How are people of other European nations represented in literature of your country?

9 comments

1. Polish literature (at least until WW2) focuses on Poland and Polish people. I’ve been a literature nerd in high school but I can’t really recall anything where another nations were represented. The only thing that comes to my mind is that Russia has been considered really, really bad ever since partitions and it’s seen in romanticism in Polish literature, where Russia is depicted as the worst oppressor and I think we all know why is that.

2. While Europe’s eye is fix’d on mighty things,
   The fate of Empires and the fall of Kings;
   While quacks of State must each produce his plan,
   And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
   Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
   The Rights of Woman merit some attention.

   ~Robert Burns, 1792

3. Usually portrayed in the same way as the Russians, but with an accent

4. In Faust I, the commonly regarded finest work of German literature, Goethe dedicates two pages to shitting on France – and Napoleon in particular.

   Being a man of Germany’s enlightenment, Goethe saw Napoleon crowning himself as Emperor as a personal betrayal, and reserved a table at Walpurgis Night, or the witches’ sabbath, for his defeated Marshals.

5. Some national literature about Portugal is very self-aggrandising and lustful for a past that was.

   The only proper literary mention of multiple nations I can think of right now is in Lusíadas (think Illiad, but Portuguese, written in 1572) is a couple of stanzas of complimenting and aggrandising each of the European powers at the time one by one, only to then place the Portuguese above them all even higher. Other self aggrandising works are more comparative of past empires than contemporary nations.

   But I suspect these are the exceptions and most other comparisons are more self-deprecating and even self-loathing.

6. “The English will never develop into a nation of philosophers. They will always prefer instinct to logic and character to intelligence. But they must get rid of their downright comtempt for ‘cleverness’. They cannot afford it any longer. They must grow less tolerant of ugliness, and mentally more adventurous. And they must stop despising foreigners. They are Europeans and ought to be aware of it.”

   -George Orwell the Lion and the Unicorn

   I get that this is more a quote about the UK and England, however I think the way he writes about England also tells us a lot about how he views Europe. More intellectual, less snobbish in terms of background.

7. One time Petrarch absolutely enraged with a French man wrote “Invectiva contra eum qui maledixit Italiae”. I don’t remember really well, but I think the French man in question, Hesdin, had supported the stay of the pope in Avignon. The text is full of great burns. One of them goes kind of like this ” Yes Rome has fallen and has been impaired by the loss of the papacy, but this was only possible because Rome was already important, how could Avignone possibly fall, if it is already nothing.”

   There is even better I will go and search for a link and add it.

   Invectiva contra eum qui maledixit Italiam – Wikisource
   https://la.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Invectiva_contra_eum_qui_maledixit_Italiam

   Here a much better explanation that I could ever give

   Grover Furr, “France vs. Italy: French Literary Nationalism in ‘Petrarch’s Last Controversy’ and a Humanist Debate of ca. 1395.”
   https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/pmr.html

   Keeping with our favourite targets, the french, there are other amusing stories. Benvenuto Cellini a great florentine artist once wrote in his diary about an exchange with a French woman that had accused him of requiring anal sex from her, insisting that was the “Italian way”. He responded by saying he was clueless about the practice and adding “How can it be the Italian way if you know about it and I don’t, it must be the French way”.

   Vita di Benvenuto Cellini: scritta da lui medesimo tratta dall’autografo – Benvenuto Cellini – Google Libri
   https://books.google.it/books?redir_esc=y&hl=it&id=1YdAAAAAYAAJ&q=Franzese#v=snippet&q=Modo%20Franzese&f=false

   Another funny one is an exchange between Casanova, famed Venetian lady man, and a frenchman in Paris. He was lovingly cuddling up with a lovely lady, when a frenchman decides to interupt telling him a group of 12 Italians hunged at the fork. Casanova replies with what at the time must have been a sick come back ” Nothing extraordinary in that, honest man generally contrive to be hang far away from their native country, and as a proof sixty french man have been hang in the course of last year between Naples, Rome and Venice. Five time twelve is sixty, only seems fair”

   The Complete Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt – Giacomo Casanova – Google Libri
   https://books.google.it/books?redir_esc=y&hl=it&id=Oe-U5QlTvgsC&q=Contrive#v=snippet&q=Contrive%20%20hang&f=false

   Finally there is our beloved Machiavelli, who in the 3rd chapter of the Prince replies to the a french man suggestion that Italians are bad at war with ” Then the french are bad at politics”

   The Prince – Niccolò Machiavelli – Google Libri
   https://books.google.it/books?redir_esc=y&hl=it&id=rEy0fErXuhoC&q=Politics+French+#v=snippet&q=Politics%20French&f=false

   Other than that we probably got similarly inflammatory stuff about other nationalities. Even more interesting then literature are treaties, particularly Venetian ones, usually foreigners ( as in non Italians) are indicated with the word Oltramontani, all sorts of interesting thing are said about them. One of the most interesting if a bit over used words of the Italian Renaissance.

8. Well, we our national poem (“Gorski vijenac”) is about killing Turks and muslim converts. So there’s that… O_o

9. There is a curiosity that unites the national anthems of my nation (Italy) and Poland. Both have references to the other people in their own text. In the last verse of the Italian anthem we find a reference to the “Polish blood”, drunk by the Austrian eagle (the Austro-Hungarian) together with the “Cossack” (the Russians). The historical context takes us back to the last thirty years of the eighteenth century, when Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Prussia shared the Polish lands, thus dismembering the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the Mazurek Dąbrowskiego (Polish anthem), the reference to Italy is purely logistical, because it invites Poles to move from where they are to reach their “promised land”.

   Marsz, marsz, Dąbrowski,
   Z ziemi włoskiej do Polski
   Za twoim przewodem,
   Złączym się z narodem.

   March, march Dąbrowski
   from Italy to Poland
   Under your command
   We will unite as a people!