Serbian Romantic Quotes

Miroslav Volf puts a finer, harder point on this: we are substantially defined not only by those we love but by who our enemies are. Our own identities are shaped by our interactions with them. As a Croatian Protestant, he was defined by the identity and convictions of Serbian Christians. We are all, whether we wish it or not, in profound relationship with our enemies, especially when that relationship is a combative one. When we respond in kind to hatred and aggression, we risk becoming like our foes. And so the biblical virtue of “love” of enemies is not romantic but practical, a love of action and intention, not of feeling. This religious wisdom would subvert the either/or choices often presented for debate in our age, where rhetoric about enemies local and global abounds. This faith requires both realism and compassion. We might need to fight our enemies or keep them at a safe remove; but we cannot let hatred, anger, and fear toward them determine our character and our actions. This cleansing of focus is the true purpose of forgiveness. I

The Romantic movement encouraged respect for primitive and popular culture; it also gave rise to cultural nationalism. J.G. Herder, one of the more ardent followers of the late eighteenth-century enthusiasm for collecting folk songs, popularized the view that nations express themselves in ballads, folk-tales, customs, and traditions, and that every particular language embodied a unique spirit, without which the world would be impoverished. On a visit to Riga, he had formed the view that Latvian folklore might be drowned in the prevailing sea of German. Herder’s enthusiasm for conservation caught on to become an influential source of modern nationalism.[25] But there were others, including the work of enlightened educational reformers. Czechs benefiting from new educational opportunities learned German, for example, and were thus able to devour the classics of German Romanticism. The University of Buda Press, founded in 1777, not only printed the first good Hungarian grammars but soon began to publish in Serbian, Slovak and Romanian. A grammar was vital to the definition of a single, literary language on which a sense of linguistic nationhood could be based (a collection of contrasting dialects could form no such basis). Furthermore, publication in a variety of emerging literary languages was to help spread a consciousness of a linguistic identity.