Zdeněk Hrbata
‘Slav’ Italy and ‘our ancestors the Gauls’ – a comparative view of some Slavomanic and Celtomanic constructs
The blending of visionary imagination, romantic philology and mythologizing narrative resulted in some very special all-inclusive ideas emerging during the 18th and 19th century regarding the European nations of antiquity, who were frequently credited with glorious histories and extraordinary qualities and missions. As part of the homogeneous representation of ‘ancestors’ to bolster the prestige of modern-era nations or to legitimize new ideologies and political struggles, concepts or constructs of the Slavs and the Celts are the focus of our attention. Characteristic of Cestopis (1843) by Jan Kollár is both a stenuous quest to find the presence and various traces of the Slavs in upper Italy and an attempt to piece together a picture of this erstwhile Slav presence. This idea of a ‘Slav’ Italy and the instruments and epistemological forms (etymology, archeology and ideological discourse) that helped to create it, is contrasted with contemporary theories regarding the Celts as the aboriginal population of Europe, ideological representations of the Gauls as the ancestors of the French, mystifying strategies for seeking out roots and cultural polarizations that had already been criticized by Voltaire.
design by Bedřich Vémola
