CHAPTER 3
A TOAST TO A COSMOPOLITAN NATION: SLOVENIA 1844
On 27 September 1989, the Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia, (a federal unit of the SFRY), passed amendment XII to its Constitution, proclaiming the poem ‘Zdravljica’ (‘A Toast’) by the Slovene poet France Prešeren, to be the anthem of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia. This amendment replaced clause 10 of the Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia of 1974 which asserted that the Republic had an anthem without specifying what that anthem was (Pavlović 1990: 209). The wording of the anthem was further determined by the Law on the Anthem passed on 29 March 1990 (Božić 2010).
In the following chapter, in addition to ‘A Toast’ we will discuss its predecessor ‘Naprej zastave slave!’ (‘Forward the Flag of Slava/Glory’) which is the anthem of the Slovenian armed forces. The complete lyrics of the present Slovenian national anthem are what previously was the seventh stanza of France Prešeren's famous mid-nineteenth century paean to drink. This is a self-congratulatory anthem, although one of a special kind. The seventh stanza celebrates the affection of the singers for other nations – a cosmopolitan feeling of a kind – without naming the singers or even the state/country they come from. In this sense, the unnamed singers are congratulating themselves on sharing cosmopolitan sentiments towards non-singers who are potentially everyone else in the world. This sentiment appears to be unique among state or national anthems, although it may be argued that this is also the intention behind the EU's use of Beethoven's ‘Ode to Joy’, in which the ideas of Schiller's absent lyrics must be taken as implied. Prešeren's whole poem does include a couple of ‘fighting’ stanzas that were not included in the official anthem. In contrast, its predecessor ‘Forward the Flag of Slava/Glory’ is a marching or fighting song and one of the most bellicose of European anthems. It is this shift from a bellicose fighting song to a peace-loving and cosmopolitan anthem that makes the Slovene anthems of particular interest for any inquiry into the dynamics of national anthems and national identity construction.
A new anthem as a prelude to independence
The adoption of ‘A Toast’ as the Slovenia national anthem was, one can argue, a prelude to Slovenia's independence in 1991. Before the song was proclaimed the official national anthem, it was popularised as a pop song by an alternative rock band Lačni Franz (Hungry Franz). The band's television and video rendition of the song in 1987 was actually a parody of a national song (‘Zdravljica – Lačni Franz in prijatelji’). In 1989 ‘A Toast’ was then transformed from a rock band parody into a national anthem; the rock band version as an anthem-parody was thus a prelude to its career as Slovenia's national anthem. However, this change from rock band anthem-parody to state song is not the only extraordinary aspect of this anthem.
Amendment XII which introduced the new anthem of Slovenia was one of 60 constitutional amendments that entrenched the supremacy of Slovenia's laws and state organs over the federal laws and federal organs of SFRY and removed the word ‘Socialist’ from the name of the Republic. The amendments and the new anthem thus initiated the process of secession of Slovenia from the SFRY. These constitutional changes were carried out by the League of Communists of Slovenia (the Communist Party of Slovenia) which at the time still had a complete monopoly of power in Slovenia. However, in January 1990 that same party left the League of Communists of Yugoslavia at its extraordinary congress in Beograd and changed its name to the ‘League of Communists of Slovenia – the Party of Democratic Reform’. The party abandoned not only the SFRY but also Marxism and opted for the European Community (EC) as the only future for Slovenia.
In April 1990, in spite of the change of name and policies it lost the first post-1945 multi-party parliamentary elections to the coalition of anti-communist parties called ‘DEMOS’. Its candidate, Milan Kučan, however, did win the presidency of Slovenia. On 25 June 1991, under the DEMOS government, Slovenia, in a coordinated action with Croatia, unilaterally declared independence from the SFRY. This was followed by a ten-day war with the Yugoslav People's Army, the federal military forces stationed in Slovenia, which was ended by the intervention of the European Community (EC). Following an EC-negotiated moratorium, Slovenia reiterated its declaration of independence in October 1991 and applied for recognition by the EC. In January 1991 the EC member states recognised its independence, followed by the United States and others (Pavković 2000: 135–41).
On 23 December 1991, under its first non-communist government since 1945, the Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia passed a new constitution which, in its Article 6, defined the coat of arms, the flag and proclaimed, once again, ‘Zdravljica’ to be the anthem of Slovenia. The Article did not specify which stanzas of the long poem were to be used. It was a different government that on 22 October 1994 passed the Law on the Coat of Arms, Flag and the Anthem of the Republic of Slovenia; in its Article 5 the Law proclaimed the seventh stanza of the ‘Zdravljica’ to be the anthem of the republic with the music score of Stanko Preml (Ministry of Public Administration 2003). As we shall see below, the absence of the stanza specification in the Constitution eventually led to public controversy as to what the anthem actually contained or should contain.
The origins: A drinking song of a Romantic poet
France Prešeren is Slovenia's key contribution to Romanticism and to Europe's dawning age of national aspiration. He was writing at a time when his homeland, divided into several provinces, was part of the Habsburg Empire with its capital in Vienna. Prešeren's place as Slovenia's national poet is undisputed and his statue at the centre of Ljubljana could easily be argued to be the focal point of Slovenian life and culture.
Prešeren was born on 3 December 1800 in the village of Vrba in the province of Kranjska (Carniola) to a well-to-do family of farmers. This enabled him to go to the Gymnasium in Ljubljana (Laibach) and to study first philosophy and then law in Vienna. This is where he became acquainted with modern Romantic poetry as well as the West European poetic cannon. Renaissance poetry, in particular that of Petrarch, was a major influence on his work. Upon gaining his doctorate in law in 1828 he returned to Ljubljana. Because of his free-thinking outlook and his free-thinking acquaintances he was not given a licence to practise as an independent lawyer-advocate until 1846. In 1833, in an exclusive social club in Ljubljana he met a high society lady for whom he developed a life-long but unrequited love. She was the inspiration for his first masterpiece the Wreath of Sonnets (Sonetni venec), which she apparently did not like very much. This work was closely followed by the Sonnets of Misfortune (Sonetje nesreče) both published in 1834. The two cycles of sonnets as well his epic Baptism on the Savica (Krst pri Savici) published in 1835 are now acknowledged to be unsurpassed masterpieces of Slovene poetry. In 1836, he started a stormy de facto relationship with a seamstress Ana Jelovšek with whom he then had three children (Paljetak 1982: 325–8).
Prešeren's composition of the poem ‘Zdravljica’ (‘A Toast’) in 1844 foreshadows the coming elevation of Slovenian pan-Slavic sentiment into a national programme. In 1844, such sentiments were anathema to the cultural and political hegemony that the Austrian-based Habsburg dynasty imposed on the many peoples of its empire and which was enforced through press censorship. Because of this censorship Prešeren agreed to omit the third stanza from the original version of ‘Zdravljica’ to be published in his 1847 collection Poezije dr. Franceta Prešerna (The Poems of Dr France Prešeren), thinking in this way to save the rest of the poem. That stanza contains the poem's most strident pan-Slavic sentiment, invoking the deity to break those chains binding Slovenes and inhibiting the freedom of the Slovene people. The Habsburg censor in Vienna also objected to the somewhat milder fourth stanza, suggesting that a more honourable outcome would be obtained if Slav children were able to get along ‘hand in hand’. Believing the poem mutilated with the omission of both stanzas, Prešeren went ahead and published his collection Poezije without including ‘Zdravljica’. Following the revolution in Hungary (and throughout Europe) and the forced resignation of the pillar of the absolutist state, Count Metternich, the poem in its entirety was then first published on 26 April 1848 in the newly established newspaper Kmetijske in rokodelske novice (Farmer and craftsmen news).1 However, only a few months later a lifetime of drinking would catch up with the poet. In February 1849, he died in Kranj from alcohol-induced liver disease. At the time he was a practising lawyer-advocate, the profession from which he had been excluded until 1846 (Paljetak 1982: 328, 335).
‘Zdravljica’ is a ‘budnica’ or ‘budilica’, a poem of national awakening. As in the case of its Croatian counterpart, ‘The Croat Homeland’ (written only nine years earlier; see Chapter 2), it aims to awaken national sentiments in its readers or audience by lifting their self-esteem and instilling a pride in their nation, its history, its members and their achievements.
Here is the ‘Zdravljica’ in its present-day literary variant and standard orthography2 translated by the authors.
With or without the accompanying tune, ‘Zdravljica’ is clearly a drinking song, written by a drinker and for the benefit of others who will imbibe. This does not, in any way, impede its potential national awakening role. It is also foremost a poem for heterosexual males who are drinking together (the ‘brothers’ of the third and of the final stanzas and those who collectively admire the comely maidens of the fifth stanza). The poem's sentiments are mixed and mercurial, as the thoughts of drinkers and drunks often are. Perhaps one might even say that there is a rambling distractedness, true to genre, in these lyrics. To gloss them in their spirit the idea is more or less this:
Let's drink up, forget your cares/don't be sad. Drink to whom? To us of course! We're Slovenes. Let lightning strike anyone who gives us trouble. Let's be free, as our ancestors were. Let's all love each other and live in peace; that way there'll be honour. And our girls our matchless! And their sons will be brave! Young men – you'll defend the land! We're all brothers. Let's have a drink!
As is common in the case of anthems, reference to events or situations is suitably vague and open to interpretation. Thus an archetypal gravitas is assured. Yet the question arises: when was the land free? Prešeren's Baptism on the Savica (1835) suggests, indirectly, an answer by referring to the mists of the eighth-century Slovene past when:
Blood flows like a river flows
A Slovene is here killing a Slovene, a brother
How horrible is human blindness?5
The narrative of this poem is placed in the aftermath of the battles between indigenous Slovene warlords as well as between Slovene warlords and German (Bavarian) invaders around the Castle of Ajdovac in 772 CE (Paljetak 1982: 349). Although these battles and defeats are thought to mark the end of indigenous Slovene religion and the advent of victorious Christianity brought by the German invaders, this poem does not paint the pre-Christian (and pre-eighth century) Slovene past as that of glorious freedom. The quasi-historical setting of the poem provides only a framework for a tragic and very personal story of unconsummated love and self-sacrifice – the central themes of many of Prešeren's lyrics.
And yet the idea in ‘Zdravljica’ of a glorious past of freedom to hark back to conforms closely to the expectations of the anthem genre in general and to the optimistic and/or patriotic phase of the drinker's enthusiasms: both require of time memorialised that it be a past of glory and freedom absent in the present. National awakening poems and anthems are often demands, framed in a poetic language, for a variety of devoutly wished abstractions from the past that the becoming nation seeks to embody – freedom, honour, power or glory. The past offers a ready-made and universal backing for those often urgent demands. The singers' ancestors are seen to have rightfully possessed all or any of those things and in virtue of the previous possession, the singers themselves now deserve and have a rightful claim to the same.
When compared with canonical anthems of the Western world, ‘Zdravljica’ impresses us with the range of tone and mood. There are lyrical and bellicose passages. There is also admiration of beauty both of the season as represented in the vines and Slovenian womanhood. There are sad thoughts to put aside and there is the image of enemies vanquished. There is the promise of neighbourly fellowship (as modelled by the circumstances in which the song is ideally sung). No matter your mood or politics on the day, there is something for every Slovene, although the poem is obviously targeted at males of drinking age. At every turn and for every purpose, there is an inducement to drink. Indeed, one is tempted to draw an analogy between the stages of drunkenness and the moods of the nation as portrayed in the song. The lyrics, with very little substitution of phrases, could be used to reference any nation because this is a song that could be sung by drinking age males of just about any European country with a few grapes to harvest. Nor would Stanko Premrl's tune be out of place elsewhere. This is of course true of many anthems. Witness the pan-European popularity of ‘God Save the King’ and its many variants such as prayer-for-the king anthems in Serbia, Montenegro, and in Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Nevertheless, as noted above, like many marching and fighting anthems, ‘Zdravljica’ makes an appropriate call upon the martial valour of its readers or drinkers-in-common. In the fifth stanza, the sons whom the blooming and matchless maidens are to bear, are called upon to strike terror in the enemies of Slovenes. Then in the sixth stanza it is explained how, or rather when, the young ones will have do this – when the hour strikes, they will be called upon to defend their home. There is a suggestion of inevitability here, a sense that the homeland will have to be fought for at some time in the future. Compared to many fighting anthems – in particular, the Slovene anthem ‘Forward the Flag of Slava/Glory’ which preceded this anthem – this is all very mild. There is no mention of death or the blood of one's enemies or even of one's martyrs.4 More importantly, there is no call to hate. Instead, the dominant sentiment of the sixth stanza is that of joyful hope and trust in the love of the youth for their homeland, a love that will motivate them to defend their home. These sentiments of hope and love dominate the whole poem; even the calls for martial valour are enveloped in this warmth of feeling. The usual elements of fighting or marching anthems are here rather subdued by the joy and universal affection that this drinking song exudes.
As a drinking song, ‘Zdravljica’ is a rare anthem brimming with the joy of apparently borderless fellow feeling. What makes ‘Zdravljica’ decisively different from any other anthem is that the final stanzas essentially contain no national sentiment at all; rather they are transcendent of the national world view. It is of further interest that the most cosmopolitan stanza in the song, the seventh, is the one the Slovenian government, in 1990, chose to stand alone as the lyrics of the national anthem. One may be tempted to see the singing of ‘Zdravljica’ as something in the light of a parody of national sentiment. And yet we may be sure both that Prešeren's intention was sincere (and patriotic in its way) and that those who sing the song today do so to sincerely express their devotion to Slovenia as the sovereign state in Europe which it has become.
Every anthem is an address to, or display for, both the self and others. It is an expression of solidarity among those who sing together. In the case of ‘Zdravljica’ the address of the seventh stanza is clearly to the world beyond Slovenia's borders. To those beyond the now national frontier, the friendly invitation is to imbibe. Although the collective persona self-addressed by those singing is the male of drinking age and inclination, this is not to say that others might not wish to join in. The act of drinking in convivial celebratory mode suggests in outline an essentially patriarchal rite of self-recognition. So the becoming nation defines itself, perhaps not as, but from the point of view of, those who drink. Its outward address suggests a friendly overture: the thing we could do together, friend, is to drink, rather than perhaps, to fight.
Thus Slovenia's anthem (in its current version) appeals to the universality of sentiments implying the participation of national entities in a cheerful cosmopolis – a glocality of neighbours and friends. Slovenia's anthem can be said to thus transform the anthem's usual object of national devotion, that is the clearly bounded nation state, into a diffuse feeling of universal solidarity with national subjects in general. The synecdoche implied suggests drinkers gathered convivially under vines are the model of good international relations. In this manner, Slovenian nationhood and brotherhood among nations is implied by a particular proven facility for brotherhood, that is the capacity to imbibe. Through these rhetorical means one might claim that, in ‘Zdravljica’, the object of Slovenian national devotion is nationhood in general. The objective of the song is the acceptance of Slovenia as brother nation among neighbours.
All the drinkers of the world unite, or not?
This drinking context and the call to imbibe together makes the whole poem a rather unsuitable source for the Slovene national anthem in the view of some traditionally minded Slovenes. There is some suggestion that the national anthem should be a text that might be expected to project more dignity and perhaps more bellicosity. Accordingly, these traditionally-minded Slovenes prefer the current anthem's predecessor ‘Forward the Flag of Slava/Glory’.7 Others, however, find objectionable not its drinking context or content but the ‘internationalism’ of the seventh stanza. Thus Boris Pahor, a prominent Slovene writer and public intellectual,8 recently said ‘we have an anthem which makes no mention of Slovenes and that is absurd’ (Božić 2010). He also proposed that the new anthem should combine the lines of the second stanza:
God let our land live!
God let the whole Slovene world live!
We are all brothers as we are sons
All of a Slav mother.
with the seventh stanza (Božić 2010). In this way the anthem would include a mention of the Slovenes as well as the Slovene land. While Boris Pahor's proposal initiated a lively debate among lawyers, literary scholars and journalists, his proposal for the change of text appeared to have generated little enthusiasm among his fellow intellectuals. There was some enthusiasm from politicians, in particular the former Prime Minister Janez Janša who publicly backed the proposal (Škrinjar 2012) but failed, when in power, to change the relevant law on anthems. However, during his premiership in 2012, at the official celebrations of Independence Day, four stanzas of the anthem were sung instead of only the seventh. The coalition government led by the Positive Slovenia Party (Pozitivna Slovenija), which replaced Janša's government in February 2013, as well as the current Slovenian president Borut Pahor, are committed to observing the law on the anthem currently in force (Škrinjar 2013). In spite of this, the debate on the anthem and other state symbols continues on the pages of the leading daily Delo (Švagelj 2013). It is impossible to say, at this time, whether the debate will eventually end with legislative change to the text of the anthem.
While demands for a ‘Slovenisation’ or ‘nationalisation’ of this cosmopolitan anthem are perhaps only to be expected, one still wonders why these demands came two decades after the anthem's unanimous acceptance in the national assembly and among the population at large. Why did the intellectuals and politicians proposing to nationalise the anthem in 2011 not propose to nationalise it in the early 1990s when the anthem was first introduced?9
In the gestation period of the early 1990s, the Slovenian nation faced the paradox that its best chance of coming into being was through joining Europe and that that manoeuvre was best made by at least appearing to eschew a normatively nationalist agenda. Saving the nation meant, in that context, foregoing some of the rhetorical paraphernalia of nationhood. Twenty years later, the whole ‘nationalisation’ debate concerning the national insignia and the anthem, it has been suggested, may be a diversionary ploy by politicians aiming to deflect attention from a deteriorating economic and financial situation in Slovenia and their own responsibility for it (Božić 2013; Škrinjar 2012). Nationalism and ‘nationalisation’ of political agenda are old and well-tested political diversionary ploys and the cosmopolitanism of Slovenia's current anthem may, indeed, become yet another victim.
From a pan-Slav fighting song to the anthem of the armed forces of Slovenia
‘Naprej zastava Slave’ (‘Forward the Flag of Glory/Slava’) is a song that would have, in 1860, overtly suggested the unison of males of drinking age; the song was originally a call to the Slavs to go to battle and to let their rifles ‘speak’. Its connection with the drinking song discussed above extends even further to the moment of conception: its music score was conceived in one Vienna tavern and then completed in another one. But today it is no longer a song of males and for males only and it no longer suggests drinking either but rather only fighting. It is the anthem of the Slovenian armed forces (Slovenska vojska) which, like most armies of the member states of NATO, is composed both of male and female soldiers.
The text of the anthem was written by a 25-year-old poet Simon Jenko who studied philosophy, economics and then law in Vienna. In Vienna, Simon became a member of the first non-German singing society – the Slovene Singing Society (Slovensko pevsko društvo) – founded in 1859 by his namesake and compatriot Davorin Jenko, a law student with a love for performing music. According to one source (Pirnat 1915), in early 1860 Simon gave Davorin, who was the choirmaster of the Society, the lyrics of the poem (initially entitled only ‘Naprej!’ (Forward!)), hoping Davorin would compose an appropriate score for it. Davorin found no inspiration for the music until 16 May 1860. While sitting in the Viennese tavern near the university, he read an article in the principal Viennese daily, Die Presse, which called the Slovene language ‘incomprehensible stuttering’ (Bric 2010). This disgusted him so much that it inspired the tune of the future anthem; and so he went to another tavern in Prater called ‘Zum Hirschen’ and there put the melody and the text on paper (Pirnat 1915).10 The song became very popular among Slav students in Vienna and at its first public performance by the Slovene Singing Society on 22 October 1860 it was met with rapturous jubilation and acclamation. Thus was born the principal national song of the Slovenes which, while sung on any variety of solemn occasions, received its official status as an anthem only in the anthem of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes established after the defeat and dissolution of the Habsburg Empire in 1918. The composite anthem of the Kingdom contained the stanzas from the Serbian royal anthem ‘The God of Justice’, the Croatian ‘Our Beautiful Homeland’ and the Slovene ‘Forward the Flag of Glory’ and was the state anthem of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia until the overthrow of the monarchy by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in 1945.
We have no records of the circumstances under which Simon Jenko conceived and wrote the text of the anthem. Knowing more of these circumstances may perhaps explain its blood-curdling rhetoric. Simon Jenko wrote many other patriotic and satirical verses, none of which seem to be as bellicose as these, as well as satirical stories. He died in 1869, aged 34, in Kranj. Like Prešeren before him, in his last years he practised law in Kranj.
Having passed his law exams in 1861, Davorin Jenko chose a career as a choirmaster first in Pančevo, a town in Austria-Hungary predominantly populated by Serbs. He then moved to the capital of Serbia where he was, until his retirement in 1903, the chief conductor and composer at the National Theatre in Beograd. In Serbia his musical compositions and endeavours were highly valued and he was showered with medals and high honours. It was there that he composed the music for the song ‘The God of Justice’ in the musical ‘Marko's Sabre’ (1872), which later became the Serbian royal and state anthem and is the current anthem of the Republic of Serbia (see Chapter 4).
Davorin Jenko is a highly successful composer in the history of anthem music. He composed the musical score for two different songs that then became anthems of two different states and that still, in the twenty-first century, do the same job. When composing this music he could have had no idea that these songs were going to be pressed into the service of anthemhood. Having died in 1914 in Ljubljana (then in the Habsburg Empire), he could not have anticipated that only four years later his ‘Forward the Flag of Glory/Slava’ would become part of the anthem of the Kingdom of the South Slavs and then, 80 years later, the anthem of the armed forces of his homeland, the independent state of Slovenia.
‘Naprej zastava Slave’ is yet another ‘budnica’ or national awaking song. However, in its call to battle and for the spilling of blood, it belongs to group known as fighting songs. In this respect, it deserves the label ‘the Slovene Marseillaise’. Its marching qualities cannot pass unnoticed. Indeed, its translation in English, published privately in London in 1885, carried the title:
Naprei Zastava Slavé! [With Slava's Banner, Forward!] the Slovenian National March, Or Patriotic Chant of the Slovenes, the South-Slavonic People of the Provinces of Carniola, Carinthia, Styria, and Istria, &c., in the Austrian Empire.11
The title of the translation also suggests a particular interpretation of its first line, which we shall discuss below.
The song, without any reference to drinking and toasting, offers a much simpler tale than ‘Zdravljica’. It seems to say:
Let us – we, the heroes – go to battle and there, for the good of our fatherland, let our rifles rattle in their own way. In this way, with blood, we shall achieve justice that is due to our homeland. Our dear mother begged us, the heroes, to stay away but we said to her (and to all of you listening): our Fatherland is our mother, honour and glory are what we love. Let us go to battle and get this bloody business done.
There are three interlinked claims made here: that justice for our homeland can be achieved only through blood-spilling; that all the objects of affection of the singer-heroes are focused on the fatherland and its honour and glory; and that, therefore, we, the heroes, will achieve justice with our weapons. These lyrics comprise a set of highly uncompromising and dogmatic statements both from an ethical and from emotional point of view. Yet all three assertions suffer from ambiguities that serve anthem purposes very well indeed because they make this song re-usable on any occasion that gives specific content or grounds for these claims. It is unclear what kind of injustice needs to be remedied here, which makes the song suitable to confront any grievance the singers may think of.
Further, if the Slovene ‘slave’ in the first line is understood to mean ‘glory’ it then becomes unclear which fatherland or homeland is referenced. The only indication we have of the actual fatherland intended is provided by the story of Davorin Jenko's composition of the music. That story makes it clear that the fatherland is not Austria or the Habsburg Empire. The song is in Slovene, but who, in 1860, were the Slovenes? The English translation of the title (above) gives us their geographical and ethnic location, which, in 1860, would be unknown to an average English-language reader: ‘the South-Slavonic People of the Provinces of Carniola, Carinthia, Styria, and Istria, &c in the Austrian Empire’.
So why do the Slovene people of these provinces have to remedy injustice by spilling the blood of their enemies? And who are their enemies?
This last question appears to be the key one, to which even the story of Davorin's composition cannot provide a persuasive answer. Are the enemies those who say that Slovene is ‘an incomprehensive stuttering’? Are these people the German-speaking Austrians? And therefore does their blood have to be spilt in order for this and similar insults to be remedied or removed?
Perhaps to the Slav student-singers in Vienna raising all these questions would seem superfluous and pointless. In the line ‘Forward to battle, heroic blood’ the spilling of blood is, here at least, an end in itself. And how better can the failure of language (or the possibility of negotiation) be expressed than by the imperative, ‘Let the rifle speak!’ One might be tempted to ask, ‘why bother singing at all?’ until one realises that it is only through words or the music that the injunction can be conveyed. Thus words foreshadow, or perhaps invoke, the failure of words. The urging of violence in the national cause suggests that any argument or any conversation is pointless: forget argument, let the guns do the talking. If the enemy is literally demonised (‘bring thunder to the devil’) then what questions can there be? These lyrics reveal the flip-side of the boosterism seen in so many national anthems. Instead of the self-congratulatory solipsism of the group's self-praise, here we have exoneration of the impulse to violence against enemies who must be stopped before they destroy us: for the sake of justice thunder must be brought to the devil. In either case the logic is, of necessity, tautological.
Beyond pure bellicosity, perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the song is the role of the mother, the gendered conviction of the story. In ‘Zdravljica’ women are beautiful objects symbolic of the nation's beauty, they are what is worth defending. In contrast, in ‘Naprej zastava slave’ motherhood is a restraint to just martyrdom. Although it is heart wrenching, the mother must be cast aside in order to get on with the blood spilling – that is what the nation business is apparently all about. Somehow, paradoxically however, one still feels it is all being done for the mother.
The anthems of southeastern Europe abound in images references to mothers and motherhood. There are only two anthem lyrics discussed in this book which do not contain any representation of mother or motherhood – the prayer-anthem of Serbia and the marching anthem of post-1945 Yugoslavia, ‘Hey Slavs’. The Serbian ‘The God of Justice’ (see Chapter 4) is firstly a prayer for a king (not a queen) and then for the collective nation, and has little room for mothers grieving over fallen sons. And ‘Hey Slavs’ (see Chapter 1) is a call to defend first the language and then the spirit of the grandfathers and this leaves no room for mothers.
The Slovenian anthem is unusual in its rejection of the mother in favour of the fatherland. The original text of Mihanović's ‘The Croatian Homeland’ and the original text of the Macedonian ‘Today Over Macedonia’ contain very similar images of mothers grieving for their lost sons (fighters who have lost their lives in the struggle for freedom and rights). In both the Croatian and Macedonian lyrics the grieving mothers are consoled for their loss by appeals to the heroism and just cause for which their sons have perished. Interestingly, these references to the grieving mothers (a standard anthemic device) were later removed from the text of the official anthems. In Bosnia and Herzegovina's first anthem ‘You are the One and Only’ (see Chapter 7) and Montenegro's ‘Oh the Radiant Dawn of May’ (see Chapter 5), the homeland of the singers is equated with their mother, which is yet another common anthemic device. In contrast ‘Forward the Flag of Glory/Slava’ stands alone in the restraints that mothers, and beloved women in general, put on males bent on heroic acts for the sake of the fatherland, honour and glory.
Which cause does the song advance? Glory or Slavdom or something else?
Whether the song should be read in terms of single-minded pursuit of glory depends on how one reads the first line of the song. The first English translators read ‘slava’ with the capital ‘S’ as a proper name and so did, perhaps more surprisingly, the learned contributor to the official journal of the Slovenian Armed Forces (Bric 2010). The first publication of the poem in the Slovenski glasnik in 1860, had ‘slave’ but then when the poem/song was published the next time in Pesmarica, edited by R. Razlog, in 1863, this word was printed as ‘Slave’ (Jenko 1964: 254–6). If you take ‘Slava’ to be a proper name, then it is the proper name of the mother of all Slavs, allegedly a divinity of the pre-Christian Slav religion, one of the divinities to whom the ‘Perun’ of the original of ‘Hey Slavs’ refers (see Chapter 1). According to this interpretation, the first line should read ‘Forward the Flag of Slava’. On this interpretation, the first line and thus the whole song should be read as advancing the flag and the cause of Slavdom, of all Slavs and not only Slovenes (who are not named at all).
Although this interpretation of the first line is far from being universally accepted, it would explain why the song was so popular among other Slav students and intellectuals in Vienna, in particular, Croats, Czechs and Bulgarians (Pirnat 1915). This was a fighting song of justice-seeking Slavs and so resonated with at least of some of the unemployed and resentful youthful and Slavic-speaking intelligentsia in Vienna. The justice they were seeking was based on the recognition of equality – primarily cultural equality – with the Austrian Germans. It was a cris de coeur of the marginalised Slav intelligentsia and a ‘cris’ that took on a particularly blood-thirsty expression that now we find difficult to understand. However, all the scholarly as well as media commentators on this song still fail to address a rather obvious if unanswerable question: why did these highly educated Slavs in 1860s Vienna cry for blood and battle?
Unlike ‘La Marseillaise’, ‘Forward the flag of glory/Slava’ was never meant as a war song or a song of armed insurrection. There is also no evidence that any of the singing Slav students were at the time even dreaming of, let alone planning, insurrection. Indeed, after the revolutions of 1848, the Slav peoples, including the Slovenes, of the Habsburg monarchy never rose in armed rebellion against their Habsburg rulers.
The first time that the song was actually used in war was during the Nazi occupation of the country (1941–5). The Communist-led Partisan resistance forces sang and broadcast the song from 1942 onwards to mobilise resistance against the German occupation and their local collaborators in Slovenia. Interestingly, the local collaborators, the Slovene Home Guard (domobranci), appear to have sung the song as well (Pavlović 1990: 209). In view of the ambiguity of its text and fighting/stirring qualities of its music, this is not surprising at all. Apparently in 1866 even the Prussian orchestras played the melody and in 1876 it was played at the entry of the Russian troops to major Bulgarian towns during the Russo-Turkish war (Pavlović 1990: 207).
Following the Communist victory in Yugoslavia in 1945, ‘Forward the Flag of Glory’ (but not of Slava) became the unofficial anthem of the People's (later Socialist) Republic of Slovenia, a unit in the Communist-ruled federation. While its use was not prescribed by law, it was used at state and celebratory occasions, usually following the equally unofficial state anthem of Yugoslavia, ‘Hey Slavs’ (Pavlović 1990: 209). In 1989, when the League of Communists of Slovenia started the process of separation from the federation and the campaign for its ‘return’ to Europe, the unofficial anthem was replaced by the official one ‘Zdravljica’. As discussed above, this song focuses on affection towards one's neighbours – in Slovenia's case Austrians, Hungarians and Italians as well as Croats. Yet, the unofficial and bellicose anthem was not, however, totally discarded. On 2 June 1991 ‘Forward the Flag of Glory’ became, as part of the Rules of the Territorial Defense Forces of Slovenia, the official anthem of the armed force. This group, originally a second-tier defence force of the federal units of SFRY, would soon be transformed into the Slovenian armed forces (Slovenska vojska). The Slovene recruits and soldiers thus gained an anthem to sing when taking the oath of service or, if necessary, in battle.13
And a battle, albeit a short one, came soon. On 24 June 1991, Slovenian forces blockaded the barracks of the Yugoslav People's Army stationed in Slovenia, an armed force composed predominantly of fellow Slavs (Janša 1994). There is no record of the song being sung during the sporadic fighting over the next ten days, but if it was, this was the last time it was sung in battle. As of 2014, Slovenia, a member of NATO and the EU, faces no threats and has, strictly speaking, no enemies. What role does such a bellicose anthem have for Slovenia now? The answer is found in the official journal of the Slovenian armed forces:
At this moment the song ‘Forward the Flag of Slava!’ possibly appears to many people too belligerent and pan-Slavic but without any doubt with its stirring and patriotic charge it had, during a century and a half, an important mobilising and national awakening role. It was an obligatory part of the patriotic struggle of the Slovenes to maintain our identity, language and culture through the most difficult ordeals (Bric 2010: 27).14
The anthem may thus appear a worthy and important relic of past struggles while still retaining the potential for ‘mobilising and national awakening’ in any future struggle that the Slovenes may face.
Two faces of Slovene national identity
Among national anthems, ‘Zdravljica’ is also something of an enigma, because it is the most cosmopolitan and at once the most libidinous of anthems. In this postmodern anthem we read a rejection of the project of modernity and concomitantly a rejection of commitment to the notion of nation per se. It is of great interest that the lyrics for an anthem performing such paradoxical functions should date from the golden age of nascent European nationalism, particularly as nationhood within Europe is the most convenient means for the Slovenian people to be themselves and enjoy their best prospects.
In a song lauding the consumption of a drug as the means to evince a particular and desirable form of solidarity, we perhaps find yet another rejection of the project of modernity that seeks to find rational grounds for national solidarity. To put it in context, the national anthem of Jamaica is not, nor is it likely ever to be, some ‘easy skankin’ number by Bob Marley and the Wailers. And yet Slovenia's anthem is an encouragement to the other nations of Europe to sit and imbibe (at least metaphorically) with the Slovenians.
With its anthem, Slovenia, as an independent state, aims to suggest that it is a convivial and thus a good candidate for joining the European club of nation states, the European Community (now, Union). The intention, conscious or otherwise, behind installing and retaining ‘Zdravljica’ is one we might describe as pragmatic. The adopting of a drinker's putative anti-anthem as anthem demonstrates a libidinous pragmatism, a stance that one could argue is well suited to the aspirations of Slovenia.
This is of course not to suggest that Prešeren was in any way a pragmatist although he certainly was libidinously adept. In writing ‘Zdravljica’, Prešeren intended to write a drinking song imbued with a strong national sentiment. The poem and its national sentiment have a cosmopolitan quality that we may associate with the European pan-nationalism of 1848, a quality that was to become a new kind of national capital to be exploited, in new and unexpected ways, some 140 years later. There is no reason to suppose that Prešeren believed he was writing a poem that would one day become the national anthem of Slovenia. In this sense, he could not have imagined that in writing his drinking song he was creating a political, and not only cultural, asset that could be exploited in the process of gaining independence for the homeland, which, at the time of his writing, had no set boundaries or even clear aspirations for self-government.
However, from the perspective of the late 1980s it is not difficult to see why ‘Zdravljica’ should have been chosen as the face to show the world just at the moment when the only desirable foreign policy goal of the emerging sovereign state was to join the then European Community (now the European Union).15 In fact, there was no more suitable song either in Slovene literature or in the literature of any other South Slavic people.
Given its cosmopolitan and anti-national spirit, one may yet ask whether this song can indeed function as a national anthem, particularly for a nation that needs to set itself apart from its neighbouring nations and other more distant friendly nations. Its functioning in the role of poem-as-anthem, we shall argue below, is assisted by the anthem-like parts of the poem omitted from the song as officially sung. If we consider which of Prešeren's words are included and which are excluded, we can easily see that the more bellicose parts have been omitted. The anthem as presented to the world is, in English, in its official translation, as follows:
God's blessing on all nations,
Who long and work for that bright day,
When o'er earth's habitations
No war, no strife shall hold its sway;
Who long to see
That all men free,
No more shall foes, but neighbours be.
It can be argued that although the fighting words and those words suggesting the exclusive qualities of those singing are not included in the official song, they will nevertheless be in the minds of those singing. That is because this poem, which is at the core of the Prešeren's canon, is one that all Slovenian schoolchildren have had to commit to memory during their schooling since 1918. If an anthem simultaneously represents a people-as-nation to itself and to the world at large, then the sentiment thus expressed and understood within the family of that nation is likely to differ in some degree from that which the outsider will perceive. In this case we can see that there is a subtext to that manner of representation, one that will operate largely at an unconscious level for the subject-in-unison. In ‘Zdravljica’ the call for sacrifice precedes the text of the anthem as sung and would have been in the minds of those who know the whole poem.
The call to arms in the poem (in italics below) follows the praise of Slovene maidenhood.
God, let Slovene girls bloom
More beautiful than precious roses.
There are no maidens more comely.
Sons you bear will be the terror
Of our enemies.
And young men now, your toast is raised.
There isn't a poison to kill
Your love of country
When the hour strikes,
You and all of us so shall
Defend the homeland
With all our hearts.
So, to sing ‘Zdravljica’ is, in some degree, to concur with the ideas expressed in the above parts of the poem omitted from the official anthem. One might also contend that it is to participate in a covert rite of exclusion: those only listening cannot know the whole of the story of what we are singing. A Slovene singing ‘Zdravljica’ may thus feel significantly more proud or defiant in the national cause than appears to the average European subject attending to the song. This difference (and distance in understanding) in itself constitutes a kind of pragmatic solidarity. We know who we are and what that entails but what advantage would there be in telling the whole of that story to the world? There is nothing atypical in this gap in understanding between the outside listener and the subject-in-unison to which the Slovenian anthem, seen in context, draws attention.
Why then was it so easy for Slovenes to express a cosmopolitan ethos through their anthem when all around them appeared mired in the need to assert (or re-assert) a narrowly national identity? The answer is in the Slovene consciousness of what lies ‘all around’ Slovenia, particularly in the fact that Slovenia borders more with the rest of Europe (Italy, Austria and Hungary) than it does with the rest of the former Yugoslavia (Croatia). To the Slovenes, looking in the direction of Europe it was clear that exit to Europe from Yugoslavia was the pragmatic and perhaps the only effective solution to the problems of geo-political identity and integrity posed by the break-up of Yugoslavia. This observation is not intended to downplay Slovenia's role in bringing that break-up about, but it does fit a long-established pattern of pragmatism in those political manoeuvres that might be deemed Slovene in origin.
In conclusion, the uniqueness of Prešeren's poem cum song lyric lies in encapsulating a Slovenian spirit of pragmatism in the geopolitical sphere. Pragmatically putting behind them the question of identity, in singing Prešeren's toast, Slovenes ironically position their national identity as other-than-national. In what might be thought a quest not to offend, they perhaps give the European Union its least problematic (one might also say most politically correct) of anthems, one to which no other nation could possibly object. When we consider how problematic the idea of unisonance has been for Europe or at least the European Union can see Prešeren's toast in the light of a helpful gesture to the EU from an enthusiastic newcomer.
A question as to sincerity arises where pragmatism is established as a motive. Yet it would be unfair to doubt the cosmopolitan (or at least pan-European) credentials of Slovenian national aspiration from 1990 to the present. The more recent demands to ‘nationalise’ the anthem by adding an overt reference to the Slovenes and their land only confirms that in Slovenia the anthem is still perceived as cosmopolitan, perhaps too cosmopolitan or ‘internationalist’ for some. Having joined the European Union in 2004, the pragmatic motives for retaining a cosmopolitan anthem may indeed now be behind the nation. One might go so far as to say that retaining such an anthem may today be seen as at least a partial denial of the pragmatism that was impetus for installing it in the first place.
However, it must be remembered that the cosmopolitan anthem is not the only anthem in operation in Slovenia. Its bellicose predecessor ‘Naprej zastave slave’ has only been demoted to the more restricted and in some ways more appropriate function of military anthem. When comparing ‘Zdravljica’ with ‘Naprej zastave slave’, one cannot imagine two more opposite injunctions than those presented by the two successive anthems. Yet, the Slovenian state retains a use for each in much the same manner as Plato notes that the Doric and the Phrygian modes (the warlike and the peaceful) ought to be retained by a sensible state that has expelled or otherwise deterred its troublemaker poets (Plato 1952: 76). Just as ‘Zdravljica’ reveals to us the evolving moods of the inebriated so these two songs together reveal the Janus-faced nation, masked for tragedy or comedy, equipped equally for war or peace. The two aspects of the current Slovene national identity are captured succinctly but accurately by these two national anthems16.