Literary Historicism: Romanticism, Philologists, and the Presence of the Past

Abstract

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Viral nationalism: romantic intellectuals on the move in nineteenth‐century Europe

“…These writers were influential across the various Slavic-speaking parts of Europe. And beyond the confines even of 'pan-' movements (pan-Germanism, pan-Slavism, pan-Celtism), there are examples of texts triggering nationalist shockwaves over long distances and crossing many cultural and political borders in the process: the Europe-wide spread and influence of oral epics like Ossian and Hasanaginica (Isakovic´1975; Juez Ga´lvez 1999;Leerssen 2004;Wolff 2001); the Greek klephtic songs printed by the philhellene Claude Fauriel as the Chants populaires de la Gre`ce moderne in the year of Byron's death in Missolonghi, 1824 (Ibrovac 1966); and the translation into English of the Polish nationalist historical novels by Henryk Sienkiewicz, which were inspired by Walter Scott, by the American-born Irish nationalist Jeremiah Curtin in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. 1 Thirdly, the mobility of persons was equally important.…”

“…7 But more important than Hoffmann's poetry was the fact that he was, precisely, a student -and a student in the newly burgeoning field of German philology. I have addressed the importance of philology for the development of national thought in early nineteenth-century Europe elsewhere (Van Hulle and Leerssen 2008;Leerssen 2004). I need only mention briefly that the pursuit of philology, burgeoning from 1800 onwards, with its habit of 'literary historicism' and its retrieval of medieval vernacular literature, provided all European nationalities with the historical myths and the sense of cultural continuity that were such indispensible ingredients for developing nationalism.…”

Romanticism, music, nationalism

“…Following Glinka's A Life for the Tsar , operas on national‐historical themes begin to proliferate (Lajosi ; Rabb ); their libretti often recycle historical material brought to public attention by Romantic‐historicist writers or historians (on this intermedial recycling of historicist topics, cf. Leerssen ). The Hungarian Ferenc Erkel is an early outstanding example; his operas on the national‐historical hero‐figures of Maria Báthory (1840), László Hunyadi (1844) and, above all, Bank Bán (1861) mark important stages in public mobilisation and Hungarian music history alike (Lajosi ).…”

“…In the case of our chosen example, the Hungarian Rhapsodies , that would mean: to see them as an early example of the overlap between ethnomusicology and ethnically coloured composition (brought to a peak by the generation of Percy Grainger and Béla Bartók), and in particular against the ‘intertext’ of Liszt's 1859 essay Des bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie . Written to accompany and to explain the Hungarian Rhapsodies, that book‐length essay not only argues that the proper national music of Hungary is that of the Romany (‘Gypsies’), but also positions Liszt's Rhapsodies as a quasi‐philological quest to retrieve, order and edit the epic roots of national culture – a practice better known from the annals of literary scholarship and Romantic writing (Leerssen , ). Liszt intended these rhapsodies as the musical equivalent of rendering to the Hungarian gypsies their own ‘national epic’ (cf.…”

De veelzijdige burger : Opstellen voor prof. mr. P.J.G. Kapteyn

“…Deze, vaak verkeerd begrepen, volzin wil uitdrukken dat een visie op het verleden, die bepaald wordt door hedendaagse morele of politieke oordelen, on-eigenlijk is; dat men het verleden in zijn eigen referentiekader moet trachten te situeren en begrijpen. Diezelfde behoefte werd tot uitdrukking gebracht door Jacob Grimm, die stelde dat men bij het lezen van oude teksten deze niet vanuit een hedendaagse mentaliteit diende te begrijpen, maar dat de lezer zichzelf als het ware 'naar de tekst toe' diende te vertalen: sich in ganz geschwunde Umstände zu versetzen (Leerssen 2004).…”