On the national anthem’s words

Abstract

When it was written in 1922, the anthem was a political and symbolic statement. The bloody Sette Giugno events were still fresh and the language question still simmering – the choice of language a question of power, identity and the making of a nation. In Dun Karm’s own words: “At a time marked by political antagonism, I sought to draw everyone together in a bond of religious and patriotic love.” The lines do not impose a linguistic identity; rather, they create a space in which a nation still in the process of formation can speak to itself in its own words.