Raphael's famous Vatican fresco portrays Apollo and the nine Muses with, on the left, the greatest poets of antiquity; on the right, we have a group of moderns. The classical group includes Dante, a very blind-looking Homer, Virgil pointing somewhere offstage, and (down at the bottom left) Sappho. If you're curious, a plausible set of labels and identifications for most of the other figures can be found here on Wikipedia.
I was reminded of this famous image when I stumbled across a Reddit thread entitled "Who are the Shakespeares of other countries?"
I actually thought that question was pretty well done and dusted already, but it turned out that a number of the participants in the discussion were misled by the fact that Shakespeare was (primarily) a playwright into thinking that the contest was for the best dramatist in their respective countries.
It did get me thinking, though. What are the qualifications for being a "national bard" - besides being a great and influential writer, that is? Does it require an international reputation? Not really, I think - you can be little known outside your own culture, and still a powerful arbiter within it.
It is, I think, primarily a Western obsession - but the concept has certainly gone far beyond that now. Who, for instance, would question the primacy of Lady Murasaki, author of the Tale of Genji, in Japanese literature?
There are problems, too, with colonial and post-colonial countries. Are English-speaking nations such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States simply offshoots of English-language culture, or have they developed their own unique voices by dint of geographical separation? Shakespeare certainly continues to hold a certain primacy in all of them.
Right at the end of the long - somewhat repetitive - Reddit discussion, a contributor called "SciGuy241" commented:
How obvious our bias to western civilization is. See how nobody mentions Asia or Africa.That isn't entirely accurate, as he would have found if he'd gone through the entire thread. Nevertheless, there's a good deal of truth in what he says.
In any case, I've done my best to redress that objection in the series of suggestions listed below. For the most part I've been able to rely on the thread itself to provide me with useful candidates for cultures and literatures I'm unfamiliar with.
It's important to note, however, that I've tried to reflect as many as possible of the suggestions made in the Reddit thread, rather than trying to impose too many - beyond the most obvious ones - myself.
- England: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
- (One or two people mentioned John Milton as a contender. Myself, I'd have felt inclined to add William Blake)
- Ireland: W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)
- (Some preferred James Joyce - of course, neither man spoke Irish; one might have to go to Flann O'Brien for that)
- Scotland: Robert Burns (1759-1796)
- (Some went for Walter Scott instead; Gaelic speakers might prefer the Jacobite Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, or perhaps the more contemporary Sorley MacLean)
- Wales: Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
- (Dafydd ap Gwilym was the greatest medieval Welsh poet; R. S. Thomas might be an alternative Welsh-speaking modern)
- Austria: Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
- (Stefan Zweig and Robert Musil were also mentioned as possible alternatives)
- Belgium: Louis Paul Boon (1912-1979)
- (Some preferred Hugo Claus, "if only for Het Verdriet van België [The Sorrow of Belgium]"; others suggested the 13th century Willem die Madocke maecte, author of Van den vos Reynaerde [Reynard the Fox])
- Czechia: Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
- (Jaroslav Hašek or Karel Čapek were mentioned as possible alternatives)
- France: Molière (1622-1673)
- (Some preferred Victor Hugo; others Voltaire)
- Germany: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
- (Some, inevitably, went for Schiller instead)
- Greece: Constantine P. Cavafy (1863-1933)
- (There were also some strong proponents of Nikos Kazantzakis and George Seferis)
- Hungary: János Arany (1817-1882)
- ("... or Petőfi Sándor from the Romantic era. From earlier it's Balassi Bálint, Janus Pannonius or Zrínyi Miklós. Our country has many great poets, but ... our only great playwright is Katona József")
- Italy: Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
- Montenegro: Petar II Petrović-Njegoš (1813-1851)
- (There weren't any other suggestions, so I guess he's it. There's a section on Montenegrin literature on Wikipedia)
- The Netherlands: Joost van den Vondel (1587–1679)
- (Other suggestions included P. C. Hooft, Gerbrand Bredero, and Louis Couperus.)
- Poland: Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855)
- (Though some went for Henryk Sienkiewicz instead)
- Portugal: Luís de Camões (1524-1580)
- (Though some went for Fernando Pessoa)
- Romania: Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889)
- (The one alternative mentioned was the novelist Liviu Rebreanu)
- Russia: Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837)
- (Though some preferred Lev Tolstoy - or even Boris Pasternak)
- Spain: Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)
- Tthough some preferred Lope da Vega, for some odd reason:
The people of Spain think Cervantes
Equal to half a dozen Dantes
An opinion resented most bitterly
By the people of Italy)
- Tthough some preferred Lope da Vega, for some odd reason:
- Ukraine: Taras Shevchenko (1814–1861)
- (Though some went for Nikolai Gogol instead)
- Denmark: Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875)
- (Karen Blixen and Søren Kierkegaard were also contenders)
- Estonia: Anton Hansen Tammsaare (1878-1940)
- (Kristjan Jaak Peterson, the "founder of modern Estonian poetry" (according to Wikipedia) was also in the running)
- Finland: Elias Lönnrot (1802-1884)
- (This one depends very much on what you expect from a national "Shakespeare" - the Kalevala is definitely the most famous work of Finnish literature, but did Lönnrot really write it, or simply assemble it? Aleksis Kivi and Mika Waltari should also be considered)
- Iceland: Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241)
- (For modern Icelandic literature, Halldór Laxness might be a more suitable candidate)
- Norway: Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)
- (Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson is also considered to be among the "four great Norwegian writers, alongside Ibsen, Jonas Lie, and Alexander Kielland")
- Sweden: August Strindberg (1849-1912)
- (Some preferred Selma Lagerlöf or even Astrid Lindgren)
- Egypt: Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006)
- (Other suggested candidates included "The Dean of Arabic Literature" Taha Hussein, Tawfiq al-Hakim, and feminist writer Nawal El Saadawi)
- Iran: Ferdowsi (940-1025)
- (Though some preferred those other great lyric poets Hafez and Omar Khayyam)
- Lebanon: Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931)
- (Some suggested Amin Maalouf or May Ziadeh)
- Palestine: Mahmoud Darwish (1941–2008)
- (Others suggested the novelist Ghassan Kanafani)
- Syria: Adonis (1930– )
- (Some preferred Nizar Qabbani, or even the medieval poet Abu al-Ala al-Ma'arri)
- Turkey: Nazim Hikmet (1902–1963)
- (Others preferred the foundational man of letters Halid Ziya Uşaklıgil)
- Nigeria: Chinua Achebe (1930-2013)
- (Though some preferred Wole Soyinka)
- South Africa: Breyten Breytenbach (1939-2024)
- (Though some preferred Athol Fugard, Nadine Gordimer, or - more to the point - Sol T. Plaatje)
- China: Cao Xueqin (1710-1765)
- (Some preferred the Tang dynasty poets Li Bai or Du Fu; others went for one or other of the great canonical novelists: Shi Nai'an (Outlaws of the Marsh) or Wu Cheng'en (Journey to the West). "The one most commonly compared to Shakespeare is probably Romance of the Three Kingdoms, attributed to Luo Guanzhong ... its impact on Chinese language and culture is certainly not less than Shakespeare's impact on English.")
- India: Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
- Japan: Murasaki Shikibu (973-1014)
- (Though some preferred the haiku poet Matsuo Bashō)
- Korea: Jo Jeong-rae (1943- )
- (Others preferred Han Kang)
- Vietnam: Nguyễn Du (1861-1941)
- (Others preferred the poet Hồ Xuân Hương)
- Canada: Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942)
- (Though some preferred Leonard Cohen - or Robertson Davies)
- Quebec: Michel Tremblay (1942- )
- (Though some preferred Marie-Claire Blais)
- United States: Mark Twain (1835-1910)
- (Other nominations included Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Herman Melville)
- Argentina: Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)
- (Some preferred Julio Cortázar or Ernesto Sábato - others would have preferred to go all the way back to Sarmiento or José Hernández)
- Brazil: Machado de Assis (1839-1908)
- (Though some preferred Carlos Drummond de Andrade or Clarice Lispector)
- Chile: Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)
- Though some preferred José Donoso - or even Isabel Allende)
- Colombia: Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014)
- (Though there were also some mentions of José Eustasio Rivera, author of The Vortex)
- Guatemala: Miguel Ángel Asturias (1899-1974)
- (Francisco Ximénez, first translator of the Popol Vuh, also got a mention)
- Guyana: Wilson Harris (1921-2018)
- (Though some preferred poet David Dabydeen)
- Mexico: Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695)
- (Though some preferred Juan Rulfo, Carlos Fuentes or Octavio Paz)
- Paraguay: Augusto Roa Bastos (1917-2005)
- (Though some preferred the poet José Ricardo Mazó)
- Peru: César Vallejo (1892-1938)
- (Though some preferred José María Arguedas or Mario Vargas Llosa)
- St. Lucia: Derek Walcott (1930-2017)
- (Though some preferred Trinidadian V. S. Naipaul as a Caribbean writer)
- Uruguay: Mario Benedetti (1920-2009)
- (Others preferred the epic poet Juan Zorrilla de San Martín)
- Australia: Banjo Paterson (1864-1941)
- (Some preferred Henry Lawson or Patrick White)
- New Zealand: Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923)
- (Though some nominated Janet Frame - or Barry Crump; interestingly, there were no votes for Baxter or Curnow)
- The Philippines: Francisco Balagtas (1788-1862)
- (Though some nominated José Rizal instead)
- Samoa: Albert Wendt
- (Some nominated Tusiata Avia instead)
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I'm well aware that the absences in this list are probably far more significant than the presences. Reddit has to take some of the blame, as I would certainly have added many additional African, Asian, and Oceanic authors if I'd had more suggestions to work with.
What would be most interesting, of course, would be to generate a bit of discussion over the 59 choices presented here - but also about all those gaps. Nominating a national bard may seem like a pretty futile thing to do - one of the main joys of literature is, after all, the fact that it presents such a rich smorgasbord of choices ... Is it so futile, though?
Do we somehow need a designated Shakespeare or Pushkin to free up the rest of us from wearing our ethnicities on our sleeves? It's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.
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