River as national metaphor

Based on Riverscapes and National Identities by Tricia Cusack, Syracuse University Press, 2010

Many nations and capital cities are closely identified with a national river, for instance, London with the Thames, or Prague with the Vltava. Rivers have long been central to cultures; one reason is their necessity for human survival, but another is to do with the nature of flowing water and its appropriateness as a metaphor for time passing. The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman (2000) argued that the essential shapelessness of liquids and their movement and changeability over time means that liquids draw attention to time in a way that solids do not (2). Rivers therefore have presented a potent metaphor for the passage of time, for life and for renewal in a way that solid landscape cannot do so easily. Not surprisingly, rivers have been associated with fertility and regeneration and sacralised in many religions. The growth of nationalism from the nineteenth century created a demand for representations of the national territory, and as rivers provided significant points of reference, riverscapes proved ideal for this purpose.  Since rivers signify life and renewal they have been appropriated as symbols of national vitality, and in representing the passage of time, they offer an excellent metaphor for the uninterrupted ‘flow’ or ‘course’ of national history. For some nations, this course has been regarded as a sacred as well as a historical one, their national mission merging with a spiritual destiny.

Reference: Bauman, Zygmunt. 2000. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity.