A FEW COMMENTS ON ALEXANDER MAXWELL’S PAPER SUPPRESSING THE MEMORY OF SLOVAK PANSLAVISM: THE HISTORIOGRAPHICAL MISREPRESENTATION OF KOLLÁR AND ŠTÚR

ZAVARSKÝ, Svorad. A Few Comments on Alexander Maxwell’s paper Suppressing the Memory of Slovak Panslavism: The Historiographical Misrepresentation of Kollár and Štúr. Historický časopis, 2023, 71, 2, pp. 349–362, Bratislava. This article has been written in response to Alexander Maxwell’s paper published in this issue of the Historický časopis. Based on an in-depth reading of Ludevít Štúr’s Nárečja slovenskuo alebo potreba písaňja v tomto nárečí, it is here demonstrated that the author of the mentioned paper creates an erroneous interpretation of Štúr’s term nárečja, when equating it with the modern term dialect or nárečie. What present-day linguists call dialect was by Štúr unambiguously denoted as rozličnorečja. Moreover, it is evident from Štúr’s Nárečja slovenskuo that Štúr cannot be regarded exlusively as a Pan-Slav (in the sense of an advocate of the All-Slav idea), since at the same time he was not only a Slovak patriot, but also a PanHumanist.

In his paper, Alexander Maxwell indignantly points out the fact that many twentieth-and twenty-first-century scholars interpret Štúr's term nárečja not as dialect, but as language. He goes even further to assert that by doing so they deliberately falsify Štúr's original concepts. Qui bene distinguit, bene docet (he who distinguishes well, teaches well), as an old scholastic principle says. A lack of this principle in Maxwell's paper accounts for the confusion contained in it. To put it briefly, Maxwell fails to distinguish between historical ideas and historical reality.
It will be useful to start this discussion with a brief recapitulation of the history of the Slavic languages as viewed by twentieth-and twenty-first-century experts in the field of Slavic philology. So, a 2006 Cambridge manual of the Slavic languages states: "The emergence of Proto-Slavic occurred around 2000-1500 BC. This is the period of Proto-Slavic unity, when the Slavs inhabited a broadly coherent land area, though its exact location remains a matter of some controversy... . According to a general consensus ... the real break-up of Proto-Slavic unity began about the fifth century AD." 1 Another authoritative handbook of Slavic philology, published in 2014, affirms that "the process of differentiation of Proto-Slavic ended in the 10th/11th century A. D." 2 This is when the individual Slavic languages, as we now know them, began to evolve. According to Czech linguists Mirek Čejka and Arnošt Lamprecht, the process of the differentiation of the Slavic languages was wholly completed before the end of the eighteenth century. 3 As regards the Slovak language in particular, the above quoted Cambridge manual asserts that "Slovak is not clearly visible in linguistic terms until the seventeenth century, and its emergence as a national language is a feature more of the Counter-Reformation than of the Reformation." 4 So, it is evident that according to modern linguistic scholarship Slovak was clearly visible in linguistic terms in the seventeenth century, when it emerged as a national language. The 2014 handbook speaks of the history of the Slovak language as follows: "The history of standard Slovak can be considered in its two development phases: the pre-standard and the standard periods. The characteristic features of the pre-standard period, which lasted from the 11th to the 18th century, are variability of norm due to the contacts of the Slovak language with other languages on the one hand and, on the other hand, the development of spoken and written forms in the Slovak dialectal macroregions (Cultural Middle Slovak, Cultural Western Slovak, Cultural Eastern Slovak)." 5 Thus we can see that a modern international handbook of Slavic linguistics speaks of the pre-standard period of the Slovak language (not dialect) which lasted from the 11th until the 18th century.
I think this short summary of the state of the art is sufficient to show that what Maxwell does in his paper is basically tilting at windmills, for it is a generally accepted fact that the modern Slavic languages had completed their process of differentiation long before the nineteenth century. It is no wonder, then, that twentieth-and twenty-first-century scholars refer to Slovak, Czech, Polish, etc., as languages when describing the historical reality of the nineteenth century. Maxwell rebukes them for not using the nineteenth-century terminology of Kollár and Štúr. It is as if a modern expert in astronomy rebuked his fellow colleagues for not acknowledging that celestial bodies are moved by angels, which was a generally accepted physical theory until the seventeenth century because Newton's laws of motion and gravitation were not yet known. Or, it is as if a modern biologist looked upon his colleagues with indignation for not accepting the fact that human hair is basically the same thing as plants. And yet, that is what natural philosophers thought three hundred years ago since they had no idea of photosynthesis. Now, linguistics and dialectology, just like astronomy, biology and other scientific disciplines, have evolved considerably over the last two centuries. Therefore, it is no wonder that modern linguists describe linguistic reality with terms different from those employed by linguists who lived two hundred years ago.
Maxwell is so very much entangled in the nineteenth-century ideas of Kollár and Štúr that he goes even as far as to absurdly assert that "Slovak particularist nationalism ... vigorously proclaims that Slovaks are a 'nation' speaking their own 'language'. Twenty-first century Slovak nationalists also insist that Slovak is not a dialect or other subcategory of Czech, but that both Slovak and Czech would share the same status in any layered linguistic taxonomy." What is he talking about? Is it a sign of nationalism to acknowledge an objective fact? The Cambridge manual of Slavic languages published by Sussex and Cubberley in 2006 makes it clear that "Czech and Slovak are distinct languages, and the official languages of the modern Czech and Slovak Republics, respectively." 6 Are these authors Slovak nationalists? Of course they are not. They only accept the evidence of facts, as do many other specialists in Slavic linguistics worldwide. Indeed, it seems Maxwell somehow got lost in the nineteenth century in which he is evidently deeply immerged.
Throughout his paper, Maxwell uses the term "particularist nationalism" without at least hazily defining it. Therefore, instigated mainly by the above passage, I consulted Merriam Webster, Cambridge and the American Heritage College Dictionaries in which I looked up the entry for nationalism. What these dictionaries basically tell us can be summarized in two meanings of the word: 1) a nation's wish and attempt to be politically independent; 2) loyalty and devotion to a nation, especially a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others. The above quotation from the author's paper is totally pointless if understood in the first meaning of the word (as Slovaks have been politically indepent since 1993). Nor does the second meaning convey much sense to the author's statement since in order to acknowledge the objective fact of the existence of the Slovak nation and language one need not have any special devotion to that nation, let alone a feeling of superiority over others. Now, let us take a look at Nárečja Slovenskuo alebo potreba písaňja v tomto nárečí. 7 It seems to me that the author has either not read Štúr's treatise at full length, or does not understand what is written in it. If neither one is true, then we must admit that the author deliberately falsifies its content.
Before turning to Nárečja slovenkuo itself, we must remember that in order to understand historical texts, it is not enough to know the different language equivalents of a particular word as registered in historical dictionaries. We must also become aquainted with the historical content of the respective word or term (which can only be ascertained in its respective context). This is also very true of Štúr's term nárečja upon which the author's argument is based.
In his Nárečja slovenskuo, Štúr distinguished the Slavic nation from other European nations by ascribing to it a unique quality -namely, kmenovitosť. The other contemporary nations, in his thought, were not endowed with this quality. This conception had far-reaching consequences for his understanding of the term nárečja. This is what Štúr writes about the Italian language and nation: "From a people using one common language (reč), (and doing so) under the layer (originating) from the languages (rečí) of other nations (národou), no stems (kmeni) could have grown. It was either necessary that nations (národi), wholly different from one another, should come into existence, or else there had to remain a single mixed nation (národ pomješaní) whose language (reč), therefore, could not have grown out into different nárečja, but has become a single language (reč), more or less mixed and differently pronounced in different places. For all these rozličnorečja, such as those of Genua, Padua and Bologna, are called nárečja, but wholly erroneously. Where are the stems (kmeni), we ask, if you call them nárečja? There are no Genuan, Paduan, etc. stems (kmeni), because they are cities and these rozličnorečja took their names from cities, not from stems (kmenou). They are rozličnorečja, not nárečja, for were it otherwise, a single common language (reč) could not have been adopted (by them) as (a) literary (language)..." (Nárečja slovenskuo, p. 43, translation and emphasis mine) Štúr writes about the German, French, Spanish and English languages in exactly the same manner. This is what he has to say about German: "The Germanic nation has not evolved in [different] stems: its branches either fell off completely and began to live separate lives not as stems but as different nations, or else they became stunted on their common trunk because, lacking moisture, they cound not evolve. ... Scandinavians and the English are not Germanic stems but Germanic nations, among which also the Dutch can be counted. ... Since the Germanic nation neither is nor has ever been developed stem-wise, no nárečja (pl.) have appeared in it, but only rozličnorečja or rather rečnje rozličnosťi (differences of speech). And so it could happen that all Germans became united in one literarary language, which is based on the Low Saxon language..." (Nárečja slovenskuo, p. 37-39, translation and emphasis mine)

Finally, this is what Štúr opined concerning the English language:
"The English language (reč) is the greatest muddle on earth (najvetšia na sveťe motaňina). It took its origin from the Old Briton, Roman and French languages, as well as from diverse Germanic languages (rečí) and rozličnorečí -namely, from Anglo-Saxon and Norman with prevalence of Germanic. In this way, nárečja (pl.) could not come into existence [in this language], but what came into existence was a single muddled language which is used in literature in England." (Nárečja slovenskuo, p. 44-45, translation and emphasis mine) It is evident from the above excerpts that Štúr's term nárečja cannot be equated with the modern English dialect (and, analogically, with the modern Slovak nárečie). For Štúr conceived of the German, French, Italian, Spanish and English languages as having no nárečja, but only rozličnorečja. Every linguist knows that, e.g., English is divided into dialects. And I suppose that no linguist would deny that English also was divided into dialects in 1846 when Štúr's treatise was published. Thus, it is obvious that the historical reality today's linguists call dialects was denoted by Štúr as rozličnorečja, not nárečja. We can see that Vicent Blanár's "theory of lexical shift" suprisingly works. It works because it is not a theory, but rather a historical fact. As is evident from the above, Štúr's nárečja cannot be translated by modern Slovak nárečie. What modern linguists call dialect or nárečie is rozličnorečja in Štúr's terminology. Therefore, we must admit that Štúr's term nárečja does not have a modern equivalent, unless we think up a neologism.
Yet, if we read Nárečja slovenskuo in its entirety, we inevitably come to the conclusion that modern linguist and historians did not err too much in translating Štúr's nárečja as language or jazyk (whereas, as we have seen, they would have grossly erred had they tranlated it as dialect or nárečie). If we follow Štúr's line of thought attentively, we can clearly see that what he actually means by the many-stem nature (kmenovitosť) of the Slavic nation is this: the Slavic nation exists (or lives, as Štúr puts it) in the concrete, particular manifestations/entities which he calls kmeni (stems). In other words, in reality there is no abstract Slavic nation composed of other smaller entities. This is a mere idea. The real Slavic nation only lives in its different (eleven) kmeni (stems). And each of these kmeni is a concrete, particular expression of this Slavic nation. This is Štúr's kmenovitosť (many-stem character) of the Slavic nation. I can illustrate it with a trivial analogy: Let us say there are different varieties of apples, such as, e.g., Fuji, Gala, Golden Delicious, McIntosh, etc. When you see a heap of Golden Delicious apples, you can either say: Look, Golden Delicious! Or you can say: Look, apples! Or: Look, Golden Delicious apples! But when you see a heap of apples of different varieties, you can only say: Look, apples! Or otherwise you have to specify the different varieties. The same is true of Štúr's conception of the Slavic nation and its stems (kmeni). One kmen is no less a manifestation of the Slavic nation than is another kmen, just as Golden Delicious and Gala are both apples. There is no other Slavic nation except the one that manifests itself in the individual Slavic kmeni.
Thus we can see that, in Štúr, there is no tension between what Maxwell calls Pan-Slavism and particularist nationalism. Such a tension simply did not exist in his mind. It only exists in the mind of Alexander Maxwell who anachronistically transfers it into the past. And in this way he does the very same thing of which he rather rashly and scathingly accuses many of his fellow scholars. A historian must make all efforts to understand the thinking of the people of the past. In Štúr's case, it means to try to understand that the categories of Pan-Slav and paricularly nationalist (to use the terms of the author) were not in opposition. On the contrary, they were intimately and indissolubly bound together. The life of the nation (i.e. Pan-Slavism) was for him unthinkable without the thriving of all the stems (kmeni) of this nation (i.e. without particularist nationalism). And, to remain faithful to Štúr's way of thinking, we must even expand this picture into a three-level system: Štúr urges the use and cultivation of the Slovak kmen's nárečja not only in order that the Slovak kmen's spiritual riches may serve the whole Slavic nation, but in order that they also may be conducive to the well-being of the whole mankind. In his Nárečja slovenskuo, Štúr makes explicit remarks on this repeatingly. Štúr was a particularist nationalist (I would rather say a patriot), a Pan-Slav and a Pan-Humanist, all in one. And this is evident to everyone who has read his Nárečja slovenskuo with due attention.
But to leave no room for doubt, let me quote a passage from Nárečja slovenskuo (and there are multiple such passages) which poignantly illustrates that there really was no contradiction between Štúr's Pan-Slavism and his Slovak patriotism. Štúr's anger with Czechs and their attitude toward Slovaks transpires in multiple places of his treatise. Štúr writes: "We have noticed that some, and in particular those who have too great an affection for their own kmeni (stems) and want to live and work in and for them only, have joyfully embraced this doctrine of the four Slavic literatures, acting boastfully on every possible occasion. However, it is now indeed the time to put an end to this delusion, to this empty bragging and the haughty disrespect, it is now the time to bring into harmony and reconcile the thought and the life, it is now the time to accept all that God has blessed in the Slavic field and cordially thank him for that by acknowledging what he has done. Our Hollý is nowhere mentioned, nowhere a word, except that which has been occasionally told about him in our Slovakia; there is nowhere any mention of the great merits of our late Palkovič. And yet, Hollý is a star of the first magnitude in the sky of Slavic poetry. And our men had affection and worked and exerted their efforts for the Slavic nation until their old age, piously committing their lives to the good of our nation, and they do not even get mentioned, nor anybody thanks them. How ungrateful they are! Is this where the reciprocity leads? Is this the loving and graceful Slavic mother whom we are supposed to honor as her sons? The true Slavism is good, full of love, it acknowledges all its children, big and small, splendid and squalid, rich and poor, and this is its blessing with which it steps up, and must do so, before the face of the world. So then, off with every particularism in Slavdom, off with the despicable affection for one's own kmen (stem) only!" (Nárečja slovenskuo, p. 25, translation mine) And here is one more quotation to show more distinctly Štúr's patriotism (or particularist nationalism, as the author prefers to call it). And, again, there are multiple such places in Štúr's treatise. This is how it goes: "Should nothing of that which belongs to the Slovak and Slovakia now stand and be valid in the truly human world?! Should all that always rot and decay in concealment and remain hidden before the face of mankind? -Off with that idea that causes great offence and shock to the inner self of every faithful being, off with that idea and forth out of concealment with our Slovak (Slovenčina)!" (Nárečja slovenskuo, p. 80, translation mine) And still another one: "We are Slovaks, and as Slovaks we stand before the world and before Slavdom. Up to now, the world has only known us by name, and our brothers, likewise, have spoken of our name only." (Nárečja slovenskuo, p. 79, translation mine) Thus, when reading Štúr thouroughly and considering his ideas in mutual relations, we cannot but state that Štúr was a Slovak patriot, a Pan-Slav and a Pan-Humanist. These are three levels of his human and, we must not forget, Christian being in the world. Therefore, the supposed opposition of Pan-Slavism and Slovak particularist nationalism on which the author's whole argumentation rests is only an ens rationis or, more precisely, an ens chimaericum, and as such it lacks real, concrete, material existence.
Furthermore, we must bear in mind that Štúr's terminology is not as fixed as we would perhaps like it to be. When reading Nárečja slovenskuo, we cannot overlook the fact that Štúr sometimes uses the terms kmen/národ and reč/nárečja interchangeably. In my private opinion, this is not due to any inconsistency, but to the fact that, in Štúr's thought, the Slavic národ manifested itself in the individual kmeni and the Slavic reč was realized in the individual nárečja. In other words, for him there was no Slavic národ apart from the individual kmeni and no Slavic reč apart from the individual nárečja. In my view, this is important to understand if we want to properly interpret Štúr's way of thinking. That his terminology is not set in stone is evident from the following quotations: "We Slovaks are a kmen, and as a kmen we have our own nárečja, which is different from the Czech [nárečja]. We were aided by this [Czech] nárečja as long as our Slovak people was spiritually slumbering ... but now that it has awakened to life ... our Slovak národ will not idly wait for what the others give ... While we were spiritually slumbering, our Slovenčina could not manifest itself in writing and ascend to [the level of] our literary reč ..." (Nárečja slovenskuo, p. 79, translation mine) "Finally, the reason we should write Slovak is that we can be hopeful that our forefathers' reč will be promoted in our fatherland, and we must prepare our reč for this [promotion]. When that time comes, it will no doubt be the domestic reč that will be promoted -namely, the one that is used and spoken by the národ in our country ... The gentry of the Slovak národ has always urged us toward the domestic reč, so that our literature could be taken up by them." (Nárečja slovenskuo, p. 83-84, translation mine) The title of Maxwell's paper promises to debunk the historiographical misrepresentation of Kollár and Štúr. But what the author actually does is heap up an amount of short quotes taken out of their respective contexts in order to support his rather strange fixed idea that modern scholars have tried to conceal Kollár's and Štúr's Pan-Slavism. This is not a scholarly way of proceeding. If we want to polemicize with fellow scholars, we should occupy ourselves profoundly with their whole concepts. I can illustrate my point eloquently with the author's six-word quote from an article by Ján Doruľa (a passage pertaning to note 59). While the author uses this quote to demonstrate Doruľa's effort to camouflage Kollár's Pan-Slavism, it is evident to everyone who has read the respective Doruľa's paper that denying Kollár's Pan-Slavism is something Doruľa did not even think of. Indeed, quite the contrary is true. Doruľa draws on extensive material from the works of Kollár himself to document his all-Slavic identity. However -and this perhaps comes as a surprise -Doruľa, in the same paper, draws on extensive material from the works of Kollár himself to show his great love for his Slovak people and country, i.e. his Slovak patriotism. Despite some modern scholars who see the two -Pan-Slavism and Slovak patriotism -in harsh opposition, Kollár did not see them so. With and in him, they could very well exist in harmony. If we fail to understand this, we fail to properly interpret the ideas of the past.
Alexander Maxwell pretends to reveal historiographical misrepresentation concerning Ján Kollár and Ľudovít Štúr, while, in fact, he does not even mention the relevant historical research of the recent period. To mention just a few scholarly books on Kollár and Štúr recently published in Slovakia, let me adduce the following: Cyril Kraus ed. Ján Kollár: zborník štúdií (1993); Tatiana Ivantyšinová ed. Ján Kollár a slovanská vzájomnosť: genéza nacionalizmu v strednej Európe (2006); Imrich Sedlák and others. Ľudovít Štúr v súradniciach minulosti a súčasnosti: zborník z medzinárodnej vedeckej konferencie v dňoch 10. -11. januára 1996v Modre Harmónii (1997; Slavomír Ondrejovič ed. Ľudovít Štúr a reč slovenská: prednášky z konferencie konanej 13. -14. júna v Bratislave (2015); Ľubomír Kralčák and others. Ľudovít Štúr: jazykovedné dielo (2015); Dušan Škvarna -Beáta Mihalkovičová. Ľudovít Štúr and Modern Slovakia (2016); Svetozár Krno and others. Ľudovít Štúr -Európan, národovec a reformátor (2017). 8 These volumes contain recent historical and linguistic scholarship on Kollár and Štúr, both Slovak and international, and the author intending to analyse the alleged historiographical misrepresentation of the concerning subject matter does not even mention them in his paper! I cannot but call it thoughtless audacity. I must confess I cannot really understand the author's fixed idea about the alleged suppression of the memory of Slovak Pan-Slavism. Children and young people in Slovak schools, at both the primary and secondary levels, are taught about Kollár's idea of Slavic reciprocity. Indeed, I dare say this knowledge is among those few things that ordinary Slovak people remember from their literature and history lessons in their later life. It seems the author seeks the monster of nationalism where there is not any.
I also attach a few minor comments: On page 263, the author translates Štúr's term kmenovitosť into English as tribalism. In my view, this is incorrect. In his Nárečia slovenskuo, Štúr himself translated the term kmenovitosť into Latin as divisio in stirpes. So we know that for him kmen was equivalent to stirps. Latin stirps is not equivalent to English tribe. The Oxford Latin Dictionary has the following equivalents for this Latin word: a stem (usually of plants), the lower part (incl. roots), a base, the family or ancestral race from which one springs, stock. To these meanings the Lewis-Short Latin dictionary adds the meanings: lineage, source, origin, foundation, first beginning, cause. In the above, I have therefore suggested to translate kmenovitosť as the multi-stem character of the Slavic nation.
As regards the author's inept remarks concerning the spelling of Šafárik's and Kollár's names, this only reveals the author's historical-philological incompetence. It was common in the past centuries for one and the same author to write his name in different language forms according to which language he published his work in. It is thus only natural that Šafárik wrote his name in Czech as Šafařík since he published in Czech. However in his Nárečja slovenskuo, i.e. in 1846 when Šafárik was still alive, Štúr constantly spelled his name Šafárik, because as a Slovak and Šafárik's compatriot Štúr of course knew what the Slovak name of Šafárik was. And I do not think Štúr did so for the purpose of making Šafárik angry. (By the way, if he did, it would only prove Štúr's nationalism. But this is not the case.) The author's linguistic, and in particular Slavistic, incompetence can be seen in the author's statement (on p. 251) that "purism also inspired a Slavic term that in modern Russian, modern Ukrainian, and modern Bulgarian is written as наречие". Were the author familiar enough with the Ukrainian language, he would know that the respective Ukrainian word is наріччя.
On page 252, the author asserts that Bernolák's dictionary "contains no entry for any descendant of *na + *rěčъ." Well, that is only partially true. Since in the respective part of the paper the author treats the descendants of *na + *rěčъ as equivalents of Latin dialectus, he should have consulted the last volume of Bernolák's dictionary published under the title of Repertorium. There he would find an entry for dialectus with the following equivalents in Slovak: Gazik (language, tongue), Mluweňí (speaking), Reč (speech), Wisloweňí (utterance, pronounciation), nareči zbratrene hrowadko [sic!] (related dialect/dialect akin to; the last word hrowadko is unintelligible, probably a misprint).
It is not without interest to note in this connection that the historical dictionary of the Slovak language (Historický slovník slovenského jazyka) contains an entry for náreč. There we learn the word was used in the so-called Camaldolian dictionary (Kamaldulský slovník, 1763) in the following context: "aliqvem instruere literis graecis: ňekoho učíti náreč geretsku" [to teach someone the Greek language]. 9 On page 254, the name of Kollár's native county is written in Hungarian, Turóc. Why, then, has the author put the name of Kollár's native town in Slovak and not in Hungarian (i.e. Mosóc)? This is an inconsistency. If we use modern geographical names in historical writing (which has the advantage of being easily identifiable), then Kollár native county should be called Turiec. However, if we choose to prefer authentic historical names (which is also an option), then it should be written in Latin, i.e. Turociensis or Turocziensis. Latin was the official language of the Hungarian Kingdom until the 1840s, so there is no point in anachronically using Hungarian geographical names. These did not become official in the Kingdom of Hungary until as late as the second half of the nineteenth century.
To sum up what has been said: Alexander Maxwell makes an unsubstantiated charge against many of his fellow scholars accusing them of deliberately falsifying Kollár's and Štúr's ideas. Much of his argument rests upon the assertion that Štúr's term nárečja should be rendered into modern Slovak as nárečie and into English as dialect. Yet, as has been clearly shown using the words of Štúr himself, what modern linguistics calls dialect was referred to by Štúr as rozličnorečja. Technically speaking -that is, strictly within the framework of Štúr's linguistic thought -his term nárečja does not have a modern equivalent (since a nárečja is a particular manifestation of the language [reč] of a nation endowed with a multi-stem character [kmenovitosť], such as were, in Štúr's opinion, the Slavs or the ancient Greeks). However, if we are to describe in modern words Štúr's contemporary linguistic reality, there is no other way to do it than to translate his nárečja as language. We dispose of no other term for it. What Štúr denoted as Slavic nárečja (pl.) is in modern linguistics referred to as Slavic languages because it is a generally accepted fact in Slavic linguistics that in Štúr's time the process of the differentiation of the Slavic languages had long been completed. Maxwell poses a problem which in reality does not exist. His problem consists in failing to discern historical ideas from historical reality. In the comments above, it has also been shown that Štúr's Pan-Slavism does not exclude his patriotism (or particularist nationalism). On the contrary, the two were intimately bound together in him. Štúr could not imagine the prosperity of the Slavic národ without the thriving of all its kmeni. In other words, for him there was no Pan-Slavism without particularist nationalisms. And, as we have seen, the ultimate goal of all his efforts was not only the well-being of Slavdom, but the well-being of all humanity. In short, Štúr was a Slovak patriot, a Pan-Slav and a Pan-Humanist, all in one.
The most interesting part of Alexander Maxwell's paper is its conclusion. He is right in observing that the story of the Slovak national awakening has so far been mostly narrated from one side only. Maxwell's conclusion is truly stimulating in this regard, and I wholeheartedly share his opinion since I myself have published on this topic from the point of view of Neo-Latin philology. 10 The period of the Slovak national awakening needs to be looked at from many different perspectives, and different historical processes co-occurring at that time need to be included in the overall picture. The period of the Slovak national awakening is one of transition, it is a period in which it is particularly important to explore the processes of continuity and discontinuity, of tradition and innovation. Undoubtedly, the ideas of Slavic reciprocity and all-Slav unity played a significant role in these processes. Maxwell's paper, however, does not shed much light on them because, unfortunately, it is founded on erroneous suppositions (his equating of Štúr's nárečja with the modern linguistic term dialect; his denial of Štúr's patriotism/particularist nationalism notwithstanding the ready evidence to the contrary contained in the works of Štúr himself). I hope these lines written in response to Alexander Maxwell's paper will instigate a more balanced view of the problem.