Matija Murko Between Romantic Philology and Modern Science

Abstract

This article adds new observations to the previous reflections on Murko’s place in intellectual currents of his time. It focuses primarily on Murko’s complex attitude towards Romanticism, discussed within a framework that understands the Romanticism of the European feudal periphery as fundamentally different from the Western, especially English, Romanticism. The paper first analyses Murko’s Slavic formation via the views of Jernej Kopitar and Franc Miklošič, and in it the paper discerns both the distinct Romantic elements of the European periphery and the elements that do not fit into the Romantic tradition so easily. Besides these, the paper touches upon positivism, to which Murko was drawn by his German studies and further professional development. Finally, in the analysis of Murko’s writings about Romanticism, the paper establishes that, despite his Romantic enthusiasm for Slavic reciprocity, the literary historian most often used the term “romantic” pejoratively, namely as insufficiently professional or as unreasonable. Above all, the paper near its conclusion demonstrates that the literary historian has even more than Miklošič transgressed the current romantic-nationalist methodological focus on supposedly autochthonous national singularities. Murko’s youthful study on the influence of the German Romanticism on the Czech pioneeringly draws attention to the transnational character of the artistic stream, despised by so many Czech intellectuals, today understood as paradigmatic Romantics, due equating it with individualistic Byronism. At the same time, this Murko’s study implies a greater mutual proximity of certain European romantics as compared to others.