ABSTRACT
National poetry bloomed in the rival Ottoman Turkish and Tsarist Russian empires after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars which spurred national cultures and vernacular languages throughout Europe, and frequent revolts.1 Poets did their part in the fall of both empires, which collapsed in World War I. Inspired by the egalitarian ideology of the Revolution, they proclaimed in all their different languages that their nations, tired of imperial rule, were set on freedom. Poets rediscovered (or invented) and taught their national history, language and education. Asserting cultural independence, their poetry was political, its originality a mark of national distinction. They sought freedom in history and myth, in revivals of long-disparaged or neglected languages. They asserted as elsewhere the cultural and psychological independence of separate national groups, anticipating political independence.
