Ľubice Schmarcová
Romantic subjectivity versus the National Revival project
Romanticism as an artistic movement constituted on the basis of heightened subjectivity and marked individuality, often with irrational tendencies, endured considerably more difficult conditions in the environment of the Slovak national movement, which insisted on presenting its national project and the axiology attributed to it within the framework of tribal psychology. Štúr's conception of Slavic poetry had the ambition to become a set of normative directives challenging the dominant position of the individual over the sovereign community of the nation. His project involved a reversion from the dynamic Hegelian system of antitheses to Herder's veneration of the "centre", the ideal becoming the standard in his conception. Taking the poetry of the emblematic Slovak Romantic poet Janko Kráľ as an example, the paper reveals the coexistence of a double literary standard and nationalist tendencies to defend the ideal of national poetry against destructive "Western" trends, which in this case were embodied by Byronism, though the poet succeeded in artistically disrupting this National Revival-constructed ideological monolith. Based on the example of Janko Kráľ, this paper presents various rebellion options against society and ideological diktats and the individual's deep subjectively experienced conflict with the outside world, which is accompanied by moments of isolation and loneliness experienced by the exceptional romantic subject, leading either to Weltschmerz, an almost cosmic pessimism, melancholy and irony, or to a tragically heroic gesture of individual rebellion against the structures of this world (not only secular, but also divine). He sees Byronism as a manifestation of romantic secularization, a tendency towards skepticism, a turn from celebration to despair, from the idyllic to agony, as individual experience brings with it satiety, fatigue and emptiness. However insignificant it was, the emergence of Byronism in the Slovak environment was an expression of revolt against Štúr's aesthetic directives and the project of constructing a Slovak nation.
Keywords: Romanticism - individualism - Byronism - national movement - National Revival ideology
design by Bedřich Vémola
