regarded attentively by the world and, most important, 
     listened to. The existence of such a community seems to 
     be a precondition for the emergence of a national 
     literature sufficiently large in extent and weighty in 
     substance to fix the world’s eye and give shape to the 
     world’s imagination; . . . it was the writers themselves 
     who helped call into being this thing called “national 
     literature”. At first, their activity had a pleasing 
     artlessness about it, . . . Later under the spell of the 
     Romantic movement, moribund languages were revived, 
     new national epics were composed for nations that as yet 
     barely existed, while literature enthusiastically ascribed to 
     the idea of national existence the most supernatural 
     virtues. . . .

     Closely interrelated, then, by the operation and effects of