The Voices of the Nation: Form and Content of National Anthems

The aim of this chapter is to analyze the main formal and thematic features of national anthems. I will study the double nature of nationalism, both religious and civil, which arises from the fact that it pretends to worship, at the same time, a nation-god, to which it assigns the classical attributes of divinity (necessity, eternity, uniqueness, and singularity) and a nation-society, which possesses the attributes of all human reality (contingency, historicity, plurality, and similarity). From this fundamental contradiction derives the four basic metaphysical tensions that appear in all nationalist expressions, in general, and in national anthems, in particular: necessity-contingency, eternity-historicity, unity-plurality, and singularity-similarity.