(i) Culture played a vital role in creating the idea of the nation: art and poetry, stories and music helped express and arouse nationalist feelings. Romantic artists and poets made deliberate efforts to create a sense of shared collective heritage, a common cultural past as the basis of a nation.
(ii) The ** philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder stated that true ** culture was to be discovered among the common people. It was through folk songs, folk poetry and folk dances that the true spirit of nation was popularised. So collecting and recording these forms of folk culture was essential to the project of nation-building.
The French painter Delacroix depicted an incident through his painting in which 20,000 Greeks were assumed to have been ** by Turks. By dramatising the incident and focusing on the suffering of and *** Delacroix wanted to appeal to the emotions of the spectators and create sympathy for the Greeks.
Karol Kurpinski celebrated the national struggle through his operas and music, turning folk dances like the polonaise and mazurka into nationalist symbols.
(iii) Language played an important role in developing nationalist sentiments. Regional languages had always been an obstacle in the unification of a country. To overcome it, a common national language was adopted. The Polish language was forced out of schools and the Russian language was made obligatory everywhere.
(iv) In 1831, an armed rebellion against Russian rule took place but it was crushed. After the ** of this rebellion, members of the clergy in Poland began to use language as a of national resistance. Polish became a common language in * gatherings and all religious instruction. As a result, several priests and bishops were put in jail by the Russian authorities as punishment for their refusal to preach in Russian. The use of Polish came to be seen as a symbol of the struggle against Russian dominance.
