žije, žije duch slovenský, bude žiť na veky, hrom a peklo! márne vaše proti nám sú vzteky!

Hey Slovaks! our beloved Slavic language still survives; While the faithful heart within us for our nation strives; Yes, the Slavic spirit lives; it will live forever Hell and thunder, ’gainst us raging, vain is your endeavour.

Jazyka dar zveril nám Boh, Boh náš hromovládny, nesmie nám ho teda vyrvať na tom svete žiadny: i nechže je koľko ľudí, toľko čertov v svete, Boh je s nami, kto proti nám, toho parom zmetie.

God to us our tongue entrusted, God, who sways the thunder; Who on earth then shall presume this gift from us to sunder! Though the earth were filled with demons, our rights assailing, We defy them. God is with us, His strong arm prevailing.

I nechže sa aj nad nami hrozná búra vznesie, skala púka, dub sa láme a zem nech sa trasie: My stojíme stále pevne, ako múry hradné – čierna zem pohltí toho, kto odstúpi zradne!

Though about us storms are raging, bringing devastation, Rocks disrupting, oaks uprooting, shaking earth’s foundation, Yet we stand like castle walls, our vested rights asserting; May the earth engulf the traitor from our ranks deserting.

Appendix 141

Samo Tomášik Hej, Slováci

142  Appendix Slovakia Janko Matúška Nad Tatrou sa blýska

Lightning Over the Tatras

Nad Tatrou sa blýska, hromy divo bijú, Zastavme ich, bratia, veď sa ony stratia Slováci ožijú,

There is lightning over the Tatras, thunders loudly sound Let us stop them, brothers, after all they will disappear The Slovaks will revive

To Slovensko naše posiaľ tvrdo spalo, Ale blesky hromu vzbudzujú ho k tomu, aby sa prebralo,

That Slovakia of ours had been sleeping by now But the thunder’s lightnings are rousing the land To wake it up

Už Slovensko vstáva putá si strháva Hej, rodina milá, hodina odbila, žije matka Sláva,

Slovakia is already rising, tearing off Her shackles Hey, dear family, the hour has struck Mother Glory is alive

Ešte jedle rastú na krivánskej strane, Kto jak Slovák cíti, nech sa šable chytí a medzi nás stane.

Firs are still growing on the slopes of Kriváň Who feels to be a Slovak, let him take a sabre And stand among us.

Slovenia France Prešeren Zdravljica

A Toast

Spet trte so rodile, prijat’li, vince nam sladkó, ki nam oživlja žile, srce razjásni in oko, ki utopi vse skrbi, v potrtih prsih up budi!

1. The vintage, friends, is over, And here sweet wine makes, once again, Sad eyes and hearts recover Puts fire into every vein. Drowns dull care Everywhere And summons hope out of despair.

Komú najpred veselo zdravljico, bratje! čmo zapét’? Bog našo nam deželo, Bog živi ves slovenski svet, brate vse, kar nas je sinov sloveče matere!

To whom with acclamation And song shall we our first toast give? God save our land and nation And all Slovenes where’er they live, Who own the same Blood and name, And who one glorious Mother claim. (Continued)

Appendix 143 V sovražnike ‘z oblakov rodú naj naš’ga trešči gróm, prost, ko je bil očakov, naprej naj bo Slovencov dom; naj zdrobé njih roké si spone, ki jim še težé!

Let thunder out of heaven Strike down and smite our wanton foe! Now, as it once had thriven, May our dear realm in freedom grow. May fall the last Chains of the past Which bind us still and hold us fast!

Edinost, sreča, sprava k nam naj nazaj se vrnejo! otrók, kar ima Slava, vsi naj si v róke sežejo, da oblast in z njo čast, ko préd, spet naša bodsta last!

Let peace, glad conciliation, Come back to us throughout the land! Towards their destination Let Slavs henceforth go hand-in-hand! Thus again Will honour reign To justice pledged in our domain.

Bog žívi vas Slovenke, prelepe, žlahtne rožice; ni take je mladenke, ko naše je krvi dekle; naj sinóv zarod nov iz vas bo strah sovražnikov!

To you, our pride past measure, Our girls! Your beauty, charm and grace! There surely is no treasure To equal maidens of such race. Sons you’ll bear, Who will dare Defy our foe no matter where.

Mladenči, zdaj se pije zdravljica vaša, vi naš up; ljubezni domačije noben naj vam ne usmŕti strup; ker po nas bode vas jo sŕčno branit klical čas!

Our hope now, our tomorrow – The youths – we toast and toast with joy. No poisonous blight or sorrow Your love of homeland shall destroy. With us indeed You’re called to heed Its summons in this hour of need.

Živé naj vsi naródi, ki hrepené dočakat dan, ko, koder sonce hodi, prepir iz svéta bo pregnan, da rojak prost bo vsak, ne vrag, le sosed bo mejak!

God’s blessing on all nations, Who long and work for that bright day, When o’er earth’s habitations No war, no strife shall hold its sway; Who long to see That all men free No more shall foes, but neighbours be!

Nazadnje še, prijat’lji, kozarce zase vzdignimo, ki smo zato se zbrat’li, ker dobro v srcu mislimo; dókaj dni naj živi vsak, kar nas dobrih je ljudi!

At last to our reunion – To us the toast! Let it resound, Since in this gay communion By thoughts of brotherhood we’re bound May joyful cheer Ne’er disappear From all good hearts now gathered here. (Translated by Janko Lavrin)

144  Appendix

Notes



1. In stanzas 2, 4 and 6 of the original anthem, the poem’s lyrical speaker seeks divine blessing for the king and Serbs and, in stanza 8, asks God to protect the Kingdom of Serbia. These had been modified in the version adopted by Parliament: the speaker seeks blessings for Serbian lands and Serbs (2, 4, 6), requesting God to shelter the homeland (8). The English text above is based on the poem’s original text. 2. Tomášik originally wrote this anthem in Czech. A Slovak version came only later, and by then it had practically been translated into all Slavic languages. Here the Slovak version is presented. The anthem has become generally known as “Hey, Slavs.”

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Index

adopted values 89–90 Alecsandri, Vasile 52 Altermatt, Urs 13 Anglo-French tradition 12 anthem archetypes 31–37 anthem cult 27, 113 anthems 1–4, 25–31, 61, 68, 81, 82, 111, 118, 122, 127, 128; “interaction” of 68–72; landscape of homeland 61–63; memory and value community 63–64; religious and denominational identity 80–81; of Slavs and Slovaks 141; symbols of space 102–110 Ash, Timothy Garton 11 Bačka/Bácska 15 Bánhegyi, Jób 32 Bartók, Béla 11 Battle of Kosovo 64, 88, 96 Bauer, Otto 9 Belgrade 30, 34, 42, 50, 53, 54, 57, 71 Bernolák, Anton 44 Bishop of Eger Johann Ladislaus Pyrker 48 Blaga, Lucian 105 Bobrownicka, Maria 15 Bosniaks 21 British anthem 27, 28 Brubaker, Rogers 7, 12 Bucharest 50, 52, 55 Budapest 11, 97 Chlebowczyk, Józef 9, 13, 16 Chrzanowski, Ignacy 46 collective identities 43 collective symbols 31–37 Confederation of Bar 34, 46 Cracow 22, 70, 97, 107

Croatian anthem 3, 30, 77, 78, 91, 107, 109, 118 Csepeli, György 19 cultural communities 4, 10, 12, 19, 20, 23, 29, 83 Cyril and Methodius 23, 33 Czech anthem 29, 36, 39, 62, 74, 78, 90, 117, 118 Czech homeland 77, 85 Czechoslovak anthem 122, 124 Czechs 21 Delaperrière, Maria 118 dissension 91–92 Długosz, Jan 32 Dobrovský, Czech Josef 45 dynastic anthems 35, 43, 47, 56–57, 68, 75, 80, 98 Eastern Europe 6, 8, 11, 13 effective national anthems 113 emerging national anthem 28 enemy, images of 90–91 ethno-linguistic groups 14 European anthems 35 Feliński, Alojzy 46 First Serbian Uprising 45 First World War 11, 54, 60, 110–113, 117 folk anthems 28, 55, 57–61, 68 Four Year Sejm (Poland) 46 freedom vs. slavery 89–90 Gaj, Ljudevit 15 Gdańsk 107, 124 Gellner, Ernest 9 Great Caranthania 22 “great migration” of Serbs 15 Gundulić monument 116

Index 153 Hajnal, István 7 Halecki, Oskar 11 Hankiss, Elemér 2 Harris, Erika 10 Herbert, Zbigniew 1 historical memory 32, 43, 53, 60, 96, 99, 106, 125 homeland 21, 28, 55, 56, 62, 64, 74–76, 78, 79, 83–86, 98, 103, 104, 106, 108; Eden, Arcadia and Canaan 83–88; by language and origin 81–83; as tragic space 88–89 Hroch, Miroslav 7, 8, 10, 13, 48 humanity: horizon of 83 Humboldt, Wilhelm von 15 Hungarian anthems 2, 29, 39 The Idea of Nationalism 8 Illyria/Illyricum 14, 21 imagined homelands 76–80 international community 30 Inventing Eastern Europe (Wolff) 6 Jenko, Simon 51 Johnson, Lonnie R. 6, 7 Karadžić, Vuk 15 Kłoskowska, Antonina 19 Kohn, Hans 8 Kölcsey, Ferenc 25 Kölcsey’s “Hymn” (“Hymnus”) 3 Kollár, Ján 48 Kopitar, Jernej 45, 51 Kościuszko, Tadeusz 96, 99 Krasicki, Ignacy 35 Krleža, Miroslav 16 Kundera, Milan 6, 7 Kuzmány, Karol 50 Lafont, Robert 44 Lancsics, Bonifác 32 Lipták, Ľubomír 20 literary genre 25–30 literary language 15, 16, 45, 51, 55, 82, 115 Macura, Vladimír 14 Magna Moravia 14 Magyars 1–3, 21 Marx, Karl 9 Matoš, Antun Gustav 3 Matthias, King 95, 99, 100

Matúška, Janko 51 Mažuranić, Ivan 97 Meinecke, Friedrich 8 modern anthems 27, 33 modern national anthems: types 27–30 modern nationalism 7 Mohács 22 Moltke, Leopold Maximilian 26 Mureşanu, Andrei 52 myths 19–24, 64, 89, 95, 98, 100, 105 national anthems 2–4, 25–30, 38, 61, 68, 111–114, 120, 122, 125–127; paths to the rank 111–119; see also anthems national communities 1, 2, 19, 20, 29, 48, 57, 63, 89, 90, 95 national consciousness 13, 21, 42, 45, 52, 108, 114 national cultures 19, 20, 28, 29, 31, 34, 38–40, 42–43, 47 national heroes 97, 99 national history 20, 48, 94–101 national holidays 20, 30, 121 national identity 10, 13, 19–21, 50, 55, 61, 62, 65, 121, 128 nationalism 6–17, 23, 72, 121 national landscape 20, 28, 102–107 national movements 7, 13, 16, 33, 35, 48–50, 52, 59–62, 72, 91 national pantheons 22, 23, 94, 97–100 national poem-symbols 3, 35, 61, 72, 85, 92, 113 national self-image 36, 62, 65, 68, 83, 89, 91, 112 national symbolism 20, 97 national symbol-poems: Albania 130–131; Bosnia-Herzegovina 131; Bulgaria 131–132; Croatia 132–133; Czechia 133; Hungary 134–135; Macedonia 135–136; Montenegro 136; Poland 137; Romania 138–139; Serbia 140; Slovakia 142; Slovenia 142–143 national symbols 3, 4, 19–30, 38, 39, 68, 70, 71, 106, 107, 111, 112, 114, 115, 120, 121, 125, 128 nation-building 6–17, 42, 45 nation concept 8, 13, 76 nation-state 7, 14, 22, 30, 53, 84, 113, 117 Naumann, Friedrich 11 Németh, László 2, 11

154  Index Nicolae Bălcescu 94 Niemcewicz, Julian 34 Nikola Jurišić/Miklós Jurisics 97 Obradović, Dositej 35 Örkény, Antal 19 Pach, Zsigmond Pál 7 Palacký, František 48 Pavlović, Milivoje 34 Ploieşti, Romania 61 Poles 21 Polish anthem 29, 39, 41, 46, 58, 64, 69, 70, 74, 116, 117 political-territorial tradition 14 Poniatowski, Stanisław August 45 Popiełuszko, Jerzy 124 Prague 48, 49, 50, 55, 58, 59, 62, 70, 97, 108, 115, 116, 117 Prešeren, France 51 Prizren 22, 64, 100, 103, 104 “Reflections on the Problem of the Nation” (Herbert) 1 Reggio 58 Ress, Imre 49 Reszler, André 22 revolutionary marches 57–61 Robert, Charles 22 royal anthems 28, 55, 56, 117, 121 Rupnik, Jacques 12 Sárosy, Gyula 71 Schöpflin, George 11, 13 second world war 42, 120–129 self, images of 90–91 Serbs 21 Seton-Watson, Hugh 7 Skledar, Nikola 19 Škvarna, Dušan 20 Slovak anthems 77, 88, 106, 122, 124 Slovak national movement 50 Slovak Prince Pribina 22 Slovaks 15, 33, 39, 50, 59, 72, 76, 80–82, 91, 104, 106, 115, 118, 126

small nations 6, 7, 11 Smith, Anthony D. 8, 10, 21 Součková, Milada 3 St. Adalbert 22, 31 Stančić, Nikša 12, 13 state anthem 26, 39, 43, 57, 117–119, 122, 123, 126 St. Bernard of Clairvaux 25 St. Francis of Assisi 25 Štoos, Pavao 49 St. Wenceslaus 22, 31, 78 Symbols of Hungarian National Identity (Magyarság-szimbólumok) (Ágnes and Gábor Kapitány) 19 Szabó, Dezső 11 Szeklerland 15 Szöllősi, Benedek 32 Szűcs, Jenő 9, 11 Thiesse, Anne-Marie 20 “Three Historical Regions of Europe: An Outline” (Szűcs) 11 Tomášik, Samo 48, 50 traditional anthem 121, 122 Tsarina Catherine II 46 Tyl, Josef Kajetán 48 unity 91–92 Varga, Pál S. 12 Vienna 15, 45, 49, 50, 51, 55, 60, 103, 115 Vörösmarty’s “Appeal” (“Szózat”) 3 Wandycz, Piotr S. 11 Warsaw 35, 46, 56, 107, 117 Werbőczi, István 108 Wolff, Larry 6 Wybicki, Józef 46 Zagorje (Hilly region northwest of Zagreb) 50, 78, 86 Zagreb 16, 49, 50, 59, 62, 70, 97, 109, 114, 115, 116, 117 Zamoyski, Andrzej 46