Формы национальной идентичности и неоформленность инаковости
Forms of national identity and unformedness of otherness

Summary/Abstract: At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries the small nations began to identify themselves on the grounds of their native language. The Czech, Slovak and Hungarian languages, however, were not prepared for this task. Therefore, the small nations wishing to identify themselves in this new way, tried to solve some of the problems simply by skipping them. This resulted in creation of myths, in a Romantic understanding of the notion nation. An appropriate example for this are the works of Berzsenyi (1776-1836) and Kollár (17831852). At the background of their considerable poetic oeuvre we find the same Romantic interpretation of the nation. Their exaggerations are similar even if they had their own separate way in literature. It would be interesting to know what they would have said to each other, if they had met, let’s say, in 1830 in Pest-Buda. Both of them found a classical poetic form for the expression of the new idea still in the process of formation: Berzsenyi the classical stanza structure, Kollár the sonnet. The ideas of freedom and nation can appear in a poem only in words and symbols, according to the rules of the language. Both poets wanted to awaken their nation from a „state of sleeping”. They wanted to use the words „I” and „you” interchangeably. At the end of their career both of them were taken with some pseudoscientific ideas. They tried to prove the originality and European significance of their culture and nation.

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