A Symbol Lauding Another Symbol – National Anthems’ Inter-Symbolic Play

Sažetak

Romanticism literature had a strong connection with the re­presentation of the imagined picture of the communities about themselves and “the other”. A lot of “patriotic hymns” were written as part of this new symbolism. Most of them are lauda­tum for the historical heritage of the nation and are in accor­dance with the nation’s historical goals. The national anthem of Montenegro, Oj, svijetla majska zoro (Oh, Bright Dawn of May), is a hymn to the ''rocky hills''. The same does Deutschlandlied, a German National Anthem, which is dedicated to the German “homeland”. The French National Anthem, La Marseillaisse, constructs the images of brutal enemies, while the English Na­tional Anthem, God Save the Queen, praises the queen in a re­ligious hymn. There are, however, some other national anthems (around 26% of all anthems), which are not dedicated to the national epic or heroic values. They are attributed to one other symbol: the flag. Such anthems are that of USA, Stare-Spangled Banner, and that of Albania, Himni i Flamurit (Hymn to the Flag), both attributed to the national symbol, the flag and/or the national colors. The present paper is an effort to analyze the role of inter-symbolic play between two (ethno) symbols: natio­nal anthems and flag/colors. For this purpose, different literary hymns are analyzed, those who have been accepted as national anthems, but also other hymns which did not become anthems, but interplayed continuously with symbols like flag and national colors.