Question

How did Romanticism seek to develop a particular form of nationalist sentiments during 18th century? Explain. 

Answer 1

(i) Culture played a vital role in creating the idea of the nation: art and poetry, stories and music helped express and arouse nationalist feelings. Romantic artists and poets made deliberate efforts to create a sense of shared collective heritage, a common cultural past as the basis of a nation.

(ii) The German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder stated that true German culture was to be discovered among the common people. It was through folk songs, folk poetry and folk dances that the true spirit of nation was popularised. So collecting and recording these forms of folk culture was essential to the project of nation-building.

The French painter Delacroix depicted an incident through his painting in which 20,000 Greeks were assumed to have been killed by Turks. By dramatising the incident and focusing on the suffering of women and children Delacroix wanted to appeal to the emotions of the spectators and create sympathy for the Greeks.

Karol Kurpinski celebrated the national struggle through his operas and music, turning folk dances like the polonaise and mazurka into nationalist symbols.

(iii) Language played an important role in developing nationalist sentiments. Regional languages had always been an obstacle in the unification of a country. To overcome it, a common national language was adopted. The Polish language was forced out of schools and the Russian language was made obligatory everywhere.

(iv) In 1831, an armed rebellion against Russian rule took place but it was crushed. After the failure of this rebellion, members of the clergy in Poland began to use language as a weapon of national resistance. Polish became a common language in church gatherings and all religious instruction. As a result, several priests and bishops were put in jail by the Russian authorities as punishment for their refusal to preach in Russian. The use of Polish came to be seen as a symbol of the struggle against Russian dominance.

Answer 2

The development of nationalism did not come about only through wars and territorial expansion. Culture played an important role in creating the idea of the nation: art and poetry, stories and music helped express and shape nationalist feelings. Romanticism was a cultural movement which sought to develop a particular form of nationalist sentiment. Romantic artists and poets generally became strong critics of reason and science in their glorified forms. The Romanticists dwelt more on emotions, intuition and mystical feelings. They were aiming at creating a sense of shared collective heritage and common cultural part to serve as the basis of a nation.

German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (1744 – 1803), a Romantic, claimed that true German culture was to be discovered among the common people — das volk. He claimed that folk songs, folk poetry and folk dances held the true spirit of the nation (Volksgeist). He encouraged collecting and recording these forms of folk culture as essential to the nation-building process.

The emphasis on vernacular language and the collection of local folklore, as the Grimm brothers (Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in 1812) did, was not just to recover an ancient national spirit, but also to carry the modern nationalist message to large audiences who were mostly illiterate. Even though Poland no longer existed as an independent territory, national feelings were kept alive there through music and language.