Reciprocity between the Various Tribes and Dialects of the Slavic Nation

Jan Kollar's Literary Nationalism

Ján Kollár’s Literary Nationalism Herder, Kollár, and Slavic Reciprocity Ján Kollár, Lutheran pastor, author of the epic poem Sláwy dcera, polemicist, educational reformer, folk-song collector, and national awakener, transformed Slavic national life in the early years of the nineteenth century. Kollár was a true Pan-Slav, and his network of contacts included not only other Slovaks, but South Slavs, Czechs, Russians, Lusatians, and Poles. His ideas also spread throughout the Slavic world. His idea of the nation, based on his idiosyncratic understanding of the national language, affected subsequent generations of nationalists in many different parts of the Slavic world, particularly among Croats, Czechs, and Slovaks. I am pleased to introduce to an English-speaking audience Kollár’s most important prose work, Reciprocity Between the Various Tribes and Dialects of the Slavic Nation, [hereafter, Reciprocity]. Despite Kollár’s importance to Slavic history, his works have seldom attracted attention in the anglophone world. The most detailed account is an analysis by Peter Black, who in 1975 briefly summarized both Kollár’s Reciprocity and Ľudovít Štúr’s Slavdom and the World of the Future in a single volume. This scholarly neglect probably derives from the national subdivisions inside Slavic studies, both historical and literary . Several Czech thinkers treat “Kollář” as a sort of honorary Czech: Tomáš G. Masaryk, the first president of Czechoslovakia, wrote that “as our first awakener, he is Czech, but he was born in Hungary.” 1 This has affected his presentation in the anglophone world. In 1919, Otto Kotouc published English translations of Kollár’s poetry in Boston: 2 Kotouc described this volume as “translations from the Czecho-Slovak,” but the Library of Congress classified it as “Czech Poetry—English translations .” Kollár’s birthplace, Mošovce, lies in the center of the Slovak 1 Tomaš G. Masaryk, Česká otázka (1894; repr., Prague: Nakladatelství Svoboda, 1990), 55. 2 Otto Kotouc, Songs of the Slav: Translations from the Czecho-Slovak (Boston: The Poet Lore Company, c. 1919). 2 ALEXANDER MAXWELL Republic, and Slovak scholars claim Kollár as a Slovak. LusatianSorbian , Serbian, Croatian, and Slovene historians discuss Kollár’s influence on the Sorbs, Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. None of these national approaches, however, do justice to Kollár’s life or thought: to understand Kollár’s impact on the Slavic world, we must transcend contemporary national categories. Kollár’s public life was devoted to the idea that “All Slavs are one single nation, and have one single language.” Kollár was well informed about the Slavic world, and was aware that it contained diverse literature , speech, religion, culture, history, and tradition. Indeed, he cherished that diversity, though he may have underestimated its divisiveness. Nevertheless, Kollár believed in the essential unity of all Slavs. While scholars normally describe this vision of Slavic unity with the term “pan-Slavism,” Kollár himself described his vision of the Slavic nation, his vision of its destiny, and its plan to promote its greatness, as vzájemnost, a Czech word which Kollár glossed into German as Wechselseitigkeit and into Latin as reciprocitas. 3 Care must be taken in translating this key term into English. Some scholars, including Owen Johnson , have rendered vzájemnosť as “mutuality.” 4 Peter Black’s summary of Kollár’s thought used the term “solidarity.” 5 These translations, however , are eccentric. Robert Pynsent, perhaps the deepest anglophone scholar to discuss Kollár, speaks of “Slav Reciprocity,” or simply a cap3 Ljudevit Gaj’s “Odgovor” (Response) also gave reciprocitas as a translation, and incidentally translated “znaimnost” into German as Gegenseitigkeit, not Wechselseitigkeit. See Ljudevit Gaj, “Listi dvih slavonskih domorodcev o pravopisu ilirskom,” Danica Horvatska, Slavonska i Dalmatinska 1, no. 31 (1835): 122; Ljudevit Gaj, Sbirka někojih rěčih, koje su ili u gornoj ili u dolnjoj Iliri pomanje poznane (Zagreb: Franji Suppanu, 1835), 21. 4 Owen Johnson, “Losing Faith: The Slovak-Hungarian Constitutional Struggle, 1906–1914,” in Cultures and Nations of Central and Eastern Europe: Essays in Honor of Roman Szporluk, ed. Zvi Gitelman et al. (Cambridge, MA: Ukrainian Research Institute, 2000), 293–312, here 301; Duncan Wilson, The Life and Times of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, 1787–1864: Literacy, Literature and National Independence in Serbia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970; Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, 1986), 301; Josef Kalvoda, The Genesis of Czechoslovakia (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1986), 16. 5 Peter Black, Kollár and Štúr: Romantic and Post...