NASSR 2033 - Romanticism and Justice. March 30 - April 01, 2023. Huntsville, Texas, USA.

Abstract

Friedrich Schlegel wrote that a nation has a right to have a characteristic (Eigentümliche) literature, i.e. a language development (Sprachbildung), of its own. For many romantics national languages were in itself valuable as they offered a unique interpretation of the world. This presentation inspects how these notions were put into practice in Finland during the first half of the Nineteenth Century. At the beginning of the century Finnish was mainly a spoken language and only major literary works were of religious nature. In less than half a century intellectual debates on the possibility of Finnish literature and practical action enabled the creation of the Kalevala (1835/1849) – an epic poem of a grand scale.

What kind of Sprachbildung Finnish had in the nineteenth century? How the right to have literature of its own kind was justified? This presentation tackles these questions from the perspective of geographical marginality of the Finnish language, both actual and imagined. The unique nature of national languages was taken under a heated discussions by the early Finnish romantics. Moreover these debates were put into practice by Elias Lönnrot who compiled the Kalevala basing it on Finnish oral poetry. In this process the justification for the right to develop literature in one’s own language was tied to the marginal geographical location of the Finnish language. Especially important was the remoteness of the areas, where an oral culture of archaic poem singing was still alive. The argument was that the isolation from modernity confirmed its unique character.