Fantasies of Roma aeterna. Heterochronic treatments of the Latin heritage in two Romansh narratives between the nationalist celebration and its deconstruction

Abstract

The idea of Roma Aeterna was embodied at times (for example, two heterochronic poems by Vasile Alecsandri and Giovanni Pascoli, respectively) in fantastic figures and situations that symbolized the permanence of Roman and Latin civilization among their modern descendants. Among the Romansh of Surselva, in the Swiss canton of Grisons, a good example of this is “La puorpra romana” (1915), by Sep Mudest Nay. In this brief narrative poem, the heterochronic coexistence of two different historical moments (ancient Rome and the modern Romansh nation) serves to symbolically underline the extraordinary and even supernatural nature of the linguistic survival of Latinness in that small alpine region. Years later, Ursicin G. G. Derungs used the same heterochronic procedure in his short story “Cicero a Cuera” (1988) to demystify that surviving Latinness in Romansh lands celebrated by Nay's ethnocultural nationalism. The report to the Roman Senate of a visit by Cicero to the modern capital of Grisons is combined with contemporary phenomena of protest and repression, thus identifying ancient and modern globalizing imperialisms, and suggesting the uselessness of traditionalist ethnonationalism in a contemporary context.