BRUKENTHALIA

Romanian Cultural History Review

Supplement of Brukenthal. Acta Musei

No. 4
2014

BRUKENTHALIA
Romanian Cultural History Review
Supplement of Burkenthal. Acta Musei
Revist Romn de Istorie Cultural
Supliment al Revistei Brukenthal. Acta Musei
Advisory Board
Francis CLAUDON, Professor, Val de Marne University of Paris, France
Dennis DELETANT, Professor, Georgetown University of Washington D. C.
Hans-Christian MANER, Professor, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz
Pascal ORY, President of Association pour le Dveloppment de lHistoire Culturelle (ADHC)
Professor, 1 Panthon-Sorbonne University of Pars
Zoe PETRE, Professor emeritus, University of Bucharest
Alexandru-Florin PLATON, Professor, Alexandru-Ioan Cuza University, Iai
David D. SMITH, Professor, University of Aberdeen
Tony WALTER, Professor, University of Bath, Great Britain
Editor-in-chief
Adrian Sabin LUCA, Professor, Lucian Blaga University, Sibiu
General Manager of Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu
Senior Editor
Mihaela GRANCEA, Professor, Faculty of Socio-Human Sciences, Lucian Blaga University,
Sibiu
Editors
Anca FILIPOVICI, PhD, Babe-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca
Ecaterina LUNG, Professor, Faculty of History, University of Bucharest
Andi MIHALACHE, Researcher, Alexandru D. Xenopol Institute for History, Iai
Olga GRDINARU, PhDc, Babe-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca
Alexandru SONOC, PhD, Curator, Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu
Radu TEUCEANU, PhD, Curator, Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu
Editorial assistant
Anca FILIPOVICI, PhD, Babe-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca

BRUKENTHAL NATIONAL MUSEUM * MUZEUL NAIONALBRUKENTHAL

BRUKENTHALIA
Romanian Cultural History Review
Supplement of Brukenthal. Acta Musei
No. 4

EDITURA MUZEULUI NAIONAL BRUKENTHAL

Sibiu/Hermannstadt 2014

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ISSN 2285 - 9497

ISSN-L 2285 - 9489

Table of contents
A. STUDIES. MISCELLANEA
Mircea-Sever Roman
Considerations on the Sumerian Hieratic City-State
Mihai Dragnea
The Thraco-Dacian Origin of the Paparuda/Dodola Rain-Making Ritual
Robert Miric
The figure of the angel Temeluch in the apocryphal writings The Apocalypse of Paul and The
Revelation of Pseudo-John. A comparative study
Vlad Sofronie
The Title Fight between the Two Christian Empires in the Age of Crusades
Ligia Boldea
Pictures of the Serfs in Medieval Documents from Banat (14th and 15th Centuries)
Mihaela Grancea
Truth in Fiction versus Fiction in Truth. Historical Novel and Romanian Folk Creation on the
Tragedy of the Brancoveanu Family
Iacob Marza
A Proposal for a Comparative Research. Two Gymnasium Libraries in Transylvania of the
Enlightenment Period
Andi Mihalache
Laocoons Prints. The Meaning Of Plaster Casts Of Antique Sculptures From A History Of Art
Perspective
Roxana- Mihaela Coman
Romanian travelers to the East between the quest for the exotic and diplomatic mission
Georgeta Fodor
Woman as a Nations Symbol: The Romanian Case
Silviu Cristian Rad
The Bible Generator of Russian Literature in the Modern Era (F. M. Dostoyevsky, The Brothers
Karamazov)
Elena Andreea Boia-Trif
The Gypsy in the Transylvanian Romanian Mentality. 19th Century
Diana Crciun
The Image of the 19th Century Worker in Wladyslaw Reymont's Literature
Irena Avsenik Nabergoj
Cultural History and Literary Representations of Jews in Slovenia
Gabriela Glvan
Eerie Beauty: Premature Death in 19th Century Postmortem Photography
Mihaela Hau Blan
From Seppuku to Hikikomori. Suicidal Patterns in the 20th and 21st Centuries Japanese Literary
Imaginary
Loredana-Mihaiela Surdu
The European Idea Reflected by the Post-communist Romanian Intellectual Elite in Dilemma
Adriana Cupcea
Turks' Image in the Romanian History Textbooks, in the Post-Communist Period
Mariam Chinchrauli
Georgian musical art in the context of European and non-European musical culture (The Case of
Globalization in Georgia)
Maria-Nicoleta Ciocian
The Dialogue between the Contemporary Writer and the Bible
Dumitru Lctuu
Convenient Truths: Representations of the Communist Illegalists in the Romanian Historiography
in Post-Communism
5

9
18
28

34
42
51

73

81

92
101
110

116
125
137
155
162

169
175
185

190
197

B. STUDIES. CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES OF WAR

Dana Percec
The Happy Few, the Band of Brothers and the Two World Wars
Valeria Sorostineanu
Dilemmatic Loyalties. A Case Study: the Church District of Sibiu before the Great Unification
Carmen gorean
Life on the Frontline and the Horrors of WWI as Seen by the Romanian Newspapers of
Transylvania: Libertatea, Deteptarea and Romnul (1914-1918)
Radu Teuceanu
Paul Eders Memories from the Bukovinian War (1915-1916)
Andreea Dncil Ineoan
... And the wind used to keep me company. The Notes of Archpriest Cndea during the Refuge in
Moldova, 1918
Alexandru Ilie Munteanu
World War I narratives in Ion Agrbiceanus literary writings
Olga Grdinaru
The Germans, the Whites, the Reds and Other Enemies in M. Bulgakovs The White Guard
Daniel Gicu
The Great War Seen through the Eyes of Romanian Peasants
Laura Coltofean
Death as a Political Instrument. Introducing the Bolshevik and Hungarian Death as Death of
Otherness
Cristiana Budac
Divergent Accounts of War German Expressionist Painting and British Official Photography

205
214
223

236
243

250
255
265
283

290

C. REVIEWS
Lucian Boia
Balchik, between Lieux deHistoire and Lieux de Mmoire (Anca Filipovici)
Adriana Babei
The Amazons. A Story (Gabriela Glvan)
Oana Bodea
About a Historical Behavior (Laura Stanciu)
Michel Pastoureau
Black. The Hero of a History (Gabriela Petic)
Ruth B. Bottigheimer
Fairy Tales: Between Literary and Oral Tradition (Daniel Gicu)

301
303
305
310
313

A.STUDIES

Considerations on the Sumerian Hieratic City-State

Mircea-Sever ROMAN
Babes-Bolyai University
Faculty of European Studies
Department of Jewish Studies
E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract. The essay deals with the emergence of priesthood and theocracy in Sumer, being useful
for those interested in the study of prehistory and ancient history, orientalists and historians of religion, as
well as sociologists and anthropologists who may identify elements of urban sociology or relations of
power. Before analyzing the priesthood, we consider it necessary to place it within the context of
discourse about religiosity and religious behaviour, making a taxonomy rather than hierarchy of the
religiosity structure.
Keywords: Sumer, priesthood, religiosity, Obeid culture, hieratic city-state
astrology, astral mantic, worship of
the stars;
c. Anthropology:
1. Anthropogony;
2. The making of the human being and
its status;
3. The roles and functions of the
human being;
4. The human body;
5. The soul (or the spirit, the
double);
d. Forms of cultic manifestation:
1. The priesthood (divinatory, magical,
purifying etc.);
2. The sacred spaces as axis mundis or
centre of the world: altars, totems,
chapels,
temples,
sanctuaries,
tabernacles, mountains, groves,
cities, rivers;
3. The story (3), which represents the
doctrinal foundation and often glides
in the performance of rites and
rituals;
4. Rites (Malherbe 2012, 41) (4) and
rituals:

The Priesthood and its Place in the

Systematized Religiosity
Specialists in religion claim that the
abyss of the human soul contains the sacred
intrinsically (Caillois 2006, 19-20; Otto 2002,
11-20; Eliade 1992, VIII), and that this sacred
springs out from the human being toward light:
when it is objectified, the sacred conceives
religious systems and religions. We must clarify
the fact that the world religions, regardless of
their name, have common constitutive elements.
In other words, Buddhism, for example, although
it has a well-established identity, has some
common elements with Taoism and with
Christianity (1) (Kolakowski 1993, 9).
This is the pattern of the constitutive
elements of religiosity and its manifestations,
although not all the elements may be found in
the major religions (2):
a. Gods:
1. Theogony or theology;
2. The functions of the gods;
b. Cosmology:
1. Cosmogony;
2. The roles and functions of the
identified stars in astronomy,

(3)The story is the superordinated category that may

contain the elaboration and the telling of primordial,
cosmogonical myths, crucial moments, historical
epics, and narrations about gods, heroes, founders of
religions, sermons with soteriological content,
eschatological teachings etc.
(4) Generally speaking, the rites appear as a
privileged place in which culture and religion meet
each other: they are the mark of a society and they
contain an important dose of folklore. It is no wonder
that the religious rites are recovered through

(1) As a matter of fact, in his work Religion: if there is

no God: on God, the Devil, sin and other worries of
the so-called philosophy of religion, Leszek
Kolakowski does not consider Buddhism as being a
religion properly, but a metaphysical and moral
wisdom. We used the Romanian translation of the
work.
(2) It is not the case of a hierarchy, but a simple
taxonomy of the structure and religious discourse.

- Sacrifices: offerings, libations;

- Purifications;
- Liturgies;
- Prayers;
- Hymns or sacred music;
- Alimentary rituals.
5. The
cosmic
liturgy:
cultic
calendar, feasts and festivals;
6. Eschatology:
- life after death;
- Inferno or the Netherworld;
- thanatological rituals: death and
body treatment (5);
- the cult of the dead.
The individual analysis of these
elements is almost impossible and counterproductive, as they are naturally overlapped.
Once the priesthood is placed in the
systematized religiosity, we may discuss the
priesthood itself.

We cannot say with certainty when man

reached the conclusion that he may indeed
continue to approach gods, but in some cases it
is better to benefit from the mediation of a
connoisseur, the priest. Consequently, the clans
from the archaic period would concoct some
criteria (mystical vocation, experience and/or
age, dynasty) that determined the identification,
selection and initiation of some of their members
in priesthood, and then would subsequently
consecrate
such
individuals.
Having
accomplished these actions, the priests of the
clans or tribes began to mediate between
communities and the sacred personal powers.
It is possible that the mediating priests
were the patriarchs of the clans. In this case, they
would operate having full authority and leading
functions on the familial, administrative,
political, military and medical-religious levels:
In most cases, the religious cult is considered by
primitives as a matter of family before being a
matter of interest for the group (Petrescu 2001,
312).
Let us see what the functions of the
priests were:
The priests worked to create,
maintain and reestablish the divine order
symbolized by the classification system
of
the
clean/unclean
and
the
holy/common. The charge given to the
priests in Leviticus 10:10 to distinguish
(habdil) between the holy and the
common and between the clean and
unclean uses the same Hebrew root for
the divine action of making distinctions
in the process of creation (Gen.
1:4,6,7,14,18). Therefore, one might say
that, just as God established the original
creational distinctions between order and
chaos, life and death, the priests in
particular, and to some extent all people
who were created in the image of God
became cocreators, or at least
comaintainers
with
God.
By
maintaining those distinctions, they
upheld the creational order from the
constant threat of encroachment of chaos
and death (Duke 2003, 646-655).
This is not true only in the case of
Jewish priesthood, as it appears in the Hebrew
Bible, but for all types of sacerdotal positions in
the Near East.
First of all, the priest has the function of
a go-between, of a builder of bridges (7)

The Definition of the Archaic Priesthood

What does priest actually mean? Who
were the priests? Where did they come from?
Who had selected them and based on which
criteria? What were their functions and what
services did they fulfill?
To answer these questions we will start
from the following historical evidences: the first
one is that the man is a social being, who enjoys
living in groups (smaller or bigger); and the
second is that, as Mircea Eliade mentioned, the
sacred is an element in the structure of
conscience and not a stage in the history of this
conscience (Eliade 1992, VIII). This aspect
means that man has always felt the thrill of the
sacred and this has manifested itself in religious
behavior, determining mankind to worship
sacred powers, be they ancestors, spirits,
protective gods or God (Tokarev 1974, 333).
At the beginning of the existence of the
human race, each individual would approach the
sacred powers alone, immediately and
unconstrained. The great orientalist Daniel
Constantin observed: In the archaic times there
were direct relations between the man and his
familiar god (6), with no intermediary, as the god
was implored and sacrifices were brought to
him, while he uttered oracles (Daniel 1983, 74).

culture, which has the effect of limiting every religion

within a culture.
(5) In the sense of interment, cremation or
abandonment as food for the wild beasts.
(6) In the Sumerian language this familiar god was
named du.

(7) Pontifex (lat.).

10

between the sacred powers and people. In this

quality of interface, he represents the people and
steps into a dangerous area, approaching the
powers according to certain patterns, after
some prayers or other typical deeds, adding
sacrifices and offers. These are not put on the
ground, but on a higher consecrated space, a
built altar made of stones orslabs, being
considered an altar that may be part of a oneroomed sanctuary or, later, of a temple with
three distinct layers, possibly a ziggurat.
Thus, the priest takes before the
powers the vegetal offerings, consisting in
wheat, honey, flour, bread, pies, fruit and
vegetables, figs, dates, as well as drinks and
libations of oil, milk, wine, beer, lemonade.
Nevertheless, it seems that the animal sacrifices
(8) are more appreciated by the Mesopotamian
gods: usually the animals are burnt (entirely or
partly), being transferred into another state, that
of fragrance to the gods that live in the ether.
Other offerings are brought ex-voto: perfumes,
vessels, jewelries, figures and statues that are
usually the representations dedicated in a
procedure with magical substratum, harbored
under gods protection (Moscati 1982, 57) (9)
The priest who receives the vegetables, liquids,
animals and objects is a substitute, a
representative and a mediator for the benefit of
the represented people.
Then, it must be said that not only the
priest would represent the people before the
sacred powers, but he would also represent
these powers before people, the representation
mode being various. Firstly, after the priest came
to know the will of the powers concerning a
certain thing (divination), he would teach the
people this will, offering his fellow-men the
teachings regarding the gods, the world, the life
or the rites, the rituals and the sacrifices.
Therefore, he is a teacher, a preacher (10) or at
least a teller, a narrative agent.

Secondly, the priest oversees his flock

of worshippers in the observance of the sacred
precepts, i.e., the observance of distinctions
between pure and impure, between sacred and
profane. Hence, the priest is not only a teacher,
but also a supervisor of the sacred institutions.
Thirdly, the priest is a purifier: if an
object, an animal, a thing or a man, transgressed
from sacred to profane and became defiled, the
priest is the one called to remove the curse, to
reestablish the proper order of things, to purify,
to restore the holiness and to attract again the
blessings of the gods by appeasing them
(Gavrilu 1997, 26; Gavrilu 1998, 160) (11).
Fourthly, the priest was a builder of
sanctuaries and sacrificial places, as well as the
custodian of cult objects with administrative and
economical functions, as we are to see below.
Having reached this point, we consider it
helpful to direct our essay to the issue of the
fable. This is what we mean concretely.
R. Laird Harris suggests that the central
element of priesthood is a sacrificial one (Harris
1991 in Butler, 1137-1138). However, this
utterance needs to be taken cum grano salis, as it
is absolutely necessary to pay attention to the
fable, the story that frames the man and the

Carl von Clausewitz would issue a philosophy of war,

the so-called Just War Theory.
(11)In the introductory study of the book Eseu despre
natura i funcia sacrificiului, by Marcel Mauss i
Henri Hubert, Nicu Gavrilu wrote that the authors
asserted that through sacrifices it was sought for the
appeasement of the almighty god, not the heavenly
mercy. On the contrary, revigoration was what was
sought for, the reinforcement of the tired or exhausted
god. We are not saying whether the assertion is
accurate or not, but we do invite the reader to
meditate on the following aspect: it is said about the
prehistorical men that they had a primitive and
rudimentary thinking; nevertheless, they thought that
due to a guilt in illo tempore, an evil deed, men were
got rid of by the gods and the divinities are to be
appeased. On the other hand, the Maya people,
considered to have an evolved thinking, believed that
the gods would need human blood so that their
strength would not fade away. The question is which
of the two positions is closer to the truth: the position
that believes in the power of the gods and the
necessity of having them appeased or the position that
states the weaknesses of the gods and the necessity of
revigorating them through the sacrifices?... After all,
the second position shows the gods dependence on
man and the mans superiority toward god if the
man does not take care of the god, the poor puny god
dies.

(8)These animal sacrifices consisted in sheep, goats,

pigs, birds, fish and rarely oxen. Pigs were brought as
sacrifices especially to the infernal gods.
(9) Later, these statues will be placed in temples.
(10) An interesting aspect of the teaching of the priests
was concerning war. Pretending that they are the
voice of gods, the priests instigated to war against
other people not so much to subdue them, but to
affirm their gods supremacy over the other gods of
other tribes. In other words, we have here the war
sacralization, the concept of a holy war, specific to
Jews later (erem) and to Muslims (jihad). Later,
when the sacred would seem to lose part of its power,

11

object (Cuceu 1999) (12). An external observer,

who does not know the fable, sees only that a
man kills a poor animal. But, being aware of the
story behind the sacrifice, the observer becomes
aware that reality may be understood only if it is
transfigured, symboled, as Leslie A. White
would put it (White 2007, 3-8), because it does
not depict a man, but a sacrificer, a man situated
in a constellation of sacred relations and who
acts, assuming a role of the offerer. In this
context, the animal is not a poor animal, a
victim, but it is ennobled, being considered an
offering given to the Divinity, through which
relations are made and consolidated, sacred vows
are renewed, holy treaties are reconfirmed and
the future is fathomed. The fable or the myth and
its narration give substance and sense to the
sacrifice itself. Before the sacrifice, there should
be the fable elaboration: in other words, the myth
precedes the rite.
C. I. Gulian, citing from the monumental
work Miti e leggende by Raffaele Pettazzoni,
confirms our conviction:
The reciting of the myths about
the origins is integrated in the cult, for
this narration (recitazione) itself is cult
and serves to the purpose for which the
cult is celebrated, i.e., the maintenance
and the stimulation of life (...). The
reciting of the creation of the world
serves to the preservation of the world,
the reciting of the origin of the human
species serves to keep alive, that is, the
community, the tribal group; the
narration of the instituition of the
initiatory myths and the shamanic
practices serves to the ensurance of the
efficiency and their duration (Gulian
1983, 158-159).
We are now to consider some aspects of
the archaic priesthood.

city-states to be like Eridu, Ur, Nippur or Uruk

(Warka) is to be framed within the Ubaid culture
Obeid,
remarks
Alexandru
Diaconescu
(Diaconescu 2001, 29).
Professor Marc Van De Mieroop notices
that after 5300 BCE, the periodization of the
history of the Sumerians is oriented according to
archaeological distinctions based on stylistic
changes in the material remains that have little
historical value. The period should be regarded
as a unit in political terms, displaying the same
basic characteristics for its entire duration
(Mieroop 2007, 42).
The initial social form of the Sumerians
was one of tribal community; in other words,
first, there were communities that were based on
the concept of kinship and on descent from a
common ancestor.
The historians admit that they do not
know whence the Sumerians came. This
population set up small independent hamlets, or
centers of agricultural areas. Each clan or tribe
lives together and has its own protecting god
(Tokarev 1974, 333). Generally, the clan or the
tribe has in its foreground a patriarch who acts
autocratically, possessing full powers: he is the
leader of the family and has authority at the
administrative, political, military and medicalreligious levels, being the priest of the clan:
In most cases, the religious cult
is considered by the primitives as a
family issue, before being an issue
important for the whole community. The
chieftain of the family practices it, for he
is able to maintain relationships with the
spirits of the ancestors. He knows what
rules are to be observed at the birth of a
child, at the wedding of a family
member or at the death of a relative. He
is also the one who holds the secrets of
the initiation and of all the ceremonies
the cult requires, fulfilling, in the same
time, to function of a general
practitioner,
for
his
knowledge,
compared to the one the family members
have is supreme in all aspects (Petrescu
2001, 312).
As it can be seen from this quotation, the
priesthood of the patriarch of the extended
family concerns the rites (here, especially the
rites of passing), the gifts given to the gods and
the healings.
In time, the independent hamlets
mentioned before became pre-urban settlements
and later, groups of nomads coming from the
deserts of Syria and speaking a Semitic

Priesthood in the Period of Obeid Culture

The
Ubaid
culture
lasted
in
Mesopotamia from 5300 BCE till about 3500
BCE, differing in presence according to
geographic area. It is not known very well who
the bearers of this culture were. This culture was
discovered near the ancient city Ur and
...represents, as a matter of fact, the beginnings
of the settling of the Sumerians in Mesopotamia,
because the first level of occupation in a series of
(12) For aspects regarding the narrative act, fable,
narrator, time, place and rhythm of utterance see Ion
Cuceu 1999.

12

language, Akkadian, began to enter the

territories from the north of Sumer, penetrating
in successive waves (Eliade 1992, 58). These
were Semites, descendants of the biblical Shem,
who infiltrate almost continually, from the
beginnings of the history to the end of the
Mesopotamian civilization: penetrating n areas
of sedentary culture, they mix themselves with
the other populations, assimilate their superior
culture (Moscati 1975, 31), developing, as
Mircea Eliade put it, a Sumerian-Akkadian
symbiosis so consistent that the Sumerian
component parts could not be detected from the
Akkadian ones.
As we have seen above, in the pre-urban
settlements the relationships were based on the
kinship, on the descendancy from a common
ancestor. Yet, when the number of the
inhabitants of these settlements increase, the
perception of the people regarding the kinship
and the family cult and worship is being
modified in time, imperceptibly but, in the end,
dramatically: the tribes and the clans dissipate in
families of 2-3 generations. The value of tribal
kinship begins to lose ground in front of the
neighborhood relationships.
Toward the end of the period of the
Ubaid culture its bearers continue to practice the
predator-prey economy of hunting and fishing,
but, step by step, the agriculture and cattle
developed a bigger and bigger importance in
economic life. In time handicrafts developed and
it led to an excess of agricultural and alimentary
products that permitted the dislocation of a part
of the population and its specialization, who was
involved in handicrafts and craftsmanship, and
especially in sacerdocy. The priests of the clans
expressed their religiosity through certain sacred
stories and gestures that individualizes and gives
consistency to the clan. Nevertheless, moving to
bigger settlements, the patriarchs-priests
interacted with other patriarchs-priests, came to
know different explications of the world as they
had known it. This fact determined the change of
their discourse, enlarging it in order to include
other narrations, other clans and leading to the
elaboration of new stories, oriented toward
supporting the tutelary divinity of the settlement
or even toward its pantheon. S. A. Tokarev
mentions: As early as the Sumerian age
(millennia 4-3 BCE) by fusions and
combinations of the local beliefs in protective
gods, deities of the entire people had appeared
(Tokarev 1974, 321) Therefore, the urbanization
process determines to a certain degree the
undermining of consanguinity, replacing the

perception of a member of one clan with the

quality of citizen or inhabitant of a stronghold.
Patriarchs-priests of the clans become priests of
the settlements, people with life experience that
hold in their hands the administrative, politic,
and religious powers; preoccupied not only with
the religiosity of the clan, but also with
homogenization of the religiosity of the
settlement in order to reduce the religious
conflicts. The new stories conceived a new
religiosity that gave birth to a new type of social
cohesion, and this, in turn, elaborated new
stories to consolidate their essence. In other
words, it appears a gnoseological and
hermeneutical spiral, both structured and
structuring. This affirmation is also verified
through Tokarevs mention:
In time, the priests had begun to
establish genealogical relations between
these gods and the local gods. () In
this way, as early as the Sumerian age,
before the invasion of the Semitic
peoples, there had taken place the
process of formation of the pantheon
from the former protective gods of the
community. In their figures there were
intermingled features that dealt with the
forces of nature, as well as features of
civilizing heroes (Ibidem).(13)
Practically, at the end of the Ubaid phase
(3500 BCE), apart from shepherds, hunters and
fishermen, farmers, we may point out the
existence of the priesthood as an institutionalized
category.
The Hieratic City-State
Before we continue our essay about
sacerdocy, we consider it useful to remind some
aspects that regard the early social history of
Mesopotamia.
As we have seen above, the priests were
considered mediums, serving as mediators
between deities, who created men for serving
them (Eliade 1992, 62; Daniel 1975, XI) (14), and
the masses of people, to whom priests would
reveal the way in which gods were to be served.
Once the gods revealed to the priests the ways of
acceptable worship, the corollary was that from
(13). In the second part of this quotation the author
reveals once more his euhemerist thinking, which was
fashionable in the scientific atheism.
(14) See aslo Gndirea asiro-babilonian n texte,
Editura tiinific, Bucureti, 1975, introductory
study by Constantin Daniel, translation, introductory
notes and notes by Athanase Negoi), XI.

13

the initial social form of organization there was a

shift that led not only to the emergence of the
full-time priesthood, which was supported by
faithful people through meaningful offerings, but
also to the theocratic governance. The priests
would have possessions and assume the role of
coordinators of the relationships within the
community and out of it.
Having plans of edifying sanctuaries, of
ensuring the cult and of perpetuating the
religious and cultural traditions, the priests coopted auxiliary personnel, various craftsmen and
artisans; that was the moment in which we may
notice for the first time in history the generation
of not only administration, but also of a
bureaucracy of the temples administrators
and scribes. Moreover, the priests were the ones
to become involved in administering the matters
of the state, including the construction of
irrigation canals necessary for the community, a
fact that attracted profusion and determined the
grouping of some smaller, rural settlements near
the bigger towns and the emergence of the citystates.
This is what Jean Deshayes wrote on the
relations among the communities, the emergence
of the full-time priesthood, bureaucracy and
temples:
It is possible that the villages
were formed near the sacred places,
about which the populations still
nomadic would gather periodically to
perform some rites and, on the same
occasion, to exchange products. The
relations between the market place and
the cult certainly date back to the oldest
times and it has never disappeared
entirely. The temples were, thus, as
naturally as it could have been, among
the basic beneficiaries of an evolution in
which the economic development
depended on a collective effort
indispensable to the good working of the
irrigation system. And they would have
a threefold advantage: the role which
they had already detained in the
economic life, their wealth and, finally, a
well-structured organization that would
foreshadow the Sumerian bureaucracy.
() The more the functions of the
temple grew in importance, the more the
social corpus differentiated, departing
from the social-economic forms of the
Neolithic villages; and also, the more it
became
necessary
a
political
organization
for
protecting
the

accumulated goods and for keeping the

cohesion of a more diverse community.
The city was birthed due to these causes
and from these needs (Deshayes 1976,
70-72).
In time, the Sumerian governance did
not remain purely theocratic, but it evolved: big
men lugal became prominent, having
administrative, and especially military, tasks. It
was believed about them that they had received
their function to represent the supreme god of
the city and to administer the law and the justice.
The Lugal were not incarnated gods, but regents
that should be accountable for the way they
would perform their functions. The lugal was
assisted by counsels of senators and young
warriors. Later on, when various city-states
established their jurisdiction over other cities, the
lugal would lead through local governors, named
ensi or patesi. They would be mandated to act
independently and they would control the
economy in their relations with the nomad from
the surrounding areas.
In the first stage of history, the essential
actions of the sovereign were not performed with
a view to war, but to peace: they would build
temples and dig or maintain the irrigation canals
in a good state.
We highlight the fact that once again the
priesthood plays an important role, as the priests
would invest the lugal officially in their role of
leading the community. We do not know with
accuracy when the first investment of this type
took place, but we may at least testify a request
in this direction made by Lugal-Zagessi in the
about 2350 BCE, when he went to Nippur, the
holy settlement, to request the priestly order
from the Vatican of those days to invest him as
King of the Four Corners a sort of king of the
entire Land. Lucian Boia writes concerning this
the following: Actually, even from the
beginning, politics (or what was to become
politics) and religion were a single body. The
gods participated in the life of the community;
they were asked for advice and help. At the same
time, what also occurred was the sacralization of
the Power (Boia 2000, 203).
On the other hand, the structures and the
religious institutions may have fallen into the
trap of those hungry for power. And here we
may apply what Georges Balandier wrote:
The sacred represents one of the
dimensions of the politic domain;
religion may be an instrument of power,
a warranty of its legitimation, one of the
means used in political competitions.
14

() The ritual structures and the

authority
structures
are
closely
interrelated (), their respective
dynamisms are correlated. () The
strategy of the sacred, having political
purposes, presents apparently under two
contradictory aspects: it may be put
under the service of the existent social
order and of the required positions or it
may serve the ambition of those who
want to conquer authority and to
legitimize it (Balandier 1998, 138-139).
Concerning the relation state
religion, Michael D. Coogan confirms:
Although temple and the crown sometimes
competed for power and wealth, in general
religion served the political ends of the state
(Coogan 2001, 17).
In the Mesopotamian cities, the monarch
came to have the privilege of designating the
high priest and the high dignitaries. The clergy
came from the royal family and from aristocracy
and it was under the leadership of the high priest.
In Mesopotamia, the borderline between the
religious and the politic sphere was very thin a
fact which, in various forms, has perpetuated
until now, so that the high priest was
simultaneously a political as well as a religious
dignitary. Constantin Daniel added:
The Sumerian sovereign Gudea
entitled himself proudly the priest of the
god Ningirsu, and even later the
Assirian kings never forgot to add to
their title that of the priest of the god
Assur. On the other hand, the Sumerian
king was compelled to participate in
some of the festivities, such as the New
Year, and to perform some rites.
Therefore, the kings would have
relations with priesthood and would help
it many times (Daniel 1983, 74-75).
Thus, it has no relevance whether
sovereigns would rule with the help of the
priestly order or priests would rule through the
lu-gal: we deal with a co-existence that was
characterized by Joseph Campbell by the
collocation hieratic city-state. Let us see what
this internationally recognized scientist writes,
an author gifted with narrative mastery:
In the period immediately
following that of the hieratic city state,
which may be dated for the south
Mesopotamian
riverine
towns,
schematically, circa 3500-2500 B.C.
we encounter a totally new and
remarkable situation. For at the level of

the archaeological stratum known as

Uruk A, which is immediately above the
Obeid and can be roughly placed at circa
3500 B.C., the south Mesopotamian
temple areas can be seen to have
increased notably in size and
importance; and then, with stunning
abruptness, at a crucial date that can be
almost precisely fixed at 3200 B.C. (in
the period of the archaeological stratum
known as Uruk B), there appears in this
little Sumerian mud garden as though
the flowers of its tiny cities were
suddenly bursting into bloom the
whole cultural syndrome that has since
constituted the germinal unit of all of the
high civilizations of the world. And we
cannot attribute this event to any
achievement of the mentality of simple
peasants. Nor was it the mechanical
consequence of a simple piling up of
material
artefacts,
economically
determined. It was actually and clearly
the highly conscious creation (this much
can be asserted with complete assurance)
of the mind and the science of a new
order of humanity, which had never
before appeared in the history of
mankind; namely, the professional, fulltime, initiated, strictly regimented
temple priest (Campbell 1991, 146).
In time, the Sumerian-Akkadian
priesthood evolved remarkably and different
tasks and specialists of the sacred appeared
(Moscati 1982, 56). Thus, there were the divinerfortune-tellers also named prophets the
magician-sorcerer-exorcist priests, the purifiers,
the anointers, the musicians and singers, the
mourners, all these having administrative duties
as well.
Conclusion
The Sumerian priesthood is placed in the
context of ancient religious systems, pointing out
the common elements of religiosity. The sacred
is analyzed in the archaic structures, taking into
account the status and functions of priests,
sacrifices and aspects of ancient mentality
concerning the relations between humans and
divinity. Obeid culture marks its special features
in the case of priesthood, delineating various
functions and specialists of the sacred, as well as
a certain position of the priest in developing
relations with the monarch or the ruler of the
Sumerian city-state.

15

References
a. Books:
Balandier
1998

Boia 2000

Caillois 2006

Campbell
1991

Cuceu 1999

Daniel 1983

Deshayes
1976

Diaconescu
2001

Eliade 1992

Gavrilu
1998

Gulian 1983

Kolakowski
1993

Balandier,
Georges,
Antropologie
politic
[Political
Anthropology],
Bucureti,
Budapest,
Amarcord, Open Society
Institute, 1998.
Boia, Lucian, Pentru o istorie
a imaginarului [For a History
of the Imaginary], Bucureti
Humanitas, 2000.
Caillois, Roger, Omul i
sacrul [The Man and the
Sacred], 2nd edition, Bucureti
Nemira, 2006.
Campbell, Joseph, The Masks
of God Primitive Mythology,
New York, Penguin Compass,
USA, 1991.
Cuceu,
Ion,
Fenomenul
povestitului [The Phenomenon
of Storytelling], Cluj-Napoca,
EFES, 1999.
Daniel, Constantin, Civilizaia
sumerian [The Sumerian
Civilization],
Bucureti,
Editura Sport-Turism, 1983.
Deshayes, Jean, Civilizaiile
vechiului
Orient
[The
Civilizations of the Ancient
Orient], vol. 1, Bucureti,
Meridiane, 1976.
Diaconescu, Alexandru, Mari
civilizaii ale Orientului antic
[Great Civilizations of the
Ancient Orient], Cluj-Napoca,
Accent, 2001.
Eliade,
Mircea,
Istoria
credinelor
i
ideilor
religioase [The History of
Religious Faiths and Ideas],
vol. I, Chiinu, Universitas,
1992.
Gavrilu, Nicu, Mentaliti i
ritualuri magico-religioase
Studii i eseuri de sociologie a
sacrului [Magical-Religious
Rituals and Mentalities
Studies and Essays of the
Sociology of the Sacred], Iai,
Polirom, 1998.
Gulian, C. I., Lumea culturii
primitive [The World of the
Primitive Culture], Bucureti,
Albatros, 1983.

Mieroop 2007

Moscati 1975

Moscati 1982

Otto 2002

Petrescu 2001

Tokarev 1974

White 2007

*** 1975

Kolakowski, Leszek, Religia

[The Religion], Bucureti,
Humanitas, 1993.
Mieroop, Marc, Van de, A
History of the Ancient Near
East, ca. 3000 323 BC, 2nd
edition, Oxford, Blackwell
Publishing, 2007.
Moscati, Sabatino, Vechile
civilizaii semite [The Old
Semitic
Civilizations],
Bucureti, Meridiane, 1975.
Moscati, Sabatino, Vechi
imperii ale Orientului [Old
Empires of the Orient],
Bucureti, Meridiane, 1982.
Otto, Rudolf, Sacrul Despre
elementul iraional din ideea
divinului i despre relaia lui
cu raionalul [The Sacred
On the Irrational Element
from the Idea of Divine and
on Its Relation with the
Irrational],
Cluj-Napoca,
Dacia, 2002.
Petrescu, Nicolae, Primitivii:
organizare

instituii,
credine mentalitate [The
Primitives: Organizations
Institutions Beliefs
Mentality],
Cluj-Napoca,
EFES, 2001.
Tokarev, S. A., Religia n
istoria
popoarelor
lumii
[Religion in the History of the
Peoples of the World],
Bucureti, Editura Politic,
1974.
White, Leslie, The Evolution
of Culture, Walnut Creek,
Left Coast Press, 2007.
Gndirea asiro-babilonian
n texte [The AssyrianBabylonian
Thinking
in
Texts], Bucureti, Editura
tiinific, 1975.

b. Chapters in books
Gavrilu,
Nicu,
Studiu
Gavrilu
introductiv
[Introductory
1997
Study]. In: Marcel Mauss,
Henri Hubert, Eseu despre
natura i funcia sacrificiului
[Essay on the Nature and
Function of the Sacrifice],
Iai, Polirom, 1997.
16

c. Dictionaries and encyclopedias

Coogan 2001 Coogan, Michael, D. (ed.),
The Oxford History of the
Biblical World, New York,
Oxford University Press,
2001.
Duke,
R.
K., Priests,
Duke 2003
Priesthood. In: Dictionary of
the
Old
Testament:
Pentateuch, T. Desmond
Alexander & David W. Baker
(eds.),
Illinois,
Leicester
InterVarsity Press, 2003, p.
646-655.
Harris, Laird, H., Priests. In:
Harris 1991
Holman Bible Dictionary,
Trent Butler (gen. ed.),

Malherbe
2013

17

Nashville, Holman Bible

Publishers, 1991, p. 11371138.
Malherbe,
Michel,
Enciclopedia religiilor [The
Encyclopedia of Relgions],
2nd vol., Bucureti, Nemira,
2013, p. 41.

The Thraco-Dacian Origin of the Paparuda/Dodola Rain-Making

Ritual

Mihai DRAGNEA
Nicolae Iorga Institute of History,
Romanian Academy, Bucharest
E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract. This study presents an analysis of the rain-making ritual from Romania, called
Paparuda, performed in the spring and in times of severe drought. The ritual is common also in the Slavic
folklore, having the same structure. In this study, I will demonstrate that the origin of the rain-making
ritual Paparuda/Dodola is Thracian, and that the South Slavic tribes from Balkans adopted the ritual from
the Thracians. The ritual is present almost in the entire Balkan Peninsula, especially in the area inhabited
by Slavs, which was Thracian before the Slavic migration from the 6th century.
Keywords: Paparuda, Dodola, Slavic mythology, Perun, Thracians, Saint Elijah
(Ibidem, 103-104; Danilov 2007, 79). (3)
Another legend tells us that the god Veles steels
Dodola on her wedding day with Perun. The
latter will wage a mythological war against
Veles, will defeat him and, as a result, the latter
will take refuge in the underworld. Perun is
presented as a fighter against the drought (Platov
1998, 108). There is an old song about him from
Gnjilane (4) where he is called Elijah:

Paparuda, also called Paparud,

Papalug, Pplug, Paparug, Babarug,
Bbruge, Dodola, Dodoloaie, Dadaloaie,
Dodoloi, Mmru or Gogul, is the name of the
magic rain-making ritual both in the Romanian
mythology and the South Slavic ones (Croatians,
Serbs, Macedonians and Bulgarians) (Paliga
2008, 50).
In the mythology of Slavs, we found out
that Perun (1) went to the heavenly world Prav,
(2) where he met Dodola, the beautiful daughter
of the god of heavens, whom he married, and
she would be called Perunica () or
Perperuna (Asov 1999, 16). The hierogamy of
the two results into a child, Diva-Devana

Let the dew appear,

Oh dudula dear God!
Oh Elijah, God bless!
(3) In the medieval encyclopedical dictionary Mater
Verborum from 13th century, the parents of Devana
(Deuana) are Perun and Letnicina (dvana letniina i
perunova dci). The manuscript was written in Latin
and contains also more than 1000 comments written
in the medieval Czech language. In the manuscript,
the mother of Devana is compared to the Roman
goddess Diana (Patera 1878, 48).
(4) Settlement in Kosovo, which was called Dardania
in Antiquity. Thracian and Illyrian tribes used to live
on this territory.

(1) The Slavic god of thunder and lightning, similar to

Thor in Scandinavia.
(2) Prav represents the divine law applied to humans
as social law, being enforced by the god Svarog or
Dajdbog.

18

Oh Elijah, my Perun!
God bless, bless, bless, Elijah bless!
(Milojevi 1870, 321).

Dalmatia, we come across the variant Preperua

(Ovsec 1991, 170, 291). On the Greek territory
we have the variants Pipieruga and Perpeira
(Vulcnescu 1985, 418), which have probably
come along the Slavic channel.
On the basis of the philological analysis
of the term paparud we may reach the
conclusion that the term under examination
might have Indo-European origins. The first part
of the name, papa, derives from a common
Indo-European root, as well as the Greek word
ancestor, mythical elder or the Latin
pappus, old man, elder. Some researchers
suggest that the second part of the word, rudarud, has Slavic origin, therefore Indo-European
too. In Bulgarian, rud means nation and
rodenie might be translated as relative
(blood, blood relative in Russian) (Ibidem,
419). The Romanian folklorist and literary
historian G. Dem Teodorescu considers that
paparuda has a Thracian origin (Teodorescu
1874, 128-134). The Romanian philologist and
poet Gheorghe Sulescu believes that the term
papalug has Greek-Latin origins (Sulescu
1982, 244). Georgieva associates the Slavic
forms dodola (sg.), dodole (pl.) with the
Lithuanian dundulis thunder (Paliga 2006,
106) which is quite possible if we take into
account the very close connection between
Thracian and Lithuanian (both belonging to the
Satem group). As far as Dodoloaie (6) is
concerned, she appears as a pluviometric
goddess, invoked by her feminine entourage
(little girls who start the rain). Dodoloaie
identifies with the Vedic god Rudra (Ghinoiu
2008, 105), a divinity of storms and winds. (7)
We notice that in the magic invoking of the
goddess peoples pleas are addressed directly to
her: Paparud, rud/come and get wet/so the
rain may fall/heavily,/paparudele (plural form)/
make the corn/as tall as fences (Kernbach 1983,
540).
The time of performing the ritual varies
from region to region. For instance, in Oltenia
(Olt county), the ritual usually takes place on
Thursdays and Sundays, between Easter and

Etymologically, the term dodola

belongs to the Thraco-Phrygian language, which
had anthroponyms and toponyms with the
radical doid-, dyd- or doudou- (Doidalsos,
Doidalses, Dydalsos, Dudensis, Duda, Dudis,
Dudistius or Doudoupes) (Decev 1957, 151).
This makes us think of the Thracian origin of the
ritual (Bratu 2008, 3), present in the ethnic and
cultural distribution area of the Thracians. The
Polish historian Alexander Gieysztor considers
that the term paparud has Slavic origins, being
derived from Perperuna-Perunika (god Peruns
wife), while dodole would represent popular
mythical figures associated with the rain cult
(Gieysztor 1986, 47, 103). Studying the
etymology of the word Perun we found out that
the radical per means fire (the lightnings fire),
having as origin the Indo-European pur, fire.
In Thracian and Phrygian, the root pur- would
be translated as having the colour of fire
blonde hair or shining (Paliga 2009, 120). The
old form of the word Perun must have been Purun, and the Slavs would have taken from the
Indo-Europeans (especially from their Thracian
neighbours) only the root of the word pur, which
means fire (Paliga, Teodor 2009, 218). The
Bulgarian ethnologist and historian Ivanicka
Georgieva believes that the theonym Perun
could be a pre-Slavic relic of Thracian origin
forming from the root per (Ivanicka 1993, 232233). The archaic Slavonic form seems to be
Prporue, a term met in Croatia and Slovenia
(Gieysztor 1986, 49-50). The old Slavs also
called Perun the God of fires in the Sky or
The God of thunder and lightning (Paliga,
Teodor 2009, 218). Therefore, the ritual is
dedicated to a goddess called Paparud,
Dodoloaie or Dodoli (5) by the Romanians
(Vulcnescu 1985, 418), Pirpiruna or Duduleu
by the Aromanians from the Balkans (Paliga
2008, 52), Dodola, (pl. Dodole) by the Serbs,
Croatians and Macedonians (Ibidem, 51),
Peperuna or Peperud by the Bulgarians
(Vulcnescu 1985, 418). In the Romanian
territory,
Paparuda has various names
depending on the region: Paparug, Peperuie
(Banat), Papruie, Papalugaia, Babatu,
Babarud,
Mthul,
Buduroas-roas,
Pprug (Ardeal), Paplug (Moldavia),
Bbrug (Bihor). In Croatia, more exactly in

(6) For the Romanian space, the term dodoloaia is

attested in Criana and in the Romanian and the
Serbian Banat.
(7) In Vedic mythology, Maruts or Rudras are the
sons of Rudra and they are responsible for rain and
storm. They are described as a group of handsomely
youths who travell in their chariots drawn by spotted
mares or antelopes with sparkling spears. Storms and
downpours of rain surround their procession, which
makes the rain fall on the ground (Oldenberg 1988,
114).

(5) In Banat and Criana regions, paparuda is called

dodoloaie or dodoli.

19

Rusalii (Pentecost). In Transylvania, the ritual is

performed on the Ispas day (The Ascension),
that is 40 days after the Resurrection, and so it is
in Bukovina, too (Moisei 2008, 106). The
Aromanians from Macedonia (MacedoRomanians) perform Pirpiruna on the second or
third week after Saint Thomas Sunday. In
Dobrudja, as in other areas of Muntenia and
Banat as well, Paparuda is performed by Gypsy
women only (Petrovich 2007, 271), on the third
Thursday after Easter (Kernbach 1983, 540).
This is a result of the Christian influence upon
the popular pagan remnants and due to the
negative image that Gypsy women have; they
are seen as witches, fortune tellers or
spellbinders. Thus, what is malefic, of pagan
origin, has been transferred to Gypsies who are
perceived negatively by the community. In Gorj
County the custom is for the ritual to be
performed by boys only. (8) In Moldavia, in the
time of Dimitrie Cantemir (18th century), the
ritual was performed only by Romanians. In his
book, Description of Moldavia, Cantemir
narrates the Paparudas episode in the chapter
dealing with religion: In summer, when the
crops are endangered by the drought, the
peasants take a little girl, younger than ten, and
dress her up with a shirt made of tree leaves and
weeds. All the other little girls and children of
the same age are following her and are dancing
and singing around; wherever they arrive, the
old women have the custom of pouring cold
water on their heads. The song they are singing
is approximately like this: Paparudo! Climb up
the sky, open its gates, send the rain here, so the
rye, the wheat, the millet and others grow well
(Cantemir 1978, 198).
In Macedonia and Bulgaria, Dodola is practiced
also at the beginning of summer, when it is
drought, usually on Lords Ascension. (9) The
main character, a 9-12 years old little girl, is
adorned with greens and lilac (Mircevska 2005,
5). Taking the date of the ritual into account,
dodola might have preserved certain pagan
Slavic influences from the god Perun (The
master of rain and thunder) (Zecevic 1975, 127128). In the Serbian version of the ritual there
are groups of boys or girls, between 12 and 15
years old, covered with leaves, lilac flowers,
sometimes even cabbage leaves, who go from

house to house and sing. The owner of the house

symbolically pours water on them (Paton 1845,
270-271). Here follows a song recorded in the
first half of the 19th century:
We go through the village, hey, dodo, hey,
dodole!
and the clouds over the sky, hey, dodo, hey,
dodole!
We go faster, the clouds go faster, hey, dodo,
hey, dodole!
The clouds are ahead of us, hey, dodo, hey,
dodole!
The wheat, the wine is shared, hey, dodo, hey,
dodole!
.................................................................
(Karadi 1841, 111-114)
The rain-making ritual is also present in India.
In his book The Golden Bough, the Scottish
anthropologist George James Frazer mentions a
certain King of the rain(10) from Poona: In
Poona, India, when rain is needed, the boys
dress one of them just in leaves and call him
King of the rain. They go then to all houses in
the village; the owners or their wives sprinkle
water on the King of the rain, giving everybody
all kinds of food; after all houses have been
visited, they take off the Kings costume of
leaves and throw a great party with the food they
have gathered (Vulcnescu 1985, 419).
The performing of the rituals by the
girls at the beginning of their menstrual activity
suggests a rite of passage from childhood to
maturity. The dancing carol was accompanied
by aspersion,(11) which is related to imitative
magic (Vulcnescu 1985, 418). The same is true
for the boys performing the Dodola (Cuceu I.,
Cuceu M. 2008, 39) ritual. Virginity also plays
an important part in the power of invoking the
divinity, by means of bodily purity (Kovacevic
1985, 79).
The vegetation covering the girls plays
the role of fertility (Cuceu I., Cuceu M. 2008,
31). We can also mention the pagan ritual of
wedding, which makes the matrimonial
relationship between the two official, where the
girl is wearing a flower coronet, symbolizing her
virginity on the wedding day. Spring is a season
when Nature rebirths, the vegetation is pure and
will not wither until the end of the year. In
Serbia again (Toplica district), those who
perform the ritual walk in twos and on their way

(8) A rain-making ritual, performed by boys, similar

to that of paparuda was recorded in India as well. See
the custom of the King of Rain.
(9) In Mavrovo region from North-Western
Macedonia, the Dodoleas ritual was held on
Ascension day, on the the Great Thursday, 40 days
after the Resurrection.

(10) Reference is made here to the ritual dedicated to

the Vedic god Rudra.
(11) Artificial rain; the bodys sprinkling with water.

20

towards the river they stop in a cemetery where

they collect a cross from the grave of an
unknown soul. Then they stop in a house where
a mother lives and steal a table. When they get
to the river, they place the table in the middle of
it, with the cross on it, in shallow waters, and all
sit around it. Then, all the participants start
eating a special cake made of millet and sing.
After this, they let the table flow down the river:

is sometimes amusing, the paparude are

congratulated, and wished for a long and happy
life, each being given a coin and a bowl of
wheat, corn flour, wheat flour, beans, a tuft of
wool or an old dress. They say that the
household which has not been visited by the
paparude will have a summer full of hardships.
At Aromanians, the Pirpiruna ritual is
performed by girls. One of them, who usually
comes from a poorer family, is covered all over
her body with sorrel leaves, ferns, poppy flowers
or with a plant called iboj, which is also named
Pirpirun. The main character is accompanied
by numerous girls, in whose presence she
performs the ritual in front of the peoples
houses, invoking the rain.
Within the Aromanian communities in
the Balkans, the mistress of the household has
the custom of suddenly throwing water upon the
paparude. Tradition says that Pirpiruna and her
companions, after having visited all houses in
the village, make a flour pie which they eat
afterwards to a fountain which has a spring or a
river nearby. While they are eating the pie, the
girls must stand with their feet in the water of
that spring or river. In the Meglen too, in the
north of Greece, where the Megleno-Romanians
live, the ritual is performed by a girl, who is
undressed by other girls and covered with a
plant called buzeu. Megleno-Romanians call this
girl Paparud or Dudule. The girl goes from
house to house where the mistress of the
household gives her an old coin called para de
timp diznit. After the ritual is over, the girl goes
to a valley where she undresses the buzeu
covering her body and throws the vegetal
garment into a river. Then, the girl, together
with the rest of her companions, go back home
to eat the food they have been given during the
performance of the ritual.
In conclusion, we may state that the
Paparuda/Dodola rain-making ritual is a panBalkan one. Its origin can be found in the
Antiquity, at the Thracians. The Slavic tribes,
which massively appeared in the Balkans
starting with the 6th century, took over this
custom from Thracians. This is also confirmed
by the fact that the ritual is performed only in
the area inhabited by the Thraco-Dacians. The
attestation of the Thracian anthroponym
Paparion also confirms the Thraco-Dacian
origin of Paparuda.
The Slavic origin of the ritual was
supported by the etymological analysis of the
word paparud which, along with all its local
variants, would be a derivative of the name of
the Slavic god Perun and of his wife Perperuna-

From two ears, many grains,

From two bunches, a bucket of wine,
Hey, dodo, hey, dodole! (Nikolov 1960, 203)
In the case of the same Southern Slavs,
the young ones performing the ritual are given
food and food products necessary for cooking in
their homes. The food is consumed by the
participants during the ritual. This custom of the
host offering food, money or wooden vessels
was also recorded on the Romanian territory
(Ghinoiu 2009, 225).
In Russia and Ukraine, the ritual exists
since the medieval times. On some silver
bracelets from 12th 13th centuries we can see
few women wearing shirts with improvised
sleeves. They flutter those long sleeves in order
to attract the rain. The Russian historian Boris
Rybakov believes that the silver bracelets were
used to keep tight the long sleeves before the
Rusalii starting to perform the rain-making ritual
(Rybakov 1981, 283; 1967, 95).
A very interesting aspect is the fact that
the inhabitants of Gorna Reka region (the former
Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia) have not
performed the Dodolas ritual (12) for 40 years
(Mircevska 2005, 6). In the case of Romanians,
while performing the ritual in front of the
peoples gates, the paparude start a rhythmic
dance, clapping their hands and snapping their
fingers, repeating the exclamation Ha! Ha!
(Olinescu 1944, 329) or Paparuda leo! The
resulting sound is similar to the one produced by
the Spanish castanets. In the meantime, the
mistress of the household takes a bucket full of
water and throws it at the paparude (Pop 1989,
132-145). Then, a crucial event in the economy
of the ritual takes place: the paparude, seeing the
household mistress coming with the bucket,
pretend to run away (sometimes they even do it,
usually when the water is cold). They are
eventually caught by the mistress of the
household and baptised. After the event, which
(12) Besides the base form dodole, one may also find
variants such as vajdudule, ojdodole or dozdole in
Vardar Macedonia.

21

Perunia. Subsequent studies have proven the

contrary of these assertions, supporting a preSlavic origin of the gods name. At the
Thracology Congress in Sofia, 2000, the
Bulgarian
historian
and
anthropologist
Aleksandr Nikolaev Fol suggested a plausible
explanation of this very old oronym, giving it a
Thracian origin. Fol also argued that the
Thracians, venerating the Pirin mountainous
range in Bulgaria (South-West of Bulgaria),
impressed the Slavic new-comers, and they
would have borrowed the name of the mountain
and transformed it into a god (litholatry).(13)
Therefore, the Pirin Mountain would have been
baptised in the honour of god Perun (Paliga,
Teodor 2009, 216-217). What is sure is the fact
that the radical per in the word Perun means
fire (the thunders fire) his origin being the
Indo-European pur, which means fire (pyros in
Greek means fire). The old form of the word
Perun must have been Pur-un, and the Slavs
would have borrowed from their Thracian
neighbours only the root pur, which means
fire, Perun being by excellence the god of the
eternal fire (ignis aeternus) (Paliga 2009, 125).

Ghinoiu
2008

Gieysztor
1986

Karadi
1841
Kovacevic
1985
Milojevi
1870

Moisei
2008

Obremski
2001

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Asov,
Alexandr
Igorevici,
Asov 1999
Slavianskie boghi i rojdenie na
Rusi, Moskva, Vece, 1999.
Cantemir, Dimitrie, Descrierea
Cantemir
Moldovei [The Description of
1978
Moldavia],
Bucureti,
Ion
Creang, 1978.
Cuceu, Ion, Cuceu, Maria,
Cuceu
Ritualurile agrare romneti
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[Romanian Agrarian Rituals], II,
Cluj-Napoca, Efes, 2008.
Decev 1957 Decev, D., Die thrakischen
Sprachreste, Wien, R.M. Rohrer,
1957.
Djordjevi Djordjevi, M., Life and Folk
1955, 1958 Customs Around Leskovac on
the River Morava, Serbian
Academy of Sciences, 1955,
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Georgieva, Ivanicka, Balgarska
Georgieva
narodna
mitologija,
Sofia,
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Izdatelstvo nauka i izkustvo,
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Oldenberg
1988
Olinescu
1944
Osvec 1991

Paliga 2006

Paliga 2008

Paliga
2009

(13) Litholatry a cult that consists of worshiping

sacred stones.

22

Ghinoiu,
Ion,
Srbtori.
Obiceiuri. Credine. Mitologie.
Mic enciclopedie de tradiii
romneti [Holidays. Habits.
Beliefs.
Mythology.
Small
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Romanian
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2008.
Gieysztor,
A., Mitologia
Sowian,
Warszawa,
Wydawnictwa Artystyczne I
Filmove, 1986.
Karadi, V. S., Srpske narodne
pjesme, Knj. I, Be, 1841.
Kovacevic, Ivan, Semiologija
rituala, biblioteka XX vek,
Beograd, 1985.
Milojevi, Milo, Pesme i
obiaji ukupnog naroda srpskog,
II, Beograd, Dravnoj tampariji,
1870.
Moisei, Antonii, Magic and
Mantic in the Folk Calendar of
the Eastern Romanians of
Bukovina, Chernivtsi, Tov. Druk
Art, 2008.
Obremski, Jozef, Makedonski
etnosocioloski studii, kniga II,
Institut
za
staroslovenska
kultura, Skopje-Prilep, Matica
makedonska, 2001.
Oldenberg,
Hermann,
The
Religion of the Veda, Delhi,
Motilal Banarsidass Publ., 1988.
Olinescu, Marcel, Mitologie
romneasc, Casa coalelor,
1944.
Ovsec, Damjan J., Slovanska
mitologija
in
verovanje,
Ljubljana, Domus, 1991.
Paliga, Sorin, Influene romane
i preromane n limbile slave de
sud [Roman and Pre-Roman
Influences in South Slavic
Languages],
2nd
edition,
Bucureti,
Evenimentul
Foundation, 2006.
Paliga, Sorin, Mitologia tracilor
[Thracian
Mythology],
Bucureti, Meteor Press, 2008.
Paliga, Sorin; Teodor, Eugen S.,
Lingvistica
i
Arheologia
slavilor timpurii. O alt vedere
de la Dunrea de Jos [Early
Slavic
Linguistics
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Archaeology. Another View of
the Lower Danube], Trgovite,

Cetatea de Scaun Publishing

House, 2009.
Paton 1845 Paton, Archibald, Servia, The
Youngest Member of the
European
Family,
or,
A
Residence in Belgrade, and
Travels in the Highlands and
Woodlands of the Interior,
during the Years 1843 and 1844,
London, Longman, Brown,
Green and Longmans, 1845.
Petrovich, Woislav M., Serbia:
Petrovich
Her
People History and
2007
Aspiration, New York, Cosimo,
2007.
Platov, Anton, Maghia i mif
Platov
indoevropeitsev,
Moskva,
1998
Menedzher, 1998.
Pop, Dumitru, Obiceiuri agrare
Pop 1989
n tradiia popular romneasc
[Agrarian
Habits
in
the
Romanian Folk Tradition], ClujNapoca, Dacia, 1989.
Rybakov, B.A., Yazychestvo
Rybakov
drevnih
slavyan,
Moskva,
1981
Nauka, 1981.
Sulescu, Gheorghe, Poezii
Sulescu
populare
[Folk
Poetry],
1982
Bucureti, 1982.
Simion, Florea M, Srbtorile la
Simion
Romni
[Holidays
from
1994
Romania], vol. II, Bucureti,
Romanian Cultural Foundation
Publishing House, 1994.
Teodorescu Teodorescu, G. Dem, ncercri
critice asupra unor credine,
1874
datine i moravuri ale poporului
roman [Critical Assumptions on
Some Beliefs, Customs and
Manners of the Romanian
People], Bucureti, PetrescuConduratu Printing House, 1874.
Vulcnescu Vulcnescu, Romulus, Mitologie
romn [Romanian Mythology],
1985
Bucureti, Publishing House of
the Socialist Republic of
Romania Academy, 1985.
Zecevic, Slobodan, Elementi
Zecevic
nase mitologije u narodnim
1975
obredima uz igru, Zenica, 1975.

Kernbach
1983

Stojkovska
2004

Kernbach, Victor, Dicionar de

mitologie general [Dictionary of
General Mythology], Bucureti,
Albatros, 1983.
Stojkovska, Gordana, Dictionary
of South Slavic mythology, 2004.

c. Papers in periodical journals

Bratu 2008 Bratu, Lava G., Privire asupra
genezei limbajului coregrafic
romnesc [On the Genesis of
the Romanian Choreographic
Language]. In: Timisiensis, no.
4, XV (2008), Centrul de Cultur
i Art al Judeului Timi.
Mircevska, P. Mirjana, The
Mircevska
Villages in the Ethnographic
2005
Region of Gorna Reka as
Religious-Rituals Communities.
In:
EthnoAnthropoZoom
(5/2005) Skopje, p. 188-213.
Nikolov,
Velimir,
Nikolov
Zemjodelstvoto
i
obiaite
1960
svrzani so zemjodelskata rabota
vo Kumanovo. In: Glasnik na
Etnolokiot muzej, Vol. 1 (1960),
Etnoloki muzej, Skopje.
Sorin,
Perun Ignis
Paliga 2009 Paliga,
Invictus, Ignis Aeternus. Briefly
on Fire, Ovens, Cremation and
Eternity.
In:
Linguistique
Balkanique, XLVIII, (2009) 1-2,
p. 119-129.
Patera 1878 Patera, Adolf, Cheshskia
glossy v Mater verborum. In:
Series: Zapiski Imperatorsko
akademi nauk. Prilozhene, tom.
31, no. 4 (1878) Sanktpeterburg.
Rybakov, Boris, Rusalii i bog
Rybakov
Simargl-Pereplut. In: Sovetskaia
1967
arkheologiia, no. 2 (1967), p.
91-116.

List of illustrations

Fig. 1 Dodole painting by V. Titelbacha

(The Museum of Ethnography in Belgrade).
[Pictur de V. Titelbacha (Muzeul
Etnografic din Belgrad)].

b. Dictionaries
Danilov, Ilie, Dicionar de
Danilov
mitologie slav [Dictionary of
2007
Slavic Mythology], Iai, Polirom,
2007.
23

Fig. 2 Uro Predi (Dodola). Xylograph

from the beginning of the 19th century.
[Dodola Xilogravur de la nceputul
secolului al XIX-lea, autor Uro Predi].
Fig. 3 Romanian Paparuda (illustration
from 1905). [Ilustraie a Paparudei din anul
1905].
Fig. 4 Peperuna at Bulgarians (Kardzhali
Province in southern Bulgaria). [Ritualul
paparudei la bulgari, regiunea Krgeali n
sudul Bulgariei].
Fig. 5 Women (Rusalii) from the Eastern
Slavic area performing the Paparuda/Dodola
ritual (detail from the medieval silver
bracelets from Russia, 12th and 13th
centuries). [Femei Rusalii din spaiul
slavilor
rsriteni
svrind
ritualul
Paparudei/Dodolei (detaliu care apare pe o
colecie de brri de argint din secolele XIIXIII)].
Fig. 6 Russian woman performing the
rain-making ritual of Dodole (photo from
the end of 19th century). [Femeie din Rusia
care efectueaz ritualul Dodolei (fotografie
de la sfritul sec. XIX)].

24

Fig. 1 V. Titelbacha, Dodole

Source: The Museum of Ethnography in Belgrade

Fig. 2 Uro Predi, Dodola

25

Fig. 3 Romanian Paparuda

Fig. 4 Peperuna at Bulgarians

26

Fig. 5 Women (Rusalii) from the Eastern Slavic area performing the Paparuda/Dodola ritual (detail
from the medieval silver bracelets from Russia, 12th and 13th centuries)

Fig. 6 Russian woman performing the rain-making ritual of Dodole (photo from the end of 19th
century).

27

The figure of the angel Temeluch in the apocryphal writings The

Apocalypse of Paul and The Revelation of Pseudo-John. A
comparative study
Robert MIRIC
Ph.D student, Nicolae Iorga History Institute
E-mail: [email protected]
Motto: Doomed to the round of ages; desolate,
He cherished not a hope of happier hours,
Loved not, confided not, but breathed above
All sympathy and fellowship and fear.
He poured not tears on thunder-riven rocks,
Nor sighs upon the burning air that fell
Like lava on his brain and through his heart
In livid lightnings wandered; but he grasped
His garments of eternal flame and wrapt
Their blazing folds around his giant limbs,
And stood with head upraised and meteor eye
And still lips whose pale, cold and bitter scorn
Smiled at eternity's deep agonies.
The Spirit of Destruction undestroyed!
(Sumner Lincoln Fairfield, Abaddon, the Spirit of Destruction)
Abstract. This article tries to underline, in the larger theological sphere of Christianity, in the
field of angelological and demonological motifs, the existence of a unique class of angelic beings. These
angels are complex and multi-faced characters, and they represent an intermediate typology of angelic
beings, a kind of hybrid angels. With a mixture of physical and behavioral traits, they offer a new
perspective on the development and reimagining of the angelical and demonological motifs. One such
example is the angel Temeluch. In the two apocalypses, in which he appears (The Apocalypse of Paul and
The Revelation of Pseudo-John), Temeluch is the agent of God's will, a partner to the Archangel Michael
and of the angel Tarouk in the punishing of sinners. The mixture of features Temeluch is embodied with,
sketches a complex and multi-faced angelic character, which has a place of its own in the Christian
angelological and demonological traditions.
Keywords: angels, apocalypse, angelology, demonology
Introduction (1)
In the area of religious studies, the
multiple traditions regarding the angelic and
demonic beings that exist in the larger
theological sphere of the three Abrahamic
religions, represent for the students and

researchers alike, two of the most complex and

diversified research topics. The angelological
and demonological motifs of the three
monotheisms have a common history and often
they influence each other (Bousset 1896;
Muchembled 2004; Reeves 2005) (2). From this
florilegium of angelological and demonological
motifs, in the pages below, we will make an
analysis of an interesting angelical figure that
appears in the Christian traditions, namely the
angel Temeluch.

(1) Research funded through the project

MINERVA- elite career cooperation in
researching the doctoral and post doctoral
contract code: POSDRU/159/1.5/S/137832, project
co-financed by the European Social Fund through the
sectoral operational programme human resources
development 2007-2013.

(2) Two such examples of interrelation are the

legendary figures of the Devil and the Antichrist.

28

Before we proceed to the actual

analysis of this angelic character, it is necessary
to do a brief rundown of the main angelological
and demonological motifs within Christianity.
This overview it is very useful on the one hand,
to highlight the vastness and the variety of this
field of research, and on the other hand, it can
help us in the contextualization of this angelic
being within the broad field of research.
The most frequent and important
angelological and demonological motifs within
the Christian traditions are: a) the Angel of the
Lord (3), b) the archistrategos Michael (4), c) the
Archangel Gabriel (5), d) the Seven Archangels
(6), e) the angelic hierarchy of Pseudo-Dionysius
the Areopagite (7), f) the Guardian angel (8), g)
the fall of the Devil and his angels (Carus 2009;
Munchembled 2004; Pagels 1995; Russel 1977,
1981, 1984), h) the angelological interpretation
of Gen. 6: 1- 4 (with the fallen angels
Shemyaza, Azazel, Remiel, or Mastema in the
center of the narrative) (Reed 2005), i) the
Angel of Death (9), j) the arch-demon Belial (10),
k) the arch-demon Asmodeus (11), l) the archdemon Beelzebub (12), m) the Angel of the
bottomless pit/the gatekeeper of Hell (which has
as its main exponent Abaddon) (Wallis Budge
1915, 1914, 1913, 1912, 1910, 1894) (13), and
others (Reiterer, Nicklas, Schpflin 2007).
Among the many angels that are mentioned in
the miscellaneous often complex traditions
of Christianity, new figures appear, which can
hardly be integrated in the list of the motifs
mentioned above.
The difficulty arises because of the fact
that we are dealing, on the one hand, with a
mixture of physical traits and/or behavioral or
names taken from other angelic characters who

are already well contoured, and on the other

hand, with the lack of supporting titles and/or
functions, such as the already known standard
formulas (14). So, I think it is safe to say, that we
are dealing here with a new, intermediate
typology of angelic beings. I think that a term
like hybrid angels can be used when we are
referring to these angels who fit the traits
mentioned above. These angels are hybrid in
what it concerns their: a) physical appearance, b)
type of behavior, c) onomastics, d) titles and e)
functions. In time, just like their most famous
counterparts (e.g. Michael or Sammael), they
may become central figures in the narratives
regarding the world of angelic entities. The
angels Qipd (15), Qushiel (16), Pyruel (17),
Qaspiel (18), Tartaruch (19) and Temeluch (20)
belong to this category of hybrid angels, which
can be determined with great difficulty, due to
the influences and similarities with the angels
situated in the other categories.
From this list, of what we are now used
to call hybrid angels, we will discuss in the
next few pages the figure of the angel Temeluch.
We will examine this character in the two works
that mention him, namely The Apocalypse of
Paul and The Revelations of Pseudo-John.
The angel Temeluch in The Apocalypse of
Paul
The first work in which the angel
Temeluch is mentioned is The Apocalypse of
Paul. This apocalypse is a 3rd-century text of
the New Testament apocrypha (21). Of the 51
chapters handed down to us, or information in
connection with, the Temeluch appears in
(14) The most used standard formulas are: a) the title
the prince of + a place/ country associated with the
enemies of God ( e.g. Dan 10: 13), b) the name of the
angel + the title prince ( e.g. Dan 10: 21), c) the
formula the angel of + name of function ( e.g. the
angel of destruction, the angel of Death, etc.) and d)
the name of the devil+ the title prince of ( e.g.
Beelzebub the prince of the devils, Mt. 12: 24).
(15) Yerahmeel 21: 2- 3.
(16) Yerahmeel 21: 6.
(17) TAb 13: 10- 12.
(18) 3 En. 1: 3- 4.
(19) See below, in the section dedicated to the
Apocalypse of Paul.
(20) A list of these hybrid angels doesn't end here; it
is much more extensive. Other examples of this kind
can be brought at any time in discussion. As a start
we can use, for example, the list of angels mentioned
in the Greek Apocalypse of Esdras.
For
more
details,
see
(21)
http://www.interfaith.org/christianity/apocryphaapocalypse-of-paul-1/

(3) Gen.16:714, 22: 11- 15; Ex. 3: 2- 4; Num. 22:

22- 38; Judg. 2: 1- 3; 6: 11- 23; 13: 3- 22; Mt. 1: 20;
1: 24; 2: 13; 2: 19; 28: 2; 28: 2; Lk. 1: 11; 2: 9; Acts
5: 19; 8: 26; 12: 7; 12: 23.
(4) Dan. 10: 13- 21; 12: 1; Jude 1: 9; Rev. 12: 7- 9.
(5) Dan. 8: 16; 9: 21; Lk. 1: 19; 1: 26.
(6) Tob. 12: 15; 1 En. 20: 1- 8.
(7) Based on his book, De Coelesti Hierarchia (On
the
Celestial
Hierarchy)
and
subsequent
commentaries made by Christian theologians (e.g.
Johannes Scotus Eriugena).
(8) Mt. 18: 10; Acts 12: 12- 15; Heb. 1: 14.
(9) Prov. 16: 14.
(10) Deut. 13: 13; Judg. 19: 22; 20: 13; 1 Sam. 1: 16;
2: 12; 10: 26; 25: 17, 25; 30: 22; 2 Sam. 16: 7; 20: 1;
23: 6; 1 Kgs. 21: 10, 13; 2 Chr. 13: 7; 2 Cor. 6: 15.
(11) Tob. 3: 3, 17.
(12) 2 Kgs. 1: 2- 3, 6, 16; Mt. 10: 25; 12: 23, 28; Mk.
3: 22; Lk. 11: 15, 18-19.
(13) See Rev. 9:1-11.

29

bottomless pit/ the gatekeeper of Hell (28), the

emphasis falling as above, on his lack of pity
(but this isn't a demonic-type lack of mercy,
generated by a malefic desire, but one generated
by the obedience of God). Returning then, to the
two variants proposed above, I consider that we
are dealing with two different angels, acting
somehow in a relationship of interdependence
(29). Thus, while Temeluch is taking care off the
active part (the implementation of the divine
punishment), Tartaruch (30) accomplishes the
function of a guardian. Basically in the angelic
figures of the two protagonists, we can observe
the relationship of symbiosis existing between
two demonological motifs (that of a punishing
angel and that of the angel of the bottomless pit/
the gatekeeper of Hell), and the ambiguous
nature of the two angels. One last thing that
must be mentioned is the positive valence of
Temeluch and Tartaruch. None of them has
demonic features, they are in full obedience to
God, they fulfil only the missions entrusted to
them by the highest power (Knibb 1978) (31).

chapters 17, 18 and 34. The first two entries are

part of the chapters devoted to death and
judgement of the righteous and the wicked (1118), and the third, in the chapters describing hell
(31-44).
In chapter 17 it is described in contrast,
the fate of a just soul and the fate of a wicked
soul. In the vision that he is receiving, Paul
hears the voice of the Lord saying: Let this soul
be delivered to the merciless (22) angel
Temeluch, and let it be cast into outer darkness,
where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth
(23). In terms of its function, as Abaddon in the
Revelation of John, Temeluch deals with the
punishment of the sinners. Also, a common
point with the Apocalypse of John is his
subordination to God (24).
The second quote depicts as the
previous one a judgment of souls, but with a
number of important clarifications (25), as
follows: Let this soul be delivered to the angel
Tartaruch, and guarded till the great day of
judgment (26). If in the first quote, you have
Temeluch as protagonist of divine punishment,
in this the second one, where the task is
completed by another angel, Tartaruch. In this
apocalypse we have a particular situation (the
identification or unidentificaton of Temeluch
with Tartaruch); several variants are possible: a)
Temeluch is the same character as Tartaruch
(both are listed in the passages concerning the
judgment of the souls of sinners, in the passages
in which they appear as the protagonists, each
keeps the souls of sinners to judgment), b) we
are dealing with two different angels (a sign of
this differentiation being the names themselves)
with the same functions.
The third quote details the punitive
feature of the angel. Thus, in the description of
the rivers that are in Hell, the Apostle, sees the
punishing an old sinner: And the angel Temeluch
coming, laid hold of an iron with his hand, and
with it drew up the entrails of that old man
through his mouth (27). In my opinion, the fact
that Temeluch is mentioned once again in this
apocalypse reveals that he is the holder of title
(although unspecified) of the angel of the

The angel Temeluch in The Revelation of

Pseudo-John
The apocryphal Revelation of Saint John
is an early medieval rewriting of the canonical
Book of Revelation. In what it concerns the date
of composition, the majority of scholars (Bovon
1997, 986; Bdili 2006, 343) gives as a
possible interval the period comprised between
the 5th and 7th centuries A.D. Although the work
contains in its title the notion of revelation, in
fact, this apocalypse doesn't present itself in the
typical form of this genre. The basic features
like angelus interpres, vaticinium ex eventu, the
ascension to heaven are missing. In fact, this
work is a concatenation of 28 questions and
answers, a direct dialogue between Jesus Christ
and the Apostle John. The angel Temeluch
(28) Cf. Rev. 9: 11.
(29) It would be a situation similar to that of the Rev.
9: 1?
(30) Tartaruch suffers here the same transformation as
Abaddon has suffered (on the Jewish mythology,
abaddon was used as a term to designate the place of
perdition, the Underworld Job 26: 6; 28: 22).
Basically from a common noun which denoted the
realm of the dead, in the Roman mythology, tartarus
becomes in the new Christian religion a proper noun,
another name for the Angel of the bottomless pit/the
Angel guardian of Hell, but at the same time, it
becomes also another name for Hell.
(31) Their actions may come into the same category as
that of the angels Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, or Raphael
from the apocalyptic enohic corpus.

(22) This epiteth represents the only element that can

put Temeluch in the category of the evil angels. The
lack of additional arguments leaves the question open
to any interpretation..
(23)http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/an08.vii.xl.html
(24) Rev. 9:1- 11.
25
The angel Temeluh is not mentioned, instead we
read of an interesting character named Tartaruch.
(26)http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/an08.vii.xl.html
(27)http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/an08.vii.xl.html

30

appears mentioned in the last questions,

regarding the judgment of the sinners (32). The
passages are just as in the case of the precedent
apocalypse, in number of three, as it follows:
a) Et Temelouck appellera Tarouk (33):
Fais enter les chtiments, dtenteur des cls
(34); fais entrer les instrumentsdu jugement; fais
entrer le ver qui ne dort jamaiset le dragon
profanateur (35); prpare les tourments; fais
entrer l' obscurit; libre le fleuve de feu et l'
obscurit misrable (36) dans le trfonds de l'
Hads (37);
b) Et Temelouck dira Tarouk (38):
Rveille le serpent pansu trois ttes (39); sonne
de la trompette (40) pour rassembler les terribles
btes sauvages et leur donner leur pture; ouvre
la porte des douze flaux (41) afin que toutes les
btes rampantes se rassemblent vers les impies
et les impnitents (Bovon et Geoltrain 1997,
1016- 1017);
c) Et Temelouck rassemblera la
mutitude des pcheurs, il frappera du pied la
terre, et la terre se dchirera en certains lieux
(42), et les pitoyables pcheurs seront prcipits
dans les chtiments effroyables. Alors Dieu
enverra l' archistratge Michel, et Temelouck,
aprs avoir scell le lieu, les frappera de la
prcieuse croix (43), et la terre se rassemblera
comme auparavant. Alors leurs anges levrent
une lamentation, alors la Toute sainte pleura sur
eux, ainsi que tous les saints, mais ils ne leur
seront daucun secours (Bovon et Geoltrain
1997, 1016-1017).

From these three passages we can draw

a set of very important conclusions:
a) In the first two passages, Temeluch
gives commands regarding the tortures destined
to the sinners, to the angel Tarouk (the
gatekeeper of Hell). From these passages, we
can see the subordination of Tarouk under
Temeluch. In general, in both Jewish and
Christian apocalyptic literature, above the angel
gatekeeper of Hell, in a higher hierarchical
position is the angel archistrategos. The angel
archistrategos, or the supreme commander of
the angelical hosts is the Archangel Michael (44).
It seems that in this apocalypse, the attributes of
the angel Temeluchus are identical with those of
the archistrategos Michael. Can we see in these
passages a re-shaping of the archistrategos
motif?
b) In these first two passages, Temeluch
doesn't have an effective/ active contribution in
the punishing of the sinners, like the angel
Abaddon has in the original apocalyptical work
(Revelation of Saint John) (45). This nondynamic contribution will change in the third
passage.
c) In the third passage, the angel
Temeluch will pass from the initial passive/ nondynamic state of commands to the active/
dynamic state. He will join the archangel
Michael in the punishing of the sinners. In this
passage the angels Michael and Temeluch form
a duo/pair of avenging angels. They seem to be
equals in strength and power.
d) Temeluch benefits of great powers,
being able to open and to close the earth, to seal
the place of torment/Hell. Besides all that, his
angelical features are enhanced by the
possibility of being able to use the cross (the
most powerful and efficacious weapon against
the forces of evil).
In this apocalypse, the angel Temeluch
is being portrayed as an agent of God. Side by
side with the angel Tarouk and with the
archangel Michael, Temeluch fulfils the will of
God, by punishing the sinners. He is in a
relationship of direct hostility with the forces of
evil.

(32) Another common feature with the Apocalypse of

Paul.
(33) It is another form for the name Tartaruch. It is the
first time that he is mentioned, and like Temeluch, he
is presented in a positive light. In this passage Tarouk
is identified as the angel gatekeeperer of Hell.
(34) By this statement, his angelic features are
underlined. Usually, in both Jewish and Christian
angelological traditions, the angel that holds the key
of the abyss is the Archangel Michael.
(35) This demonologic character seems to be the same
one mentioned in Rev. 12: 9.
(36) Rev. 20: 14- 15.
(37) (Bovon et Geoltrain, 1997, 1016).
(38) It is the second mentioning of this particular
angel. In this apocalypse, Tarouk seems to be an
angel subordinate to Temeluch.
(39) Rev. 12: 3; 13: 1, 11.
(40) Tarouk acts like one of the seven trumpeting
angels, Rev. 8: 7- 11: 15.
(41) See the ten plagues of Egypt, Ex. 7- 12.
(42) Rev. 16: 18- 19.
(43) The fact that he is using the cross it's a sign that
reinforces Temeluch's angelical feature.

Conclusions
Making a comparison between the
figure of the angel Temeluch from The
Apocalypse of Paul and The Revelation of
(44) Dan. 12: 1; Rev. 12: 7; 1 En. 10: 54; 2 En. 22: 6,
33: 10, 72: 5, T. Abr. A 1: 4, 2: 16, 19: 5; T. Isaac 14:
7; Gk Apoc. Ezra 4: 24; 3 Bar. 11: 4.
(45) Rev. 9: 1- 11.

31

Pseudo-John, we can find a number of common

elements, as well as a number of distinguishing
features. Among similar traits we can include: a)
the place in which this angel appears in the
narrative in passages detailing the judgement
of sinners, b) the reports of direct hostility
between himself and the sinners, c) the absolute
obedience and execution of orders received from
above, d) the relationship of partnership with
another angel, in the performance of its tasks
Tartaruch/Tarouk, e) the common features
which Temeluch has with Tartaruch/Tarouk and
f) the positive valence.
Among the distinctive elements of the
figure of this angel, as they appear in the two
apocalypses, we can include: a) the emphasis on
his lack of mercy in the first work, vanishes in
the second, b) it makes a pair within its actions
as an agent of divine retribution, and with the
Archangel Michael, c) has another weapon in his
fight against the sinners (a cross, instead of
iron), d) he acts punitive against all sinners, e)
the punishment imposed for sinners only affects
the physical body, f) his portrait is better shaped,
thanks to the new details brought out by this last
work, g) we have two of his direct appeals to
Tarouk and h) the tone of his appeals, highlights
the hierarchical superiority of Temeluch in front
of Tarouk.
Above, when we've spoken about the
classification of the angels, in the larger context
of the Abrahamic religions, we've touched the
problem of a series of angels, which can hardly
be framed in the known angelical and
demonological typologies and we've named
these angels with the formula hybrid angels
(Qaspiel, Qushiel, Pyruel, Qipd). Many of the
question marks that follow these angels are
found in the figure of the angel Temeluch, and
also in the figure of the angel Tarouk, with
whom he makes a pair in these two apocalyptic
writings, that we have analysed.
As we have seen in the pages above, the
figure of Temeluch combines various elements
from specific angelological and demonological
motifs. This mixture of features sketches a
complex and multi-faced angelic character, who
has a place of its own in the larger theological
sphere of the three Abrahamic religions, just like
his most famous counterparts, Abaddon,
Sammael, Asmodeus, Azazel or Belial.

Metamorphoses
of
the
Antichrist at the Chruch
Fathers), Iai, Polirom, 2006.
Bousset,
Wilhelm,
The
Bousset 1896
Antichrist Legend. A Chapter
in Christian and Jewish
Folklore,
London,
Hutchinson and Co., 1896.
Bovon,
Francois,
Pierre
Bovon,
Geoltrain 1997 Geoltrain, Ecrits apocryphes
chrtiens, vol. II, Paris,
Galimard, 1997.
Carus, Paul, The History of
Carus 2009
the Devil and the Idea of Evil
from the earliest times to the
present day, Santa Cruz,
Evinity Publishing, 2009.
Muchembled, Robert, A
Muchembled
History of the Devil: From
2004
the Middle Ages to the
Present, Polity Press, 2004.
Pagels, Elaine, The Origin of
Pagels 1995
Satan, New York, Vintage
Books, 1995.
Reeves, John C., Trajectories
Reeves 2005
in Near Eastern Apocalyptic,
Atlanta, Society of Biblical
Literature, 2005.
Reiterer, Friedrich V., Tobias
Reiterer,
Nicklas, Karin Schpflin
Nicklas,
Schpflin 2007 (eds.), Deutercanonical and
Cognate Literature. Yearbook
2007. Angels: The Concept of
Spiritual Celestial Beings
Origins, Development and
Reception, Berlin, New York,
Walter de Gruyter, 2007
Russell, Jeffrey B., The
Russell 1977
Devil: Perceptions of Evil
from Antiquity to Primitive
Christianity, Ithaca, Cornell,
1977.
Russell, Jeffrey B., Satan.
Russell 1981
The
Early
Christian
Tradition, Ithaca, Cornell,
1981.
Russell, Jeffrey B., Lucifer.
Russell 1984
The Devil in the Middle Ages,
Ithaca, Cornell, 1984.
Wallis Budge Wallis Budge, E. A., Saint
Michael
the
Archangel:
1894
Three
encomiums
by
Theodosius Archbishop of
Alexandria,
Severus
Patriarch of Antioch and
Eustathius, Bishop of Trake,
London, Kegan Paul, Trench,

References
Bdili 2006

Bdili,
Cristian,
Metamorfozele Anticristului
la Prinii
Bisericii (The
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Wallis
1910
Wallis
1912
Wallis
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Wallis
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1915

Trubner & Co., 1894.

Budge Wallis Budge, E. A., Coptic
Homilies in the dialect of
Upper Egypt, London, 1910.
Budge Wallis Budge, E. A., Coptic
Biblical Texts in the dialect of
Upper Egypt, London, 1912.
Budge Wallis Budge, E. A., Coptic
Apocrypha in the dialect of
Upper Egypt, London, 1913.
Budge Wallis Budge, E. A., Coptic
Martyrdoms in the dialect of
Upper Egypt, London, 1914.
Budge,
E. A.,
Budge Wallis
Miscellaneous texts in the
dialect of Upper Egypt, 1915.

33

The Title Fight between the Two Christian Empires in the Age of
Crusades

Vlad SOFRONIE
Ph. D., University of Bucharest
Faculty of History
E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract. The most important conclusion of my study represents the title analysis that was
adopted by the Latin princes after they conquered Constantinople. The first two counts of Flanders
managed, with the help of the anti-Byzantine propaganda, to step on the East-Roman Emperors chair at
Constantinople. We realize the incompatibility and convergence of the moment when the two Latin
counts are being crowned in Constantinople. Baldwin I copied the Byzantine ceremony of crowning an
emperor and took the title of imperator Romanorum with all its meanings. Henry I, his successor, did the
same. Both of them demanded the recognition of their title and of the political formation they were
leading now. Beside the imperial title they also adopted the imperium Romanorum statute for their
possession. At Baldwin I we notice also this title: a Deo coronatus Romanorum moderator et semper
augustus. Both Baldwin and Henry I took in their title the Byzantine formula through Gods
mercyimperator Romanorum. So the Byzantine title was taken in all its aspects and with all its
significances by the new rulers from Constantinople. Its ironic that they took over and acquired all that
they had so hard challenged and defamed during the last century. The reason for this changing in their
conception was first of all the accomplishment of their desired mission. Secondly, they needed to
legitimize the power they had taken over in the eyes of the Byzantine subjects. Through the conquest of
Constantinople the counts of Flanders had then inherited the whole Byzantine imperial political tradition.
After the crowning of Otto IV in Western Europe in 1209, the Latin emperors from Constantinople
needed to settle for the imperator Constantinopolitanus and imperator Romaniae titles. The critics that
the Latin chroniclers developed against Byzantium before 1204 disappeared after their victory from the
beginning of the 13th century. They prepared the Occident mentally for the decisive attack against
Constantines metropolis. The fourth crusade represented an important stage in the Byzantine
universalism crisis. The fights between the Greek states to impose themselves as the rightful heir of the
Constantinopolitan seat led to the devaluation of the imperial idea in Byzantium. We had changes in the
Occident as well. Through the practical recognition of the two Catholic empires and the efforts made to
legitimate their doctrinal existence we remark the relativity of the imperial idea.
Keywords: Papacy, Byzantium, Empire, Title, Barbarossa, Christianity
political position? An answer to these questions
will appear at the end of this study.
The creation of an empire in the Occident
is a consequence of the emancipation process
started by the Latin world from the basileus
authority. The initiative belonged to Rome and
their popes. The beginnings of the papacys
affirmation as a political power started under
Leon I (440-461). He was the first who tried to
take a series of imperial attributions (Brezeanu
1978, 273-279). Gelasius (492-496) is going a
step further claiming in theory his supremacy
over the Res publica Christiana. The premises
for the pontifical empowerment were now
created
with
Gelasius
pretending
his

This essay wants to present how the

relations between these two rival empires (the
Western Empire and the Byzantine Empire) had
developed during the age of crusades. The main
goal is to analyze the conflict over the Roman
title, the imperator Romanorum, which
practically dominated the existence of the two
Christian
structures.
These
ideological
dissensions showed the political ambitions of the
Eastern and Occidental world. The reduction of
Constantinople from 1204 brought a new
problem for Western Europe. What happened
with the new Latin Empire that was now
residing in the Byzantine capital? What was its

34

preeminence even in the temporal power. The

drop of the empire establishment in Western
Europe brought the papacy into the center of
political events. There is nothing casual that the
first schism between Rome and Constantinople
happened only eight years after Rome was
conquered. This religious schism was raised
after three and a half decades but during this
time pope Gelasius managed the delimitation
between the temporal and the spiritual power in
the Occident. The conflict between Byzantium
and the papacy escalated not only because of the
ambitious political projects the popes had but it
was also a consequence of the hard repressions
the Byzantines emperors led against the Holy
Chair. The pope was between the 6th and the 8th
centuries the basileus spokesman for the
barbaric kingdoms and for all the Christians
from the sunset lands. The Byzantine emperors
regarded themselves de jure as the natural
owners of the whole world. In this category
were included the churches and all the
principalities from Western Europe.
The first half of the 8th century was the
decisive stage in fulfilling the papacys dreams.
The religious institution exploits skillfully the
lack of Byzantine authority in Italy, because
Leon III and his successors were more focused
on Asia Minor and the Oriental provinces of the
empire. The Roman bishops headed towards the
French royalty because the Italian peninsula was
under the threat of the Langobards. The double
intervention of Pepin the Short in Italy in 754
and 756 led to the formation of the papal state in
the territories of the former exarchate which was
released from the Langobards control. Dlgers
opinion is that Pepin and his sons have adopted
the patricius Romanorum title (Dlger 1955,
77). Romes alliance with the Carolingian
royalty and the creation of the papal state in the
space of the old Byzantine exarchate from
Ravenna meant in fact the final emancipation of
the papacy from the Constantinopolitan
authority. But the Roman bishops knew that they
cant have full independence without the
creation of a rival empire in the Occident in
order to protect their achievement.
For four centuries since Charles the Great
coronation and until the fourth crusade the
political thought from Christian Europe has been
dominated by the problem of the two
emperors. In the specialized literature it was
called the Zweikaiserproblem. The act from the
year 800 directed by Pope Leo III was defying
and insulting the position and the policy doctrine
of the Byzantine emperor. There could have
been only one Christian emperor and one

empire, the correspondent for the celestial

kingdom on earth. God blessed the Byzantine
emperor and only he could have been
acknowledged by the Divinity in this role. The
pope was aware of the consequences of his
gesture, which led to the challenging of the
Roman emperor title for the Constantinopolitan
sovereign. Charles was not so familiar with the
Roman emperor idea and he hoped for an
understanding with Constantine successors. He
intended to crown himself as an emperor of the
Franks without attempting to attack the
historical and doctrinal rights of the Greek
rulers. But the future events and Romes will
were much more powerful than the pragmatism
of the first Aachen emperor. His crowning
opened a title dispute for four centuries in the
Christian world. But the Western emperors were
usurpers of the Roman Christian emperor title,
while their rivals from the East had solid
arguments to defend their legitimacy.
The loss of Egypt and Syria was a hard
knock for the Byzantines. Their empire was
relying now on Asia Minor, the Aegean Sea and
Greece. This brings new important changes in
the life of the Eastern Empire. The Latin
language lost its position in front of the Greek.
Even the imperial title, imperator Hellenizes
into the Greek one basileus. The bigger problem
was that Byzantium hadnt many possessions in
the Occident. The universal character of the
empire was now under question. The Latins
began to denigrate the Byzantine emperor with
the
rex
Graecorum
and
imperator
Constantinopolitanus titles in the 7th and 8th
centuries (Lilie 1994, 241). The modern
historians mean that Byzantiums Oriental
problems (caused mostly by the Arabs) made
them distant from the Occident (Beck 1969, 136;
Konstanz 1969, 227-241; Ostrogorsky 1936,
45).
The title of the Byzantine emperor
stabilized at the half of the 10th century when we
discover the classic form: born into Christ God,
faithful basileus and autocrat of the Romans
(Brezeanu 1978, 278). The origins of the title go
back to the doctrine of Constantine the Great
theorized by Eusebius of Caesarea. He defined
the divine source of the emperor, the absolute
character of the imperial power, the uniqueness
and universality of the Byzantine Empire. The
doctrine underlined a millenary empire, which
defined the Roman and Christian identity set by
Constantine some centuries back. The emperor
was the father of the Christian family and the
other princes could have been only brothers,
sons friends or dutiful. The Byzantine

35

emperors regarded themselves de jure as the

natural owners of the whole world. In this
category were included the churches and all the
principalities from Western Europe. The
basileus had to be (from the Byzantine point of
view) for the kingdoms from the Occident the
pater familias, the one who was the head of the
new built Family of kings (as Dlger called it).
This theory about the medieval family was
better developed during the time of Constantine
VII Porphyrogenitus. The ideology began with
the idea that the Byzantine emperor was the only
one invested by God in his role. After that, all
the other kings from the Christian world were
invested by the Byzantine emperor through
Gods will. The basileus was the intermediate
between God and the other princes. Only
through him were the other kings capable of
being recognized by God and invested on their
thrones. This title was relevant in the eyes of the
subjects but also in the ones of the other
Christians princes. But this hierarchical structure
that we had in Byzantium became fictional and
unfunctional especially for this age.
From the Greeks point of view, the
possibility of Charles being crowned as the
Roman emperor was ridiculous and hilarious.
Nikephor I changes the old basileus title into
basileus tn Rhomain for denouncing the
Western usurpation (Brezeanu 1978, 279).
Under Venices pressure and suffering from
Crums defeat, the Byzantines saw themselves
obliged to recognize Charles basileus title. But
only that part of the title not the whole one with
the Roman emperor addition (Ohnsorge 1979,
118). Charles was also regarded as brother of
the Byzantine emperor, so he took his place in
the
Princes
family
theorized
by
Constantinople.
The new political creation had a FrenchChristian inspiration not a Roman one (Dlger
1955, 86). The French sovereign was heavily
penetrated from the Christian substance, so he
thought to be ruling an imperium Christianum
represented by his people. The title reflects his
Christian vision over the Western empire. The
formula Romanum gubernans imperium reflects
his view about the doctrine of this new built
structure. Charles appears more like a defensor
ecclesiae, a protector of the Christianity.
The appearance on the Western political
stage of this empire leads shortly to a fierce
rivalry with New Rome and the successors of
Constantine the Great. Louis II (855-878) is the
first Occidental sovereign who contests the
Roman title of the Constantinopolitan emperors.
Charles followers annexed the imperator

Romanorum title until the fall of the Carolingian

empire in 888. After that the doctrinal conflicts
disappeared for nearly a century.
The rise of the German kingdom under
Otto I brought his imperial coronation at Rome
in 962. The recognition of his empire from
Constantinople is Ottos foreign politic for a
decade. But Otto had the objective to be
regarded as the emperor of the Franks not as
the Roman emperor (Ohnsorge 1979, 94). At
the beginning of his work Antapodosis,
Liudprand named the Byzantine emperor as
imperator augustus and sanctissimus imperator
(von Kremona 1915, 133). After Otto I
crowning, the Western sovereign was named
caesar augustus imperator and sanctissimus
imperator, while the Byzantine was degraded at
the imperator Constantinopolitanus title (von
Kremona, 1915, 164). During his embassy from
the year 968 in Constantinople, Liudprand used
for his master the title imperator Francorum
(Ibid., 179). In the end, Otto reaches his goal to
be recognized as emperor of the Franks from
Constantinople. We can affirm that Otto
continued Charles realistic politic who didnt
attend to the Roman title of the Byzantine
sovereigns. Ottos troubles to be recognized as
imperator Francorum showed the Occidental
tries to legitimate itself in front of the Eastern
Empire. But Pope John XII saw Otto as an
emperor and his re-born empire as a Roman
one with universal aspirations. Otto was still
under the Carolingian inheritance and refused
the Roman title for the imperator Augustus one
(Nerlich 1999, 122).
Otto II, the son of the great German
sovereign followed at the beginning the
pragmatic political line of his father. Later his
ambitions rose and he wanted to be equal with
the Byzantine emperor so he proclaimed himself
imperator Romanorum and began using this title
(Ohnsorge 1947, 67). His successors insisted on
the Roman origin of their empire and contested
frequently the Byzantine title (Folz 1957, 133).
The thesis over the translatio imperii was more
used during Otto III reign. This legend was
manufactured after Charles the Great coronation.
According to this false story, the emperor had
deliberately abandoned Rome for moving to
Constantinople centuries ago (Ibid., 164). The
Donatio Constantini assigned the power of the
emperor in the act of the papal coronation. The
Byzantine historians Anna Comnena and
Kinnamos knew about this forgery elaborated by
the papacy. Kinnamos is intrigued about the
Popes and the Western emperors claims that
the Byzantine Empire is not the true Roman one

36

(Kinnamos 1972, 164). So the Greek sources

knew in the 12th century about the Occidents
tries to contest their title. For Anna it was
unbelievable that the Westerners had the nerve
not to recognize Byzantium as the true Roman
Empire (Comnena 1977, 59).
Ottos III successor, Henry II abandoned
the restoration politic of the Roman Empire. He
came back to the initial French idea (renovatio
Regni Francorum). The Byzantine Empire had
friendly relations with the Salian dynasty.
Afterwards, Conrad II and Henry III took the
Roman emperor title but as a concept of the
third kingdoms: Germany, Italy and Burgundy
(Nerlich 1999, 230). As long as there werent
any political or military tensions between
Byzantium and the Latins, then the imperial title
didnt create any problems for the two sides.
But during the Staufen dynasty in
crusading time we have the toughest appeals
against the Byzantine imperial title. In 1138 an
official act sent by Conrad III to Genoa
mentioned about the imperium Romanorum.
According to this document, Conrad III was
ruling over the Roman empire (Jansen 1954,
166). From now on the official diplomas had
always expressed the idea that the Roman
Empire was in Conrads possession.
The introduction of these two phrases in
Conrads title is due to Wibald, the chancellor of
the German sovereign. The Western Empire saw
in the Byzantine one only a copy of the antique
Rome and not the continuer of that famous
structure (von Freising und Rahewin 1965, 7375; Ansbert 1928, 36). After the return from the
second crusade Conrad III kept in his acts the
Romanorum
imperator
title
(Historia
Peregrinorum in Chroust 1928, 131-134). In the
writings towards the Eastern Empire, Conrad III
used for him the Romanorum imperator title,
while the basileus was seen only as
Constantinopolitanus rex (Jansen 1954, 187). In
the internal diplomas Conrad entitled himself
augustus. Ohnsorges opinion is that the German
king added this title in the moment a Greek
legacy visited his court (Ohnsorge 1979, 251).
The chaplain Albert was sent in 1140 to
Constantinople. During the audiences he used
besides the augustus also the imperator
Romanorum title for his sovereign (Henkenrath
1969, 29). In other German official acts Conrad
appears as Romanorum imperator, while the
Byzantine
emperor
was
regarded
as
Constantinopolitanus imperator (von Freising
1965, 76, 93, 166).
Conrad III was cheered by the German
princes who conferred him the rex Romanorum

title. After that the pontifical coronation had to

legitimate his supreme title. But the German
sovereign wouldnt have reached Rome for the
imperial crowning, because he died just before
his journey in 1152. During this time the official
documents name him king. So despite
Wibalds attempts, Conrad III had never been
seen as a Roman emperor. The chancellor tried
to treat him like one in the home documents. But
Conrad couldnt have pretended to be an
imperator Romanorum because he was never
crowned by the Pope. And no one from the other
political factors regarded him with this title.
Conrad had never achieved his dream to be
crowned as the Roman emperor. Only the
contacts with the basileus made him assume the
imperial title.
In a letter of Pope Eugene III, Conrad III
was named simply imperator. From the Popes
point of view, the German sovereign was not
entitled to name himself imperator Romanorum
but only rex Romanorum. While Wibald
answers the pope, the Stablo abbot used the
word Romanum imperium in order to define
Conrads kingdom (Jansen 1954, 199). In other
writings to Byzantium, Wibald mentioned the
terms imperator, imperalis or imperium when he
referred to the Occidental Empire and its
sovereign (Ibid., 132, 144, 146, 172, 197). In a
letter addressed to the German bishops, Pope
Eugene III asked them to support their king
Conrad in his Rome march in order to be
crowned there as emperor (Henkenrath 1969,
23). So this is the proof that the Pope wanted to
crown Conrad as imperator Romanorum in
1152. But the death of the German made that
coronation impossible.
The Comnenian emperors affirmed then
more than ever their right to be the only heir of
the Roman Empire and the Constantinopolitan
propaganda explained the historical rights of
their possession. On the other hand, we have the
Staufens who are in an ideological offensive
after they had discovered Justinians legislation.
That new founding inspired them and the
imperial Western propaganda hit the papacy and
the Byzantine interests likewise. Conrads title
was contested even in the Occident now. But
once his successor Frederic Barbarossa was
crowned in Rome, the things changed radically.
Now we witness the start of the powerful
German propaganda against the Pope and the
Byzantine emperors.
After more than three centuries from the
birth of this Western Empire, the imperial idea
romanized itself following Justinians legislation
and the state construction from the Occident.

37

Barbarossa spoke about the only empire from

Christianity. He proclaimed himself as the
legitimate successor of Constantine, Heraclius,
Charles and Otto. The constitution of the
German sovereign is inserted in Justinians
Corpus iuris civilis. In Otto of Freisings
opinion Barbarossas Roman Empire was the
fourth and the last great universal in the
succession of the Assyrian-Babylonian, Persian
and Macedonian one (von Freising 1956, 178).
So before the humanity entered in regnum
Christi, the last possible and the only empire
was the Roman one. And Frederic was the
continuer and the right heir of the ancient
Roman Empire. This anachronistic conception is
based on the idea that the Roman Empire was
continued by the Greeks in Constantinople, from
the French after the translatio imperii from the
year 800 and from the Germans through the
renovatio imperii in 962. Barbarossas
propaganda developed the conception that the
Roman Empire was owned by their holders
directly from God. So it appeared the idea of the
Holy Empire founded on the Christian
tradition of Constantine and Charles the Great
(Brezeanu 1978, 280). During Frederic and then
Henry VIs time that new political vision had
been fully elaborated. The imperial occidental
doctrine knew its final form under the lead of
Barbarossas chancellor, Rainald von Dassel. He
was talking about reges provinciarum and
rules in the relations of the Western kings with
the emperor (Ibid., 281). Barbarossas new
conception, theorized by von Dassel was
attacking the Byzantine Empire, the papacy and
the other national monarchies from the Occident
who were now in full affirmation processes.
The German Caesar was developing an
aggressive European politic through which he
entitled himself to hold by right the imperator
Romanorum title, while the basileus could have
been mostly rex Graecorum (Ohnsorge 1979,
214). In Otto of Freisings work was a narration
about a visit of a Byzantine embassy at
Frederics court, probably in 1157. This legacy
came to negotiate an alliance with the German
sovereign. During the reception the guests
mentioned that they were representatives of the
Roman emperor. This sentence angered and
shocked Barbarossa (von Freising 1956, 339).
The Western emperor proposed to Manuel to
hold only the emperor of New Rome title
because the true Roman Empire was in the
Occident and only Frederic was by right its
successor (Ibid., 341). So there was no doubt
that Barbarossa considered his empire as the heir
and continuer of ancient Rome. With these

conflicts we assist to the resumption of the

Zweikaiserproblem from four centuries ago. But
the positions were different now because
Barbarossa had other ambitious goals and
considered his possession as the truthful and
only Roman Empire, while the basileus was
regarded as a usurper of the imperial title. With
Byzantium in decline and the Western Empire
rising, the roles were so much inverted as in the
time of Charles the Great.
In the official addresses towards Manuel,
Rainald the chancellor used the imperial and the
augustus title for his master Barbarossa.
Frederic appeared as Romanorum imperator et
semper augustus, while Manuel was degraded to
Graecorum rex (Ohnsorge 1943, 124). The
introduction of the term semper augustus is
attributed also to Rainald from the modern
historians (Dlger 1955, 97; Lamma 1955-1957,
145). The formula was founded first at
Diocletian. Constantine had used the words
semper augustus in his title. Byzantium applied
this phrase until Heraclius reign. After that the
formula was forgotten and the Byzantine
emperors did not return to it. With Conrad III
and Barbarossa the Western emperors assumed
for themselves the semper augustus collocation
near the Roman emperor title. They were
probably influenced by Justinian. Through this
annexation the German emperors tried to give
consistency to their function and to underline the
Roman imperial idea and its continuation in
Western Europe.
In an official act Frederic entitled himself:
Fridericius dei gratia Romanorum imperator
prepotentissimus, a deo coronatus magnus et
pacifius inclitus victor ac triumphator semper
augustus (Historia Peregrinorum, 198-199).
Other studies speak about the Kaiseridee with its
key concepts of honor imperii, sacrum imperium
and Barbarossas universal domination pretences
of urbis et orbis (Ohnsorge 1947, 268-271). The
German emperor tried to form in Lombardy his
main territorial domain, which he didnt had in
Germany (Dlger 1955, 104).
The title pretenses of the German emperors
had effect in their foreign politic especially in
the one against Byzantium or other kingdoms
from the Occident. John of Salisbury mentions
that Barbarossa was a tyrant and he wanted to
terrorize and frighten the Greeks. He didnt send
legacies in order to negotiate an alliance but to
obtain the full obedience of the Byzantines (of
Salisbury 1956, 169). The Roman title conflict
between the two empires and their sovereigns
widened during Barbarossas rule. In Otto of
Freisings work, the Byzantine emperor was

38

seen as imperator Constantinopolitanus, while

Frederic was regarded as imperator Romanorum
(von Freising 1956, 137, 140). Frederic was
intrigued by Isaacs boldness to entitle himself
Imperator Romanorum. The German sovereign
considered him a usurper and mentioned further
that Isaac II had the right to wear the name
moderator Romaniorum and not at all
Romanorum (Historia Peregrinorum, 146).
During the 12th century the ideal of the
universal empire was one of the specific time
concepts pretty similar with the religious rebirth,
the feudalism, the trade or the chivalry (Lamma
1955-1957, 154). Barbarossa, Henry VI and
Manuels death had confirmed that the whole
notion of universal empire was anachronistic
during those times. All this ideological and
military construction couldnt have lasted more
than its precursors. If there wasnt a strong
person to guide and to impose this universal
doctrine then the whole idea wouldnt have no
future. The proof lies in the fact that the
conception resisted only during the life of the
three emperors.
The two empires were like two swords that
did not fit in the same European Christianity.
The politic ideology couldnt have found its
fulfillment because there was supposed to be
only one Christian empire, the direct heir of the
ancient Roman one. The appearance of the rival
faction in the Occident brought the title conflicts
and ideological fights between the two sides
who wanted to prove that only their possession
was the rightful Roman Empire from
Christianity and the other was a usurper.
From the beginning of his pontifical
mandate Innocent III supported the Western
Empire against the Byzantine one. His
justification was that the Greek sovereigns
hadnt protected their empire from the
iconoclastic heresy. In the popes conception the
Byzantine emperors deserved to be punished for
such a sacrilege. One of the central ideas of the
occidental doctrine was the theory about the
imperial translation. According to that notion
the empire knew a double translation: when
Constantine transferred the imperial mission
from Romans to Greeks in 330 and in 800 when
the pope made the reverse travel from the
Byzantines to Charles the Great and its German
successors. The relative thesis about the
translatio imperii justified the emancipating
aspirations of the papacy. The Roman Chair
wanted to get more independent from
Byzantium. In the future it turned out into an
equity argument of the Roman bishops in their

struggle for supremacy with the Western

Empire.
Paradoxically, the problem of the two
emperors peals again after 1204 when the
events of the fourth crusade seemed to have
concluded the matter. The new Latin emperors
who violently conquered Constantinople copied
the Byzantine imperial title and through this
they proclaimed the Roman and universal
character of their structure: N., Dei gratia,
fidelissimus in Christo imperator, a Deo
coronatus, Romanorum moderator et semper
augustus (Brezeanu 1978, 92-93) The thesis
over the imperial translation from the year 800
was now contradicting the new situation from
the Bosphorus banks. Once Charles had been
crowned from the Roman prelates, it was clear
that there couldnt have been another Christian
empire at Constantinople but only a Greek
kingdom so the counts from Flandres werent
allowed to claim the imperial title. Innocent III
insisted, until 1204, on the idea of a single
Christian empire. After the reduction of the
Byzantine capital, the Pope tried in his writings
to justify the political changes from the Orient
and promoted the idea of a Latin Empire in
Constantinople. In a letter to Baldwin I, the Pope
mentioned that the Greeks had been punished by
God for their pride and schism from the Catholic
Church and their empire had now been
transferred to the Latins (Ibid., 103). Innocent III
meant that the translatio imperii from the year
800 was the work of the papacy from where we
had the sacerdotal supremacy in the respublica
Christiana. The transfer from the year 1204 was
interpreted by the Pope as a Divine will.
Innocent was not exerting any supremacy
towards the new holders of Constantinople.
Despite that the Popes vision the Staufen
Empire was the true imperium Romanum, while
the Latin state from the east was named
imperium Constantinopolitanum, imperium
Romaniae or imperium Graecorum by Innocent
III (Ibid., 104).
The most important conclusion of my
study represents the title analysis that was
adopted by the Latin princes after they
conquered Constantinople. The first two counts
of Flanders managed, with the help of the antiByzantine propaganda, to step on the EastRoman Emperors chair at Constantinople. We
realize the incompatibility and convergence of
the moment when the two Latin counts were
being crowned in Constantinople. Baldwin I
copied the Byzantine ceremony of crowning an
emperor and took the title of imperator
Romanorum with all its meanings. Henry I, his

39

successor, did the same. Both of them demanded

the recognition of their title and of the political
formation they were leading now. Beside the
imperial title they also adopted the imperium
Romanorum statute for their possession. At
Baldwin I we notice also this title: a Deo
coronatus Romanorum moderator et semper
augustus. Both Baldwin and Henry I took in
their title the Byzantine formula through Gods
mercyimperator Romanorum. So the
Byzantine title was taken in all its aspects and
with all its significances by the new rulers from
Constantinople. But its also important to
observe that the whole luxurious Byzantine
court ceremonial with all his immoral and
decadent clothing was copied in all the tiniest
details by the Western Latins. Its ironic that
they took over and acquired all that they had so
hard challenged and defamed during the last
century. The reason for this changing in their
conception was first of all the accomplishment
of their desired mission. Secondly, they needed
to legitimize the power they had taken over in
the eyes of the Byzantine subjects. Through the
conquering of Constantinople the counts of
Flanders had now inherited the whole Byzantine
imperial political tradition.
After the crowning of Otto IV in Western
Europe in 1209, the Latin emperors from
Constantinople needed to settle for the
imperator Constantinopolitanus and imperator
Romaniae titles. The critics that the Latin
chroniclers developed against Byzantium before
1204 disappeared after their victory from the
beginning of the 13th century. Mentally they
prepared the Occident for the decisive attack
against
Constantines
metropolis.
The
chroniclers of the fourth crusade dont reveal us
anything about the former defamatory clichs of
the Western literary works. The purpose for this
silence is to justify their action and to explain
that it was their right to possess the enormous
and single Byzantine wealth.
The fourth crusade represented an
important stage in the Byzantine universalism
crisis. The fights between the Greek states to
impose themselves as the rightful heir of the
Constantinopolitan seat led to the devaluation of
the imperial idea in Byzantium. We had changes
in the Occident as well. Through the practical
recognition of the two Catholic empires and the
efforts made to legitimate their doctrinal
existence we remark the relativity of the
imperial idea. These happenings gave a sign to
the European monarchies to force their
emancipation from the supremacy of the Empire

and papacy, the two universal powers of the

middle Ages.
References

a. Books:
Ansbert,
Der
Kreuzzug
Ansbert
Friedrich Barbarossas 11872003
1190, tr. Bhler, Stuttgart,
2003.
Comnena,
Ana,
Alexiada,
Comnena
Bucureti, 1977.
1977
Folz, Robert, Lide dempire
Folz 1957
en Occident du Ve au XIVe
sicle, Paris, 1957.
Henkenrath Henkenrath, Rainer Maria,
Regnum und Imperium. Das
1957
Reich in der frhstaufischen
Kanzlei (1138-1155), Wien,
1969.
Lamma, Paolo, Comneni e
Lamma
Staufer. Ricerche sui rapporti
1957
fra Bisanzio e lOccidente nel
secolo XII, I-II, Roma, 19551957.
Lilie, Ralph-Johannes, Byzanz.
Lilie 1954
Kaiser und Reich, Kln, Wien,
1994.
Nerlich, Daniel, Diplomatische
Nerlich
Gesandtschaften zwischen Ost
1999
und Westkaisern 756-1001,
Berlin, Bern, Wien, 1999.
Ohsorge,
Werner,
Das
Ohnsorge
Zweikaiserproblem
im
frhen
1947
Mittelalter, Hildesheim, 1947.
Ohnsorge, Werner, Abendland
Ohnsorge
und Byzanz, Darmstadt, 1979.
1979
b. Chapters in books
Ansbert,
Historia
de
Ansbert
expeditione
Friderici
1928
imperatoris. In: A. Chroust,
Quellen zur Geschichte des
Kreuzzugs Kaiser Friedrichs I.,
Berlin, 1928.
Choniates, Niketas, Historia,
Choniates
ed. J. Dieten, Berlin, 1975.
1975
Chroust,
A.,
Historia
Chroust
Peregrinorum. In Quellen zur
1928
Geschichte
des
Kreuzzugs
Kaiser Friedrichs I., Berlin,
1928.
von Cremona, Liudprand, Die
von

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Cremona
1915
von
Freising
1965
Jansen
1954
Kinnamos
1972
of
Salisbury
1956

Werke, Hannover, Leipzig,

1915.
von Freising und Rahewin, Die
Taten Friedrichs oder richtiger
Cronica, Berlin, 1965.
Jansen, D., Wibald von Stablo
und Corvey, Berlin, 1954.
Kinnamos, Jean, Chronique, tr.
J. Rosenblum, Paris, 1972.
of Salisbury, John, Historia
Pontificalis, ed. & tr. Marjorie
Chibnall, London, 1956.

c. Papers in periodical journals

Beck, Hans-Georg, Byzanz
Beck 1969
und der Westen im 12.
Jahrhundert. In: Vortrge und
Forschungen, 12, Konstanz,
1969, p. 227-241.
Brezeanu, Stelian, Ideea de
Brezeanu
Imperiu
n Occidentul
1978
medieval n lumina cercetrilor
din ultimele decenii [The Idea
of the Empire in the Medieval
West Reflected by Researchers
from the Last Decades]. In:
Revista de istorie [The History
Review], nr. 2, 1978, p. 273298.
Dlger 1955 Dlger, Franz, Byzanz und das
Abendland
vor
den
Kreuzzgen. In: Relazioni del
X. Congresso Internazionale
die scienze storiche, Roma,
1955, p. 67-112.
Ohnsorge,
Werner,
Die
Ohnsorge
Byzanzpolitik
Friedrich
1943
Barbarossas
und
der
Landesverrat Heinrichs des
Lwen. In : Deutsches Archiv,
I., 1943, p. 118-149.
Georg,
Die
Ostrogorsky Ostrogorsky,
byzantinische
1936
Staatenhierarchie.
In:
Seminarium Kondakovianum,
8, 1936, p. 41-61.

41

Pictures of Serfs in Medieval Documents from Banat

(14th and 15th Centuries)
Ligia BOLDEA
PhD Researcher, Museum of Montan Banat, Reia
E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract. The many facets of medieval society in Transylvania and Banat induce the need to
investigate all sections of society in order to cover the evolving paradigms of each social segment through
everything that documentary information sources or books bring to light. While the elitist world is much
easier to recompose due to its ubiquity in written testimonies, it is more difficult to observe and analyze
the modest world of the terrae filii, of those struggling to work the land a determinant bedrock in the
process of establishing socioeconomic and politico-administrative relations. Chronic lack of documents
relative to key aspects of serfs life can be compensated only if we try to make use of analogies and
references to information in documents that could help in our attempt to recompose an entire social
segment that proved to be indispensable for the evolution of a society based on a strong hierarchy,
bringing into sight obvious social and juridical inequality. We have the intention to draw based solely
on documentary sources (the only ones that survived the test of time) some constituent elements of the
image of the serf in medieval Banat, a foray encumbered by frustrating informative gaps.
However, in the light of limited information in documentary sources, we propose some
reflections on ways of identifying the serfs in the clerical texts. They are related to both the formal
appearance of serfs in stilionarums of the era, and quantitative estimates of ethnic and anthroponomical
considerations.
Far from being an exhaustive research, the present study aims to highlight the possible research
directions on this lower class of society in medieval Banat.
Keywords: Banat, 14th and 15th centuries, the art of nobility, serfs of feudal relations,
anthroponomy
serfdom in Transylvania has been a
controversial issue for long time, because of the
admission or denial by historians of the
existence of feudal relations (and of feudalism
itself) in the Romanian space, even though to
better understand the social relations in
Transylvanian Middle Ages it is absolutely
necessary to demonstrate the different statute of
peasants and the deepening of these
socioeconomic differences, their vassalage, the
functioning of the rural economy in the feudal
system, the obligations that serfs had towards
landlords (Edroiu 1995, 16; Pop 2011, 142-143).
Unfortunately, such an undertaking is difficult
because it refers to the most humble of human
activities in an area that leaves few traces, an
area that historians usually neglect; this is why
we have to face both a lack of documents, and
their low informative quality. For the 14th and
15th centuries, as in the case of Transylvania,
also there it is to be noticed the absence of land
records, tax assessments, inventories and
accounts about fields in Banat, things that could
undoubtedly indicate the mechanism of feudal

A few general considerations

For a thorough analysis of the medieval
Banat we have to call into requisition the
relationships that were established between field
owners and their vassals serfs in this case , an
appeal facilitated by the proliferation of
documents in the later part of the 14th century
due to new social and juridical requirements
thrown out by the Angevins dynasty. However,
the incursion that we propose suffers a serious
impediment related to inconsistent information
on the question of serfs in Banat during the 14th
and 15th centuries. In his work on feudal society
(Duby 1988, 186), the famous mediaevalist
historian, Marc Bloch, said: Que de leons ne
pourrait-on pas attendre dune carte de la
libert et de la servitude paysannes! This
exclamation contains the frustration of
researcher that experiences parsimony of
documents in matter of information about an
entire social class that was basic for the
evolution of medieval human society
In the Transylvanian area (and we could
say, by extension, in Banat also), historian
Nicolae Edroiu believes that the history of

42

Economical
aspects
34%

Social

Legal

4%

Money

Serfs
activities

7,7%

5,8%

7,8%

10%

Personal
property,
tools
Land
inventory
Serfs
estates and
12,2%

41%

Ownership
of animals
15,5%
Taxes

A typology of documents related to matters of

economics is possible on the basis of the
following parameters:

Violence
committed by/
with the help of
Attitudes of serfs

Violence against
serfs

Te right to resettle

A percentage arrangement of documents on

social issues is to be found in the next table:

Relations between
nobles and serfs

4,6%

21,4
%

48,8
%

Serfs presence in period stilionarums

One of the first things a historian notices
is how serfs are mentioned in documents of the
epoch. As persons deprived of their liberty by
law, serfs are mentioned in relation to their
masters in absolutely all cases, so that one can
find them in formulas like serf of the noble ...
or serf on the estate...followed by its possessor,
be it a king, a noble, an ecclesiastical institution
or an official of one county or kingdom. This
ubiquitous possession, this dependency of the
serfs to a master or another reveals their inferior
unprivileged legal status, encumbered by
specific obligations.
The nature of these obligations and their amount
remain controversial issues, since, as in the case
of Transylvania, there it is to be noticed the
absence of land records, tax assessments,
inventories and accounts about fields in Banat
also, things that could undoubtedly indicate the
mechanism of feudal relations on royal or
nobiliary domains. There are few documents
that refer to the serfs on the royal domains in the
two counties of Banat, principalities probably
included in the perimeter of the royal castles in
the area. In our opinion, this reality is related to
Angevins kings, whose generosity is well known
in the early decades; we consider especially first
kings generosity towards those military
employed, trustee, vice-trustee, castellans and
vice-castellans in Banat (Holban 1962, 75;
Andea 1996, 66). We also think that this is the
context in which many of the areas were
established in counties of Banat, founded on
royal donation.
It is to be noted that when we refer to
the serfs on the fields belonging to royalty we
have to confuse them not with category of serfs
within the walls (iobagiones castri), whose
duties were primarily of military nature (Popa
1988, 198; Drgan 2000, 267; Pecican 2001, 7778; Rusu 2005, 423-424; Diaconescu 2013, 4450). Our attention was directed only to the serfs
tillers of the soil who were agricultural
workforce for field labour carried out on those
dominions which still remained royal property.
However, the information is incidental, and is
related either by royal estate donation altogether
with dependent serfs, donations made in the
benefit of the noble families (Ortvay 1896, 85)

Military
aspects

aspects aspects
50%
12%

7,6%

17,6%

relations on royal or nobiliary domains (Fenean

1977, 225; Haegan 2003, 68-69).
Based on a consistent number of documents that
we accessed, we try to make a summary
statistical which does not claim completeness,
but set out a few lines of research that can
reconstruct some aspects of daily life in rural
Banat. We note also that we have analysed the
situation of the serfs in the plain counties of
Banat, mainly Timi and Cara, where serfdom
phenomenon can be observed in a better
measure from the 14th century.
Interestingly, as a slight difference from
these, in the highlands of Banat which are
circumscribed to Banat of Severin and in
Romanian privileged districts serfs presence is
reflected documentary just in the second half of
the 15th century (even then, sporadically);
volume of documentary evidences had to grow
exponentially over the next two centuries.
Thus,
starting
from
consulted
documents (about 250), we could make the
following classification of issues:

43

(1), or is it related to changing boundaries of

some royal property and possessions of the
nobles (Ortvay 1896, 128) (2). There are also
cases when documents relate to the implications
of the serfs rights to leave royal estates, or to a
strengthening of these rights provided that the
serfs paid their taxes (Hurmuzaki I/2, 1890,
441)(3), or, by contrary, some documents show
how these rights were violated by attacking and
looting the serf during his lawful relocation to
another domain (Ortvay 1896, 579) (4). The
documents records also some economic
problems; in 1372, King Louis I prohibited
serfs right in Themeskuz to grind his grains in
mills that are not situated on royal domains
(DRH, C, XIV, 14, 2002, 112). An interesting
formula (that appears very rarely) in a document
from 1437 refers to Mihail and Danko,
jobagionum imperialium of Chiglobanya
(Ciclova),
and
reflects
Sigismund
of
Luxembourgs dual (imperial and royal)
authority (Pesty 1882, 364).
The number of documents that mention the serfs
of the royal or local officials is slightly lower,
although information in the documents does not
clarify their status, either as feudatory to a
dignitary, that came with investiture with his
honour (thus, somehow royal serfs), or as serfs
on private possessions of the same officials in
counties of Banat. When a document of 1368
mentions Nicholas Lackfi from Sudgea, a serf of
Prince of Transylvania, it is certainly about the
family dominions, barons in Lacks/Hermanns
family, knowing that they held important

properties in the Arad County (DRH, C, XIV,

13, 1994, 480; Boldea 2013, 243). Other times,
we find a number of references to the serfs of
trustees in Timi and Cara (Ortvay 1896, 438)
(5), of bans in Severin (Prodan 1967, 64) (6), of
the chatelaine in Cuieti, Cara and Orova,
portrayed in various situations (Pesty 1882, 155;
Hurmuzaki I/2, 1890, 441; Pesty 1878, 66) (7).
A rather small number of documents mention
the serfs on the properties of ecclesiastical
institutions in counties from Banat, namely
those of Capitols of Cenad and Arad (Ortvay
1896, 614; Ortvay 1896, 616) (8), as well as
those of greatest monastic domains in that area,
the monasteries Bizere and St. Gerard from
Cenad (DL 29800; DRH, C, XIV, 12, 1985,
156).
The others, most of the documents give
information on the serfs from the nobiliary
domains in Banat counties. Serfs are usually
mentioned in cases of dispute between different
feudal lords, when servants and members of
(5) In an interesting intervention, trustee of Timi
asks magister Stephen of Egerzeg to revoke murder
charges against Ladislaus of Buren, serf of the trustee
in Timi, Filippo Scolari.
(6) A piece of information reveals an aspect less
surprised by chancellery documents, although the
issue is a fundamental one; we refer to payment in
goods6 owned by serfs as result of work on fields of
landlords (it is about agricultural products, wine,
farm animals, n. tr.), which are insufficiently
reflected in the documentation of 14th and 15th
centuries. Thus, taking into account a petition of ban
of Severin, Nicholas Pernyi, king cuts tax to 20
barrels of wine (tunnelas vini) for his serfs working
their vineyards on Pataaki hill.
(7) On 16 March 1381, the chatelaine of Cuieti and
his serfs made a run-up to Remetea possession of
Himfi family and robbed it. In 1405, king prohibits
chatelaines in Cara the right to file complaints
against serfs who moved on the lands of tefan of
Remetea since they had paid their resettlement tax. In
May 1453, the chatelaine of Orova confesses in a
letter addressed to some magistrates that he urged
serfs to quickly bring them gifts they deserved.
(8) A very interesting act issued by the Capitol of
Cenad in 1427 grants the inhabitants and the serfs in
Cenad the right to bequeath their properties (movable
and immovable things) to all their descendants. A
document dated 15 of June 1428 evokes some less
Orthodox interactions between dignitaries from
Capitol of Arad and the prelate of Bizere Monastery,
rather strained relations, since the abbots men
(servants and serfs) did not hesitate to enter by force
on certain possessions of the Capitol, where they
sowed millet and looted property from those serfs in
the Capitol.

(1) On October 14, 1358 the King made a speech in

front of the magistrates, assembly of guests and serfs
in Chuturtukhel, a settlement in Timi County, to
announce that he donated this royal land to the
nobiliary family of Himfi, and he ordered them to
obey their new masters.
(2) A document uncertainly dated 1361-1373 refers to
a changing of boundaries of royal estate in
Altalkereke and that of nobiliary family of Veyteh,
situated in Timi county, where assisted both the
nobles in Veyteh and the assembly of serfs in
Altalkereke (universis Jobagionibus nostris de iam
dicta Altalkereke).
(3) In 1405, for instance, trustee of Timi and Cara
Filippo Scolari asked castellans in Cara to no
longer file complaints on serfs who moved from
royal lands on those of the family Himfi since they
had paid their taxation (terragium).
(4) A document of 1423 mentions that Stephen
Chech, serf on the royal estate of Hollos in Timi
county, was attacked and robbed by two noble when
he tried to migrate legally on the estate of another
noble; they stole from him 600 grains salt and 73
buckets of grain.

44

their families appear either as active or passive

factor. Thus, a plastic image of neighbourhood
relations in the region is created, a unique
context that better explains the existence of serfs
of the time (Prodan 1967, 108-109; Pop 1985,
103). According to specific legislation adopted
in the time of kings Louis I and Sigismund of
Luxemburg, anyone but the own lord or
governor could catch, pledge or judge a serf, and
if the accuser found himself aggrieved by their
judgement, the former judges could be convened
in front of the king or at his usual court (Prodan
1967, 108-109; Pop 1985, 103).
After seigniorial jurisdiction came the
judgment of the county as court of appeal for
those dissatisfied with feudal court in cases
against feudal himself or against his serfs. Serfs
had no right to complain of their masters; in case
that a master brought injuries a serf of another
lord, this last one could be affected in his
interest and bring a charge against this lord.
(Pall 2003, 362).
The documentation available to us is
eloquent all these disputations were tried in the
presence of trustee, vice-trustee and nobiliary
magistrates of administrative counties in Cara,
Timi, Arad and Torontal, some of them at the
explicit request of the king. In all cases, those
who have turned to the judgment were masters
of serfs, despite the fact that those directly
harmed by the various spoilers, aggression or
violence were their serfs, people without legal
identity. Clearly, under the law, all complaints
brought before court ended with the finding that
the real damage was the one they brought to the
lord, and not to serfs. Ensuring the right of the
master to judge its serfs, it is clear that the texts
exempt currently major crimes involving capital
punishment, which could affect public safety,
and thus these remained within the competence
of other (public) law courts. But there are some
cases when feudal lord gained extended
privilege to judge serious crimes the so-called
ius gladii honorarily granted by the king in
special situations as favour. It was, for example,
the case of the Himfi of Remetea-Ersig family,
in 1369 (Lendvay 1896, 34).

offer too much information about the

population. Acts of division of property among
heirs are the most conclusive documentation,
and also those related to sharing of assets
between familys branches, documents for
awarding the heirs patrimonial quarter or
regulations establishing or changing boundaries
of estates. In such cases, the rigour required for
equitable sharing of goods or for correct
drawing of land borders resulted in identification
in acts of the number of lots (see lat. sessio), and
their spatial positioning.
Interestingly, in scripts from 14th
century we find only numeric entry of lots or
houses of the serfs; just in the second half of the
next century one can notice first time the names
of the serfs altogether with the lots they were
living on.
Some documents of this kind shed some
light on the numbers of the workmen on the
feudal estates. One of the best examples is
provided by the case of Himfi of Remetea-Ersig
family and dates back to 1389, when a partition
of the family property in Cara county was made
between descendants of the three branches of
that family; the inheritors were offspring of the
well-known brothers Benedict, Petru [Peter] and
Nicolae [Nicholas] Himfi (Pesty 1882, 185). We
considered those twenty four villages located
around Ersig an important part of the family
domain of Banat where I counted about 300
serfs (damaged parts of the document could
have influenced a changing of this number), thus
the average per village is 15 serfs. It is an
impressive number, relative to other domains
inhabited by serfs, and this is explained by the
fact that Himfi aristocratic family was
undoubtedly one of the most prosperous and
powerful family in the counties of Timi and
Cara in the second half of the 14th century and
the first half of the next one. Moreover, in a
previous paper dated 1378, reference was made
to construction of a stone church in Remetea, for
which they used 108 serfs, surely from the
Himfi familys domain (Pesty 1882, 136).
The number of serfs is surely lower on
the other domains; when they made a partition
of villages in the Voiteni domain (Timi county)
in 1415, one could count twenty plots of land or
households of the serfs (Ortvay 1896, 496). Four
estates in the county of Arad, divided between
two aristocratic families in 1421, comprised ten
farms of the serfs (Ortvay 1896, 570), and the
next year a widow from the nobiliary family
were given as legal quarter 33 households of the
serfs in villages from Belin-Buzia area in the
county of Timi (Pesty 1882, 456).

Numerical presence of serfs on nobiliary

domains
It is difficult to make estimates about
the number of serfs on the fields of nobility in
Banat for these two centuries. In the absence of
tax assessments and land records, chancery
documents are the only elements that we can
substantiate views. However, they are
unpredictable and incidentally; thus, they do not

45

We reiterate the idea that all these numbers are

strictly based on information in scripts from the
old Banat, and that this analysis is only an
intermediate stage of our study on this subject.

167). For the next century, the percentage of

serfs
nominally
identified
increased
significantly, to approx. 20-25% after our
estimate. If in the first half of this period still
prevails the identification of a serf only with his
nomen unicum, one can observe that after 1460
the documents use more and more the complete
names for identifying a serf.
This was caused perhaps by general
evolution of anthroponomy within human
communities throughout the Middle Ages, a
phenomenon found especially at the elite level,
where the simple names gradually turned into
family names during the 14th-16th centuries. For
example, Romanian aristocratic family Mtnic
from Ohaba-Mtnic, mentioned under this form
in the 14th and 15th centuries, can be found under
Mtniceanu name in the documents of 16th and
17th centuries (Boldea 2011, 235-269); also, the
family of the trustee of Cara in the 14th century,
Pousa de Szer, is found in the next century as
Szeri Posafi (Boldea 2013, 233-250).
This is a fact that can be observed as
clerical acts become more and more complex,
and a person belonging to a particular family
will be as important as individual distinguishing
different family members using first names. In
fact, the occurrence of an additional appellation
was determined by necessity to identify
unequivocally and immediately a particular
individual, due to need of registration from legal
perspective (especially in what regards
bureaucratic chancellery activities) in a period
when tax system becomes more articulate.

Observations of anthroponymy
Another issue of interest for us was
anthroponomy, namely the way the serfs names
are mentioned in documents of their times. A
first observation concerned the little difference
between how serfs are mentioned in documents
of 14th and of 15th centuries. One can easy say
that during the 14th century serfs presence is
much less personalized, they are mentioned
rather as individuals with a generic name (the
serf or the serfs) and not as people with
nominally certified identity.
This is related perhaps to specific of the
chancellery acts, but there is obviously a lack of
interest for the names of people in
underprivileged social categories. Thus, of a
total of approximately 70 documents from 14th
century referring to this social class, only 13%
mention the names of some serfs, in fact, their
forename, which is sometimes accompanied by
a nickname (the sobriquet), as additional way to
identify the individual within a community (9).
Recent research demonstrates the
reality that, reported to the Occident, in
Transylvania a family name is less present
together with a first name. Research on the 14thcentury Transylvania found that only a
percentage of 0,64% of individuals can be
identified binominally (Turcu et al. 2011, 169).
If we consider the whole society, how many of
these individuals were serfs? Certainly, the
percentage is insignificant.
For this situation researchers have
offered several explanations: first, most of the
times, the low population density and distances
between towns made only possible to identify
individuals starting from a unique name, and this
the more so as the quartering of the serfs on the
feudal domains through a restriction and
stipulation on their right to relocate diminished
the need for additional identification of them.
Another pertinent and plausible explanation is
that no tax practices or registration of taxes
levied on individuals by local and central
authorities did encourage denomination of the
individuals in this period (Turcu et al., 2011,

Serfdom and ethnicity

In our opinion, ethnicity of these serfs in
Banat county open a real debate. In this context,
we will only advance some opinions based
solely on what documents allowed us to see.
First,
mainly
Romanian-Hungarian-Slavic
interference among population had effects on the
toponymy and some different linguistic forms.
In the 14th century, the Angevins come to the
throne of Hungary; they had a well-defined
concept of ethno-religious cleavage, but this
program worked only at the top of the social
pyramid and stopped after this dynasty.
One said that any comprehensive
discussion with the meaning of determining
ethnic origins of anthroponyms in Transylvania
(by extension also in the Banat) is misleading
and unproductive when there are no
explanations or evidence in this direction.
Based on the anthroponymyc analysis
and
statistical-geographical
comparison,
thorough research on the subject appreciated that

(9) These sobriquets usually derived from certain

physical (age, height, physical defects, hair color),
moral, ethnic or professional types.

46

onomastic dominant cultural model in

Transylvania was of oriental origin,
which
does not involve any ethnic dominant, but
involves a cultural-anthroponymyc dominant
which may facilitate certain reflections on ethnic
issues.
A
quantitative
statistical
on
Transylvanian onomastics shows a clear
hierarchy of the most commonly used names
during 11th-14th centuries: Ioan [John], Nicolae
[Nicholas], Petru [Peter], Mihail [Michael],
Ladislau [Ladislas]; this does not necessarily
mean a certain ethnic assignation, but is the first
image of an onomastic culture that has
established over time (Turcu et al. 2011, 172173). For example, the Slavic name Bogdan was
adopted and often used among Romanians since
the medieval period. How could we certainly
find the ethnic origin of numerous serfs
mentioned in documents under this forename?
Not to mention the names inspired by the
onomastics inspired by Old or New Testaments.
Of course, there are enough cases where ethnic
specific of onomastics is quite suggestive, but,
in our opinion, great caution is needed in the
approach of some definite opinions on this
subject, taking into account that even
stereotyped names often were wrong transcribed
in local or central chancelleries.
Uncertainty comes moreover with
appellatives of strict family circumscription or
presenting a strong customization. Of course,
there are other considerations to be taken into
account, on which one may outline a specific
spatial arrangement of ethnic communities, if
one has the certainty that they had a compact
homogenous nature; we do not believe that there
it was the case. But, no doubt we have today the
opportunity to appreciate, at least in general,
territorial and geographical disposure of some
ethnic structures inside plain counties of the
Banat, so that, by analogy, we assign an
approximate affiliation of some serfs to an
ethnic group or another (Haegan 2003, 69). But
his happens rather at a general level, because it
is even more difficult to speak about individual
onomastics.
With the second half of the 15th century,
in chancery documents the formula name and
forename is generalized even in the case of the
serfs, and it brings more information on
someones ethnic belonging. We offer two
examples that seem suggestive in this regard:
there are two documents from the same period,
one in 1478 and another in 1482. The act of
1478 relating to a dispute in what concerned the
occupation by force of the Jenew estate in Cenad
county lists some serfs to whom their master,

Ioan Literatul of Bekenfalwa would have

fraudulently given that land. They are: Albert
Zew, tefan [Stephen] Kun, Laureniu
[Lawrence] Kun, Alexium Katona, Georgium
Katona, tefan [Stephen] Sos, Ambrozie
[Ambrose] Zep, Balsiu Magnum, Clemente
Chwtha, Ioan [John] Varga, and Matia
[Matthias] Magnum. We do not think there is
any doubt about the onomastics of this subjects,
reality coupled with the fact that we are dealing
with an estate inside the county of Cenad, in the
far western part of the medieval Banat, an area
dominated by ecclesiastical structure of Capitol
in Cenad, where Hungarian Catholic
communities were more numerous (Pesty 1882,
445).
A completely different situation is
reflected in the other document a document
that shows how noblemen Bean of Belin
compensate the widow of a shareholder, who
receive temporary 33 households of serfs,
instead of the becoming quarter of property;
these households are nominally indicated:
Nicolae Vysi, Nicolae Negwl (Neagu), Petru
Bartha, Gheorghe Maro (Marcu), Mihail Olah
(the Romanian), Ban Mylas (Milo), Nicolae
Zazthuph, Francisc Kukyth (Cuchici), Stanciul
Biro, tefan Chiriac, Grigore Ghew, Ywcho
(Ivacu) Szwmarin, Ioan iman, Myza, Gerla,
Mihail Stoia, Mytho Ilya (Mitu Ilie), Saya, Toma
Bathya, Grigore Jakus, Ciuc Duma, Radu,
Gheorghe Marcu, Paul Kechkes, Ioan Stana
(Pesty 1882, 456). In good measure, most of
these serfs are Romanian and perhaps also
Serbs. The situation is different here because we
talk about possession in southeastern part of
Timi county, where this intersects with Banat
of Severin, near Lugoj and Reca. This area
mentioned as Bel district in the documents of the
late 14th century belonged to the Romanian
family Bean de Belin (successors of the trustee
Nexe Neacu). It was an area with a cohesive
Romanian community that has generated the
entire social fabric of the time.
We can not generalize our conclusions simply
because, in most cases, the documents are not so
revealing. A more detailed perspective on
onomastics in the medieval Banat would be
required to complete the social picture of that
time.
Conclusions
A few general considerations on this
major problem so deprived of primary sources
merely showed the limits and challenges of a
future research. The image of the serf, as
pictured in medieval documentation, is difficult
to reconstruct. Lack of uniformity and

47

consistency of sources we have makes it even

harder to observe in detail many aspects of the
serfs life. The way they mentioned serfs in
chancery documents underlines their minor
position, devoid of legal substance in the
medieval society, in opposition to the major
economic impact of his existence. Assessments
related to quantity, anthroponomy and ethnicity
are also hard to find and read off.
However, we believe that a wider
documentation and the analogies with other
patterns of medieval society that are much
better documented could help us outline more
accurately the image of a social segment which
played a fundamental role in medieval world.
Some problems that beneficiate of much more
information are those concerning relations
established between various families of
noblemen, relations disrupted by numerous
disputes on neighbours estates, which
occasioned a series of actions in instance;
sometimes, they brought into light the identity of
the serfs, an identity that in many other issues is
difficult to speak about.
We are thus witnessing a long series of
violent acts, characterised by the noblemen
desire to gain profits of material nature (land,
money, manpower); in this context, the serfs
appear both as active or passive elements,
directly affected by looting, devastation,
kidnappings, verbal or physical assault or even
homicide to whom they are victims. In the eyes
of the law, major damage is of the feudal lord;
otherwise, the serfs appear as victims of a
system that constantly protected by specifically
formulated laws the feudal property and the
rights of the noble landholder, and thus
disregarding the force behind development of
the state and economic progress in those times.
Where serfs were attacked on their lands, out in
the fields or in the woods, or when they walked
on public roadways toward markets, when their
goods was stolen by targeted attacks, they could
find justice only if their masters called the
aggressors in front of justice and, if the
aggressors were find guilty, these serfs were
able to recover from their injury. We suppose
that this disturbing atmosphere is not to be
extended, as pervasive reality, in the activities
on the nobiliary domains; natural course of
housework, systematic working of earth, and
everyday life on the feudal domains had their
normality and regularity, even if routine was
sometimes stricken by some annoying events
proving social decay; however, they are
unfortunately the only ones we can use for
historical reconstruction on this issues, since

they survived the test of time due to documents

that mention them.
For a broaden overview of an entire
social class, it is imperative to do further
research about serfs of medieval and pre-modern
county of Banat.
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Boldea
2013

Holban
1962

Pall 2003

Boldea, Ligia, Structuri domeniale

n Banatul medieval de cmpie.
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Holban, Maria, Deposedri i
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Francisc,
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i
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b. Books
Andea, Avram, Banatul cnezial
Andea
pn la nstpnirea habsburgic
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rulers
before
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2013.
Drgan,
Ioan,
Nobilimea
Drgan
romneasc din Transilvania
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1440-1514 [Romanian nobility in
Transylvania,
1440-1514],
Bucureti, 2000.
Duby 1988 Duby, Georges, Seigneurs et
paysans. Hommes et structures du
Moyen Age (II), Paris, 1988.
Haegan, Ioan, Habitat i
Haegan
populaie n Banat (sec. XI-XX)
2003
[Habitat and population in Banat
11th-20th centuries], Timioara,
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Lendvai, Mikls, Temes vrmegye
Lendvai
nemes csaldjai, I Budapest,
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1896.
Pecican,
Ovidiu,
Arpadieni,
Pecican
Angevini, Romni. Studii de
2001
medievistic central european
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Angevins.
Romanians. Studies on medieval
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Pop, Ioan-Aurel, Din minile
Pop 2011
romnilor schismatici. Romnii i
puterea n Regatul Ungariei
medievale (secolele XIII-XIV) [In
schismatic Romanians hands.
Romanians
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Popa 1988 Popa, Radu, ara Maramureului
n veacul al XIV-lea [Land of
Maramure in the 14th century],
Bucureti, 1988.
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Prodan
Transilvania n secolul al XVI-lea
1967
[Serfdom in Transylvania in the
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Rusu 2005 Rusu, Adrian Andrei, Castelarea
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teritoriile
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Turcu et Turcu, erban (ed.), Adinel
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Transylvania. Statistic evaluation,

evolution, meaning], I, ClujNapoca, 2011.
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Boldea
romn a Banatului montan n
2011
epoca Principatului: Mtnicenii
de Ohaba-Mtnic [A noble
Romania family in Mountain
Banat in the age of Principality:
Mtnicens of Ohaba-Mtnic].
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(eds.), Itinerarii istoriografice.
Studii n onoarea istoricului
Costin
Fenean
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itineraries. Studies in honor of
historian Costin Fenean], ClujNapoca (2011), p. 235-269.
Edroiu, Nicolae, Studierea
Edroiu
iobgiei transilvnene [Study
1995
of serfdom in Transylvania]. In:
N. Bocan, N. Edroiu, L. Maior,
A. Rduiu, P. Teodor (eds.)
David Prodan Puterea
modelului [David Prodan
cPower of the patterns], ClujNapoca (1995), p. 11-20.
Fenean, Costin, Noi informaii
Fenean
privind iobgimea din Banat n
1977
secolul al XIV-lea [New
information on the serfs of Banat
in the 14th century]. In: tefan
Mete la 85 de ani [tefan Mete
at 85], Cluj-Napoca (1977), p.
225-229.
Pop,
Ioan-Aurel,
Statutul
Pop 1985
cnezilor supui pe domeniile
feudale din Transilvania n
secolul al XIV-lea [Statute of
subject trustee on feudal fields in
Transylvania
in
the
14th
century]. In N. Edroiu, A.
Rduiu, P. Teodor (eds.)
Civilizaie medieval i modern
romneasc [Medieval and
modern Romanian civilization],
Cluj-Napoca (1985), p. 102-115.
d. Collection of documents
Romaniae
DRH,
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XIV,
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Hurmuzaki,
Eudoxiu,
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Documente privitoare la istoria
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history of Romanians], I/2

49

DL
Ortvay 1896

Pesty 1878

Pesty 1882

Bucureti (1890).
Magyar Orszgos Levltr,
Diplomatikai levltr.
Ortvay, Tivadar (red.), Pesty
Frigyes,
Oklevelek.
Temesvrmegye
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Temesvrvros trtnetehez, I
Pozsony (1896).
Pesty, Frigyes, A Szrnyi
bnsg s Szrnyi vrmegye
trtnete, III Budapest (1878).
Pesty,
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Krass
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Budapest (1882).

50

Truth in Fiction versus Fiction in Truth.

Historical Novel and Romanian Folk Creation on the Tragedy of the
Brancoveanu Family
Mihaela GRANCEA
Lucian Blaga University, Sibiu, Romania
E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract. For a century and a half, the language and style of the Romanian historical novels
remained broadly the same. The manner in which this type of text was written in the 19th century turned
into a sort of stylistic matrix, especially for the historical novel of the communist period (see Rodica
Ojog-Braoveanu, Dumitru Almas etc). Brancoveanu became a novel character because the apocalypse of
his family reminded of old Bible stories and scenes of Elizabethan theatre. For Romanian and European
people, Constantine Brancoveanus death was an example of dignity, of reconciliation with God and the
world, a case of resistance to extreme oppression. The tragedy of the family of Brancoveanu
demonstrated the draconian Turkish despotism, and also the exemplarity of the Prince Constantine
Brancoveanu, the modernity of his political and cultural aspirations. The first modern Romanian literary
reference to the Brancoveanu family is a historical drama, a literary work with memorial function (see
Iorga Nicolae, Constantine Brancoveanu, 1914). The portrait of Prince Constantine Brancoveanu seems
to be the same in all these stories, while the authors focused on building an idealized moral portrait that
they reduced to some positive aspects: piety, dignity, ability to forgive, devotion to his family and
country. Simplification and abstraction derive from the gaps in the narrative and iconographic
information (that the Byzantine canon of church painting imposed), and also from the mechanism of
heroizing this character. Most of the historical novels that we analysed prefer to portray and inquire only
those episodes from the end of the Middle Ages, which feeds the protochronist vision, asserting that
Modernity had a chance to bloom since the reign of Matei Basarab, erban Cantacuzino, the Cantemirs
and Constantine Brancoveanu. But after Brancoveanus terrible death, his image underwent (and still
undergoes) profound metamorphosis. Since the 18th century until today, Brancoveanu has been perceived
especially as a manifestation of homo religiosus. As we know, during the post-communist period,
historical novel with his few appearances and postmodern stylistic approach, mainly with interest in
decrypting the recent past abandoned celebrated personalities related to identity projects. Thus,
Constantine Brancoveanu is instrumentalized as an emblematic character by the Orthodox Church and
partially came into notice of historic research as the creator of a style during his era. On the other side,
Constantine Brancoveanu has impressed the popular sensitivity due to his terrible death, which
humanised the ruler and brought him closer to the archetypal images of popular epos.
Keywords: Prince, public execution, martyr, Sultan, historical novel

51

historical novel satisfies the need of romantic

escape, but also of resolving ethically and posttemporally/postfactum some consumed tragical
events.
Georg Lukcs established several
criteria that a narration with claims of short story
or historical novel has to fulfil. The interference
between the historical (romanced) past and the
socio-identity horizon of expectation of the
present is realized within a historical novel. We
may read other types of texts within the
historical novel, even documents in order to
build the verisimilitude of the artistic demarche,
the intertextual relation between some events
that are described in the narration. The reader of
a historical novel is transposed in a pre-existing
world to the textual content; it lives mediated,
while
the
substance
of
the
texts
testifies/certifies the existence of some historical
realities. That is why, in order to create the
impression of reality, the author must research
chronicles and official documents, works with
historiographical character, syntheses on the
material and spiritual culture of the time that
constitute the background of the presented
actions. Thus, a novel is considered historical
only if it has the following features: the reader is
introduced in a known and interesting era, with
events known from textbooks and the official
and/or folk discourse about history. Some of the
characters of the historical narration known for
the significant role they had had in the history of
a macro-community (see cardinal Mazarin in
The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas,
tefan cel Mare in Sadoveanus trilogy The Jder
Brothers and also Constantine Brancoveanu in
many fictional works). But the main characters
are fictional heroes that may open us the way to
enter several backgrounds of the described era.
The fictional characters may have access to real
or imaginary events, they may provoke events in
order to make the narration colourful and to
create the immediate effect of adventure for the
reader.
The language in the dialogues and
monologues of the characters, their sensitivities
and attitudes are presented in a sort of
compromise; they have to reflect the historicity,
but, firstly, they have to be perceived by the
actual reader, to stir his constant interest and
empathy. The most popular historical novels are
those that narrate historical events, which took
place several hundreds years earlier, facts that
may be verified through historical sources. The
language of the characters and of the narrator,
which seems contemporary with the era in

Exigencies Satisfied by the Historical Novel

Longeval as a genre, the narration
focused on historical issues had been successful
on the market of the 19th century (1), being
determined through its origins, problems and
stylistic solution by the Romantic sensitivity
and the identity project. Secondly, especially in
the period of the communist totalitarianism, the
historical novel was used to connect, sometimes
protochronistically, the exigencies of the new
identity project, related osmotically by the
communist ideologies to the project of the
egalitarian society. Not only the need for
legitimation encouraged the affirmation of this
genre, but also the fact that the short story and
the historical novel offer, through their syncretic
nature, more than the classic escape the
possibility of popularizing the official discourse
about the national history.
The theory of the historical novel was
established by Louis Maigron through Le Roman
historique l poque romantique (1898), but
the classic work appeared later. This is the
case of Georg Lukcs work Der historische
Roman, Berlin, 1956 (Lukcs 1978) (2).
According to the theory of the Marxist
philosopher and politician at the beginning of
the industrial era, the historical novel expressed
the vision of the bourgeoisie and an
individualistic vision on history. As such, the
epic heroes were caught less in an effort of selfknowledge, as the characters of the romance,
and more in a world of conflict, a world in
which they learned to survive and to succeed.
Beyond
the
appreciations
determined
ideologically, the historical novel remained
inevitably tributary to the relationship between
the author and its historical period; the present
deforms the past from the perspective of certain
social and political necessities. According to
Groot (Groot 2006, 391-413; Groot 2008; Groot
2009; Groot 2011 in Sutherland et Gibbons
(eds.)) (and this is also our opinion), the modern
historical novel is dominated by the request
come from the folk culture (Krulic 2007), as the
(1) Recent theories consider that the initiator of this
genre wasnt Walter Scott, but Marie-Madeleine
Pioche de La Vergne, countess de La Fayette. It is
also true that the most well-known works were
written by Walter Scott (Waverley, 1814, a novel
considered traditionally the first literary narration
with a historical subject), Eugne Sue (Les Mystres
de Paris, 1843), Alexandre Dumas the father and
Paul Feval the father.
(2) We used the Romanian translation in two
volumes.

52

which we are introduced, is however influenced

by the historical sources, is archaised. The
author of the writing uses old words that are
functional in the fundamental vocabulary of the
language, the terms are proper for the
institutions of the described times (some novels
have annexes and glossaries) and the
explanation from the historiographical discourse
is a simplified and subjective one. The hero
gains personality and manifests options, being
humanised; he remains in the pantheon of the
national mythology, but he is enriched as a
character and perceives a huge amount of
sometimes contradictory feelings.
The historical fictions facilitate the
(indirect) knowledge, being a form that
mediates, an alternative way toward the
knowledge of the facts and events. It is no
wonder that children before manifesting a
scientific interest for history read literary
narrations with historical subjects. The ethic and
pedagogical function of them satisfies the need
for strong models and axiologies, the need for
mystery (3) and development of empathy.
Some of the theoreticians of the
mentioned literary genre prefer the concept of
meta-fiction when they analyze the narrations
built around some real events and historical
personalities, narrations built on solid historical
research. An authentic historical reconstruction
requires: rendering the historical peculiarites of
the environment, of the public and private

background, of the mores and collective

mentalities specific to the times, presenting
more perspectives on the same events and
characters (see the fictions that regard the same
era, the same character; see the Romanian
literary works about Decebal, tefan cel Mare,
Constantine Brancoveanu). As a rule, the used
sources for reconstructions are historical
sources, especially narrative ones (chronicles,
memoirs, etc.). If the historical information isnt
enough, the author will appeal to the discourse
of historiography (especially the identity
discourse); thus, the subjectivity specific to
discovery, reinvention of ethno-cultural identity
intervenes. But often beyond the Romanian
characters, the historical context becomes a
mythological background. Generally speaking, a
character is meant to structure the subtext of the
narration, conferring coherence, continuity (see
the way in which the logothete Radu Andronic
manifests in the novels written by Rodica OjogBraoveanu regarding the Brancovenesc era, but
also the existence of the ruler as an axis around
which other events are built; the two characters
form a classic couple: the leader and the loyal
servant (4)). The meta-fiction is tragical by
default. The tragedy of the individual destiny is
determined by the history as a collective destiny.
As a rule, the hero of the novel with an antique
or medieval background corresponds to the
archetypal and soteriological canon. This is the
modern novel that prevailed the Romanian
writing. Another added ingredient was the
communist
ideologization.
While
the
contemporary Romanian novel isnt seduced by
the historical reconstructions, the European
postmodernism searches for mythologies in

(3) The well-known historical novels appreciated by

the literary criticism are: Franois-Ren
de
Chateaubriand, Les Martyrs, ou le Triomphe de la
religion chrtienne, 1809; Edward George Earle
Bulwer-Lytton, The Last Days of Pompeii, 1834 ;
Constache Negruzzi, Alexandru Lpuneanul, 1840;
Thophile Gautier, Le Roman de la momie et
autres rcits antiques, 1858; Gustave Flaubert,
Salammb, 1862; Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo vadis?,
1895; Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha. Eine indische
Dichtung, 1922; Iuri Tnianov, [Ambassadors Death], 1928; Mihail
Sadoveanu, Creanga de aur [Golden Branch], 1933;
Idem, Fraii Jderi [The Jder Brothers], 1935-1942;
Robert Graves, I, Claudius, 1934; Hermann Broch,
Der Tod des Vergil, 1945; Marguerite Yourcenar,
Mmoires dHadrien, 1951; Gary Jennings, Aztec,
1980; Ismail Kadare, Npunsi i pallatit t ndrrave
[The Palace of Dreams], 1981; Gore Vidal, Cration,
1981; Umberto Eco, Postille al nome della rosa,
1983; Milorad Pavi, Hazarski renik [Khazar
Dictionary], 1984; Lawrence Norfolk, Lemprire's
Dictionary, 1991; Idem, In the Shape of a Boar,
2000; Idem, John Saturnall's Feast, 2012; Daniel
Kehlmann, Die Vermessung der Welt (2005); Hilary
Mantel, Wolf Hall, 2009.

(4) Device used for the first time in the Romanian

novel by Sadoveanu in Nunta Domniei Ruxandra
[Lady Ruxandras Wedding] (see chief magistrate
Soroceanu), The Jder Brothers from the novel with
the same name. The writings related to logothete
Radu Andronics actions are: Agentul secret al lui
Altn-Bey [Altin-Beys Secret Agent] 1976;
Logoftul de tain [The Secret Logothete] 1978;
Ochii jupniei [Ladys Eyes] 1980; Letopiseul de
argint [The Silver Chronicle] 1981. The cycle of
the logothete Andronic was reedited after 1989; see
the posthumous editions used by us: Logoftul de
tain [The Secret Logothete], Bucureti, Editura
Nemira, 2008; Agentul secret al lui Altn-Bey [AltinBeys Secret Agent], Bucureti, Editura Nemira,
2008; Ochii jupniei [Ladys Eyes], Bucureti,
Editura Nemira, 2006; Letopiseul de argint [The
Silver Chronicle], Bucureti, Editura Nemira, 2004;
Vulturul dincolo de Cornul Lunii [The Eagle beyond
the Horn of the Moon], Bucureti, Editura Nemira,
2004.

53

rewritten unconventional and intertextual

histories (5). The parody, the stereotype
character, deconstruction, chronological elusion
and the perspective of the marginal on history
become to be exercised by those loyal to the
genre (McHale 2009).
The language and the style of the
Romanian historical narrations remained
basically the same for one century and a half.
The writing manner of the 19th century has
transformed into a stylistic matrix, especially for
the historical novel of the communist period (6).
The authors had used archaic and simple words
used in the socio-cultural fundamental
vocabulary of the language or they archaised
some common terms, using the names of the
historical institutions of those times (and
sometimes a glossary). The used style is
generally simple and accessible so that it will
seduce the reader, being focused on building the
dynamism of the action and the dramatic tension
of the conflict episodes, as well as those of
interiour fluster.

Romano, Del Chiaro, Ferrati etc. More than a

half (170) of the identified 282 letters sent by
Brancoveanu to various addressees have
political
and
diplomatic
character
(Cernovodeanu 1989, 21). Brancoveanu was
also very rich, inclined towards an eclectic
lifestyle. Actually, his Court was a space of
political and cultural interferences of both
Western
and
Eastern
origins.
After
Brancoveanus death, the interest for their story
had remained constant in the European public
milieu. The execution of this family an act of
Medieval justice of an unprecedented cruelty (it
was also a public act of intimidation, an act
assisted by representatives of Western states
ambassadors, consuls, envoys present in the
capital as residents for audiences) demonstrated
the despotic nature of the Ottoman power, as
well as the transience of the worldy power (O
quam cito transit gloria mundi). Moreover,
Constantine Brancoveanus dignity facing
Sultans sadism, especially facing the violent
death, his confession of faith had transformed
him in an axiological model (Pippidi, 1980, 161186) (7).
In Europe of the 17th century the
sovereign incarnated the state more than ever
and he was considered axis of history, present
and, at the same time, transcendent, an object of
history and a subject of the narrative discourse.
His presence was considered to support the
order in all structures of reality. In the civilized
Europe of the 18th century the political systems
were defined from the perspective of the theory
of the enlightened despotism and of debating the
problem of the political tyranny (Voltaire 1740).
The modern political moral supposed new
dimensions, the most sensitive problem in
governing being the relations between princes
and subjects. This relationship was discussed in
terms of Princes responsibility that should have
represented his subjects according to their
interests. The problem of the good and the evil
Prince became a predilection in theoretical
debate. According to pedagogical and political
philosophy literature, the monarch established
his ruling on justice, prudence and generosity
fundamental values in an era in which the good
administration of the state seemed to be a
supreme
purpose.
Inside
this
reality,
Machiavellism was considered a calamity due to
the effects in morals and political practice. For
Westerners, despotism/tyranny was manifested

The Role of the Historical Context and of

Princes Personality in Literaturising
Brancoveanus Tragedy
Brancoveanu became a Romanian
character due to the apocalypse of his family,
which reminded of old biblical stories and of the
Elisabethan theatre. Brancoveanus tragedy
impess even nowadays. Besides, for Romanians
and
Europeans
alike,
Constantine
Brancoveanus death was an example of dignity,
reconciliation with God and the world, a case of
resistance
to
the
extreme
opression.
Brancoveanu was Wallachias Prince and he
benefited from public notoriety, being
considered a great political personality. This is
demonstrated by the ample correspondence with
the sovereigns of those times (Habsburgs, Peter I
of Russia, kings of France and Poland, English,
Venetians, Dutch ambassadors from Istanbul,
papal curia and Greek scientists). His
chancellery benefited of cultivated secretaries as
(5) See Umberto Ecos novel Il Cimitero di Praga,
2010; the Romanian edition Cimitirul din Praga [The
Prague Cemetery], translated by tefania Mincu, Iai,
Editura Polirom, 2010.
(6) See Nuvela istoric romnesc n secolul al XIXlea [The Romanian Historical Story of the 19th
Century], anthology, preface and notes by D.
Vatamaniuc, Bucureti, Editura Albatros, 1972. The
following writers are presented: Costache Negruzzi,
Gheorghe Asachi, Al. I. Odobescu, I. Pop Florentin,
I. A. Lapedatu, N. Gane.

(7) See details on the European image of the Prince

and on his transformation in Romanian fictional
character in Andrei Pippidis book.

54

in classical forms in the Ottoman Empire, a

political system based on arbitrary and nefarious
ruling. Anything could have been told about that
despotism, as it hadnt had any quality, and his
apparent greatness and power was based on the
subjects terror. It was believed that as a result
of such ruling, countries would become deserts.
Thus, despotism would equal death (Hazard,
1981, 175).
Brancoveanus tragedy proved the
draconian face of the Turkish despotism, as well
as
Prince
Constantine
Brancoveanus
exemplarity and the modern character of his
political and cultural aspirations. In return, in the
world of Romanian countries, the Princes
behaviour was influenced by the Byzantine
political image, by the terms of the feudal
contract and by the faith in Princes luck
(Codarcea 1992), as it emerges from the
Romanian chronicles and the evolution of
relations with Ottomans. According to the terms
of the feudal contract, the ruled had to show
mercy on his subjects, to protect the country and
to show justice. The tradition of the chronicles
depicted the Romanian Prince as specific for the
Medieval vision of the political ruler. Thus, it
had to be calm, pious, gentle, and modest
(Costin 1944, 35). On his behaviour and luck
depended (as in the country of the Grail) the
prosperity, security and wealth of the country.
Brancoveanu corresponded to this political
model (8). From a certain point of view,
Constantine Brancoveanu as a political
personality was a Prince who tried to reconcile
the traditional Romanian political perspective
and the modern finalities of ruling.
Some of the Western travellers
manifested a sort of curiosity for the public
executions and for the atrocious death of some
of the Romanian Princes. Most of the
Westerners are impressed by the exotic nature
of the executions; thus, all travelling journals
(from the 17th-18th centuries) concerning the
extra-European geo-cultural spaces Levant,
Russia, Far East have substantial chapters
regarding the judiciary systems, the repression
system and the specificity of the torture
techniques. Executions were considered
exceptional events, as they materialized for the
community the show of the Medieval and premodern justice a ritual with political and
punitive valences (Bastien 2002, 31-56), as well
as a certain pedagogy of death. On such
occasions the attitude of the condemned person
and of the crowd facing death was of great

interest, including the resignation and the desire

of being absolved of sins. Resignation and
repentance of the convict persuade the witnesses
of the efficiency of the public executions. Thus,
the convict asked for forgiveness from those
present at the execution (as representatives of
the community) and they absolve him and offer
him alcohol to save him from the horrors of
death. Other considerations concerning these
moments are not to be found in travelling
journals because the background of the Western
and central European justice didnt lack such
manifestations of legal and commanded
violence. The profound compassion is raised by
Romanian Princes executions victims of
institutionalized violence of the Ottoman
system. Such events seemed exemplary from the
perspective of ideas regarding the motif of
vanity and of apparent glamour and stability of
the Romanian Princes authority. Anton Maria
del Chiaro (9) and Aubry de la Motraye (10) in
(9) He is the author of the monograph Istoria delle
moderne rivoluzioni della Valachia (1718); we have
used the edition
Antonia Maria del Chiaro
Fiorentino, Revoluiile Valahiei [Wallachias
Revolutions], translated by S. Cris-Cristian,
introduction by Nicolae Iorga, Viaa Romneasc,
Iai, ed. 1929. The information about the execution of
the Brancoveanus family was from Romanian or
Venetian political milieu. Antonio del Chiaros
testimony is the most detailed referring to the
premises and the start of the tragedy. He offers the
most rational presentation of the accusations
expressed by the Turkish authority concerning the
ruler Constantine Brancoveanu: the secret
correspondence with Ottomans foes; espionage on
the behalf of Austria, Russia, Poland and Venice; the
status of Prince of the Holy Roman Empire offered
by Leopold (in 1695); exploiting the country in
personal interest; the residence at Trgovite as a
proof of the attempt to save himself through escaping
to Transylvania; the desire to raise a new palace; the
deposit of money in Venetian and Austrian banks;
the so-called consent to Toma Cantacuzinos escape
to the Russian side at Stnileti and then to Moscow
(1711); the pomp of the political ceremonial that
competed with the Ottoman; the fact that he coined
coins as medals with bigger value (the writer stated
that the ruler wanted to celebrate his 60th birthday and
26th year of ruling at a banquet on the Assumption of
Mary, offering the medals to his guests) and the irony
of fate would make that that day would be the sinister
day of death of the men from the Brancoveanu
family. Turkish planned the dethronement, arrest and
exile in an eventful period for Wallachia: preparation
for Passover (there was the Holy Week) that meant
the family reunion and thus the Brancoveanu family
reunion. The safety of the ruler who obtained the
throne for his lifetime, the faith that he is loved by
God (and his distrust in news coming from

(8) It is less obvious in Radu Popescus chronicles.

55

their Western diplomatic reports describe the

scene of the execution of Constantine
Brancoveanu and his family. It is worth
mentioning that these scenes are not present in
most of the contemporary narrations, as they
generally dont offer details about murders and
bloody executions, resuming the individual or
collective death in several words. Even PseudoMuste (Kogalniceanu 1874, 54-55) offers
merely a description of the beginning of
Brancoveanus ordeal, presenting a succession
of violent scenes from which some aspects are
obvious: rulers confusion, his familys panic,
the cowardice of the Court and of the boyars, the
disturbance of the citizens of Bucharest at
Passover: Ruler Constantine Brancoveanu, not
knowing anything of this to protect himself, was
on Wednesday before the Passover at the royal
court where a royal Ottoman officer came.
Entering the house immediately, he secured the
doors, read the dethronement act and started to
beat up the children in the house and to throw
them out. And then they say that Constantine
shouted at the window: Servants! Servants!
Where are you? Dont abandon me! But no one
could do anything, because the Turkish shut the
gates and secured all the rooms and cellars. All
the boyars who found out were horrified [...]
The Turkish called the boyars to the Court and
read them the act, and all the boyars,
understanding the command of the emperor

obeyed [...] It was a great pity to see a wellknown ruler like he was, old in his reign;
laments and cries were heard from his daughters
and daughters-in-law, as all of them were
gathered together and kept in horror with the
sons and sons-in-law. And not waiting, they
prepared him hastily for the road [...] and when
he was leaving Bucharest all the people were
crying and weeping after that ruler as if he were
their father, because great bounty had been in
their country during those 26 years of his reign;
in that country there was plenty of people and
food, as it was here during the days of Vasilie
the ruler (Ibidem).
The chronicle of Blceni hostile and
canny regarding the ruler Brancoveanu
described however his confession of faith,
transforming it into a discourse of being
sacrificed for faith, a sign of choosing
martyrdom: My sons, my sons! Behold, all the
wealth and everything we had we lost. Lets not
lose our souls! Be still, manly, my dears and
dont mind death. Look at Christ, our Saviour,
how much he endured for us and what an
opprobrious death did he suffer! Believe
strongly in this and dont move away from the
Orthodox faith for this life or world! Remember
Saint Paul who says: neither sword, nor death,
nor anything else could separate you from
Christ, that these needs and sufferings are not
worthy to be compared with the glory which
shall be revealed in us. Now, my sweet sons,
with our blood let wash our sins! (Desartovici
(ed.) 2007, 279). Facing death and faith,
Blcenis desire of retaliation seems to be
annihilated.
For historians and novelists the most
solicited sources regarding Brancoveanus rack
were the reports, accounts and letters of the
ambassadors, consuls and envoys who
represented
Austria,
France,
Venice,
Netherlands, and Poland. The first letters
concerning the execution are those of the
Venetian ambassador (letters and reports to the
doge from July-August-September 1714), of the
Dutch consul and French diplomacy (on
September, 2nd, the French diplomat Pierre
Puchot, count of Alleurs, French ambassador in
Istanbul 1711-1716, wrote to minister Louis
Phlypeaux, count of Pontchartrain about
Brancoveanus ordeal, about Princes death and
his four sons death, all decapitated in front of
his father. His execution was, in his opinion, a
staging that should have satisfied Sultans desire
of retaliation, offering the victims the chance of
saving their lives just a few days before the
execution if they accepted to become Muslims.

benevolent people who announced his disgrace),

naivet in his relations with the Ottomans and the
Cantacuzino family, the ignoring of the ominous
signs, as the Prince wasnt superstitious (the illness,
delirium and death of Stanca, his eldest daughter), the
attempt to marry one of his sons with Antioh
Cantemirs daughter all these elements contributed
to putting to sleep his vigilance and transformed him
in the perfect victim (see the chapters IX and X, p.
43-47, about these events and about dethronement,
first humiliations, naming tefan Cantacuzino the
ruler, the trip to the capital of the empire). In the
chapter XI, Del Chiaro wrote about Brancoveanus
decapitation, mentioning the rulers words: My sons,
be brave, weve lost everything we had in this world,
at least lets save our souls and wash our sins with
our blood (p. 47). Del Chiaro was a source for the
Romanian chronicles and he probably influenced
Dimitrie Cantemir (see Cantemir 1996, 99).
(10) Voyages du Sr A. de La Motraye en Europe, Asie
et Afrique: ou l'on trouve une grande varit de
recherches gographiques, historiques et politiques
sur l'Italie, la Grce, la Turquie, la Tartarie, Crime
et Nogaye la Circassie, la Sude et la Laponie, etc.,
avec des remarques instructives sur les moeurs,
coutumes, Tome seconde, la Haye, chez T. Johnson
&J. Van Duren, M.DCC.XXVII., Cp. IX, pp. 212213.

56

The offer was refused and the consequence was,

in the opinion of the diplomat, that barbaric
execution) (Mihordea 1943, 156). In those two
documents there are no details about this event,
about the despair of the Princes youngest son or
about
Constantine
Brancoveanus
final
discourse. More and even more impressive
details are offered by the secretary of the envoy
Stanislaw Chometowski, ruler of Mazoria, the
Jesuit Francisc Gosciecki and, as weve already
mentioned, the French traveler Aubry de la
Motraye (1674-1743); these and the Italian
representatives (Alvise Mocenigo and especially
Andrea Memmo) introduced the description of
the tragedy, the episode of Mateius despair, the
youngest son of the Prince, as well as the rulers
drastic intervention so that his son would accept
his fate (Popescu 2012, 132-166).
The first Romanian literary work that
concerns the Brancoveanu family is a historical
drama, a play with a memorial function. It
insists on the events, which explain the fact that
ruler Constantine Brancoveanu was a political
leader with a modern political vision. It was
determined in all his actions by the conscience
of the political responsibility toward the country,
by the principle of the reason of state. Such a
determination made him prudent in exterior
affairs and made him to consider unrealistic the
Byzantine project, which seduced the political
and cultural Romanian and Greek milieu from
the times of Mihai Viteazu to erban
Cantacuzino. Furthermore, the brief apparition
of a prophetic monk is introduced to explain this
political attitude. In the name of Christendom,
the monk accused Brancoveanu of spiritual
ignorance and obedience to the Sultan, who was
seen as the manifestation of absolute evil;
although he received the holy myrrh/On his
forehead to be the ruler of the world/And to
emancipate all these Christians/From the
atrocious ardour of the lawless ones (Iorga
1914, 15), the Prince marginalised the PanOrthodox project. The play is built on a dramatic
crescendo from the moment when Chancellor
(sptar) Toma Cantacuzino deserted. After his
running, Brancoveanu feels that he may rely
only on his mind and the help from above
(Iorga 1914, 53). The 4th act of the play starts
with a verbal confrontation between Radu
Brancoveanu who claims his right to the throne,
a right derived from the earthly origin (Iorga
1914, 57) (11) and tefan Cantacuzino who

supports that Cantacuzino family is entitled

through its imperial origin and the Christian
project of Byzantine inspiration to sit on the
throne of Wallachia. The fight between the two
degenerates and tefan Canatacuzino bursts into
violence (Ibidem). The dispute between the two
drives apart their fathers Constantine
Cantacuzino and Constantine Brancoveanu
two old and efficient political partners. If the
humanist erudite affirms the attachment to
Cantacuzino for the adoptive country,
Brancoveanu will reproach the Chancellor Toma
Cantacuzinos betrayal (see his participation to
the anti-Ottoman campaign in 1711, without
rulers
approval).
Thus,
the
edifying
confrontation takes place between Radu and
Constantine Brancoveanu on hand, and tefan
and High Steward Constantine Cantacuzino on
the other hand. The Cantacuzino family feels
affected by the fact that they are considered
strangers and they are ignored as bearers of the
Byzantine legacy, while the Brancoveanu family
feels disregarded due to their peasant/earthly
origin. Fathers support their sons. The ruler
claims the dynastic right in the name of his
native origin (Radu stated that they are
Basarabs successors), denounces Greek
haughtiness, declares that he wants to
emancipate from the High Stewards influence
who made the political games in the country
during the last decades (Ibidem, 64). Although
he suspects his relatives of duplicity,
Constantine Brancoveanu doesnt believe in
their capacity of plotting against him. He
underestimates and considers them far from the
desire to claim the throne of the country.
Besides, Brancoveanu, the founder of Orthodox
spirituality, felt under divine protection and even
in divine grace (Ibidem, 66).
The future family apocalypse was
however told in chronicles and in Del Chiaros
narration foretold by bad signs like the
detachment of an icon in the altar and its
shredding. The last act of the play starts
abruptly with a tragic scene: in Forno, the
darkest prison in Edicule (Istanbul), Constantine
Brancoveanu and Ienachi Vacarescu meditate on
the death of the late rulers, on the beauty of the
world, a world bathed in the light of the sun:
But blind are we with our eyes opened in the
dark/In front of us is death: a mute darkness
(Ibidem, 70). The diplomatic agent of Wallachia
at Istanbul attempted to save Brancoveanu,
although he represented theoretically his

(11) Radu Brancoveanu states in this play of

nationalist inspiration that Brancoveanu family was

the oaks risen in our wood, unlike Canatacuzino

family.

57

successor. Pasha Sahil seemed easy to

persuade if the ruler recognized even formally
that he arrived dethroned in prison, because he
got lost. But before Sahil would intermediate
Brancoveanus cause, between pasha Sahil and
Brancoveanu began a polemic argument
regarding the rightful Law. According to
Nicolae Iorgas text, Prince Constantine recited
the Creed, refusing to accept the idea that Islam
was the true faith (Ibidem, 76-77). During that
private conversation the same pasha would
reveal the Ottoman project that the Romanian
countries were to be transformed in Ottoman
provinces; and Sahil suggested that in the
context of this project if the Prince recognized
the absolute authority of the Ottomans and
accepted to be the agent of the new order
(Ibidem, 78), he would gain an exceptional
socio-political status. Brancoveanu refused
categorically such a dishonouring offer and
affirmed that he preferred to choose death than
to see the crescent replacing the crosses on the
churches (Ibidem). That is the moment when
the Ottoman representative showed the prisoner
his sons prepared for the execution. Seeing his
family condemned, as a despondent Job,
Brancoveanu lamented: My children, my
children My Lord, What have I done wrong!
(Ibidem, 37).
The tension rises, but the spectator
doesnt see what was going on in front of the
prison. The one who mediates the information is
pasha Sahil, describing the scene of the public
execution: Listen how the wave of the enraged
crowd fumes/What blood it wants and asks a
sacrifice of soulless. The end of the play is a
rhetorical discourse-confession of faith and
expression of the sacrifice for the country and
Christendom: Oh, how dear you are to me, my
children/I am like dead [...] Oh, forgive me
Christ the God/ Who gave us not more than
human power!/ I would do the sacrifice you ask,
merciful Turkish!/ But I was the ruler. In
countrys book I leave a name/ And I dont want
to sacrifice the Holy Law/ The reign adorned
with such foundation/ Of places of worship and
Christian ardour,/ With pious deed from day to
day,/ Devoutly dedicated to God the Holy /
Theres better one spot of blood to end it,/ Mine
and those who would have inherited me! (he
stops)/ [...] I swore in life to be my countrys/
And I am today hers, although she forsook me:/
I will go for her in eternal abodes! (he makes a
sign to the window. Sahil departs. The
diplomatic agent reclines his head. The soldiers
open the door). I am Constantine the Christian

who was once a Romanian ruler./ I have four

sons. You all do your duties!
In this literary work Iorga is influenced
by the relation between biography and chronicle.
He resumes the events of the last year of
Brancoveanus reign using episodes with
explanatory value (see the verbal duel between
Radu Brancoveanu and tefan Cantacuzino, the
tension of political negotiation between the
Turkish pasha and the Romanian imprisoned
ruler). Drama is the explicit historiographical
discourse when talking about Iorga.
Brancoveanus and Cantacuzinos. Secondary
Characters, Main Characters
The portrait of the ruler Constantine
Brancoveanu resembles in all the historical
narrations, being focused on the idealization of
the moral portrait, a portrait that is reduced to
several positive dimensions: piety, dignity,
ability to forgive, dedication for his family and
country. The simplification and abstraction are
determined by the lack of narrative and
historiographical information (dictated by the
Byzantine canon of church painting) that didnt
value physical aspects when it came to the case
of rulers. Moreover, in the case of
Brancoveanus moral portrait the novelists
ignored the hostile or neutral narrative sources,
although they sometimes have some interesting
approaches. See the case of a chronicle
description: Constantine reigned 25 years and a
half and his reign ended, as you heard.
Constantine Brancoveanus reign was happy for
all the inhabitants of the country and even for
other countries, as far as his name was known,
but he wasnt praised, as one thing is happiness,
and another is praise: that many kings, princes
and boyars become happy due to their luck, lust
and will so that they would have much wealth,
as honour and many possessions and others like
these are given by luck that other tyrants and
pagans had had, but they didnt praise in some
good deeds. Praise is only of good deeds made
by someone in his life and after him goodness
remains that people praise. In this way
Constantine the ruler may bring happiness, as
luck gave him all sorts of good things: health,
wholesome, a full home, many sons and
daughters, much wealth, palaces, villages,
vineyards, long reign and others like these, that
nothing lacked him that his eyes desired, and all
were given by luck and were not earned by him:
because what someone earns in this world is his
soul [...] and Constantine showed no kindness of
soul, and during his life and his reign were no
good deeds to praise, but more to profane due to

58

his many bad deeds. He was very greedy and

driven by this greed, destroying every good
thing inherited on this land from his fathers [...]
so that the poor cursed him and cursed will he be
forever (he is accused of being unfair, of
neglecting the political-administrative traditions
and of increasing the taxes) (Popescu 1988, 322323 in Mazilu (ed.)).
Depicting such a Prince, contesting the
existence of any virtue, the chronicle transforms
him in a beneficiary who lacks any merit of luck
in an incompatible existence with the good
deed, in a counter-model (tyrannical, parvenu,
guileful, manipulator), an object of a national
curse. And yet, his notoriety, his long reign and
the need to satisfy the exigencies of the
Ottomans and the need of safety fed his ego and
even haughtiness, opulence, wealth gain, which
raised envy and eventually disgrace and death.
Luck had determined the bad fortune and
provoked an unprecedented tragedy in the premodern history. An approach for this
representation is found partially only in Dumitru
Alma writings.
Rodica Ojog-Braoveanus historical
novels have as their central character the
logothete Radu Andronic, whose existence as
fictional character is linked especially to those
events from Constantine Brancoveanus reign
(12). In Rodica Ojog-Braoveanus narrations,
the remarkable manner of Brancoveanus
representation
is
determined
by
the
historiographical discourse and by the folk about
the ruler; in the midst of his small Court, the
Prince seems a miraculous character, kind and
forgiving, but also bright as the refined and
eclectic luxury surrounding him: As soon as the
morning religious service was over, the sound of
the silver spurs hung on the boots was heard on
the streets of Bucharest. There were twelve
stalwart men dressed in white garments with
green girdles, on the rulers command. A green
stone sparkled at the temple of their hats.
Brancoveanus lust for emeralds, inherited from
his uncle, the great chancellor Preda, which took
hold later of all the heirs, was known by all
jewelers from Brasov, Vienna and even Venice.
Once, at the end of spring, in a small golden
coffin arrived the emerald cut as a comb
customary on the small finger (Ojog-Braoveanu
2008, 11) [...]. Lady Marica felt, without

noticing, a cold fear passing through her heart.

Brancoveanus icon, the one from the Sunday
Passover of the year 1704, there, at the stairs
was not to forget by her and by Bucharest
inhabitants (Ibidem, 14). [...] Brancoveanu
didnt take off his golden garment. The sun
entering through the opened window fired the
heavy skirts of brocade and the big girdle, a
peacock tale only emeralds, rubies and
sapphires. He drank his vodka with small sips,
caressing the golden cup. His gentle look
surrounded the room, lingering upon the faces of
the boyars (Ibidem, 16).
We appreciate the authors impressive
documentary work. While other authors of
historical novel attempted to reconstitute old
facts based more on the dynamic of dialogue
between the characters, Rodica OjogBraoveanu, famous author of detective novels,
succeeded through archaisation of language,
usage of existing narrative sources referring
especially to rulers life and his Court, as well as
the lifestyle of Bucharest and Balkan world of
the 18th-19th centuries, the appeal to the
historiographical discourse, retracing scenes
from private and daily life that reproduce
convincingly the dynamics of the city. The
impressionist description of the capital of
Wallachia preparing for the holiday radiates
such a scent of the foretime: Suddenly,
Bucharest was filled with rumble. A host of
trumps and bells swept upon the city. The bells
from the slums of Oetarilor and Scorarilor,
Brezoaia and Calicilor and then from
Spunarilor started to resound. They would ask
the Passover to halt sooner in the city, they
would thrust the darkness, rushing it not to
loiter. That night had its own purposes; it would
spread sift cloth over the stalls of the have-nots
and over the boyars abodes, increasing the
eagerness. A hasty rain stirred up the smell of
the mud on the streets, blending it with the
smells of lilac, hyacinth and lilies-of the valley
risen on a purpose [...] (Ibidem, 5). The air
remained mesmerised with the smile of the sun.
The locust trees and the apricot trees blossomed
and caressed the nostrils; it smelled like spring,
like holiday. In the Upper fair spread at the
south of the Old Court, sneak thieves, stooges
and merchants of sweets would wait for their
clientele. A big merry go round and two smaller
ones, a vane and a wheel of the world had been
set up much to the delight of the townspeople.
The man having a tongue as of an oxe was
sitting hidden between the cloth walls. Anyone
could stare at it paying two copper-coins. The
one who knew to swallow flames like Satan was

(12) See especially in Agentul secret al lui Altn-Bey

[Altin-Beys Secret Agent] 1976; Logoftul de tain
[The Secret Logothete] 1978; Ochii jupniei
[Ladys Eyes] 1980; Letopiseul de argint [The
Silver Chronicle] 1981. We used the postcommunist editions.

59

passing time stuffing at Leibas shop, a chubby

and smiley Jew, dressed in a purple caftan. He
was selling donuts and pies, pastries with
almonds. [...] Children were buying gape seed
especially staring at the bear with red fallkrauts
in the ear, hovering about the place where the
man with the ox tongue was sitting, having their
heart in their mouth. The music, fiddlers,
trumpeters and gypsies with lutes were about to
come later (Ibidem, 12).
The manner in which the author
imagines for the reader the rulers comfortable
bedchamber and its eclectic luxury with the
touch of the Orthodox spirituality is remarkable,
revealing a rigorous documentation regarding
the culture of the private life of those times:
Brancoveanus bedchamber for his day rest was
yellow. The walls were covered in honey
yellow; on the sofas and on the marble floor
there were big velvet lemon pillows with heavy
fringes with golden fibres. A big icon of the
Saint Emperors Constantine and Elena in
emerald border and a butter lamp made of
filigree and blue glass of Bohemia, crafted by
Iohannes Henning of Brasov, guarded above a
silk knitting on the Eastern wall. Near the sofas
covered in silver brocade, on the expensive
coffee tables made of rosewood, in precious
cups were smouldering fragrant herbs and bluish
paper from Armenia. [...] Above the big sofa
Turkish swords were hanging encrusted with
rubies and sapphires, but in the corner between
the windows there were lilies in a jade vase,
spreading their pollen in the fabric of the red
material like embers. Nearby, in a big golden
cage two yellow canaries were swinging on a
coral merry go round, and in a dark blockout the
emailed icon of the Saint Hierarch Nicolae was
gently sparkling, under which heavy strings of
amber and turquoise were hanging. In the
middle of the room a tiger fur was resting. On
another table, near the beasts head, was a
narghile and panegyrics of the priest Maiota the
Candiot covered in silver by Sebastian Hann
the artful proving Brancoveanus pleasure of
lingering in his rest moments on the beasts fur.
Brancoveanu, of whose peerless wealth was
talking the entire Europe, the one Ottomans
called Altin-Beg the Prince of gold knew
how to live (Ibidem, 32-33).
Such an introduction in Princes private
surroundings is in our opinion artistic and more
than convincing from the aesthetic perspective
than the dry and correct presentation from the
historical point of view offered by another
historical novel: Brancoveanu climbed the
stairs of the house and passing through a long

and cool corridor, arrived to his parlour. The

stone slabs of red, black and white colour in
Venetian fashion were so well polished that they
mirrored the legs of the furniture as doubles
encrusted there like some bugs are caught
forever in amber. It was a working room and
parlour. He liked walking in large spaces when
he was working. [...] The place resembles
somehow with a parlour of a Western cardinal
concerning the colour combintion, the skated
brown of the wood, the azure blue of the
Austrian stained glass, the abated red of the
velvet a coold space with categorical nuances,
favourable for clear judgment and benevolent
contemplation of the surrounding faces
(Popovici 1986, 332).
Unlike the other writers, Rodica OjogBrasoveanu counted on the contrasting effects of
the political couple Constantine Brancoveanu
and High Steward Constantin Cantacuzino. The
latter is defined frequently in the historical cycle
of novels, especially in Ochii Jupniei [Ladys
Eyes] as the demon of the mystery aspects of
His Majesty Brancoveanu. We render for
relevance some images that build the contrast
between the opulent, generous and sincere ruler
Brancoveanu and Constantine Cantacuzino a
greyish eminence who dreams about devouring
his political creation: Constantine Cantacuzino
was the only man in Bucharest to know his
[Brancoveanus] wealth. [...] The oldster also
knew his craftiness and his extreme generosity
when he struggled to make friends even the
stones of Istanbul. But what did the High
Steward not know? (Ojog-Braoveanu 2006,
51). The same couple is described in detail in the
novel Letopiseul de argint [The Silver
Chronicle]. Thus, while Cantacuzino was a
restless spirit, always lurching like a beast of
pray: As he used to do, High Steward
Constantine Cantacuzino, rulers uncle and
adviser, was sitting in the darkest corner of the
room, Brancoveanu was a plain man, with a
less passionate personality, a weary man,
weighed by responsibilities and manipulated by
the High Steward: The smile left the slack face
of the ruler [...]. His image wasnt that flattering
with his big eyes and long nose, weary cheeks
and big brown beard, with thin arms on which
you could read the map of the dark veins
(Ibidem).
The same author in the novel Agentul
secret al lui Altn-Bey [Altin-Beys Secret Agent]
focuses on the events till 1703. The interest for
the obscure plots is obvious, as the narrative
rhythm of the historical novel is adapted to the
one of an adventure novel. Here, High Steward

60

Cantacuzinos portrait is more complex

matching his complex personality a great
scholar and unscrupulous political man, harsh
and guileful: Although old, he was staying
straight, his strong arm was laid on the encrusted
dagger with rubies and sapphire pearls at his
waist. No one had ever seen him without his
dagger. The men at the court were whispering
that in this way he had conceived his children
with one hand on his wife, and another on the
dagger. And they were whispering that he had
poisoned his brother tefan to bring his nephew
Brancoveanu to reign. The cause of that was, as
they said, the unfair split of wealth remained
after lady Ilinca. But such words might have
come from bad mouths (Ibidem, 18-19).
The collective portrait of Cantacuzino
family is suggestively presented in the style of
folk sapiential literature: [...] there is an old
Romanian story that says that once an axe with
no handle started to cut an old forest. All the
trees were terrified of death, but an old oak
asked if the axe was helped by anyone of them.
The trees answered No and then the old oak
told them to be at peace, as the axe couldnt do
anything alone. But later a tree made himself
handle and wretched forest; the first to fall down
was the old oak. Thats how it happened with
ruler Brancoveanu. As long as Turkish didnt get
help from one of ours they couldnt cut down
but leaves and branches, but when they were
helped by Romanians, they could cut down the
lordly oak [...] (Popescu 1934, 65-66).

of affluence and the awful tribulations of the

Edicule cellars. And he couldnt chase away the
thought that pervaded his mind and heart as an
aglow spike. High Steward Cantacuzino was a
reliable pillow in this wretched curse of events
[...]. Constantine touched his wounds and
groaned. His heart bleeded more heavily than his
wounds. He was in the precious hour betwen
regrets and his conscience pierced the thick
walls of the prison, searching greedily for future.
He always thought and used to say: I never
considered myself a travelling bird on the throne
of Wallachia, saving her from the Turkish,
Habsburg and Polish rapacity. He kept in
ballance their lusts, watching over the freedom
of the country. Would anything of
Brancoveanus ardour remain over the ages?
Brancoveanus memories brought to light many
things: monasteries, schools, publishing houses,
many victories of a conscience that knew less of
a brave soldier and more of a sharp mind,
destined to see beyond the borders of time. An
afflicted smile appeared on rulers face. He
accomplished his duty... His duty for the future
(Ibidem).
On the other hand, in order to complete
the moral finality of his book, the author
describes the end of cunning Cantacuzino, an
accomplishment of the Brancovenesc curse and
a payment of destiny, as shortly after
Brancoveanus death, the traitors Constantine
and his son tefan die of a violent and
dishonouring death. The author imagines that
the High Steward being in the same prison was
disturbed by a guilty conscience due to
Brancoveanus betrayal so cunningly ploted and
especially haunted by the Princes ghost: The
old man fell down on the ground of the prison,
rolling his eyes and thinking of remote events
that had happened two years ago. He dared to
send to Ottomans the proof of Brancoveanus
unfaithfulness. For secret plots of the same
nature against the green flag he was sitting in the
same place as his nephew and disciple. He
listened carefully. From the square across
Galata, where in the summer of 1714
Brancoveanu was beheaded, as well as his sons,
was coming a sharp sound of laughter. The long
chattering laughters pervaded the cell and
crushed the damp walls. The old man covered
his ears. It was in vain. The laughter of the
former Prince Constantine Brancoveanu filled
the dungeon and smashed his body [...] No one
would have recognized in that terrified oldster
the High Steward Constantine Cantacuzino, that
scholar full of wisdom and advice so treasured
by the scholars of those times (Ibidem, 317).

The Execution of the Brancoveanu family in

the Historical Novel. Constantine
Brancoveanu Biblical Job and Christian
Martyr
Although in her novels Rodica OjogBraoveanu
retraced
with
unparalleled
expressivity the urban background of the
Brancovenesc era, the main characters, the
interior designs of the boyars in this type of
novel during the communist period, the space
for Brancoveanus death was limited (OjogBraoveanu 2008, 314-316). The author insisted
on the image of the Prince in the Istanbul prison
and on his evaluation regarding his political and
spiritual legacy: In the dungeon of the Seven
Towers, Constantine Brancoveanu, stripped off
his sable fur, confessed wealth and reign, was
pondering with his eyes focused in void. Doom
pounced bitterly over Brancoveanu family that
spring. Death of Lady Stanca, Radu Ilie
widow, pulled after it a strand of bitterness:
dethronement, imprisonment of the ruler and his
wife Marica, of the daughters and sons, the raid

61

One year after the book of Rodica OjogBraoveanu was published, another historical
novel appeared more popular due to authors
notoriety and due to its simplified, dynamic and
accessible style. The dialogue and the
monologue prevail in that novel, while the
descriptions are few and sketchy, with no accent
on the historical colour.
The historian Dumitru Alma, known as
an author of historical narrations, focused on the
stages of Brancoveanus tragedy in the book
Comoara Brncovenilor [The Treasure of the
Brancoveanu Family]. However, there is a
fictional element that became the epic moment
of the novel the search of the hidden treasure
of Brancoveanus family (Alma 1977).
Brancoveanus ordeal had lasted several months:
the events within the family distracted the
Princes attention (Stancas illness and death,
the wedding plans for his son Radu and Ana,
Antioh
Cantemirs
daughter,
Dimitrie
Cantemirs brother, the rebellious who fled to
Russians, fact that could have made difficult
Brancoveanus relations with the Ottomans), his
blind trust in friends: Turkish dignitaries as
Aga Mustafa, contextual allies periodically fed
to ensure his protection and to inform about
hostile factors at Sultans Court, lack of
surveillance of Cantacuzino family. Among
other stages of the same tragedy the author
depicts the dethronement and boyars cowardice
and betrayal, the raid after dethronement and the
horrible road to Istanbul, the humiliations at
Adrianopole and Istanbul, the tormented months
in captivity that supposed repeated, unbearable
tortures, blackmailing with the forgiveness
caftan in exchange for giving up the goods and
wealth, moving the ruler in a better prison to
relent Brancoveanu (see the transfer of prisoners
from Groapa Sngelui [Pit of Blood] to Casa
romn [Romanian house] in order to deceive
the prisoners regarding the moment of
forgiveness),
promises
and
threats,
Cantacuzinos
plots
frightened
by
Brancoveanus possible return and again
unimaginable throes, Princes depression and
familys despair, the offer to receive the Muslim
faith and the temporary madness of Punia
Cantacuzino (in love and obsessed with Radu
Brancoveanu), who had the bloody vision of
Brancoveanus death.
The undeclared conclusion of the novel
is that Brancoveanu was a Job never rewarded
on earth by God. The novel starts with Radus
monologue concerning his wedding after 1711
when the relations between Brancoveanu and
Cantemir were difficult. Then the author

presents the difference between Brancoveanus

sons: Radu a handsome and well-spirited man;
Constantine who had a fine spiritual face;
tefni although fat and with a round face,
the philosopher of the family, suspicious and
fatalist; Matei, the youngest around 12 years
old seemed more a girl, frail and feeble as if the
parents, conceivers of 11 children, would have
emasculate their last drop of power. The
secretary Antonio Maria del Chiaro, who tried to
teach him Italian, knew that the baby of the
family was frisky and sometimes weirdly evil,
behaving like a demonic (Ibidem, 7-45). The
ruler seemed confident and reliant on his destiny
after Stancas death, thinking of his sons
wedding and how it could be politically handled,
distrusting the news of his disgrace (Ibidem, 4648).
The scene of dethroning the Prince
(Ibidem, 49-56) is impeccably expressed by
building a gradual dramatic tension and
reproducing the historical milieu. The
description of Princes dethronement, presenting
the inner intense and sometimes contradictory
feelings of the victims were realized after a
thorough historical documentation; we thus
recognize fragments from Del Chiaros
monograph, describing Brancoveanus sad face
right before Mustafas arrival, who declared him
brutally dethroned. The humanization of the
main character is accomplished through the
panic and despair of the ruler becoming aware of
his disgrace and seeing the immobility of his
Court (All boyars hearts were frozen; no mind
was at work: all of them were crushed by fear,
perplexity and heavy oppressive silence. No one
believed and understood that in those moments a
great reign was falling down, a reign as few
Romanians had. It was falling down and no
eyelid moved [...]. Many were shivering and no
voice was heard (Ibidem, 53 sqq).
On his road to the capital of the
Ottoman Empire the ruler oscillated between
hope, despair and the desire of retribution,
meditating on the preparations of naming the
new ruler of Wallachia. Brancoveanus arrival to
Istanbul and their imprisonment dashes to the
ground all previous hopeful thoughts.
Humiliations followed shortly after the arrival
and a horrific detention, bringing them in front
of the Edicule prison like murderers. Brought
to a place smelling like mold, fear and death,
all members of Brancoveanus family decided,
without sharing their thoughts not to tell
anything even if they would be crushed in the oil
press (Ibidem, 117-118). Then the torture
began: scorn, humiliations and pains; hits in the

62

chest, in ribs and spleen, beating the soles of the

feet, twisting the arms and stepping on nails
(Ibidem, 128 sqq). [...] But the torturers came up
with new ways to torture them. Brancoveanu
fainted many times. Waking up, he thought with
anger: It seems that its a pity to gather great
fortunes. [...] Why didnt I remain poor? Why
am I not a beggar? And thats how,
unwillingly, he was confessing [...]. Members of
the family were crying and spitting blood, curses
and railings, mixed with names of the places
where precious things were hidden. [...] When
the brand was on his flesh, Brancoveanu prayed
untill he fainted; they woke him up with cold
water and then branded him again and again
until he confessed that precious items were
hidden under the floor of his bedchamber in the
house from Trgovite (Ibidem).
In the breaks between the tortures, the
members of the royal family remembered the
lost happiness and the futility of wealth and
power they had had over the years. The most
draconian torture was fixing branded crowns on
their heads, followed by more torture, weakness
of body, disturbance of mind and the decision to
resist (Ibidem, 213-224). The last generosity of
the Sultan was expressed by the message sent
by a high Ottoman functionary: Weve gained
forgiveness for you and your sons if you bow to
Alah and to Mahomed the prophet. Its a
privilege given by the Sultan. Part of your
fortune would be given back to you. And your
son Radu would be made Egypt sultan or Kara
Eflak sultan if he learnt quickly the Koran. He
could even become vizier! I learnt about his
bravery and artfulness. But the final answer
followed: I should be very glad for such an
honour if such an honour wouldnt be an
absurdity. Ive been and I believe that I am still
the founder and benefactor of Orthodoxism. Ive
founded dozens and dozens of churches, Ive
gilded hundreds of crosses, Ive printed
thousands of Gospels and covered them in gold
and now, on the verge of death, to pray at the
mosque and read the Koran? How do you
imagine that could be possible? Youve branded
my chest and my soles and my wounds still hurt.
But what irrefutable wound you produce by
asking me to backslide when I was hoping that
my justice and freedom would come. Not being
a Romanian after Ive been their ruler? After
you killed my body you want to kill my spirit?
No! (Ibidem). Counting on his sons freedom of
choice, the ruler gave them the opportunity to
choose, but the sons follow their fathers steps
although during the detention and earlier there
were small rivalries and frustrations: While the

Ottoman chancellors stepped out the narrow

room rather stonished than angry by the
unanimous resoluteness, the five members of
Brancoveanu family gathered closely in a sort of
embrace (Ibidem).
The scene of Brancoveanus death is
presented in Paunitas vision the wife of
tefan Cantacuzino. She took refuge in the
monastery so that she wouldnt be sent by the
usurper and ruler of the country to Istanbul to
witness the execution of the Prince and his sons:
The Sultan sat on his golden throne and looked
shadowy. The grand vizier, a small and fat man
was standing. [...] The crowd in the square
bowed, kneeling three times. [...] The grand
vizier beckoned and Aga Osman shoed up with
the guard from Edicule, who kept six convicts
surrounded. They wore long shirts like bags,
barefoot, with uncovered heads, weak, weary,
squashed and worn out as if they had come a
long journey exhaustibly tickle. In front of them
a boy Matei was on the rack, going back and
shouting I dont want to die Im young Im
not guilty Ill become a Muslim [...], but the
old man shook his head: No, my sons! Weve
lost everything in this world; let us deliver our
souls at least and wash our sins in our blood
[...]. The guards grabbed Matei and got him up
the bridge; the executioner set his head on the
trunk and cut it shortly; then with his left leg he
pushed the body aside, leaving the trunk
splashed with warm blood (then Radu, tefni,
Constantine stepped unto death). Now she sees
ruler Brancoveanu: he stepped slowly and alone;
hes the last; the bridge is covered with cut
heads; he stepped among them whom he loved
so much. She watches him kneeling, bending
and setting his head on the trunk. She hears the
sound of the scimitar; trembles when she sees
the springing blood, but the head still hanged in
a piece of flesh and skin under the beard. With
fierce fright she sees how the executioner put
their heads on spears, and the guards set out on
the streets of Istanbul (Ibidem, 248-250).
The last pages of the novel are focused
on the encrypted moral the tragic destiny of
those who desired and provoked Brancoveanus
death. At the beginning of January 1716,
Sultans envoy took the ruler tefan
Cantacuzino together with his family and took
them on the road with no return like in the case
of Brancoveanu. He was dethroned by the plots
of his brothers Neculai and Ion Mavrocordat.
Cantacuzino family was accommodated at the
same prison; on the 26th of June 1716 tefan
Cantacuzino and his father Constantine High
Steward were brought to the Bostangibasa

63

prison and hanged. Lady Puna lived and

suffered what Maria Brancoveanu had lived and
suffered two years earlier (Ibidem, 254).
Other historical novels prefer to depict
and to analyze only those episodes from the end
of the Middle Ages, episodes that feed the
protochronistic vision, according to which
modernity had chances to affirm since the reign
of Matei Basarab, erban Cantacuzino,
Cantemirs and Constantine Brancoveanu
through the affirmation of the dynastic principle,
the significant role played by the Romanian
countries in diplomatic affairs of the region
(especially after the siege of Vienna in 1683),
the cultural politics that combined the
preservation and promotion of tradition (of the
one with identity significances) with the
influence of Western culture. Thus, in the novel
Soare i cea [Sun and Fog] Gheorghe Onea
delineates the powerful personality of the ruler
erban Cantacuzino, inspired by audacious
political plans and describes his sudden death, as
well as Lady Anas suspicions over the relatives,
her escape and exile, as well as her attempt to
claim the throne for the smallest son of the
deceased. The background of those times are
described with the plots and the scenarios of
misalliance between Cantemir, the Cantacuzino
and the Brancoveanu families, the reconciliation
between
Antioh
Cantemir
and
ruler
Brancoveanu that seemed to scatter the clouds
and to bring sunshine. The end of the novel
seems opened, but it dashes the hope of
accomplishing the Romanian political projects,
the freedom of the state and entering modernity
through the ambitious reflections and projects of
the vindictive Lady Ana. We are pleasantly
surprised by the fact that the author of the novel
brings convincing examples for the functioning
of a paradox guilty for the stagnation of the
Romanian extra-Carpathian society. The main
character of the historical narration is erban
Cantacuzinos widow, Lady Ana, a somehow
negative heroine. Although she longs for the
good of the country and hates the Turkish, she is
dreaming of the restoration of Byzantium,
pursuing to realize a petty thing the coronation
of her son Iordache a young man with no
personality and charisma, possessed by his
mothers authoritarianism and chimeras as
ruler of Wallachia. The fact that he seems
unable to accomplish the Byzantine project
doesnt affect the will of this iron lady (see
another lady Chiajna). She plots to ensure
allies in Moldova, Wallachia and in Austrian
Transylvania, planning to buy the throne from
the Turkish and applying any means to pursue

the throne in order to fulfill the immediate

personal interests and not the common good and
the support of the desideratum of the reason of
State. Thus the novelist presents in indirect
manner the lack of political morals in Romanian
pre-Fanariot milieu. The language of the novel is
interesting, as it combines the existing archaisms
with common terms of the nowadays language.
The author is less interested in rendering the
colour of the era and more inclined to depict the
action through dialogue, through the credible
transfer of the dynamic action from a (spatial
and political) stage to another (Onea 1985).
The last novel in which Constantine
Brancoveanu is one of the main characters
(together with Cantacuzino, Cantemir, Corbeti
families), as far as we are concerned, is Cinstii
meteri mari [The Great Honourable Craftsmen]
(Popovici 1986). The author uses narrative
techniques that make the novel accessible to
large categories of readers, bringing into
foreground secondary characters in the
historicity perspective, but significant for the
milieu of the presented era. In this case, those
who deal with the space of the narration are the
craftsmen (especially see Simion and the brief
presence of Constantinos and Parvu Mutu), who
contributed to founding and building the
Brancovenesc edifices. The events of the novel
are set at the end of the 17th century after the
Zenta battle (1697) and especially after
Karlowitz peace treaty when Brancoveanu
believed that he was divinely chosen (Gregorian,
Stnescu 1961, 9) (13), that he was at a haven of
centuries and in an era of relative harmony of
geo-political re-establishment: [...] he felt again
the wing of the angel foretelling destiny [...].
Now something was done and he would have
peace with the Empire of the Sun Set, remaining
to see how friendly would be the Empire of the
Rising Sun, while the Turkish would be fed with
gold and smooth words. Let us await the times
that are to come [...] (Popovici 1986, 338). The
novel uncovers the elements of Brancoveanus
external politics, according to Ceausescus
ideology, and especially reveals cultural aspects
that made Constantine Brancoveanu novus homo
an image built as a counter-part with the
traditional political vision of the High Steward
Constantine Cantacuzino (Ibidem, especially
196-198).
An interesting genre in the nationalist
period of communism is represented by the
literature of popularizing the era and the
(13) He felt like being gifted by God. Brancoveanus
official chronicler said the same thing in those times.

64

significant historical personalities for the

communist project of those times; the works that
illustrated this genre narrate in an accessible
style with dramatic touches the scenes with
emotional effect. Thus, other pedagogical and
formative finalities are accomplished. The most
famous writings of this type are in our opinion
Neculai andru, Prinul Aurului [The Prince of
Gold] (1972) and Petru Demetru Popescu,
Trimisul
lui
Constatin
Brncoveanu
[Constantine Brancoveanus Envoy] (1984). We
quote the final scene of Brancoveanus tragedy
in order to establish the relevance of this type of
writing: Sunday, August 15 1714, on the
Ladys day and when the ruler had 60 years,
Constantine Brancoveanu, his four sons and his
faithful treasurer Ienache Vacarescu were led to
the place of the execution in the square
Ialichiosc not far from seraglio. They were
brought barefoot like simple burglars, uncovered
heads and wearing only long shirts, with their
weakened bodies by tortures and heavy chains
(andru 1972, 39). Then the author describes the
preparations for the execution, using information
from the French, Italian, Polish and Romanian
sources (Cantemir in Cernovodeanu 1995), as
well as from Del Chiaros monograph, but here
andru describes paradoxically how the
condemned removed their caps from their heads
before being executed. The final speech of the
ruler contains the same urge to die with dignity
and to save their souls by washing the sins in
their blood (andru 1972, 39). The scene of
treasurers execution is of naturalist character
(Ibidem, 40); the author described then the
reluctance of the youngest son being only 11
years old, expressing his desire to embrace Islam
only to save his life. Nevertheless, at his fathers
command that sounded like a thunder over the
crowd assisting to this ghoulish show, the
youngest son seemed to weak up from a
nightmare and accepted the idea that it was
better to die a thousand times than to deny the
ancestral faith (14) in order to live a few more
years on this earth (Ibidem, 40). The author
supports the idea that the ruler died dominated
by the peace of reconciliation with him in front
of destiny and death (Ibidem).

The second part of the mentioned

literary works is closer to the historical novel,
although the scientific explanation of the
political internal and international background
prevails, as well as the lack of dialogue. The
voice of the narrator covers often even the
monologue of the characters. While Neculai
andru was preoccupied in his writing with the
internal and cultural politics of the ruler
Brancoveanu, Petru Demetru Popescu explained
the political events of the 17th century - military
facts and decisions, political and diplomatic
events both European and Ottoman that marked
Brancoveanus era - from the historiographical
national-communist (implicitly protochronist)
perspective (see the 1st chapter referring to what
had happened in Europe after the siege of
Vienna and the 2nd chapter, a section where it is
told the history of the Romanian community in
Brasov and the Corbeti refuge to Wallachia in
the context of affirmation of the Habsburg
Counter-Reform). The author depicts the
background using the monograph of rulers
Italian
secretary
and
the
official
historiographical discourse (see the way in
which the union with the Church of Rome and
the politics of the Austrian reform in
Transylvania are anathematized). The antiWestern and anti-Catholic ideas are presented
through the thoughts of David Corbea, a
cultivated and skillful diplomat. In the last
chapters of the book the narrator stands out from
his objective and tells about the Unusual days
of Constantine Brancoveanu and of David
Corbea from Braov, as well as the Missions
and trying of the devoted ceaus (messenger).
The narration stops at one of the Moscovite
missions of the secret man without
mentioning the great drama of 1714. Thus the
writer mentions that he cut the ends of the
epilogue. But due to this mere final act, due to
this choice with an axiological and political
essential value, as well as due to his dignity,
Constantine Brancoveanu entered the history
and legend as an exceptional figure and as a
manifestation of homo religious. Nevertheless,
in that period of nationalist communism the
author found it suitable to avoid this significant
episode that secured a place for Brancoveanu in
modern European conscience due to his
overtaking the opportunism of the era and his
weaknesses. The self-censorship of the author
was a natural aspect in the given historical and
ideological context of the last communist decade
in Romania.

(14) During communism the Orthodox religion was

assimilated through the concept of ancestral faith to
the tradition and loyalty toward the country and
people/nation. Such assimilation was functional due
to its ambiguity. An atheist system like the nationalist
communism didnt allow the luxury of recognizing
the historical role of the church in the identity
project.

65

action begins at dawn with the old rulers

preparation, while the Court is surrounded by
Turkish men. The texts present the martyrdom
of
Brancoveanus
family,
Vcrescus
determination (ignored in many historical
novels), Brancoveanus sons troubled by the
perspective of a violent death, asking for
forgiveness from their father (customary aspects
in the popular perception before dying).
Between his sons execution, the Prince repeated
in various formulas that he accepted what was
going on if that was divine will. Thus, the
tension rises and is ensured with this indirect
nobility of the sacrifices. Even the youngest son
has an attitude that contradicts the texts of the
foreign travellers, as he gladly receives death as
a completion of Brancoveanus martyrical
destiny. No one had ever manifested a weakness
in front of blackmail (the offer of forgiveness,
peace instead of becoming a Muslim).
Although the ruler was dignified during
the ordeal, he prayed and refused Sultans offer,
after the execution of his sons he is a despaired
Job, a peasant who shows his suffering (he falls
on his knees, embraces and kisses the dead
bodies of his sons, morns and calls their names).
Then he recovers and curses the Ottomans with
words inspired from Psalms (the perishment of
the Turkish tribe, its devastation from the face of
the earth, the loss of deliverance and of the rest
in the other world) (Alecsandri 1971, 129).
As the Romanian peasants suffered after
the numerous Turkish raids during the 18th and
19th centuries (the period in which the songs
about Brancoveanu family were created), the
peoples hatred was constant in the folk
perception in ballads, as well as in narrations,
introducing a new chapter in the tragedy of the
Princes family. In these creations of peasantry
the curse of the Prince provokes Sultans pride
and sadism so that he commands to skin alive
the Romanian ruler and when Brancoveanu
doesnt display signs of pain, Ahmed decides to
drag the skin in mud. In this way the Prince of
Wallachia would perceive that even in his last
moments he is in the Sultans power and he is on
the last step of humiliation. But although his
body has been de-humanised through tortures
and unimaginable torments, the ruler has closed
with dignity this extreme chapter by reaffirming
his faith (see the famous ending in almost the
same formula, in all the variants of the ballad or
of the historical story): ... Constantine
Brancoveanu dies a faithful Christian,
abandoned by everyone, but resting unto the
Lord. There is another invented episode in folk
ballads in which there are saving interventions

The Folk Culture on Brancoveanus

Martyrdom
Among the folk forms the folk theatre
was greatly inspired by Brancoveanu history
(Oprian 1984). There are well-known studies
on the popularity of Constantine especially in
the counties of Moldova (Adscliei 1972) and
in the mining area of Lpu (Mulea 1964, 2161). The acting is not inspired, surprisingly
enough, by the folk epic song, because the
telling of the events respects Brancoveanus
stages of ordeal and martyrdom, which denotes
the existence of some influences from sources
that belong to scholarly culture (the folklorist
used a manuscript that was a copy of another
manuscript from the end of the 19th century). It
is surprising that this folk play was presented
during the winter holidays and known as
Constantine Brancoveanus curse, which is a
segment of text present in all variants of the
researched manuscript (in 1940 and before
1964). The ruler is both innocent and vehement,
addressing the tyranic Sultan and cursing him:
With what great cunning did you find me/ That
so heavily bound me/ What is our guilt/ That we
perish with no judgement?/ Holy Lord may
bring justice/ Over your iniquity!/ Holy Lord
may punish you/ With a divine sword/ He will
destroy you! (Ibidem, 56).
In the creations of the folk culture (epic
ballads and historical stories) (15) the ruler is a
wise and loved man presented as the patriarch
of the country, of the Court, family and crowd of
gypsies whom he cared fatherly. The relations
between the ruler and his family are depicted
after the standards of the traditional family
(absolute obedience was one of the essential
elements of this relation). In these folk creations
the cause of Brancoveanus disgrace is his
wealth and the fact that, as an independent
Prince, he coined big golden coins.
Generally speaking, the debut of the
ballads
and
historical
stories
about
Brancoveanus martyrdom sums up the elements
of the folk epics, the chronical text applying the
reason of the folk explanation concerning the
events and the heroes discourse in which they
express and justify their options. Thus, the
(15) See cultural creations that were inspired by the
folk epic and by the chronicles, as it is the case of
Vasile Alecsandris ballad Constantine Brancoveanu
(Alecsandri 1971, 127-129), which contributes to the
most recent perception of Brancoveanus martyrdom.
Some other recent folk creations have to be
mentioned: Adscliei 1966, Brill 1970, Dumitrescu
1990, Dragomir 2002, the communist textbook of
Romanian language for the 5th grade 1995.

66

for Brancoveanu family. The gypsy nurse of

Brancoveanus youngest son supports the idea
that by mistake her son replaced the young
Prince and she sacrificed her son so that the
royal blood would be saved. Such an episode is
the result of the fact that the ballads were
usually sung and sometimes composed by
gypsies so that they added this soteriological act
made by a marginal tribe as a sign of love for
this exceptional leader.
A ballad that hadnt been changed for
over a century was found by Lucan Candoi in
Celei, Corabia, being reproduced for the first
time by N. Pasculescu (Pasculescu 1910), then
in another book (Datcu 1966). The mentioned
ballad respects the background of the epic
traditional song, according to which Tarigrad
(Istanbul) was considered axis mundi, the place
where the emperor (Sultan) exerts an impartial
power (see the epic song with historical and/or
familial subject) (Grancea 1998, 75-79).
According to this popular mentality, Constantine
Brancoveanu undertakes a voluntary voyage to
Istanbul and, like a peasant who has a complaint,
burns a matting over his head so that the Sultan
would see him and listen to him. Actually, the
ruler hopes to determine the emperor not to burn
his country (*** 1974, 6). In his innocence, a
candor specific to the simple man who sees the
political power as exceptional, the Romanian
Prince didnt imagine that he went to ...
Tarigrad/ To the honourable Sultan/To lose his
head! (Ibidem, 4). Is this a historical
inconsistency or a poetic license? The ballad
also introduces the existence of mercenaries as
an expression of the repressive Ottoman order
when they were a Romanian reality after
Brancoveanus era. Princes absolute faith and
blind self-confidence are partially ridiculed in
the epic song. The words of the confession of
faith made by the Prince during the
confrontation with the Sultan become the
leitmotif of the ballad. Although he is
blackmailed with his sons execution, between
their decapitation Brancoveanu repeated thrice
(see the sacred numerology) that he wasnt
abandoning his faith and that he didnt give up
to his immortality of the soul by accepting
another religion for a fleeting life.
One after another, the bodies of
Princes sons fall in dust as an effect of refusing
the Ottomans offer (Ibidem, 10-18). Such a
reaction attracts, according to the ballad, the
uncensored sadism of the Sultan, skinning alive
the Romanian Prince and then cutting his body
in pieces and throwing them away in the sea, as

Brancoveanu himself suggested that he would

do with the Sultan (Ibidem, 20-22).
In the folk creations, the Romanian
political background and Cantacuzinos plots are
not mentioned, because the commoners found
significant only the wicked character of the
Turkish domination. On the other hand,
significant was the power of the Orthodox
testimony constantly repeated, no matter what
the personal pain was or the anguish of
Brancoveanus family. In the folk epic the rulers
of Wallachia and Moldova were not very
popular.
The mythologies of the elite figures are
effects of the Romantic and nationalist
historiographical discourse, of the popular
literature of the 19th-20th centuries and of the
scholar culture (historical dramas, stories and
historical novels). In return, the folk literary
creations didnt favour the leaders who
coordinated the social, economical and financial
policies and dramatically affected the life of
peasantry and merchants. Moreover, in the fight
of the boyars parties to impose their favourites
on the throne, the biggest loosers were the
peasants. Ottomans were called to support one
or another claimant to the throne and they were
not happy with the promised payment, robbing
the rural and urban communities and taking
slaves. Thus, according to the proverbial
formula, rulers change was madmens joy.
Even the rulers who were praised by
historiography for their external politics and
identity project, are considered mere puppets in
boyars hands the pillars of Tarigrad
(Grancea in Bocan et Leu (eds.) 1996, 64-70).
The realities of the Fanariot era
overlapped in the peasants explanation in these
specific folk creations on the history of older
times so that we witness a process of
reinterpretation from the relatively recent
lifestyle and mentality. Only Constantine
Brancoveanu due to his terrible and exceptional
death in Romanian history impressed the
popular sensitivity. Thus, we may explain the
admiration and empathy manifested for this
Prince, who may have had under different
circumstances other folk representations, taking
into account the financial policies and his
opulent wealth.
Brancoveanus ordeal and death and the
martyrdom of the entire family, the status of
their terrible death and of confession of faith
made before their execution have occupied a
special place in the propaganda of the Orthodox
Church, remembering this tragical death
periodically. Therefore, the theologian Niculae

67

Popescu has described in laudatory notes the

personality of the Romanian Prince and his
sacrifice for the country during the times of
conflicts with the Habsburg Empire, Russia and
Cantacuzinos plots, improving significantly the
texts of the chronicles (Popescu 1934). The
sufferings of imprisonment and the execution of
Brancoveanus family are summed up compared
to other texts, which describe these moments of
tragedy, the tension being concentrated in the
moment of Princes confession of faith made in
the name of his sons. The theologian also
describes less known details and unverifiable
aspects compared to other narrative sources
terrifying moments of torture and Princes death:
Turkish had tormented in various ways the ruler
Brancoveanu for three and a half months; they
put him in iron chains, cut his face and hands,
branded his chest and when they saw that they
couldnt get any information out of him, they
decided to kill him... (Ibidem, 73). The
execution is preceded by a verbal duel between
the Prince and the Sultan: to Sultans mentioned
offer Brancoveanu responded vehemently with a
speech focused on the subject of faith: I wont
forsake my Christian law; I was born this way
and I will die the same said the one who
filled his country with churches, being unable
to do otherwise and being responsible for
keeping the faith. Although the order of the
sons death and their age are not thoroughly
rendered in order to impress the reader, the
episode of Mateis backset is reduced to a mere
short cry. The focus of the narrator is on
Brancoveanus execution: Peaceful and
determined, Constantine Brancoveanu bent and
said: Lord, may your will come true and set his
head on the trunk. The executioner cut his head;
rulers neck broke, but he didnt split from the
first hit from his suffering body. And then the
executioners sword sounded like saws cutting
wood until the head of the unfortunate father fell
in the slop of his children (Ibidem, 77).

scholar Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli appreciated

Brancoveanus lordship and mentioned him in
his report to Leopold I (October 1691) and
treating him con ogni cortezia et onore
(Hurmuzachi 1885, 392). More detailed are the
writings of the reverend Edmund Chishull (an
enthusiastic report) and of the English
ambassador Lord William Paget (a sobre
presentation), who both passed through
Wallachia in 1702 (Cernovodeanu, Holban,
Alexandrescu-Dersca Bulgaru 1983, 195-224),
being impressed by the gardens and palaces of
the ruler, by the ceremonials of the Court, by the
shone feast offered with uncommon courtesy
and hospitality. The same reverend attains the
most felicitous portrait of the ruler Constantine
Brancoveanu: he is a defender of order and
discipline, a founder of revival in architecture, a
protector of learning. He is suave, he has a kind
and obliging nature, he is generous, careful and
a great protector of religion ... (Ibidem, 196
sqq). But after his terrible death, Constantine
Brancoveanus death underwent a profound
metamorphosis. Since the 18th century till
nowadays Brancoveanu has been perceived as
the manifestation of homo religiosus.
In the past the Westerners were
confronted with the phenomenon of accentuated
secularisation of society, especially Catholics,
seeing in the martyrical death of the Romanian
ruler an example, a sort of imitatio Christi, but
also a manifestation of the political tyrany
exerted by the Ottomans. The Romanian
historiography have reevaluated in a complex
manner the leaders personality in modernity
related to the memorial culture (see the
memorials in 1914 (16)) (Xenopol 1914, 2).
In the post-communist Romania, the
Romanian Orthodox Church accomplished a
pantheon of martyrs and saints of the
Romanian Orthodoxism in her impetuosity of
affirming the traditional terms so that rulers
from Middle Ages, monarchs, partisans of anti-

Conclusion
As we have already highlighted at the
beginning of this study, the political personality
of Constantine Brancoveanu was of great
interest for the European public opinion long
before the tragic end of his family. In the era of
political games that were craftily interwoven in
Europe, he was the first Romanian ruler named
by the Europeans Il Modeno Principe due to
his great personality, culture, his Court, which
during his 26 years of reign had undergone a
luxuriant activity and cultural politics
unequalled in Wallachia. The diplomat and

(16) The recent memorial texts from Orthodox

journals (including those from online sources) are
inspired to plagiarism by A. D. Xenopols article,
Sfritul lui Constantin Brncoveanu [Constantine
Brancoveanus End], in Romnul, no. 179, Friday,
16/28 August, 1914. All these recent texts resume
what Xenopol wrote with no critical notes and
referring to emotional scenes of dethronement and
execution on the Bosfor shore on August 15/26 1714.
See also Paul Connertons book How Societies
Remember (Connerton 1989) on memorial practices
of the community that choses to remember
especially what satisfies certain political and identity
finalities.

68

communist resistance are included on that list.

Unfortunately,
Constantine
Brancoveanu
remained in the collective memory due to his
ordeal and his dignified behaviour in the
moment of his familys execution. The
canonization of Brancoveanus family and
Ienache Vcrescu is due to their execution; the
canonization took place on June 20th 1992 and
was performed by the Synod of the Romanian
Orthodox Church.
Brancoveanu was frequently mentioned
in the period of nationalist communism in the
official discourse due to his modern spirit and
his opening toward the West, feeding thus the
protochronist discourse of Ceauescus era;
nowadays the Prince is remembered as the
martyr of the Orthodox faith.
The memorials legitimated by the
Romanian Orthodox Church wipe away in the
collective memory rulers lay work, presenting
from a different perspective, once again, a
personality who during his existence had known
power and wealth, physical and moral extreme
sufferings, as well as reconciliation with the
hardships of History. However, concerning the
political value of Constantine Brancoveanus
decisions, we prefer the old and satisfactory
analysis, according to which the Prince knew to
serve the Turkish without leaving the rights of

his country; he knew to remove the

unconditional rulership of Christians: Austrians,
Poles and Russians over the Romanian land; he
knew to bind his inhabitants to Moldova through
cultural and political means; he knew, even after
the political relations with Transylvania had
been cut, to maintain the cultural ones. And
during all these times he knew how to replace
the previous Byzantine emperors as a rightful
heir through his great work of Eastern culture,
through housing the church leaders of Orient,
patriarchs, teachers, through his foundation
works. Independent ruler in his country,
surrounded with superiour prestige of heirs of
Constantin the Great in the entire world of
Orient, this was the situation of ruler
Constantine Brancoveanu (Iorga 1914, 51-52).
As far as we are concerned, the
historical novel abandoned the celebrated
personalities linked with the identity projects in
the post-communist times, having few
appearances
and
post-modern
stylistic
approaches, and being preoccupied with the
decryption of the recent past. Thus, even now,
Constantine Brancoveanu is instrumentalised as
an emblematic figure by the Romanian
Orthodox Church and he had partially captured
the attention of the historical research as the
creator of an era.

References
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Adscliei, Vasile, De la
Drago la Cuza vod.
Legende
populare
romneti [From Drago
to Cuza the Ruller.
Romanian Folk Legends],
Bucureti, Editura pentru
Literatur, 1966.
Adscliei,
Vasile,
Adscliei 1972
Teatrul popular de Anul
Nou n Moldova [The Folk
Theatre of the New Year in
Moldova], Bacu, 1972.
Alexandrescu et Alexandrescu-Dersca
Bulgaru,
M.
M.,
alii 1983
Cernovodeanu,
Paul,
Holban, Maria, Cltori
strini
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rile
romne
[Foreign
Travellers
about
Romanian Countries], vol.
VIII, Bucureti, 1983.
Alma, Dumitru, Comoara
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Brncovenilor
[The
Adscliei 1966

Brill 1970

Cantemir 1995

Chiaro 1929

Codarcea 1992

69

Treasure
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cinci acte [Constantine

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*** 1885

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72

A Proposal for a Comparative Research. Two Gymnasium Libraries

in Transylvania of the Enlightenment Period
Iacob MARZA
Professor, 1 December 1918 University of Alba Iulia, Romania
E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract. The present paper analyses the two gymnasium libraries of Transylvania of the 18th
century: Elenchus Librorum Humanisticorum Bibliothecae Regii Gymnasii Cibiniensis in Sibiu and Index
Librorum Classicorum ad Bibliothecam Gymnasii R[egii] Zalathnensis spectantium in Zlatna. The
comparative research indicated the state and evolution of the gymnasium libraries, starting with the
manner of acquiring and data that point the apparition of some books in the structure of collections and
content of some volumes. The structure of the two catalogues and especially the big number of volumes
of humanistic orientation delineate the profile of the education at the Kings gymnasiums in Sibiu and
Zlatna, where the subjects of humanistic study (classical Greek and Latin authors, history, poetics,
rhetoric, grammar etc.) were of an overwhelming prevalence. The study of the classic authors was part of
pupils education during the Enlightenment times. The titles with practical and scientific content are also
present in the catalogues of the libraries, which suggests the realist and scientific tendencies, registered by
the Transylvanian education in the first half of the 19th century, phenomenon that characterized the
mentioned gymnasium libraries as well. These educational institutions followed, as the titles point out,
the directions of the Aulic and provincial educational legislation, applied by other schools of the Great
Principality of Transylvania in the Enlightenment era, including the Romanian school in Blaj, Cluj,
Oradea, Trgu-Mure, Aiud, Ortie, Nsud and others. The classic Greek and Latin culture prevailed in
the school curriculum, but there were also other practical subjects. That was the cultural ideal with some
political connotations, according to the educational principles followed at the Aulic and provincial level.
Keywords: comparative research, gymnasium libraries, humanistic orientation, classical Greek
and Latin culture, Transylvania
73-125) (1). It was an era in which the commerce
If we can agree on the fact that library is
with encyclopedias and textbooks had known
a special sign of distinction for the intellectual
new cultural and political dimensions, given the
profile of a private or institutional possessor and
development of pragmatic elements of the press
when we interpret the phenomenon from the
and diffusion of books.
perspective of the third revolution of the book
Regarding the previous affirmations, we
th
(Barbier 2013) from the 18 century, then we
must also mention: organization, rationalization
will understand better the growth of the number
of libraries and collections with books at the
(1) See also on this complex matter Istoria romnilor.
private and institutional level. That is a
Vol. VI. Romnii ntre Europa clasic i Europa
consequence of the press phenomenon in the
Luminilor (1711-1821) [History of Romanians. Vol.
Enlightenment times, when the network of
VI. Romanians between Classical Europe and Europe
gymnasium
libraries
diversified
as
a
of Enlightenment (1711-1821)], Bucureti, Editura
consequence of the economic development on
Enciclopedic,
2002,
p.
834-880;
Istoria
the European level, including Transylvania, a
nvmntului din Romania Vol. I (de la origini pn
province of the Habsburg Empire. The
la 1821) [History of Education in Romania. Vol. I
continuation of the educational and spiritual
(from Origins to 1821)], Bucureti, Editura Didactic
i Pedagogic, 1983, p. 230-416; Nicolae Albu,
preoccupations was registered there for various
Istoria
nvmntului
romnesc
din
social categories (Marza 2013, 77), as a result of
Transilvania
pn
la
1800
[History
of
the reorganization of the school network in an
Romanian
Education
in
Transylvania
till
1800],
effort of cohesion and modernization of the
Blaj, Lumina, 1994, p. 113-334; Idem, Istoria
educational policy (Protopopescu 1966, 47-186,
colilor romneti din Transilvania ntre 1800229-236, 241, 249, 251-263, 283-333; Bozac et
1867 [History of Romanian Schools in
Teodor 1966, 142-170; Marza 1987, 34-46;
Transylvania between 1800-1867], Bucureti,
Malinas 1994, 46-62, 119-120; Albulescu 2006,
Editura Didactic i Pedagogic, 1974, p. 20-94.
73

and systematization of the education in villages

and cities of Transylvania after the second half
of the 18th century; the foundation of schools in
Blaj during the fall of the year 1754 in the spirit
of imperial policy and for strengthening the
religious Unification in that part of the Empire;
the statist and political directions received by
education and instruction at Aulic and provincial
level, according to the legislation of those times,
illustrated by Allgemeine Schulordnung (1774),
Ratio educationis (1777) and Norma regia
(1781). Among other relevant aspects in the
same region we state the following: the cultural
and didactic activism of some intellectuals like
Ioan Pioariu-Molnar, Gheorghe incai, Dimitrie
Eustatevici, Radu Tempea, Petru Maios and
others, many of them having great
responsibilities; the obvious development of
elementary
and
secondary
schools
(gymnasiums) in Southern Transylvania and in
the mining regions pursuing some cultural
economic and political objectives by the Court
of Vienna; the cultural and political performance
accomplished by Regium Gymnasium Cibiniense
and in Apuseni (2) Mountains by Regium
Gymnasium Zalathnense (1790-1848); the
diversity of the secondary education in
Transylvania at the end of the 18th century
(1784, the foundation of the military institute in
Nsud; 1792 the opening of the seminary in
Oradea by the Greek-Catholic Bishop Ignatie
Darabant) (Marza 1987, 34-46) etc.
The proposal for a comparative research
of two gymnasium libraries in Transylvania of
the 18th century has at its basis the research and
interpretation of two catalogues of the libraries
and starts from the cultural and political
significance of the two educational and
representative institutions for the society of the
Transylvanian
Principality
during
Enlightenment and Vormrz. This was the case
of the royal secondary schools/gymnasiums in
Sibiu (the nowadays High School Gheorghe
Lazr (Boros 1896; Stanciu 1843; Munteanu
1968)) and Zlatna (destroyed during the
revolutionary events in 1848-1849 (Marza 1969;
Idem 1972, 231-245; Idem 1972, 109-115; Idem
1972, 347-372; Idem 1977, 409-430)) that
accomplished an important role in the formation
of a class of intellectuals in those times. We
mention among those who studied at Regium
Gymnasium Cibiniense the following: Simion
Sterca Sulutiu, Iosif, Molnar, Gheorghe Lazar,
Simion Balint, Ilie Mcelariu, August Treboniu
Laurian, Ioan Pucariu, Iacob Bologa, Axente

Sever, Nicolae Cristea, Visarion Roman, while

at Regium Gymnasium Zalathense were
educated more of the leaders of the Revolution
(1848-1849) in Transylvania: Avram Iancu,
Gheorghe Anghel, Petru Dobra, Dimitrie
Moldovan, Petru Ioanete. We must also mention
Alexandru Sterca Sulutiu, Iosif Sterca Sulutiu,
Dionisie Sterca Sulutiu, Ioan Pipos, Ioan Boer,
Petru and George Damian, Vasile Fodor, Samuil
Corches, Iuliu Mihali, Absolon Popovici, Ioan,
Mihai and Aviron Telechi, Tretulian, Dionisie
and Alexandru Tobias, Pompiliu Ighian and
others.
The two lists with books kept in the
school libraries of Sibiu and Zlatna, entitled
Catalogus
Librorum
Gymnasii
R[egii]
Cibiniensis (Marza 1990, 167-176; Idem 1978,
329-340) and Index Librorum Classicorum ad
Bibliothecam Gymnasii R[egii] Zalathnensis
spectantium (3) (Marza 1972, 85-111) offer us
interesting data on the structure and content of
the gymnasium libraries in Transylvania of the
Enlightenment period according to the
legislation of those times (4). Moreover, it is
necessary to analyse these documents from the
perspective of the educational content of the two
gymnasiums, which echoed the statist and
pragmatic cultural policy at the Aulic and
provincial level through the educational
curriculum. The school must have been an
instrument of strengthening the Habsburg
regime and Catholic religion in Transylvania.
The institution aimed at educating and forming
young people useful to society and obedient
citizens to activate in church, educational,
military,
industrial,
administrative
and
commercial areas both in the rural and urban
space (Marza 2005, 33).
(3) The National Library of Romania, Batthyaneum
Alba
Iulia,
Protocollum
Regii
Gymnasii
Zalathanensis, XI-35 a, p. 429 437.
(4) Norma regia pro scholis Magni Principatus
Transilvaniae Josephi II. Caesar. Aug. Magni
Principis Trans. ivssv edita M. DCC. LXXXI, Cibinii,
Typis Martini Hochmeister, p. 56-61, 68-72 (III-IV
Librorum, argumentorum et temporibus distributio
pro classibus Grammaticae et Humanitatis). See
interesting aspects in: CC De Universitate
Bibliohteca,
Numophylacio,
ceterorumque
antiquitatis monumentorum Museo, p. 348-352;
Capit. VII. De Regiis Academiarum Hungaricarum
Bibliothecis et Museis.
CXCIV. De Regits
Academicarum Bibliothecarum
generatim;

CXCIV. De extructione Regiarum Academicarum

Bibliothecarum, p. 362 363. Ratio edacationis
totiusque rei litterariae Regnum Hungariae et
provincias eidem adnexas, Vindobonae, 1777.

(2) Romanias Occidental Carpathians.

74

Not impressive numerically, 99 titles in

126 volumes at the gymnasium in Sibiu (Marza
1990, 174-176; Marza 1978, 338-340) and 250
books in Zlatna (Marza 1972, 98-101), the
libraries evolved together with the development
of the housing institutions. For the gymnasium
in Sibiu, Consultatio scholastica die 17-ti Julii
[1]810 from the protocol rises the necessary
problem for reorganizing the fund of books and
forming a catalogue of the library so that it
would be useful for pupils and teachers. At the
same time, Catalogus Librorum Gimnasii
R[egii] Cibiniensis is legalized by the prefect
Joannes Nepomucenus Eschenbach (in May
1826) and it represents the inventory of the
library (Marza 1990, 168). The structure of the
collection in Sibiu (similar to that in Zlatna)
Classics, Historia, Geographia, Artes Liberales,
Lexica and Libri mixti indicates the profile of
the lectures honoured by the so-called scholae
latinae in Transylvania of those times. The
humanistic orientation prevailed, although they
were also books with scientific and practical
inclination. A part of those books is from
acquiring of the institutions according to the
school legislation. In the case of the gymnasium
in Zlatna, there are several donations recorded,
donations from the teachers who had worked
there. Some donations are specified as coming
from teachers Emericus Balas, Constantinus
Hene, Gregorius Simai, Antonius Buday (1835)
and Josephus Staerker (1836) (Marza 1990,
168).
The comparative approach of the two
catalogues is focused firstly on the language of
the books. It is not surprising that the Latin titles
prevail in both cases, as it points out the
importance of the Latin language in the
education of Transylvanian gymnasiums in the
18th century. Actually, Latin was the official
language in which the lessons were conducted.
Moreover, we may find titles in German,
Hungarian and even Italian in the mentioned
catalogues. Nevertheless, the majority of the
titles were in Latin, proving the cult for the
classical Greek-Latin antiquity that held a great
role in the instructive-educational process of the
period (Protopopescu 1966).
From the perspective of the content, in
the collection of the library in Zlatna we
identified the following categories: 43,2% libri
philologici (poetici, oratorici, rethorici et
grammatici); 13,6% libri historici et
geographici; 2,8% libri philosophici et morali;
1,2% libri juridici; 0,8% libri naturali; 2,4%
libri arithmetici; 3,6% libri teologici; l,2 % libri
medici. There were also books on various

subjects: 0,9% and in 2,4% there was no title

(sine titulo) (Marza 1972, 93-94). Similar
proportions are to be found in the case of the
Sibiu gymnasium library if we take into account
the structure offered by the collection, in which
we find not only libri classici, libri historici,
libri geographici, but also Artes Liberales,
Lexica, and libri mixti. That is a valid
categorization if we follow the order of the
books proposed by the prefect of the library
(Marza 1990, 171).
We may notice the frequency of many
Greek and Latin authors and historians when we
study both catalogues. We mention the most
relevant names for the pupils and teachers of
those times in Transylvania: Iulius Caesar,
Cicero, Claudianus, Eutropius, Fedru, Horatius,
Iustinus, Titus Livius, Lucanus, Lucretius,
Cornelius Nepos, Ovidius, Platon, Plaut,
Quintilianus, Curtius Rufus, Sallustius Crispus,
Seneca, Suetonius, Tacitus, Terentius, Vergiliu
and others (Marza 1972, 94, 99-100; Idem 1990,
169, 174-175). In the case of the school in Sibiu
we have to admit that there were more books
from Germany or books with the mention
Edition Schraembliana due to some important
subjects in the 18th-19th centuries from Brger,
Gessner and Hlty to Hbner, Bauer, Scheller
and Parizek (Marza 1990, 169, 174-175).
Concerning the Greek and Latin
classicism we point out many titles of oratory
and rhetoric subjects in which the pupils were
initiated at the gymnasium. In Zlatna (Marza
1972, 94, 99-101) we may find the following
titles: Nicolaus Avacinus, Orationes, Carolus
Poreus, Orationes, as well as Tironianum
Eloqueantiae,
Bibliotheca
Rethorum,
Institutiones Oratoriae, Institutiones ad
Eloquenatiam, Syntaxis Ornata and others. In
Sibiu such books are included at the section
Classici (Marza 1990, 174-175).
In the mentioned catalogues there are
also other titles regarding history. In the Zlatna
library we find books written by Christophor
Cellarius
(Historia
and
Breviarium),
Ferdinandus Stoerger (Historia Ecclesiastica),
Martinus Bolla (Historia Universalis) (5)
(5) It is interesting to find Martinus Bollas textbook
of universal history, Primae liniae historiae
universalis, I-III, Cluj, 1798-1799. The author is
known as one of those who contested the Romanian
origin of the Romanian people, the Latin character of
the Romanian language and its continuity in the
space of the former Dacia. Cf. Popovici 1945, 277278, 301. He disputed vehemently with arguments
the Supplex from 1791. For the circulation of the
textbook in the school media in Blaj during the times

75

(Prodan 1984, 90; Bittay 1923, 374 sqv) and

others. There are also other important books,
among which we mention: Rudimenta Historica,
De Romana Republica, Germania gloriosa,
Ritus Romanorum, Koronas Mgyar Kiralynok,
Carl Neugeboren, Handbuch der Geschichte
Siebenbrgens, Hermannsatdt, 1836 etc. During
the lessons of history there was a great emphasis
on political and military events, information on
emperors lives (caesarologia studied in classes
with humanistic profile). Pupils from Sibiu
could also consult Carolus Palma, Martinus
Felmer, Johann Mathias Schrck, Strada
Famianus, De Bello Belgico, as well as titles like
Rudimenta historica, Annales sacri et profani,
Epitome chronologica rerum hungaricarum.
Historia
Regni
Hungariae,
Specimen
Genealogico-pronologicum ad ilustrandam
prosopiam Habsburgo-Lotharingicam. In fact, it
is suggested a certain type of history cultivated
in gymnasiums, insisting on ecclesiastical and
lay history, universal and province history from
the heroic times of Greeks and Roman to
important moments from the European modern
and contemporary history. As in other cases, we
may notice a certain cultural identity indicating
the school legislation (Marza 1982-1982, 577605) (6) characteristic to the message of several
history textbooks that had circulated among
pupils and teachers in the Great Principality of
Transylvania during the Enlightenment era.
Libri geographici, as well as the socalled Artes Liberales represent another group of
books that may be identified in both catalogues.
Even if the categories include many books both
in Sibiu and Zlatna, we may find works as:
Mathias Bell, Compendium Geographiae
Hungariae, Geographia of Jnos Tomka Szszki, the famous Real Staats Zeitungs und
Lexicon of Johann Hbner, and also Atlas
Geograph[icus] sive Mappae Geogr[aphicae]
Deutscher Atlas of Franz Johann Joseph von
Reilly (Marza 1990, 169-170, 175, 176). Among
the books in the Zlatna gymnasium library we
were able to identify only Geographia written
by Jnos Tomka Szszki. But here there are
other interesting books: Mineralogia of
Johannes Fridwalski and De Metalurgia seu De
Metalis a natural presence (Marza 1972, 96-

97, 101, 102) if we take into account the

economic specificity of the town and its
surroundings.
Poetics and rhetoric were subjects with a
defined purpose in the educational system of the
gymnasiums in Transylvania (Norma regia
1781, 56-67, 69-72). This is the explanation for
the impressive number of books in the category
entitled Artes Liberales: Institutiones ad
eloquentiam, Method[us] parandae eloquentiae
written by Cyprianus Soarius, Nicolaus Ignarra,
De Palaestra (Oratoria), Orationes Sacrae
written by Johannes Ker. Molnr, the wellknown textbook Mythologia by Josephus
Philippus Hollius, Compedium antiquitatum of
Chrystophorus Cellarius, Praecepta stili bene
latini by Immanuel Johann Gerhard Schellerus,
Bauers textbook, which was often used,
Anleitung zum richti[gen] Ausdruck[en] der
latein[ischen] Sprache etc. These titles confer a
special note to the collection from Sibiu (Marza
1990, 170, 175). Among the books from the
mentioned category identified in Zlatna, there
are three representative titles for oratory and
rhetoric: Nicolaus Avacinus, Orationes, Carolus
Poreus, Orationes, Cyprianus Soarius, Rethorica
and Manuale Rethorum, as well as Tironianum
Eloquentiae, Bibliotheca Rethorum, Institutiones
Oratoriae, Institutiones ad Eloquentiam,
Syntaxis Ornata (Marza 1972, 94, 99-102).
The utility of dictionaries and lexicons
for the gymnasium education is beyond any
doubt. And that results from the presence of
some examples in those two catalogues, where
we find some representative dictionaria and
lexica. We have to mention several titles from
Sibiu:
Theodorus
Schrevelius,
Lexicon,
Dizzionario Imperiale, Mathaeus Pasor, Lexicon
latino-graeco-ungaricum, Ambrosius Calepinus,
Dictionarium, Phraseologia of Vagnerus,
Dictionarium of Josephus Marton, J. - F.
Nolterus, Lexicon antibarbarum (Marza 1990,
170, 175-176). On the other hand, in Zlatna
were identified books from the same category:
Dictionarium Tris, Lexicon Universale by
Fredericus Hoffmanus and others (Marza 1972,
102).
When we study the section Libri mixti
from the Sibiu catalogue we face an interesting
bookish standard, as we see works of
philosophy, arithmetic, chrestomathies etc. We
should mention the following: Johannes Ker.
Molnarius Phisiologicon; Alexius Vincenz
Parizek,
Erklrung
der
sonntglichen
Evangelien;
Loscanius,
Institutiones
philosophiae moralis; Pedro da Fonseca,
Institutiones dialecticae; Elementa Geometriae;

of national revival cf. Mrza, cole et nation (Les

coles de Blaj lpoque de la renaissance
nationale), p. 21, 155, 156, 158, 162, 168, 169, 188,
197, 224, 225; Idem, 1984-1985, 373-389.
(6) See also Norma regia, Cibinii, 1781, p. 56-61, 6872 (III-IV Librorum, argumentorum et temporibus
distributio
pro
classibus
Grammaticae
et
Humanitatis).

76

Jan Amos Comenius, Novus Orbis pictus

quadralingvis; Rechenkunst by Klausenberg;
Arithmetica
Claudiop[olitana];
Deutsche
Crestomatie by Jozsef (Imre) Cserei; Seibtius,
Practica exercitia (Marza 1972, 102) and others.
In the Zlatna catalogue there are also some
books that have to be included in the Libri mixti
category: Marcellus Palingenius, Zodiacus
Vitae; Elementa Matheseos Purae; Elementa
Algebrae; Jan Amos Comenius, Ianua trium
linguarum; Sylvia Parnassi; Pia Desideria;
Joseph
Staerker,
Kurzer
Abrisz
der
K[aiserlichen]
K[niglichen]
Zalathner
Schulen, Cibinium, 1836; Der neunzehnte April
des Jahres 1836 im Bergflecken Zalathna,
Hermannstadt, 1836; Das Manifest am 24-sten
May 1836, Claudiopoli, 1836; Anleitung zur
Rechenkunst zum Nutzen und Gebrauch der
Schulen, Prag, 1768; Auszug aus beiden Theilen
der Anleitung zum Rechnen, Hermannstadt,
1809; Michael Feder, Predigten auf alle
Festatge eines ganzen Jahres, Gratz, 1820;
Auszge aus den besten Journalen Europas,
Wien, 1793; Kriminal Gerichts Ordnung fr
Siebenbrgen, Hermannstadt, 1788 (Marza
1972, 99-101, 103) etc.
A bookish standard similar to the
gymnasium from Sibiu indicates other important
titles,
such
as:
Elenchus
Librorum
Humanisticorum Bibliothecae Regii Gymnasii
Cibiniensis, descoperit n anex la Catalogus
Librorum Communium in Residentia Suppresae
Societatis Jesu Cibiniensis repertorum, &
aestimatortum
in
Anno
1774
Conspectus[...](Marza 1978, 329-340). The list
of humanistic books at the gymnasium in Sibiu
covers 99 titles, 126 volumes of philology,
theology, history, philosophy etc. Actually, the
document indicates just a part of the books of
the former gymnasium, the one dedicated to
pupils from humanity classes (Marza 1978, 329340). However, there are more landmarks of the
Transylvanian education from the last decades
of the 18th century related to the stipulations of
the educational legislation, respectively in
Norma regia (1781) (Ibidem, 330-331).
The proposal for a comparative research
of the two school libraries from Transylvania,
starting
from
Elenchus
Librorum
Humanisticorum Bibliothecae Regii Gymnasii
Cibiniensis and Index Librorum Classicorum ad
Bibliothecam Gymnasii R[egii] Zalathnensis
spectantium imposes several conclusions. These
documents reflect in the most convincing way
that in the decades 3-4 of the 19th century the
state and the evolution of the libraries from the
acquiring way and data that proves the entrance

of books in libraries to the structure of the

collections, as well as the content of many
volumes. At the same time, the structure of the
two catalogues and especially the numerous
volumes of humanistic orientation delineate the
profile of the education at the Kings
gymnasium in Sibiu and Zlatna, where the
humanistic subjects (classical Greek and Latin
authors, history, poetics, rhetoric, grammar etc.)
were prevalent. In fact, the study of classics was
part of peoples education during the
Enlightenment era (Lyons 2011, 95-130).
However, there are also books of practical
inclination that indicate some tendencies toward
scientific orientation registered in the
Transylvanian education of the first half of the
19th century, including the Sibiu and Zlatna
gymnasiums. These educational institutions
were following the directions of the Aulic and
provincial educational legislation, as the titles
from the presented catalogues suggest. Other
gymnasiums of the Great Principality of
Transylvania from the Enlightenment times
were following the same legislation and
directions, and the Romanian gymnasium in Blaj
is another example in this respect (Marza 1987,
152-156). Other Transylvanian gymnasiums
should also be mentioned: Cluj, Oradea, TrguMure, Aiud, Ortie, Nsud etc. The classical
Greek and Latin culture prevails in the
educational curriculum, although other subjects
are also included. Such a cultural ideal with
political connotations was related to the
educational principles followed at Aulic and
provincial level (Ibidem, 33).
The organization and the content of the
books presented in catalogues of the Sibiu and
Zlatna gymnasiums responded to some cultural
imperatives imposed to Transylvanian Kings
gymnasiums. Other gymnasium libraries from
the same Romanian historical background of the
18th-19th centuries aligned to those principles (7).
They represent a special moment from the past
of the gymnasium libraries in Transylvania,
which may be attached to European librarian
innovations and practices of the Enlightenment
(8) (Barbier 2013, 217-224). Moreover, they
plead for the justness of Nicolae Iorgas
affirmations even after a century: [...] no list of
(7) For a certain cultural identity suggested in school
libraries in Wallachia of the Enlightenment era,
where the decisive role was held by the classical and
modern Greek culture, cf. Dima-Dragan 1965,
269290); Popescu-Teiusan 1964, 183-197; Parnuta
1960, 291-299.
(8) For analogies with previous situations, cf. Monok
2011, 192-203.

77

books is indifferent. We would like to have as

much as possible knowledge of souls, as much
as possible psychologies; we would need the
registration of the best and of the worst books,
of the wisest and of the most narrow-minded
authors in order to understand fully the need for
reading of a society, its orientation, its mores, its
seriousness or looseness toward the informed
and severe judgment of times (Iorga 1907,
129).

80), Joseph II (1780-90) and

Leopold
II
(1790-92).
Contributions Regarding the
Romanian-Austrian
Relations], Oradea, Mihai
Eminescu, 1994.
Marza, Iacob, Gimnaziul
Marza 1969
criesc din Zlatna (ncercare
de monografie) [The Kings
Gymnasium in Zlatna (An
Attempt of Monography)],
Alba Iulia, 1969.
Marza, Iacob, coala i
Marza 1987
naiune (colile de la Blaj n
epoca renaterii naionale)
[School and Nation (Schools
in Blaj in the Era of National
Revival)],
Cluj-Napoca,
Dacia, 1987.
Marza, Iacob, cole et nation
Marza 2005
(Les coles de Blaj lpoque
de la renaissance nationale),
Cluj-Napoca, CET, 2005.
Monok,
Istvn,
Les
Monok 2011
bibliothques et la lecture
dans le Bassin des Carpates,
1526-1750, Paris, Honor
Champion, 2011.
Munteanu, Petru, Monografia
Munteanu
liceului Gheorghe Lazr din
1968
Sibiu 1692 93 1957 68,
Sibiu, 1968.
Popovici,
Dimitrie,
La
Popovici
littrature
roumaine

1945
l'poque
des
lumires,
Sibiu, 1945.
David,
Supplex
Prodan 1984 Prodan,
Libellus Valachorum. Din
istoria
formrii
naiunii
romne. [From the History of
Formation of the Romanian
Nation], Bucureti, Editura
iinific i Enciclopedic,
1984.
Lucia,
Protopopescu Protopopescu,
Contribuii
la
istoria
1966
nvmntului
din
Transilvania
1774-1805
[Contributions to the History
of Education in Transylvania
1774-1805],
Bucureti,
Editura
Didactic
i
Pedagogic, 1966.
Ioan,
Istoricul
Stanciu 1943 Stanciu,
liceului Gheorghe Lazr din
Sibiu. 250 de ani de la
ntemeierea lui. 1652-1942

References
a. Books:
Albu 1974

Albu,
Nicolae,
Istoria
colilor
romneti
din
Transilvania ntre 18001867 [History of Romanian
Schools in Transylvania
between
1800-1867],
Bucureti, Editura
Pedagogic, 1974.

Didactic

Albu,
Nicolae,
Istoria
nvmntului romnesc din
Transilvania pn la 1800
[History
of
Romanian
Education in Transylvania till
1800], Blaj, Lumina, 1994.
Albulescu, Ion, Histoire de la
Albulescu
pense et de la pratique
2006
pdagogiques
roumaines,
Cluj-Napoca, CST, 2006.
Barbier 2013 Barbier, Frdric, Historire
des
bibliothques
dAlexandrie
aux
bibliothques virtuelles, Paris,
Armand Colin, 2013.
Bolla 1798- Bolla, Martinus, Primae liniae
historiae universalis, I-III,
1799
Cluj, 1798-1799.
Boros, G., Nagyszebeni llami
Boros 1896
fgymnazium
trtnelme,
Nagyszebeni, Reisesenberger
Ad., 1896.
Malinas 1994 Malinas, Ioan Marin, Situaia
nvmntului bisericesc al
romnilor
n
contextul
reformelor colare din timpul
domniei mprtesei Maria
Tereza
(1740-80),
a
mprailor Iosif al II-lea
(1780-90) i Leopold al II-lea
(1790-92). Contribuii privind
relaiilor
romno-austriece
[The Situation of the Clerical
Education in the Context of
School Reforms during the
Reign of Maria Tereza (1740-

Albu 1994

78

*** 1777

*** 1983

*** 2002

[History of the Lyceum

Gheorghe Lazar in Sibiu. 250
Years from its Foundation
1652-1942], Sibiu, Dacia
Traian, 1943.
Norma regia pro scholis
Magni
Principatus
Transilvaniae Josephi II.
Caesar. Aug. Magni Principis
Trans. ivssv edita M. DCC.
LXXXI, Cibinii, Typis Martini
Hochmeister,
Ratio
edacationis totiusque rei
litterariae
Regnum
Hungariae
et
provincias
eidem adnexas, Vindobonae,
1777.
Istoria nvmntului din
Romania Vol. I (de la origini
pn la 1821) [History of
Education in Romania. Vol. I
(from Origins to 1821)],
Bucureti, Editura Didactic i
Pedagogic, 1983.
Istoria romnilor. Vol. VI.
Romnii ntre Europa clasic
i Europa Luminilor (17111821) [History of Romanians.
Vol. VI. Romanians between
Classical Europe and Europe
of
Enlightenment
(17111821)], Bucureti, Editura
Enciclopedic, 2002.

Bittay 1923

Dima-Drgan
1965

Iorga 1907

Marza 1972

b. Chapters in books:
Bozac,
Ileana,
Pompiliu
Bozac,
Teodor,
nvmntul
Teodor 1966
romnesc din Transilvania n
secolul al XVIII-lea i la
nceputul secolului al XIXlea.
In:
Din
istoria
pedagogiei
romneti
[Romanian Education in
Transylvania in the 18th
Century and the Beginning of
the 19th Century. In: From
the Romanian Pedagogical
History],
II,
Bucureti,
Editura
Didactic
i
Pedagogic, 1966.
Lyons, Martyn, Iluminismul
Lyons 2011
i masele [Enlightenment
and the Masses]. In: Istoria
crilor [History of Books],
Bucureti, Art, 2011.

Marza 1972

Marza 1972
c. Papers in periodical journals:

79

Bittay, Arpad, Martin Bolla

(1750-1831) i aa numitul
Supplex Libellus [Martin
Bolla (1750-1831) and the
so-called
Supplex
Libellus]. In:
Anuarul
Institutului
de
Istorie
Naional din Cluj [Annals
of the Institute of National
History in Cluj], II, 1923.
Dima-Drgan,
Corneliu,
Contribuii
la
istoricul
Bibliotecii Naionale de la
Colegiul
Sf.
Sava
[Contributions to the History
of the National Library of the
College St. Sava]. In: Revista
arhivelor
[Journal
of
Archives], VIII, 2, 1965.
Iorga, Nicolae, nc o dat:
ce se cetia pe vremuri la noi
(Biblioteca
lui
Vasile
Drghici) [Once Again:
What Our People Were
Reading
Formerly
(The
Library of Vasile Draghici)].
In:
Floarea darurilor
[Flower of Gifts], II, 9, 1907.
Marza, Iacob, Avram Iancu
elev la Regium Gymnasium
Zalathense
(1837-1841)
[Avram Iancu as Pupil at
Regium
Gymnasium
Zalathense (1837-1841)]. In:
Revista
de
pedagogie
[Journal of Pedagogy], XXI,
9-10, 1972.
Marza,
Iacob,
Index
Librorum Classicorum ad
Bibliothecam
Gymnasii
R[egii]
Zalathnensis
spectantium
/Biblioteca
gimnaziului
criesc
din
Zlatna. O contribuie la
istoricul bibliotecilor colare
din
Transilvania
[The
Library of the Kings
Gymnasium in Zlatna. A
Contribution to the History of
the Gymnasium Libraries in
Transylvania]. In: Anuarul
Institutului de Istorie i
Arheologie Cluj [The Annals
of the Institute of History and
Archeology Cluj], XV, 1972.
Marza, Iacob, Elevi ai
gimnaziului criesc din Zlatna

(I) [Pupils of the Kings

Gymnasium in Zlatna (I)].
In: Apulum, X, 1972.
Marza, Iacob, Protocollum
Marza 1972
Regii Gymnasii Zalathnensis
(Unele probleme privind
importana
protocoalelor
colare) [(Some Problems
Regarding the Importance of
School
Protocols)].
In:
Sargetia, IX, 1972.
Marza, Iacob, Elevi ai
Marza 1977
gimnaziului criesc din Zlatna
(II) [Pupils of the Kings
Gymnasium in Zlatna (II)].
In: Apulum, XV, 1977.
Marza, Iacob, Elenchus
Marza 1978
Librorum
Humanisticorum
Bibliothecae Regii Gymnasii
Cibiniensis /Lista crilor
umaniste
a
bibliotecii
gimnaziului criesc din Sibiu
[The List of Humanistic
Books of the Library of the
Kingss
Gymnasium
in
Sibiu]. In: Apulum, XVI,
1978.
Marza 1982- Marza, Iacob, Manuale de
istorie folosite la colile din
1983
Transilvania ntre mijlocul
secolului ai XVIIl-lea i
mijlocul secolului al XlX-lea
[History Textbooks Used in
Transylvanian
Schools
between the 18th and the
middle of the 19th centuries].
In: Sargetia, XVI - XVII,
1982 -1983.
Marza 1984- Marza, Iacob, Lectori ai
manualului de istorie a lui a
1985
lui Martin Bolla: semnificaii
culturale
i
politice
[Lecturers of Martin Bollas
History Textbook: Cultural
and Political Significances].
In: Sargetia, XVI-XVIII,
1984-1985.
Marza, Iacob, Catalogus
Marza 1990
Librorum Gymnasii R[egii]
Cibiniensis
/Catalogul
bibliotecii gimnaziului criesc
din Sibiu [The Catalogue of
the Kings Gymnasium in
Sibiu]. In: Revista arhivelor
[Journal of Archives], LXVII,
2, 1990.
Marza, Iacob, Libraries and
Marza 2013

Parnuta 1960

PopescuTeiusan 1964

Book Collections of the

Teachers of Blaj during
Enlightenment. In: Historical
Yearbook, X, 2013.
Parnuta, Gheorghe, tiri noi
despre primele biblioteci
colare [News on the
First School Libraries]. In:
Studii
i
cercetri
de
bibliologie
[Studies
and
Research of Bibliology], III,
1960.
Popescu-Teiusan,
Ioan,
Vechea
bibliotec
a
colegiului popular Nicolae
Blcescu din Craiova [The
Old Library of the Popular
College Nicolae Balcescu in
Craiova]. In: Studii i
cercetri
de
bibliologie
[Studies and Research of
Bibliology], VI, 1964.

d. Documents from libraries:

Biblioteca
Naional
a
Romniei
Filiala
Batthyaneum Alba Iulia [The
National Library of Romania,
Branch Batthyaneum Alba
Iulia], Protocollum Regii
Gymnasii Zalathanensis, XI35 a.

***

80

Laocoons Prints. The Meaning of Plaster Casts of Antique

Sculptures From a History of Art Perspective

Andi MIHALACHE
Researcher I, PhD, Institute of History, Iai, Romania
E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract. To the disappointment of the amateurs of facile classifications, the article shows
that originality was not looked after as a purpose in its own, as it entered the stage as a passe-partout
notion, with the participation of which imitation was explained in a more honourable way. There are,
accordingly, two coexisting tendencies, and none of them prevails; originality is rather an unexpected
guest, a concept with a restrained public. It represents a tacit counterweight to the popularity of
surrogates and to the re-canonizations of the mimesis. But the most important aspect is that this kind of
originality does not oppose imitation, being rather synonymous with the new. The people of the 18th19th centuries were not rushing to decide what is and what is not authentic, preferring to discover what
was left to imitate. The originality was thus born as a side effect, on the edges of a very old art of
reproduction, infinitely re-conceptualized and redefined.
Keywords: Greek statues, art history, plaster casts, restorations, aesthetics, truth and beauty
first, the King of France, claimed it was his,
from the spoils of the war (Vasari 1968, 6263).(1) But in order to retain the original statues,
the Pope Leon X, commissioned Baccio
Bandinelli (1493-1560) to make a copy of them.
The artist wanted to make the copies nicer than
the originals and it therefore took him more time
than expected (Vasari 1968, 63). So when
Clement VII, from the Medici family, became
Pope, he called (1532) Giovanni Angelo
Montorsoli (1506-1563) to help and he gave
Laocoon the right arm which he was missing
(Kultermann 1977, 111-112).(2) Clement VII
was ecstatic about the copy and did not want to
give it to Francis I, so he sent it to Florence and
gave other antiquities to the French. The real
right arm, discovered in 1905, was only
accepted as being the original one in 1950.
Eckart Marchand added that during Julius IIs
reign as Pope, Jacopo Sansovino (1486-1570)
a specialist in festive decorations and ephemeral
ceremonial sculpture also made a wax copy of
Laocoon, which paved the way for a whole

The hypothesis of this article, related to

the history of historiography, was suggested by
Marcel Sendrail: Even if we take into
consideration a well-defined type of art, the
norm is not shown with the sincerity that the
doctrinaires would like. There is always a
surviving hesitation between the normal and
abnormal. And it is precisely in this indecisive
zone that the feeling of beauty chooses to satisfy
its wishes, not without a slight malicious intent.
A long time ago someone noticed, for example,
that if archaisms accommodate perfectly the
conventions of verticality and symmetry, any art
that searches for maturity, searches for
perfection in imperfection and seeks to put in
those bodies small deviations through which it
believes the works of art will gain an extra
charm. Let us measure, with regard to Greek
Statues, the road taken in half a century from the
Angry Woman at the Acropolis to the praying
Women of Barberini, and we will see how the
aesthetic emotion is born from the imperceptible
contestation of a too strict orthodoxy (Sendrail
1983, 174). I therefore decided the title for this
chapter should be The prints of Laocoon,
because of the fate of the group of statues that
was discovered in 1506 in a Roman vineyard.
Giorgio Vasari wrote that in 1515, Francis the

(1) Details about this famous copying episode can be

found in Giorgio Vasaris book, in the chapter about
Baccio Bandinelli.
(2) A version of Laocoons missing arm was also
made by Michelangelo, but this was lost.

81

series of copies and replicas (Marchand 2010,

67-68).
Looking through an art dictionary, I
found a succinct definition of a cast: a faithful
reproduction of a sculpture, made in relief,
ronde-bosse, like those parts of a human body
(cheek, hand, foot, etc.), obtained by a print (in
soft wax, a mix of plaster and water, glue and
resin), which gives a negative mould into which
the plaster cast is made (fr. moulage, it. calco,
germ. Abguss, Gypsabguss, engl. plaster cast)
(Rachiteanu 1995, 294). In Jean-Jacques
Wunenburgers opinion, a cast is the
isomorphic reproduction of the model, the
most faithful form of mimetic images
(Wunenburger 2004, 72). It re-emerged when, in
May 1968, Parisian students destroyed several
works from the museum of the cole Nationale
des Beaux-Arts, which determined the
authorities to move what was salvaged to
Versailles, two years later (Pinatel 1992, 307).
Amongst these was a plaster cast of the famous
Hercules Farnese, whose feet and left calf had
been destroyed by the protesters (Pinatel 1992,
312). Unfortunately, even these lines have been
taken from an article: Faut-il dtruire les
moulages? (Pinatel 1992, 310) (3) The question
in the title challenged us to go back in time, to
lay out a history of attitudes towards the
dilemma of original-copy. We will thus be able
to reveal the way in which the theory of mimesis
was perceived and applied in different stages of
the history of sculpture and justify or, depending
on the case, discredit the controversial habit of
copying, in its different aspects (casts,
imitations, reproductions, replicas, emulations)
(Townsend
2000,
20).
( 4)
From
a
methodological point of view, this procedure did
not demonstrate, as Dabney Townsend thought,
an interest in the way these objects are perceived
now; it rather suggests the need to integrate their

entire history in the idea that we have of them

today (Townsend 2000, 166).
At the beginning of the modern era, art
history was saved out of symbolical replicas
rather than from real remains. Giorgio Vasaris
(1511-1574) description of the sculptor Lione
Lionis home (1509-1590) is relatively wellknown: Going though the large door, through a
small room, one gains access to an inside
courtyard in the middle of which there is, resting
on four columns, the equestrian statue of the
Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, a plaster cast
made immediately after the one that can be
found on the Capitol. By means of this statue,
Lione wished to submit his house to Marcus
Aurelius. [] In his beautiful and spacious
house, Lione also has, cast in plaster, all the
most important works of art, ancient or
contemporary, that he could get hold of (Vasari
1968, 302). Seeing as we are talking about the
house of a professional sculptor, maybe Vasaris
comments are not relevant to the magnitude of
his taste for making things look like antiques.
One thing is certain, that the people of the
renaissance did not necessarily copy a certain
style, but they honoured its age (Townsend
2000, 160). In other words, the duplicates of the
important masterpieces did not come directly
from the past but they made the past attainable
(Lowenthal 2002, 331). And the casts from Italy,
given to the King Francis I and made into
bronze statues at Fontainebleau (before March
1547, when the death of the monarch stopped
the works) suddenly awakened the interest of the
other European Courts: suddenly, having such
copies was an attribute of the princely powers,
like hammered coins (Cupperi 2010, 82). Walter
Cupperi suggested that, first and foremost, these
copies were attractive as garden decorations and
technical achievements, and only secondly as
artistic fetishes; at the beginning a copy of a
copy, made by the French, was enough, after
which only a copy of the original was accepted.
The fact that the le vallet de chambre du roi
was Francesco Primaticcio from Bologna also
led to the rumours that he had a part to play in
the Kings interest in the allantica style and the
Italian masters (Cupperi 2010, 83). Helped by
helpful intermediaries like Primaticcio, these
artists made themselves necessary to the North
of the Alps and opened up a prosperous business
selling plaster casts (Schreiter 2010, 140-141).(5)

(3) ***, Revue de lArt 1992, pp. 5-9. One of the

main reasons for their destruction was the fragility of
these objects that made them hard to preserve. The
old casts were strengthened on the inside with reeds,
chestnut tree wood or even metal rods, this made
them breakable at the slightest movement and
susceptible to damage caused by humidity.
(4) Dabney Townsend believes that a copy is just a
small case of imitation. He says the following: One
of the main distinctions between a copy and an
imitation is simply the fact that sometimes the
imitations are better than the original. Although a
copy cannot do anything more than the original, an
imitation can. All copies can be seen as imitations,
but it would be wrong to believe that all imitations
are copies.

(5) The travels of the Italians through an antiquarian

Europe were followed by Charlotte Schreiter. She
discovered that the ever increasing interest that the
German world had for these casts, especially after

82

The proof that the French were great creators of

art even in the Renaissance period, is clear from
the research done by Walter Cupperi, who
documented the Jngling case: a bronze statue
representing a young man (hence the title) that
was discovered in 1502 (Cupperi 2010, 87-90).
After the Emperor Maximilian I of the Habsburg
dynasty showed a lack of interest, it was bought
by Matthus Lang, in 1519, who was the
counsellor and bishop of Salzburg. Lang died in
1520, however and for three decades the statue
remained the property of the diocese. Over those
three decades, the taste for antiques became a
synonym for nobility and the statue aroused the
interest of Ferdinand I of the Habsburgs, the
archduke of Austria and grandson of
Maximilian. He therefore requested for the
Jngling statue to be given to him by the new
bishop of Salzburg, Ernest of Bavaria. Because
Ernests two brothers were also vying for the
duchy of Bavaria adds Walter Cupperi ,
giving Ferdinand what he asked for was a good
way for the bishop to ensure he remained on
good terms with the Habsburgs. In January
1551, with the approval of the church, Ernest
had to have a copy made for himself and to send
the original to Ferdinand. But a letter came from
Maria of the Habsburgs, Ferdinands sister and
the governor of the Netherlands, which changed
the destination of the Young Man. Knowing
that Maria was fascinated by antiques,
Ferdinand had given her the statue, on the
condition that, during the Diet of Augsburg
(autumn-winter 1551), Maria would support him
in winning the crown of the Holy RomanoGerman Empire, against Philip II of Spain, the
son of Charles V (Cupperi 2010, 90). It was time
for the archaeological enthusiasm of the
humanists to settle down with the political
magnificence and the joy of showing that one
was up to date with the legends of Mount
Olympus, especially those made out of marble.
The ambassadors from the Eternal City were
therefore required to inform their masters when
an ancient marble statue was newly discovered.
And the decisions of the monarchs depended on
the amount of rivalry that was ever-growing: in

1540, Primaticcio brought the King of France 33

crates of plaster casts, the copies ordered by the
Emperor Maximilian II (a Hercules, an
Aphrodite and a Mercury, as well as the bust of
Socrates) were transported in 1569, on a bier
(Delumeau 1995, 111).
Under
the
influence
of
the
archaeological enthusiasm, mimetic and antiqueloving tendencies grew (Bazin 1968, 79).
Working in Rome, the French sculptor Nicolas
Cordier (1576-1612) showed off his passion for
Greco-roman art by creating sculptures that were
made out of fragments of marble he found whilst
he searched archaeological sites (Bazin 1968,
79). Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), who
was also a part of this trend, was making his
debut as an artist by restoring ancient works of
art like Ares Ludovisi (a Roman copy of an
original Greek statue from the Antonine period)
(Ibidem).(6) In order to underline the
specificities of the way of thinking, which
defines the renaissance, it seems useful to us to
mention one of the truths that was common
knowledge in the 16th century: being a restorer
was so badly paid, it was more profitable to be a
falsifier (Arnau 1970, 79). It is interesting that
this activity did not stir up indignation and was
not considered a fraud (Arnau 1970, 77). Quite
to the contrary, the falsifier was appreciated
more when his work of art was more
convincing, as they appreciated his hard work
and the skills it took to imitate the ancient artists
and to be almost on their level (Townsend 2000,
159). If in the Middle Ages, art was a
superficial termination of material (U. Eco),
during the renaissance, the simple act of copying
statue became a sort of godly art. The late
renaissance not only believes that the world is
full of life, but it also wants to translate that
vitality into images, said Eugenio Battisti
(Battisti 1982, 218). It was no longer about
competing against Creation, but about directing
its metamorphoses, about mastering the five
elements in a way that would enable artists to
compete against nature. Maybe the clearest case
of confusion between mimesis, copying and
falsifying is the so-called Sleeping Cupid by
Michelangelo. Lorenzo of Medici suggested he
sold it in Rome but not before making it look
older, by burying it in earth filled with acid. The
sculpture was backdated by 1500 years and the
antique was then sold for 200 ducats to Riario,
the Cardinal of San Giorgio (Battisti 1982, 218).
This episode, which is well-known, is classified

1760, led to the riches of the Ferrari brothers. She

mentions that in the 18th century, the requirements
were already that the copies were to be made after
the originals, the Italians raised suspicions by the
speed at which they sent the orders off. Seeing as
their businesses in Germany were made up of many
intermediaries, they did not return repeatedly to Italy
to make their copies time after time: they asked for
the casts of the casts already made for the Venetian
collection of Farsetti.

(6) He completed the right leg of the statue and it is

rumoured that he added the little Cupid.

83

in what Victor Ieronim Stoichi would call the

Pygmalion effect or a historical anthropology
of simulacrum (Stoichi 2011, 114). Stoichi
makes a difference between a copy and a
simulacrum, as he writes a complex piece about
this subject: a copy knows its origins off by
heart, whereas the simulacrum can only just
mimic them. It is a made object, an artefact, it is
something else, using the resemblance effect,
he underlines patiently the stability of the
western representations, based, on nothing less
than the idea of mimesis (Stoichi 2011, 7).
The creation of fakes also met a need
caused by one of the great aesthetic prejudices,
which considered that an incomplete statue was
frustrating and must be completed. As ancient
sculptures were considered in the neo-platonic
spirit examples of trans-historical perfection, it
was inconceivable that such archetypes could
exist in a limbless or broken form (ForeroMendoza 2002, 34-38).(7) Through Toma
dAquinos organic aesthetics, the 16th century
had received the three criteria by which to judge
a work of art: integritas, proportio and claritas.
And if we believe Umberto Eco, that integritas,
especially, must be understood like a presence,
in the organic entirety, of every part that fights
to define it as such []. A human body will be
misshapen if one of its limbs is missing; and we
consider mutilated people ugly because they are
lacking the ratio between the parts and the
whole (Eco 1999, 111). The validity of this
theory in the following centuries is insisted upon
by exegetes: the clergymen and laymen of the
renaissance showed a great delight in classic
sculptures, says Frank Arnau. Deteriorated

statues troubled their aesthetic sense. They sent

ancient statues to be repaired; even the lobe of
an ear could be replaced. Everything had to be
perfect from an anatomical point of view
(Arnau 1970, 78). Hans Sedlmayr wrote the
following: It is clear that, from the 16th century,
busts were sculptural projects, they appeared
before, from an outward point of view, busts as
an autonomous art form. But it is clear that the
baroque busts are always projects and nobody
ever thought about using the project for a final
work. [] This is also valid for classicism and
romanticism and it is even more valid for the
earlier periods, - the Middle Ages and Antiquity.
As an autonomous artistic theme, Busts seem to
have made their appearance for the first time
with Rodin (Sedlmayr 2001, 128-129).
Plaster casts did not put the viewer in
the presence of what once was, but they had the
advantage of reminding people of a prototype, of
canonising it and popularising it, making it
ubiquitous (Sicca et Yarrington 2000, 4-8).(8) If
the original made it easier to be in touch with the
past that it came from, its copy would not offer
that lost era, but would made it easy to imagine,
describe and understand. It must be said that in
the 17th-18th centuries there was a whole fashion
of collecting casts: enabling people to imagine
works of art that were hard to see, they
contributed to the remaking of a chronological
timeline of the stages of art history. If a link was
made between them and other objects, the copy
would succeed in doing what the original a
tribute to the idea of uniqueness could not
offer. The cast became the bearer of historicity,
meaning that it started by illustrating archetypes
or typologies and ended up suggesting evolution.
The first collection of such objects did not have
a problem with their authenticity, but with the
development of knowledge (Lowenthal 2002,
331). They were not interested in empathising
with the relic but in informing the spectator by
giving him the most faithful image possible of
the original work. The museum was described as
being scientifically interesting and not
aesthetically-affectively interesting; copying a
work of art was also a way of taking a step back
from the moment the original was created in
(Lowenthal 2002, 344). As Lowenthal said, the
copies give meaning to the past but do not make
it actual. And if we do not put them in their
historical context, they can no longer say what

(7) The author talks about Phaidros, demonstrating

that in Platos conception, beauty was a characteristic
that came from the intelligible and eternal essences. It
had nothing to do with what was empirical,
dominated by mixtures, contingencies and hazards,
which bang against each other and degrades each
other. Earthly beauty did not have her substance; it
was a reflection of a superior permanent and stable
existential register. The main symptom of this
immutable beauty was an untouchable integrity. A
man-made object could not aspire to this statute if it
were not, first and foremost whole, undamaged. The
ontological definition given to beauty was taken a
step further by Aristotle, in his antithesis between
form and substance: form implies order, reason, and
perfection whilst substance means the opposite
chaos, lack of balance, imperfection. As a
consequence, beauty was the same as formal
perfection, harmony, plenitude, balance, and ugliness
was always maintained by incompleteness, maimed
bodies, alterations, dislocations and the instability of
forms.

(8) At the beginning, the English were satisfied with

some small copies brought by the travellers from the
18th century who had left on their so called Grand
Tour.

84

bit of history caused them to be sculpted. And

by not re-making their past, we cannot
understand the efforts of the people, who at the
end of the 19th century, fought to get as many
casts as possible from the big museums of the
world. Their story is hard for us to understand.
This is how, at the end of the 17th
century and all through the following one,
classicism hesitated between an indirect, idealist
or summarizing knowledge, gained from the
copies, on the one hand, and direct, optical and
exhaustive knowledge coming from the originals
on the other hand (Himmelmann 1984, 204).
Caught between artistic and archaeological
interests, the casts had the advantage of either
the meditational reception of the aesthetician, or
the imitative investigation of the archaeologist or
student of the Belle Arte (Himmelmann 1984,
120-121). It was endlessly exposed either to
sensory effusions, typical of travellers and art
amateurs, or to the completing, recuperating
eyes of the scientist (Himmelmann 1984, 204).
In the first case, the viewer identifies himself,
enthusiastically with a used and maimed original
work of art, but which he has finally managed to
see for himself (Menant 2011, 262-265).(9) In
the second case, the archaeologist, collection or
museum curator copied the work of art in order
to complete it with the missing parts, and, last
but not least, to integrate it in a temporal
succession, in a certain school, a current, an era.
By making a cast, they took a step back from the
work of art; they put it into history and made its
image available to a multitude of curious people,
who wished to study it, to date it, to put it in
catalogues, to compare it (Levy 1997, 88114).(10) The reproduction was not a double, but

an interpretation of the prototype (Delon 2011,

284-285).(11) It uprooted the work of art,
making it just a message, reduced as much as
possible down to the essential. The original was
in this way depersonalised, and forced to
integrate into different artistic genealogies,
which were different to the one it came from
initially (Himmelmann 1984, 112). This is how
the number of different pieces in your collection
became more important than how unique each
one was, says Himmelman. Plaster casts were
still very useful in collections and museums of
the 19th century because they perpetuated the
meaning of the work of art, not the authenticity
of the material out of which it was made
(Himmelmann 1984, 169). Besides, the cost of
the original had not grown due to the apparition
of copies. That only happened once there was a
mechanical reproduction of whole batches of
copies (Benjamin 2002, 109-110).(12) An
important role in the apparition of these new
sensitivities was played by the apparition of
copyright laws, that covered the works of the
artists, how they could be used, totally or
partially by third parties (Maltese 1979, 114).
Until then, casts had had an
incontestable prestige and had been treated by
classicists as a work of art in its own right: often
they completed a prototype that was possibly
maimed, maintaining its memory, or more
correctly, the idea that had created it
(Himmelmann 1984, 175-176). To complete
means, for the moment, to give meaning to.
Once upon a time, repairing a statue, which
today would make many people indignant, gave
Benvenuto Cellini the occasion to enchant the
not met with any more enthusiasm for fear that the
replica would have an effect upon the aura of the
original. As Walter Benjamin put it, years later, the
first maintained the exhibitional value of his opera,
whereas the Church held onto its cultural value.
(11) In Diderots vision, art no longer reproduced
what was real, but expressed the way in which it was
perceived. It was not the artist who reinvented reality
when he created, but rather; reality was reinvented in
the eyes of the viewer, when he saw the sculpture or
the painting.
(12) Walter Benjamin looks through reproduction
techniques, showing that the manual ones did not
have any effect on the authority of the original.
Really iconoclastic was the mechanical reproduction,
a photo, for example, because it was much less
dependent on the prototype. This reproduction could
take a copy to places where the original could never
go. Moreover, reproduction in batches cancelled out
the quality of event tied to any work of art but also
the idea of it being a witness of history, because it
modernises it and cuts out its ancientness.

(9) It was the time when the so-called art critics had
to write about works of art which many of their
readers would never be able to see. Writing about
these analyses was one of the procedures by which
the unattainable works of art became visible.
(10) The idea that copying something sometimes
meant taking a step back from the prototype can be
seen in the case of the opposition to the reproduction
of the statues from the holy places: they had a ritual
value which, after the apparition of copies, was
degraded to the statute of exhibitional value. The
existence of a copy made the original more secular.
The article discusses a contentious question from the
beginning of the 18th Century, between Pierre Legros,
a sculptor, the author of the statue of Stanislas
Kostka, and the Jesuits from the church of Sant
Andrea of Quirinale. The idea of the artist of moving
the sculpture from a sacred place, which was difficult
to access for visitors, to a non-scared but easily
accessible place aroused the indignation of the
monks. The idea of making a copy of the statue was

85

duke Cosimo I of Medici: ... it is a statue of

Greek marble and represents a real marvel; I do
not recall ever having seen amongst the antique
statues such a beautifully sculpted boys face.
This is why I suggest to your Excellency, that I
repair his head, arms and legs myself. I shall add
onto him an eagle so that we can give him the
name of Ganymede. Although it is not fitting for
a man of my qualifications to repair statues
this being the job of a mender the majesty of
this great artist forces me to serve it. []
Around the same time, some antique statues
were discovered near Arezzo, amongst which
was the Chimera, that is to say the bronze lion
which can be seen in one of the rooms next to
the Large room of the dukes palace; with the
Chimera they found a multitude of smaller
statues, made from bronze, covered in earth and
rust, each one of them had a head or arms or legs
missing. The duke found great pleasure in sitting
down and cleaning them up himself, with the
help of a small jewellers chisel. [] A few
evenings later, the duke put me to work again,
so I started to make the missing limbs for the
statues (s.n. A.M) (Cellini 1959, 397, 424425).(13) But the renaissance admiration for the
ancient artists has never led to a monotonous
plagiarism of the Great Model. E.H. Gombrich
saw in these copying exercises an effort to
purify the Greco-Roman inheritance. The
medieval barbarianisms were set to one side and
they saved themselves through reproducing and
re-contextualising a multitude of patterns or
sculptural processes that were truly antique
(Gombrich 1981, 239). For example, they would
take the scene of a man falling off a horse from
Traians Column and was adapted to other
sculptures but with different attitudes or with
extra objects like a shield that hid the origins
(Gombrich 1981, 243). Through such imitations
and especially assimilations the allantica style
was born. This style required a certain selection
and a large amount of generalisation; this is why
it was recommended to artists in the second half
of the 18th century to overcome their accidental
and fortuitous perceptions, thus drawing nearer

to the ideal (Hobson 1997, 580). Imitation no

longer risked uselessly copying nature which
was what Hegel had feared (Hegel 1966, 68).(14)
Such a danger existed, even when the sculptures
of antique inspiration were only ordered to
decorate the French gardens and their
supervised landscapes. In the park of the Marly
castle, Diderot realised that in a garden there
should not be many statues, but here there seem
to be too many. Statues should be considered
beings that like solitude and who seek for it like
poets, philosophers and lovers do, and such
beings should not be found at every corner
(Diderot 1982, 36).(15) And, discussing a subject
closer to what we are looking at, Goethe proved
in 1769, that the difference between original and
duplicate obtained through casting was not as
bad as nowadays: the latter seemed to be a
promoter or a lawyer for the former.
Otherwise, they would not have aided the
meditations of the scholars, and their desire to
come back later, to verify their first impressions.
I arrived in Mannheim he tells , I curiously
rushed to visit the collection of antique art of the
city. From Leipzig, due to the works of
Winckelmann and Lessing, I had heard talk
about these important works of art, but I had
seen too few of them. Apart from Laocoon and
the faun with cymbals, there were no other
plaster casts in the Academys collections. [] I
received a warm welcome from director
Verschaffeldts. One of his collaborators opened
the room for me and then left me alone to
observe and rejoice. [] The splendid statues of
the antiquity were not only lined up against the
walls, but also in the middle of the room, in no
particular order, so they seemed to make up a
forest of statues, an ideal assembly, through
which you had to make your way, in order to get
anywhere. By opening or closing the curtains,
the light was projected in the best way onto
these amazing figures, which could also be
moved by turning their pedestals. [] After
studying so many sublime works of art, my taste
for ancient architecture could not help but be
aroused. I found the plaster copy of a capital of
the Rotonda and I do not deny that as I observed
the large and elegant leaves of acanthine, my
admiration for Nordic architecture started to

(13) It is important to mention that Ganymede was an

extremely good-looking young man that even Zeus
had fallen in love with. This is why the father of gods
transformed into an eagle that took the boy to
Olympus. In Cellinis time, it was not the accuracy
with which you restored a statue that was important,
but the esoteric aspects: the knowledge of the
symbolical substratum of the work of art, the
allusions to Greek mythology. Any work of art,
however small, was a good reason to show your
knowledge of the Classical Antiquity.

(14) Winckelmann, filled with the contemplation of

the old ideals, opened up the way for a new
perception in the study of art, freeing it from the
points of view that ordinary goals offered, and also
from those of the simple imitation of nature (s.n.
A.M.).
(15) This is the letter addressed to Sophie Volland on
10th May 1759.

86

wane (s.n. A.M.) (Goethe 1967, 66-68).

Goethes story reminds us somewhat of Diderot:
we can see that those storehouses for casts
(easily made into impressive places by means of
the curtains and the mobile pedestals) were not
meant to receive a large public. Although they
belonged to the Academy, they were at that
point hoarding them privately, and they were
only available for the solitary pleasure of
collectors or a couple of curious people. They
gained popularity gradually, towards the end of
the 18th century.
Although Greek art was supreme for
Winckelmann, he did not agree with the copying
of sculptures as a goal per se, with no critical
judgement. He did not share either the opinion
of his French counterparts, who, a century
before him despised spontaneity and considered
the idea of originality as something bizarre or
ridiculous (Mortier 1997, 811). Quite the
opposite, his conception of the ideal beauty as a
representation of the general beauty proves to
us that he saw in the reproduction of the statues
a method of synthesis and harmonization of the
best works of art of the ancients. For this reason,
he thought that eclecticism and compilation
were somewhat useful as they brought together
the beauty spread out in original fragments, but
that were isolated and incoherent: just like the
bee that gathers the nectar from many different
flowers, the idea of beauty is not limited to one
single individual beauty, like many of the
ancient and modern poets ideas about beauty
state, and as todays artists seem to believe, but
seek to reunite the beauty from the chosen forms
of
many
different
beautiful
bodies
(Winckelmann 1985, 182-183). Combining,
hypothetically, the head of a first statue with the
torso of a second one and the arms of the third,
would suggest a hierarchy of the most beautiful
works of art ever made by the Greeks. His top
went into the finest details, however, down to
the locks of hair, the eyebrows or the folds of
the clothes. To copy a sculpture was, in his
opinion, a sort of prize for the artist who created
the work, a modest form of museumification. On
one hand, what was new seemed to him like an
epi-phenomenon of the old, an imitation; but
on the other hand, appearances of ancientness
should not be made a fetish, as they often hid
late copies of a prototype. He put an equal sign
between a new thing and degradation, what
bothered him the most were tricks and
duplicates that were made to look older and
which mislead him: a statue that seems
Etruscan or from an era before Greek art is not
always authentic: it can be a copy or an

imitation of an older work of art, which was a

model to several Greek artists in different times
[]. Or, if we are talking about statues of gods,
which, judging by other signs and reasons
cannot be as old as they seem, it could be that
the author has adopted an older style in order to
awaken more veneration (Winckelmann 1985,
257). And compared to the times of Benvenuto
Cellini, when completing statues was just a
small detail in the scheme of things, the time of
Winckelmann showed the negative character of
this renaissance habit. This is what he wrote in a
book published in 1764: the most errors of the
experts on Antiquitys statues come from their
overlooking the add-ons and restorations;
because they could not make a distinction
between what was added on to replace bits that
had deteriorated or been lost, and what was
really ancient (Winckelmann 1985, 47) and he
carried on to say: ...research into art has always
been my main interest and it needed to start with
the ability to discern what was modern from
what was ancient, what was authentic from
replacements or add-ons. I immediately
discovered the overall rule that secondary parts
of statues, especially arms and legs must be
considered, generally speaking, as being
modern, this applies to all the parts that were
added on; it was hard for me at the beginning
however, to decide by myself about the heads of
some of the statues (Winckelmann 1985, 122).
This was an acceptable situation, compared to
what Diderot heard from an expert: [] Baron
Gleynach has travelled much. He is the one who
made conversation flow upon his return. He
spoke to us about [] the barbarism in the
Court of Sicily, which left a triumphal carriage
from the Antiquity, covered in bas-reliefs and
horses, in the hands of some monks, to melt it
down and make some bells (Diderot 1982, 38).
A few changes of attitude appear in the
19th century, as knowledge about objects and
recreating the context in which they had been
made became more important than collecting
them (Rheims 1987, 379). Maurice Rheims
compared the 18th century to the 19th, stating that
the former was an antique-maniac age and the
latter a period obsessed with anything that was
past (Rheims 1987, 378). Considering the fact
that the 19th century arrived with the persecution
of anachronic restorations, Rheims admired the
way in which people had started to place value,
premeditatedly, on the fragments that had
survived over time. The Philosophy at the base
of this new type of behaviour could be summed
up thus: let us be happy with what the centuries
have left us, and not complete our knowledge by

87

any means possible and not create, by adding

things on, fictive histories, creating more past
than we need. If you look at things this way, you
reach the conclusion that the lack of many
vestiges left by a past civilisation is in itself a
historic fact, which we would distort if we
sought to multiply the sources of our
information. The remains of a statue are, despite
of their desolating and poor aspect, a stage of
their own in the biography of that object;
therefore the damages suffered are a visual
certificate that proves the history of the work of
art and the way in which it came through so
many centuries to get to us.
The Philosophy that entitled the
restoration of the ancient statues during the
renaissance and till late in the illumination
period, can be summed up with the following
axiom: Beauty was the face with which the idea
of Good made itself visible to man. The
confusion
between
restoration
and
rationalisation of images disappeared however,
especially from the second half of the 19th
century, by moving the accent away from the
idea to the expression, from the content to the
form (Himmelmann 1984, 171). They no longer
desired the reconstruction of a lost or broken
whole, the fragment in itself was now more
important, precisely as it had been found, and
the wear on the object made it all the more
sought after as it was the mark of the length of
time the fragment had lived (Himmelmann
1984, 172-173, 196). This was an important
change, which came about in a mimetic way,
excessively so: ... our young artists try to
imitate everything said David dAngers in July
1831 even the ancientness of the old works of
art (dAngers 1980, 76). Greek art was no
longer seen as the mirror of archetypes or high
moral virtues as Winckelmann described it
beauty no longer teamed up with Good, but
chose Truth instead. In 1911, Auguste Rodin,
who was considered the last romantic sculptor,
said to Paul Gsell: ... in Art, nothing is beautiful
except that which has character. [] And
seeing as only the force of character is the
beauty of Art, it often happens that the uglier a
being truly is, the more beautiful it is in Art. []
In Art what is ugly is what is fake, what is
artificial, whatever tries to be sweet or beautiful
instead of being expressive [], everything that
is soul without truth, and everything that is just a
parade of beauty or grace, everything that lies
(Rodin 1968, 21). Due to the new changes of
conception, the decline of the taste for
completion seemed to happen on its own: the
time of familiarity with the Greco-Roman period

finished, admitting it was inaccessible and

acknowledging the distance between them and
that past (Haskell et Penny 1999, 139). Art and
science were separating: reconstructions were
now just an attribute of museums and in their
turn, art critics considered romantic any
sculpture that was not reminiscent of or a copy
of an older work of art (Benoist 1994, 56).
To sum up what we have looked at till
now, we can see three different stages in the
history of reactions to casts/copies: a) they were
another kind of original, a reborn one or
helped, without acknowledging the fact that
this would imply it was counterfeit; the
explanations and perceptions of things were then
owed to a logic of adjacency (to liken two things
or to draw them together physically was one and
the same thing as making them family or
creating a relation of causality between them),
the copy was a relic of the original and inherited
a bit of its aura; b) they had the statute of
effigies, of substitutes or symbols of the
original; the latter being almost hidden within
the reproduction, but accepted to be represented
by it; c) they were a sort of citation or
paraphrase of the prototype, without keeping
any of its authentic substance. The 19th century
is overwhelmingly invoked as a period of
originality. In fact, under the pressure of the new
technologies and particularly of photography,
the usages and prestige of all forms of
reproduction are reconsidered. There coexisted
three variants to bear a relation to plaster casts
and to the completions and restorations of the
old masterpieces: 1) the backward-looking
variant, seeing imitation, in all of its forms, as a
way to re-teach a Greek-Roman standard, with
global applicability and unlimited validity; by
copying the ancient art, we save they thought
the only origins we all acknowledge; 2) the
probabilistic variant: by copying and adding
something to the original, one was looking for a
new plenitude, a new sense, carrying on the
creators thought; the best form of conservation
seemed to be continual creation; 3) the presentlooking variant, which saw the chopped
sculpture per se as an autonomous work and the
limbless trunk not a truncation, but a review, the
conclusion of a long biography; the chopped
torso was not the image of an unfortunate
accident, depriving us of the joy of the
wholeness, but a visual episode, naturally
developing from others. However, maybe the
great gain reside in the involuntarily difference
between the false and the fictive: while the
former degrades the prototype and cheats the
watcher, the latter brings us closer to the

88

masterpiece and clarifies it for us; in other

words, it redefines the already known,
rendering it to us in a manner more adequate to
our desire to be, periodically, other individuals.
To the disappointment of the amateurs of facile
classifications, the paper shows that originality
was not looked after as a purpose in its own, as
it entered the stage as a passe-partout notion,
with the participation of which imitation was
explained in a more honourable way.
Accordingly, there are two coexisting
tendencies, and none of them prevails;
originality is rather an unexpected guest, a
concept with a restrained public. It represents a
tacit counterweight to the popularity of
surrogates and to the re-canonizations of the
mimesis. But the most important is that this kind
of originality does not oppose imitation, being
rather synonymous with the new. The people of
the 18th-19th centuries were not rushing to decide
what is and what is not authentic, preferring to
discover what was left to imitate. The originality
was thus born as a side effect, on the edges of a
very old art of reproduction, infinitely reconceptualized and redefined.

Cellini 1959

Delumeau
1995

Diderot 1982

Eco 1999

ForeroMendoza 2002
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no damage to his Majestys

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*** 1992

91

Romanian Travelers to the East between the Quest for the Exotic
and Diplomatic Mission
Roxana-Mihaela COMAN
PhD Candidate, Faculty of History, University of Bucharest
E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract. Travel has a long and complicated history, and has always been an experience
observed from the European point of view. A journey is more than just a walk from A to B, its a
bildungsroman, and its an identity interplay between us and others, because, in most of the cases, travel
is an initiatic journey for self-knowledge, self-worth, and recognition. Confronted with the reality of the
other we cannot help ourselves from comparing what we see or fell, hear, smell, with the familiar without
pointing out the differences, the strange.
Our study aims to analyze the types of travel writings by the Romanians who, for various reasons,
journeyed into the East, starting from the Near East (the Ottoman Empire).
Keywords: travel, perception, stereotype, travel writings, identity, cultural encounter
Romanian travelers to the East: were they
products of the Western cultural phenomena?
Did the political situation between the Romanian
Principalities and The Ottoman Empire played a
key factor in the characteristics of the gaze?
Casey Blantons definition of travel
literature will provide a starting point for the
analysis. From his point of view, based on
psychological relation between the observer and
the observed, the topic of the travel books is the
result from the interplay between the
philosophical preconceptions of the traveler and
the test to which they are submitted.(Blanton
2002, 1-3) Outlining some of the features from
travel literature, Blanton names some of the
obvious ones: the existence of a narrator/
traveler with no specific purpose, just for the
pleasure of travel; a narrative style that borrows
from fiction to set a climax and anticlimax for
the action and the characters, a setting fitted for
the action, and a commitment to picture the odd
and the exotic, but using familiar methods.
When trying to discover similar patterns
among the Romanian travelers we ought to
make several distinctions. First of all, the
Romanian Principalities where among the
regions chosen by the Western travelers as being
part of the East. Secondly, from a social
standpoint, there were two major social classes:
the boyars and the peasants, and in between, the
incipient bourgeoisie. The reason behind these
explanations is mainly, due to the social changes
produced by the Western imports.
The social role of the 19th century
Romanian elite is borrowed from the Western,

Peter Burke named travel history among

the subjects favored by the cultural historians
who took upon the study of cultural maps.
(Burke 2004, 59) Because any journey begins
with the existence of a map, physical or mental,
of the destination (1).
An example can be found in Timothy
Youngs work Travel writing in the 19th century
that begins with a quote from Trough the Dark
Continent by Henry Morton Stanley (Youngs ed.
2006, 1) Stanley says to his travel companion
that Europeans recent map of the African
continent is blank, empty, and that hes taken
upon himself to populate with cities, wonderful
images of the people that occupy them, while
being anxious to see if his predictions are true.
Travel literature doesnt represent an
objective or photographic record of the
travelers experience in another foreign land.
These types of writings are the subject of
normative social influences such as the authors
cultural background.
In this study we will try to answer some
questions regarding the travel records of the
(1) This paper is supported by the Sectorial
Operational
Program
Human
Resources
Development (SOP HRD), financed from the
European Social Fund and by the Romanian
Government under the contract number SOP
HRD/159/1.5/ S/136077

92

especially French, aristocracy, in an attempt to

gain some prestige when faced with the
examples provided by the western world.
(Olariu 2006, 45)
And so, we can use some of the
definitions we discussed so far in order to
analyze the writings of the Romanian travelers.
At the border between the reality of
the descriptions and the subjectivity of the
narrator/travelers gaze, travel writing is
considered by Florin Faifer a domain that ranges
from the murks of the subconscious to the
universe of the fictional. (Faifer 1993, 6-7)
Travel literature has been used by
Romanian researchers in an attempt to better
understand the events from the Romanian
Principalities in the 19th century using the
descriptions made by foreign travelers. And, of
course, are a valuable source for cultural
historians because they are the products of
encounters between different cultures, a product
and a process.
We will attempt to use the theories and
characteristics mentioned above in order to
discuss the works of Vasile Alecsandri, Dimitrie
Bolintineanu, Dimitrie Ralet, Alexandru M.
Lahovary. We will try to point out the image
attributed to the Orient by individuals who,
somewhat journeyed inside their cultural
comfort zone (they were aware of the oriental
cultural background and the descriptions that
depicted them as existing within the East). Their
perceptions of the Orient, as defined by the
Western cultural norm, is quite revealing and
draws a certain evolution of mentalities
concerning the relations with the East.
Irina Mihai-Vainovski thinks that in the
second half of the 19th century travel literature
undergoes a process from the Romantic
exaltation to the scientific inquiries made by the
so-called intellectual travelers. (Mihai 2009,
11-12) We would add to these categories the
works of those sent to Constantinople on a
diplomatic mission (and tend to put the political
affairs first, and their perception is heavily
influenced by the outcome) and the descriptions
brought back by some Romanian artists, like
Theodor Aman.
Between 1848 and 1856, the main
features of the travel writings of the Romanian
travelers can be summed up in a Romantic quest
for the exotic, for those aspects that are outside
the concept of civilization. The authors tend to
give the impression that they took a mirror down
the street and their descriptions are the image
resulted.

The interval between the 1860 and 1880

was named by Irina Mihai as the classic period
of Oriental travel when there is a rising interest
for the African continent and some of the
territories under ottoman rule (Oriental Rumelia,
Bosnia, Albania).We can find articles published
in magazines and newspapers of the time by
Iulian Grozescu, Ioan Maiorescu, Iacob
Negruzzi, Ieronim Bariiu, Cezar Bolliac, etc,
that try to inform the public regarding the
oriental delights. Their content is more
balanced between fascination and reality, and
more specific about the ethnographical detail.
(Mihai 2009, 15)
Maybe
this
phase
owes
its
characteristics to the political and diplomatic
relations between the Romanian Principalities
and the Ottoman Empire. Another possible
explanation can be provided by the Western
influence and taste for the Eastern travel adopted
through their period spent studying in Western
universities.
We can trace the second hypothesis in
some of the articles published in Romanian
papers taken from the foreign press, often
published without any alterations (copied from
their original form), or paraphrasing the terms
that didnt have any correspondent in the
Romanian language.
Irina Mihai called some of these articles
de-exotised because they were adapted to fit
the level of understanding of the Romanian
public by containing comparisons of types of
costumes
and
descriptions
with
long
explanations. (Mihai 2009, 16-19) The French
cultural pattern for the oriental travel can be
found in the presence of works by Lamartine or
Chateaubriand or Victor Hugo in any personal
library owned by the representatives of the
Romanian elite. Travel becomes a way of life in
the 19th century, a trademark for ones status.
As well as any other cultural
phenomena, the history of travel has its
moments of spontaneity, and reaches a stage in
which scientific inquiry and critical appraisal are
dominant.
The oriental temptation is present in the
Romanian poetry: The herder of Bosphorus by
Vasile Alecsandri, The flowers of the Bosphorus
written by the one who also wrote about the
historical legends of the Romanians, Dimitrie
Bolintineanu, etc. Also, the ones who traveled to
the Orient didnt have the chance to publish their
experiences in independent volumes, but chose
to send articles to the local newspapers such as:
Curierul romnesc, Albina romneasc, Foaia
duminecii, Mozaicul, Icoana lumei, etc.

93

providing their readers with means for travels

with the power of imagination. These papers
also translated various pieces from foreign
travels to the East (made by Lamartine,
Chateaubriand or Nicolas Forbin). (Faifer, 76)
The concept of the exotic becomes, by
the end of the 19th century, a concept familiar to
the cultural Romanian elite. Oriental interiors in
the Western-fashioned residences of the
Romanian intelligentsia (not only ottoman, but
Chinese and Japanese, also) become a trend.
There are more and more journeys into the
exciting East and more frequent, and tend to
break the comfort zone targeting regions such as
Tierra del Fuego, Australia etc. The Far East is
the main attraction and, when revisiting the
Middle or the Near East it isnt a foreign or
unknown land to the Romanian public, and
Romanians dont perceive themselves in a
competition with the East in tracing their own
identity. (Mihai 2009, 32-34)
One possible reason for this shift in
perception regarding the discourse about the
oriental can be found in the unfolding of the
events in the Romanian Principalities towards a
national state. But we can add the
Westernization of the Romanian elite might
have played a part in the shaping the context for
these changes.

the result of a cultural encounter with the claim

to truthfulness.
In our opinion, the Romanian travelers
to the East didnt sought an exotic escape from
an over industrialized landscape (because it
wasnt the case in a predominantly agrarian
economy), but the desolation and degradation
found in the oriental depictions/representations
had the purpose of convincing them that they
made the right choice at the crossroad of the
18th-19th centuries.
Belonging
to
the
so-called
revolutionary generation, Vasile Alecsandri
and Dimitrie Bolintineanu are among the first
ones to publish descriptions of oriental voyages.
They are, also, pioneers in breaching the oriental
comfort zone, traveling to Africa, a breach
considered by Mircea Anghelescu as a
consequence of the 1848 Revolution, a catalyst
for surpassing the traditional itineraries.
(Anghelescu, 1983, 9)
These traditional routes mentioned
above were the journeys undertaken by the sons
of the Romanian boyars to the Western
universities in order to study and reduce the gap
between the Romanian Principalities and the
Western world.
The travel writings of Vasile Alecsandri
and Dimitrie Bolintineanu, although they have
the same stylistic characteristics as the ones
written by French or English travelers, they
constitute the materialization of an Orient filled
with poetry and harmony, and feminine beauty.
We can observe a certain influence in picking up
some of the leitmotifs of French romantics such
as Chateaubriand and Lamartine, their attention
being drawn by the street movement, polyethnicity of the bazaar and human types. The
result from the confrontation of what was
expected from the oriental landscape and the
reality of it consists in an ambiguous and
heterogeneous writing.
Vasile
Alecsandri
publishes
his
impressions from the African/Oriental travel in
an article My travel diary. Morocco in the
edition of Telegraful from 1868. It tells the
story of a long journey that began 1853, in the
south of France, passing through Spain and
ending in the north of the African continent. An
itinerary quite familiar and almost identical to
the one used by those who were searching for
the exotic. The most interesting aspect regarding
the memoirs of Vasile Alecsandri is the use of a
character, fictional more or less, who is
presented to the reader as a companion met in
unusual circumstances. Angel, the British, draws
a mental map of their expedition.

Romantic exoticism and Romantic

nationalism
The purpose of this study doesnt reside
in the determining the authenticity of the
descriptions for the Orient and the public
reaction. But every analysis of the travel
literature must establish the certain report
between the body of text and the reality of the
event.
There are difficulties in establishing this
relation because it entails a multitude of
variations. Starting from an idea that the text has
its own reality, we are dealing with the text that
declares reality as its own meta-structure, but,
also, with a text that decides to break away from
reality. (Anghelescu 1988, 5)
The travel memoirs, even the ones
written by the Romanian travelers, have a
fundamental and unmistakable characteristic
over time. And that is the tendency to describe
to their readers information unknown to them, to
retell, as precise as possible, the itinerary of the
journey, with details about various smells, or
sounds, colors and types of physiognomies.
Travel writings, though a significant historical
source, represent the subjective reflection of the
Other through the travelers lenses, becoming

94

Angel suggested that from Marseille

we go and visit the whole of the Spanish coast:
Barcelona, Valencia, Cartagena, Malaga, etc., up
to the Gibraltar rock. From there we travel to
Cadix, and from there our Spanish voyage truly
begins by visiting: Seville, Cordoba and
Granada. And then we reach Madrid, where we
stop for as long as we like, before returning to
France. (Alecsandri 1960, 200)
Impressed by the Mediterranean views,
Alecsandri remembers episodes from his
previous travels. In 1845 he took a short voyage
to Constantinople where he met the consul of
Tripoli, Dickson, who was very fond of Turkish
coffee. (Alecsandri 1960, 204-205) Alecsandri
also gives various details about Turkish cities
Brussa, the old Ottoman capital, Ghemlic, and a
romantic description of the natural wonders of
the road.
The encounter with the Other is
rendered using as term of comparison the notion
of home, of his native land, and so, the exotic
romanticism coexist with the nationalist
romanticism in his travel stories. At the end of
his journey in Spain, he leaves France on a ship.
Alecsandris sea journey facilitates a moment of
meditation about his countrys situation: among
my thoughts and dreams, my country reveals
herself as a loving mother calling me to her
bosom. Oh! Beloved country, oh! My beloved
heaven. Wherever I may wonder in this world, I
am
accompanied
by
your
holy
image.(Alecsandri 1960, 216) He then proceeds
to remember his favorite scenes from Italy,
France, and the picturesque oriental landscapes.
The same motif, associating his
homeland with and oriental situation, is present
in Suvenirele din 1855 in his famous letters to
Ion Ghica. Travelling to Crimea, he reaches
Sevastopol, a city of great importance to the
recent Romanian history (a battle from the
Crimean war), naming it the New Jerusalem
because of the Oriental Question. Sevastopol
becomes in Alecsandris description a sacred
place for us, Romanians, where the future of our
countries is being made. () under the influence
of those thought and driven by a great curiosity
a decided to do a pilgrimage into the old
Tauride, accompanied by a friend who
previously visited the region.(Alecsandri 1998,
288)
The construction of the Other begins,
from an anthropological point of view, as a gaze
of the Western world over the non-European
people, situated outside of the civilized worlds
standards. And the story of this encounter
becomes the expression of crossing the cultural

boundaries using a fixed point, home. For Vasile

Alecsandri, home is a national remembrance, as
noticed in his letter to Ion Ghica, or is a
nostalgic meditation about the concept of a
homeland. This home is always present in his
evocation of the Oriental journey, the East
becomes a term of comparison between the
familiar and the foreign, with emphasis on the
familiar, of that loving mother/country.
Vintil Mihilescu argues that there is
an anthropological and universal fascination
about the distant, the foreign and the strange,
and that strangeness is ambivalent. It can be the
object of feelings of hate and rejection (the
Herodotuss rule) or, on the contrary, one of
admiration and attraction. (Mihilescu 2009, 63)
Alecsandri includes himself in the
European world, pertaining to the civilized
world, taking upon himself the role of an
omniscient narrator. On the 27th of September, at
8 oclock in the morning, he reaches the
Gibraltar where he can already see the shores of
the African continent. He perceives the
landscape beneath his gaze as the juxtaposition
of two opposite worlds: the civilized Europe and
the wild Africa, admiring the majestic spectacle
of this union. (Alecsandri 1960, 242)
His scrutiny crosses city walls, bad
roads, admiring the sights offered by the
symbiosis of nature and human constructions,
but considering its people a population of sick
and foolish men. The indigenous people I have
met so far have an air of suffering and saddening
misery; I have not seen yet a jolly face and
Tangier is like a city burnt by a big fire, shaken
by an earthquake. (Alecsandri 1960, 244-249)
Although Alecandri is obviously disappointed
when faced with the confrontation between
reality and expectation, it doesnt prevent him
from dreaming away to the Orient with immense
gardens and silvery waters.
Nature has the Romantic aura of a deity
and Alecsandri gives the reader a slight
sensation that the aesthetic pleasure of the
journey is solely provided by its wonders. When
speaking about the governor of the city of
Tangier he pictures him as an oriental, barbaric
satrap, living isolated from his people. Based on
this description of Tangiers ruler, he concludes
that, if in Morocco, a place where Europe meets
Africa, one can find such barbaric
manifestations, in the center of the continent,
what degree of wilderness must characterize the
populations living there. (Alecsandri 1960, 254255)
When
speaking of
Alecsandris
counterpart, Dimitrie Bolintineanu, the Orient

95

means the city with a certain significance for the

Romanian contries, Constantinople (he joins
Alexandru-Ioan Cuza on a diplomatic mission to
obtain the sultans recognition of the united
Romanian Principalities), but also, the Holy
Land, and the northern Africa.
Given the fact that Bolintineanu
received a scholarship in Paris (1846-1848), he
had the opportunity to read travel novels that
were in fashion then such as Volneys (whom he
quotes often). But, unlike Bolintineanus French
counterparts, he came from a part of Europe
considered to be oriental in nature. Lumina
Munteanu views Bolintineanus take of the
oriental image as one dominated by the Western
norm, existing outside of civilization, passive,
the fundamental opposite of the active and
progressive spirit of the West. (Munteanu 2009,
77-78)
The Danube is considered by many of
the Romanian travelers, including Dimitrie
Bolintineanu, as a liminal space, a hybrid space
between Us and Them. But, on the other hand,
in his description, the river becomes a cradle of
liberty () a witness for the greatest deeds
(Bolintineanu 1915, 12-13) filled with beauty
and riches, speaking about its ancient history.
Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of
alterity, consists of the self-analysis that creates
self-images. The relation between Us and Them
in the case of the Romanian travelers to the East
from this interval (1848-1880) often contain
allusions to a national ideal and tend to describe
the oriental populations using pejorative terms
and poetical eulogies to home.
The self-images that can be found in
Bolintineanus accounts can only be understood
in tandem with the stereotypical images taken
from his lecture of French authors as he
confesses at some point: I havent yet read a
book about travelling in the East in which the
author doesnt mention a bearded and raggedy
dervish. (Bolintineanu 1951, 284) He then
continues the series of unappreciative
stereotypes regarding the oriental people, mixed
with a slight note of optimism: everything in
Turkey seems to be a ruin: people and places;
and this decay affects even its government. The
foreigner who sees these things for the first time
thinks the Turkey is fading. But its on the verge
of major changes.
Bolintineanus opinions about the
political situation of the Ottoman Empire
(always named in the text as Turkey, as a secular
state), are due to better understanding of the
status of the Empire given the relations between
the two states. The cultural differences are fewer

than in the Western example. Lumina

Munteanu considers that these constant
references to other travel books as a nuanced
and ironic remark regarding their lack of real
knowledge about the real Orient. (Munteanu
2009)
Cltoriile pe Dunre i n Bulgaria
have been considered to be a witness to
debunked discourse of the East because they
were made under the constraint of exile (as a
punishment for his role in the 1848 Revolution,
Bolintineanu was banished from the Romanian
countries until 1857; his travel accounts were
published a year later). (Munteanu 2009)
But that doesnt prevent him from recreating an oriental atmosphere with beautiful
women, exotic and mysterious places e.g. am,
Candili, Scutari, Brussa. He uses various
toponyms and anthroponyms, names of types of
clothing or objects of everyday use. This type of
discourse adds, if it was still necessary, to the
intention of giving the reader the impression he
was more acquainted with the reality of the
Orient.
Unlike Vasile Alecandri, Bolintineanu
tends not to adopt the Western perception of the
East in its entirety. Regarding some of the
specifications made about the demography of
the Ottoman Empire, he contradicts what was
generally known to Western public (the
Europeans believed that the decrease in
population was due to their religion that allowed
polygamy, but Bolintineanu states that such
assumptions were false and based on a religious
aversion). (Bolintineanu 1951, 269)
His work about the journey through
Asia Minor is filled, almost annoying at some
point, with so much historical, demographical,
social information that it resembles more and
more with a travel guide or encyclopedia than a
personal experience. He quotes the writings of
Nicolas de Forbin. During his pilgrimage to
Jerusalem, he doesnt act like a pilgrim, but,
rather in a matter similar to a tourist who came
to discover what happens at the Holy Tomb on
Easter.
He insists, with a Romantic mindset, to
describe
buildings,
natural
landscapes,
sacrificing the human element. Cltoriile have
a bookish feeling, with long historical accounts
about various cities, biblical episodes e.g. the
battle of David and Goliath. Following the
itinerary established by his travel memoirs we
can have a compound of romantic exaltation,
historical and relevant facts in a tourist guide
manner and personal opinions regarding aspects
of culture. And what is more intriguing is that

96

the author never visited all those places, retelling the first or second-rate story of a fabulous
oriental journey, checking the usual destinations
on an usual Eastern tour.

in a different group Aman makes some

observations regarding the structure and gender
roles in Turkish society, keeping also in mind
some of the culinary customs.
The men, as it is their custom, are
placed in separate groups from the women, they
drink and smoke. When I say drink it means
coffee because, due to their Islamic religion,
wine is forbidden, but they often drink it
whenever they are home alone. (Istrati 1904,
13-14)
Theodor Aman was acclaimed among
the Romanian cultural elite for his series of
odalisques, greeted as works of significant
beauty. Depicted in several stances: smoking
hookah or playing the mandolin, or sitting in a
Turkish style, laying on the divan, the erotic
aspect of this kind of subject is slightly
diminished, the ambience being one of
detachment and the indolence of a Moorish
afternoon. With a nonchalant and dreamy
attitude, the odalisques source of inspiration
can be traced back to his journey from
Sevastopol to Smyrna. Smyrna, where I could
only admire womens beauty, but their waist
were ill-proportioned with the allure of their
heads and their eyes filled with fire. (Istrati
1904, 12)
He speaks often of the female figures he
met in Istanbul, Pera, and some other cities in
Asia Minor, which always had an expression of
eternal somnolence, a recurring assertion in the
letters sent to his brother.
Amans
oriental
perception
is
profoundly shaped by the western cannon, and
that can be seen in his sequel of paintings of
harems or odalisques, several types of human
characters (sketches such as Mosque, Turkish
fighter, Turkish coffee shops, Oriental
architecture, Street from Constantinople). This
sums up an image comprised of stereotypes
borrowed from orientalist stream in the
Romantic painting in the 19th century.
One of Amans peers, the painter
Gheorghe Tattarescu whose main focus
consisted, mainly, in the religious artistic theme
or the historical allegories, also took a short
voyage to Istanbul. The art historian Ion
Frunzetti mentioned that in 1851 Tattarescu used
this journey to reach out to some of the exiled
participants in the 1848 Romanian revolution.
A small notebook with several sketches
was used as a proof for his oriental voyage with
views of Athens, drawings of the Temple of the
wind, Mountain peaks in the Balkans,
Bosphorus, Prinkipo Island, Karavanserai,
Andal-hipar (one of the two fortresses that stand

The Orient through an artistic eye: the case

of Romanian artists
Having declared that his sole purpose
for his voyage to Constantinople is to present his
recent painting The Battle of Oltenia to the
ottoman sultan after being received so well in
the Parisian cultural circles, Theodor Aman
doesnt publish his experience (he prefers to
correspond with his brother on the matter). It
seems to be important for Aman to specify to his
brother the reason behind his trip to
Constantinople in a letter dated October 1854:
the possibility to see the French troops in their
glory and watch the wars unfolding. (Istrati
1904, 11) Unlike other orientalist painters,
Aman doesnt assert a need for an escape from a
suffocating and industrialized society, or a
longing for spiritual renewal, as in the case of
Victorian orientalist painters.
In his letter exchange with his brother,
Aman fulfills the role of a narrator to a public
with little knowledge about the Orient. Maybe
his artistic education has a say in the matter, but
he describes the scenery with precision and an
abundance of details: I thought I was dreaming
because it is indeed something enchanting, the
shores of Bosphorus being bordered by gardens,
the exquisite columns decorating the houses, the
multitude of boats that form the port, convince
the tourists to declare that it is the most beautiful
place seen by someone anywhere in the
Universe. (Istrati, 13)
After the enthralling scenery at the
crossing of the Mediterranean Sea and the
entrance in the old Byzantion, Aman has a
similar reaction as a westerner to the reality of
an oriental, crowded city, the confrontation
between the ascribed exotic beauty and the filth
of a transit area. But what a disappointment
upon entering the city, those foul streets,
innumerable dogs, those barefoot Turks with
barbaric appearance. The women, whom, in
another cities I have admired their poetic allure,
are nothing but ghostly figures, differing only in
color () contribute to a feeling of regret from
whoever visits this ancient city. (Istrati 1904,
13) Aman uses all of his senses to perceive the
oriental flavor of the city, documenting every
little detail of the surroundings, informing his
brother about several Turkish traditions. For
instance he wrote that the men would gather and
dine every Friday evening, with women divided

97

on each side of the Bosphorus), Brussa and

many more. Although the oriental scenery
attracts his gaze and artistic prowess,
considering them worthy to be subject of an
entire sketchbook, they are merely travel notes,
results of a different frame of mind from the
Romantic travelers infatuated with the exotic
scenery, such as Delacroix or Raffet ()
landscape is not a subject favorable to
Tattarescu and his oriental voyage has no effect
on his style. (Frunzetti 1991, 185-186)

numerous contacts between the upper-class

Romanians and Ottoman officials). He makes
note of the new and old melting pot (the 19th
century Tanzimat), the infusion of various
populations Muslim and Christian, the
Europeans that began to wear oriental clothing
and Turks which had to renounce them in favor
of the western attire.
Ralet, in behalf of his diplomatic role,
had the chance to witness up close the
diplomatic ceremonies and customs of the
Turkish Divan, commenting on how obsolete
they were. The Sublime Porte kept a
disproportionate arrogance during the audience.
Unlike
other
authors
discussed
previously, Ralet uses quite frequently the term
oriental, when speaking about a council of
elders, regarding some of the customs and
functions, types of clothing and even a
proverbial oriental apathy, when patience is a
virtue. This kind of assertions can be understood
in the context of the voyages purpose: a
consular service.
A peculiar sequence of his stay in
Constantinople was dedicated to a rather
unexpected encounter with what he called a
ghost of the past. On one of his touristic walks
in the old part of the town, he came across a
Divan with elders sitting silently, dressed
according the norms of the high Ottoman
officials. Among this gathering he noticed a
familiar figure, that of one Walachian former
rulers, in an oriental costume: a cutlass around
his waist, a piece of garment denoting his rank
(cbni), tall fur cap and a mace in his hand.
(Ralet 1979, 86-90) It was a scene from a history
museum, a place filled with dreams of the past,
Ralet took the image of an old buttonwood to
picture the Ottoman Empire as a state threatened
from all of its borders, shaken by the numerous
fought wars, but protecting and still keeping its
will to live.
During his visit to Boiagi-Kioi, a village
with many liaisons to the Crimean War, Ralet
took the advantage to bring up the Romanian
involvement in this conflict and the implications
of its actions.
The reader doesnt miss in Ralets travel
notes the usual oriental images of slowness and
passivity that makes the peoples temperament
one of laisse faire, laisse passer, uncaring and
pessimistic about the future, giving in to carnal
desires. Also, the writer informs his audience of
the differences between the Orientals and
Romanians, the latter being part of the sort of
people meant to inquire, to discover, to progress,
to spend their existence in the fast lane, never

Through the eyes of a diplomat

Until this moment we attempted to
analyze the Orients representation through
visual, auditory and olfactory experiences by
some of the artists and men of letters. This
section of our study aims to discuss the features
of a discourse outlined in the memoirs and notes
pertaining to members of the Romanian cultural
elite sent on diplomatic missions in Istanbul.
We will begin with the work of Dimitrie
Ralet, a significant member of the boyars, who
dabbled with literature, but was, also, a gifted
politician who played an important part in the
1848 Revolution (a liberal with modernist
views). Ralet was nominated along with
Costache Negri by the Moldavian ruler Grigore
Ghica to find a solution to the situation of
monasteries dedicated to the ones from Athos.
His account Souvenirs and travel impressions in
Romania, Bulgaria, Constantinople was
published in Paris in 1858.
Recurring mentions in his notes are
those consisting in assertions about the political,
judicial and the various conflicts with the
suzerain state, Ottoman Empire. Ralets
accounts do not have the usual structure of a
travel report, instead they have a slight tendency
to be a manifesto for the independence of the
Romanian countries.
Touched by the natural wonders, he
described his journey on the Danube River with
details about every city encountered; when he
had an opportunity he informed his reader about
famous battles that occurred in the places he
visited.
Approaching the Bosphorus shores, he
talks about the history of the old city of
Byzantion, using more details and a somewhat
critical point of view to discuss the variegated
mix of ethnical costumes, the bright colors of
those ensembles in opposition with evident signs
of poverty. (Ralet 1979, 45). Ralet makes a habit
of informing his readers about the specifics and
main members of the ottoman society (his
knowledge of such details is due to the

98

stopping until they reach the very end. This

paragraph placed beside the one at the beginning
of his journey when he talks about the Romanian
people in terms of an oriental race makes an
interesting point about the never-ending
fluctuation between the East and the West,
between being oriental by acculturation and
westerner by cultural heritage.
His last chapters of Souvenirs and
impressions take into consideration the
contradictory aspects of Ottoman society and
everyday life, making extensive notes about the
role of women, with personal observations about
literature, language, music, poetry and so on.
Ralet concludes his oriental voyage with
state affairs raised shortly after the signing of the
Paris Treaty (1856), discussing the current
political situation of the Romanian Principalities
and claiming that the events so far were never
intended to bring any damage to the relations
with the Ottoman Empire.
His travel writings are among the most
detailed work so far by any Romanian traveler,
with significant details regarding the Ottoman
culture and society, and hinting at the issues of
the two provinces struggling for autonomy.
Half a century later, we have the
Diplomatic memoirs of Alexandru Em.
Lahovary who was the Romanian Minister
Plenipotentiary at Istanbul during the interval of
1902-1906, a period of conflict between the two
states caused by the Armni from the Ottoman
Empire. His account is mostly filled with details
about the Sultan Abdul-Hamid and the
diplomatic affairs.
Alexandru Lahovary tries to shed some
light on the personality of one the most
controversial sultans in the recent ottoman
history, he is adamant in describing the high
ranking officials and the evolutions of the
political talks. (Lavohary 1935, 10-11)
He has very few remarks about the
oriental customs and mundane aspects, when
compared to the political ones. But Lahovary
assures his readers that Wallachia and Moldavia
were never the subjects of Ottoman rule. They
were only vassals of the Empire. (Lahovary
1935, 19-21)
Unlike Dimitrie Ralets travel account,
Lahovary gives less or none, for that matter, an
exotic feeling replacing it with matters of the
state.
The travel literature discussed above
draws a certain image about and Orient
meaningful only when viewed through the
political and diplomatic aspects, reminding the

audience of the relations existing between the

Romanian countries and the Empire.
In order to conclude our study, we
would like to point out that, although Romanian
travelers use a literary genre borrowed from the
western culture, they distance themselves from
similar works by including elements regarding
their own identity and history, with an oriental
background. We can assert that the idea of
writing about the Orient not only in political and
historical terms is a way of placing a gap
between them and the oriental heritage and
transforming it in a literary representation/image
References
a. Books:
Anghelescu 1983

Anghelescu 1988

Alecsandri 1960

Burke 2004

Blanton 2002

Bolintineanu 1915

Bolintineanu 1951

99

Anghelescu,
Mircea,
Cltori romni n Africa
(Romanian travelers in
Africa), Bucureti, Editura
Sport-Turism, 1983.
Anghelescu, Mircea, Textul
i realitatea (The reality
and the text, Bucureti,
Editura Eminescu, 1988.
Alecsandri,
Vasile,
Cltorie
n
Africa.
Culegere
de
proz
(Journey to Africa. Short
story collection) vol. I,
Bucureti, Editura de Stat
pentru Literatur i Art,
1960.
Burke, Peter, What is
cultural
history?,
Cambridge, Polity Press,
2004.
Blanton, Casey, Travel
writing: The Self and the
World, London, Routledge,
2002.
Bolintineanu,
Dimitrie,
Cltorii, vol. I, (Pe
Dunre i n Bulgaria. La
Ierusalim i n Egipt)
(Travels. On the Danube,
and in Bulgaria. At
Jerusalem and in Egypt),
Bucureti,
Minerva,
Institutul de Arte Grafice i
Editur, 1915.
Bolintineanu,
Dimitrie,
Opere (Complete works),
Bucureti, Editura de stat,
pentru literatur tiinific
i didactic, 1951.

Fairfer 1993

Frunzetti 1991

Istrati 1904

Lahovary 1935

Mihilescu 2009

Olariu 2006

Ralet 1979

Faifer, Florin, Semnele lui

Hermes. Memorialistica de
cltorie (pn la 1900)
ntre real i imaginar (The
signs of Hermes. Travel
memoirs
until
1900
between
reality
and
imaginary)
Bucureti,
Minerva, 1993.
Frunzetti,
Ion,
Arta
romneasc n secolul al
XIX-lea (Romanian Art in
the 19th century), Bucureti,
Meridiane, 1991.
Istrati, C.I., Theodor Aman,
Bucuresci, Institutul de
Arte Grafice Carol Gobl,
1904.
Lahovary, Alexandru Em. ,
Amintiri
diplomatice
(Constantinopol
19021906) (Diplomatic memoirs
Constantinople 19021906),
Bucureti,
Imprimeria
naional,
1935.
Mihilescu,
Vintil,
Antropologie.
Cinci
introduceri (Anthropology.
Five introductions), Iai,
Polirom, 2009.
Olariu, Elena, Mentaliti
i moravuri la nivelul elitei
din Muntenia i Moldova
(secolul
al
XIXlea)(Mindsets and manners
of the elites in Wallachia
and Moldavia the 19th
century), Bucureti,
Editura Universitii din
Bucureti, 2006.
Ralet, Dimitrie, Suvenire i
impresii de cltorie n
Romnia,
Bulgaria
i
Constantinopole (Souvenirs
and impressions from
travels
to
Romania,
Bulgaria
and
Constantinople)
Mircea
Anghelescu
(ed.),
Bucureti, Minerva, 1979,

Munteanu 2009

Youngs 2006

Dridri, Bucureti, Litera

Internaional, 1998.
Munteanu,
Lumina,
Cltoriile lui Dimitrie
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Despre resursele i
limitele
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About the stereotypes
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c. Unpublished thesis or reports:

Mihai, Irina, Cltori
Mihai 2009
romni n Orientul
Apropiat i imaginea
Orientului (1880-1914)
(Romanian Travelers
in the Near East and
the Image of the Orient
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b. Chapters in books:
Alecsandri,
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Alecsandri 1998
Suvenire din 1855
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Alecsandri
Vasile,

100

Woman as a Nations Symbol: The Romanian Case

Georgeta FODOR
PhD, Petru Maior University of Trgu-Mure
Faculty of Science and Letters
Department of History and International Relations
Trgu-Mure, Romania
E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract. Out of all the definitions scholars gave to the concept of a modern nation the one that
best fits our approach refers to the nation as a virtual community. We understand nation as a mental
construct based on a set of symbols. The present study will make reference to one of these icons, which is
the female embodiment of a nation. The subject of our analysis is the Romanian society during the 19th
Century. There are two objectives to be pursued: the first is to reveal the historical context in which
Romanian artists felt the need to represent the nation as a womans body and, secondly, to see if this new
national perspective in regard to women was a consequence of the changes registered in the general
perception of womens place and role in the Romanian society.
Keywords: women, nation, symbol, allegories, paintings
We hear about the feminization of
politics, of feminism in international relations, in
art, science, even in history, where the
expression herstory refers to writing about the
past having women as major characters of a
play, from a feminist point of view. There is no
need to criticize these approaches, as long as
they do not mystify the truth, of course, and as
long as, for instance, they do not try to find
manifestations of feminism before the modern
age. They mark in fact the progress made by
women in intellectual and cultural domains.
They are the outcome of women scholars who
are interested in setting women in an appropriate
context in their fields of activity. Indeed, female
scholars tend to be the first to be interested in
these kinds of approaches, yet male scholars also
support their colleagues efforts. This is proved,
in history for instance, by the fact that some of
the best historians on womens history are men
(G. Duby, for example). Yet, gender does not
matter, or should not matter, where womens
history is concerned. Moreover, historians had
indeed recovered much of womens past. There
are still gaps that must be filled, especially
regarding the Romanian historiography. This is
one of the goals we try to achieve through the
present study: to reveal the connection between
women and nation. It is our aim to identify how
the Romanian nation has included, at its birth,
the other half of the nation (Lungu 1879, 69).
Also, we intend to identify the mechanisms by
which the nation incorporated women among its
symbols.

In the first part of the study, we will

discuss the connection between nation,
nationalism and gender. First, we have to find a
suitable definition for nation. But this is not an
easy thing to do despite the generous literature
we have on the subject (Hobsbawm 1992;
Gellner 1997; Anderson 2006). From all the
definitions at our disposal, the one that best fits
our approach deals with the symbolic
understanding of the nation. The nation is a
mental projection, a mental construct
disseminated through education. It is, as
Benedict Anderson argued, an imagined
community, an imagined political community and imagined both as inherently limited and
sovereign (Anderson 2006, 6) which turned
into a real one by using a set of symbols. E.
Hobsbawm names them the holy icons which
make a nation feel like being a real, palpable
thing (Hobsbawm 1992, 71). This symbolic
feature of a nation justifies our approach once
more: that is because we treat women and
nation, likewise, symbolically. Nation is the
outcome of an ideological process; women
were imagined as well, either as goddesses,
angels or demons. They were either idealized or
diabolized. In fact, we consider that each
society, whatever the age or nation, has
elaborated a portrait of an ideal woman. There is
an imagined woman in each nation. Likewise,
both women and nation, as mental projections,
are idealized. For instance, the imagined woman
is never the replica or embodiment of the real
one. It is also true that, if we use the progressive

101

method, the visual representations of women

multiply from one age to another; and that the
visual language can best reflect this progress
towards gender equality promote by women. See
for instance the miniature of J. Le Grant, Livres
de bonnes moeurs, from the 15th century and
Eugn Delacroixs Libert and you will have a
glimpse of this complex process of building the
modern woman. Whereas, during the Middle
Ages the most common images of women were
those of saints and sinners as the medieval
age favored the opposing images of Virgin Mary
and Eve the Renaissance, due to its admiration
for the classic cultures, would enrich the female
portrait (1): from then on we have women as
they were during Antiquity personifications of
such abstract notions as Victory, Justice, Peace
etc.
The modern age would also contribute
to this feminine portrait which gains new
features, more realistic ones, it might be said.
We would still have the image of abstract
notions embodied by women (2), but from now
on we would also have female embodiments of
nations. One can argue that nation is also an
abstract notion, but the Nation/Woman allegory
is different from the others. Allegories of Peace,
War, and Justice etc. required a certain cultural
level, whereas feminine allegories of the nation
were for everyone; their message seemed to be
easily understandable by everyone, even by
those who were illiterate, as they incorporated
symbols of a sort that all could understand. This
visual propaganda, as some scholars argue, was
the best way to approach the common people
(Agulhon 1976, 144). Indeed, comparing the two
types of allegories, the representations of
abstract notions were more difficult to read as
they were inspired by models from ancient
times. Thus, in order to understand their
message, the viewer needed some classical
knowledge. But should we consider the
allegories of nation as being more easily
understandable than their predecessors? From P.
Burkes point of view we might give a positive
answer to this question. The historian argues that
nationalism is relatively easy to express in
images, whether they caricature foreigners or
celebrate the major events of a nations history,
whether they evoke the style of the folk art of
the region or they depict the landscape

characteristics of the region (Burke 2001, 64).

But would they, in fact, be easy to read? How
and who could read these images, these
paintings representing the nation as a woman?
Because, before attempting to read images
between the lines and to use them as historical
evidence, it is only prudent to begin with their
meanings (Ibidem, 34). Moreover, can the
meanings of images be translated into words?
(Ibidem).
These are among the statements we try
to validate in the Romanian case, too. First, we
do not have to think that when the nations were
born the past allegories vanished; on the
contrary, from the French Revolution onwards,
the visual language was enriched with new,
modern allegories (like Nation), and many
attempts were made to translate into visual
language the classic ideals of liberty, equality
and fraternity (Ibidem, 19). We must also stress
the fact that these feminine representations of
nations would have been inspired by such
representations of abstract notions as those
previously mentioned. Moreover, of great
relevance is the fact that these national allegories
seem to interact with each other. See for instance
Russian propaganda posters from 1914
representing altogether France, Russia and Great
Britain as feminine figures.
In what follows, we will discuss the
connection between the emergence of these
feminine allegories and the nation-building
process. It is not so easy to connect the two
aspects given the fact that the literature on
nations and nationalism rarely addresses the
question of gender. In fact, most texts on
nationalism do not take gender as a significant
issue (Walby 1999, 235). Although the subject is
analyzed only marginally, the few existing
studies written so far have proved that there is a
close connection between the emergence of
nations and the progress made on the womens
question (Yuval-Davis 1989, 236-237). We have
to take into account that they are both aspects of
modernization and are thus interconnected.
Moreover, they would use each other. A nation
would use female allegories as propaganda for
constructing the real nation. Meanwhile,
women, in their effort to gain civil rights,
appealed to the role they were given in forming
the national identity. In summary, women were
involved in the national and ethnic processes
both as subjects and objects. Anthias and YuvalDavis suggest that there are five major ways in
which women were involved in the nationbuilding process: 1. As biological reproducers
of members of ethnic collectivities; 2. As

(1) In respect of the progress/evolution of womens

condition from medieval to modern times, it can be
seen as a portrait in progress.
(2) See, for instance, Eugne Delacroix, Libert or the
Statue of Liberty etc.

102

reproducers of the boundaries of ethnic/national

groups; 3. As participating centrally in the
ideological reproduction of the collectivity and
as transmitters of its culture; 4. As signifiers of
ethnic/national differences as a focus and
symbol in ideological discourse used in the
construction, reproduction and transformation of
ethnic/national categories; 5. As participants in
national, economic, political and military
struggles (Ibidem). These five points can be
seen in the process of constructing the Romanian
nation, too. Indeed, they are more obvious
among the Romanians from Transylvania due to
their distinct political status in the Austro Hungarian empire. But they are also noticeable
in Romanian discourse from the society of the
old regime. What must be stressed is how this
process of nation building seems not to mark
gender differences any more. This is probably
the result of the effort of intellectuals to create
and strengthen the nations unity. But we should
not exaggerate facts. This openness towards
womens involvement in the creation of the
nation tends to be temporary. Once again, there
seems to be a difference between discourse and
reality. A sort of gender equality is accepted
mainly in extreme situations such as revolutions
and wars (3). But after the crises are gone there
is a tendency to re-establish normality when and
if possible. Where the symbolic status of women
as icons of the nation is concerned, it jarred in
most cases with the inability of real women to
fully get involved in politics (Hewer 2008, 49).
Despite this fact, no one can deny that
during the 19th century we witness the
emergence of a new feminine ideal. It emerged
as a consequence of the transformation brought
by the modernization processes the European
societies were going through. During this period,
it occurred, in France for instance, an urban
background saturated by feminine figures:
monumental sculptures, religious allegories,
advertising posters etc. (Perrot 1997, 17). The
19th century also introduced feminine allegories
of national and political regimes. From now one,
we would have the new image of woman
represented as the peoples mother (Blu 2002,
65). This is also the birth period of feminine
figures transformed into myths and included in
the national iconography. These feminine
allegories of nations tend to have common
features whatever nation designed them. They
either represent images of real or imagined

women who brought themselves to notice or

they personify noble features such as purity and
modesty, commitment and sacrifice for both the
family and the country (Ibidem, 66). They are all
young women, usually dressed in ancient
clothes, looking to the past (Mosse 1996, 9) and
wearing several easily identifiable national
symbols. These features tend to be constant
across the ages. These allegories were not
usually dependent upon changes in the nation
itself, monarchical or republican; they
represented through their constant visual
presence the ancient values that the nation was
supposed to hold (Ibidem). Look for instance at
Marianne, the national symbol of France;
Germania, the national personification of the
German nation, Britannia, the national
personification of great Britain; Albania;
Bulgaria; the Finnish maiden, the national
personification of Finland; Greece; Romania etc.
These allegories share several common
features of course, but they are adjusted to
national goals: emancipation from a foreign
authority, the fight against the old regime etc.
Sometimes even the context they emerged in is
similar. Images of the nation as a woman,
especially in Romantic art and literature in the
1820s and 1830s, served to dramatize national
oppression and, implicitly, the need to rally to its
defense (Hewer 2008, 49). For instance, the
armed figure of Marianne was used to inspire
resistance against the enemies of the French
revolutionary nation (Ibidem). Germania
appeared somewhere around 1813 when
Germanic countries were at war with Napoleon.
After an eclipse, the symbol reappeared in the
1840s and reached another apogee in 1870,
during the war against France (Ibidem). The
nation is also represented as a warrior goddess,
embodying the nation fighting against its
enemies (Perrot 1997, 19). Britannia, whose
origins can be traced back to the Roman
conquest of Britain, gradually evolved from the
symbol of a conquered province to the icon of a
powerful empire (Hewer 2008, 48) (4). An
allegory of Greece would be painted by Eugne
Delacroix in 1827, inspired by the Greeks
struggle for independence. Bulgaria would also
emerge in the context of the national building
process. It would inspire Georgi Danchov in
painting Svobodna Bulgaria (Free Bulgaria).
The previously mentioned allegories
emerged or were converted during the nation-

(3) Reference can be made to the 1789 French

Revolution and the 1848 revolutions as well as to the
Great War.

(4) But we must mention that England also has an

allegory inspired by a real character: that is Queen
Victoria.

103

building process, but they should also be seen in

the modern context of the age, because the latter
also designed not only a new, modern woman,
but also a new, modern man. As George L.
Mosse argued, nationalism was a movement
which began and evolved in parallel with
modern masculinity and it was this modern
society that diffused the ideal of modern
masculinity (Mosse 1996, 7). Yet, he argues that
the position of manliness was not unlike that of
femininity, that masculine and feminine figures
became public symbols at the same time
representing the nation (Ibidem, 8). Women as
national symbols, however, did not embody
generally valid norms such as the virtues that
masculinity projected but, instead, the motherly
qualities of the nation, and they pointed to its
tradition and history (Ibidem).
We will focus, in what follows, on the
allegories of the Romanian nation. Our intention
is to expose and analyze the mechanisms, the
processes and the context in which these
personifications emerged. We also intend to
identify whether or not they were designed in
order to increase national solidarities (Blu
2002, 66).
The present study revolves around
several basic questions: why did the Romanian
nation, its scholars, need such an allegory? To
what extent did the emergence of this feminine
portrait denote a change in the general
perception of womens role in the society? Were
they just an artistic product of the painters
imagination or do they have a deeper
significance, marking as well a change towards
the perception of women? Whom were they
addressed to? Were they meant just for the
private eyes of the artist/owner or were they
designed for a specific target-public? (5).
Should these painters be considered as political
philosophers? (Burke 2001, 60).
The answers to these questions will be
drawn from an analysis of the most famous
allegories of Romania signed by Constantin D.
Rosenthal and Gheorghe Tattarescu. Besides
these two, there are other painters who gave life
to such allegories, for example, Theodor Aman
and N. Grigorescu (6).

We chose only the visual language for

this approach without forgetting that there are
several other feminine allegories of the
Romanian nation which can be found in other
forms, literature for instance. Why choose the
visual? Beside the reason we have already
mentioned we might add another: that is
because, with the second half of the 18th century,
Western Europe not alone we might add was
entering an ever more visually oriented age,
exemplified not only by national symbols, but
also by the effect of sciences, such as
physiognomy and anthropology, with their
classification of men according to standards of
classical beauty (Mosse 1996, 5). We must also
add the fact that during the 19th century
Romanian painters were also commissioned to
record such events as wars (Ionescu 2002).
Romanian historiography has paid
special attention to the Romanian nation and
nationalism. They were studied in their entire
complexity. Even the correlation art/nation and
nationalism had already been the subject of
analysis. It still is a major subject of interest, and
not only for the historians, taking into account,
for instance, the exhibition organized between
12 September 2012 and 31 March 2013 by the
Romanian National Art Museum. The exhibition
is a proof of the constant interest in the
Romanian
nation-building
process.
The
exhibition The National Myth the
Construction of Romanian Identity (1830-1930)
included among its exhibits such famous
paintings as those of C. D. Rosenthal and Gh.
Tattarescu (7).
Less attention was paid to the relation
between the Romanian nation-building process
and the re-evaluation of womens role and
perception in the Romanian society. We still
have a long way to run before revealing the
process by which women from Romanian
society became a subject of history. These
statements are to be taken as arguments for the
present scientific approach. As we already
stated, there is a close connection between this
process and the progress made by the women
question. We consider the first as a vector for reevaluating women in Romanian society of the
19th century (8). The Romanian nation, in its

(5) Probably the middle class: from George L.

Mosses point of view women as public symbols
were a projection of a normal society and a
prosperous nation, (Blu 2002, 66).
(6) Theodor Aman painted The Union of
Principalities in 1857, two years before the actual and
desired union of Walachia and Moldavia. N.
Grigorescu also has several works among which is an

allegorical representation of the Romanian

principalities which will form Romania in 1859.
(7) A presentation of the exhibit can be found at
www.mnar.arts.ro/web/Expozitii-temporare/Mitulnational
(8) This connection is testified to by the entire debate
around women led by some prominent personalities
but also by the emergence of these allegories of the

104

effort to define itself and to create a national

identity, used a set of symbols amongst women,
too. But are we entitled to apply the conclusions
drawn by the European scholars where the other
national feminine allegories were concerned?
Moreover, due to iconography studies,
some of the possible difficulties in order to
understand this kind of representation was
annulled (Ibidem, 35) (9). Despite the pros and
cons in the debate on how images should be
approached, the scholars all agreed that images
are a privileged source for studying the subtle
relations between imagination and reality
(Nicoar 2002, 122). Images, as we previously
mentioned, remain a significant source for
womens history, a privileged one perhaps for
proving the progress made by women from one
age to another. Images from Romanian society
follow the same patterns as the European ones:
compare, for instance the frequent medieval and
modern votive paintings as the one representing
Brncoveanus family with the 19th century
paintings of Rosenthal. It is also true that
Romanian iconography is not as generous as the
European one in representations of women. This
can be considered as one of the main difficulties
of studying such a topic. From another
perspective, images are just like all the other
sources in that they tend to put women in the
background, lacking or showing little interest in
women stories. Romanian historical mythology
seems to be no more generous, as Lucian Boia
argued, as it does not seem interested in women
either (Boia 1997, 335). Yet, the major events of
the 19th century and the first half of the 20th
century would change this negative balance. The
1848 Revolution is among the privileged
moments of the Romanian society which

favored womens entrance as icons of the nation.

This event is to be taken, for the Romanian case,
as a revolutionary moment for womens visual
representations. The revolution was the one
inspiring the artists to express the national ideals
through allegories.
The first and probably the best known
allegories are those signed by Constantin D.
Rosenthal. He was not a native Romanian, but a
Jew born in Budapest, who adopted the
Romanian revolutionary ideals. Despite his
origin, he would become a true Romanian
assuming and sharing all the national aspirations
of Romanian intellectuals. This is visible in his
major works, the allegories he painted under the
influence of the 1848 Revolution. There are
three allegorical representations of the
Romanian nation: Romnia eliberat (Liberated
Romania) (10); Romnia rupndu-i ctuele pe
Cmpia Libertii (Romania breaking off her
chains on the Field of Liberty), in August 1848
and Romnia revoluionar (Revolutionary
Romania) painted in Paris, while the artist was
in exile with other Romanian revolutionaries
among whom was C. A. Rosetti, the artists
friend. Questions are still asked about the first
allegory. Adrian Silvan Ionescu relates it to the
statue of Liberty (Ionescu 2002, 47), while
others, such as Doina Pung, focus on Romnia
eliberat (Liberated Romania) (Pung 2008,
93). It is a sculpture initially placed in Piaa
Vorniciei in Bucharest, unfortunately destroyed
when the temporary government withdrew to
Rucr fearing a Turkish invasion (Ionescu 2002,
47). We know about it from the German press,
which published a stamp commemorating it
(Ibidem). It can be considered the first step in
creating the allegory of the Romanian nation as
it resembled closely the first painting
representing Romania (see Figure 1).
According to the iconography, we agree
with A. Silvan Ionescus conclusion that this
sculpture represented rather the abstract notion
of Liberty than an allegory of the nation: it is
dressed in ancient clothes; with a halo over the
head; having around the wrists the chains it was
imprisoned with; holding a crutch/cross in one
hand and a pair of scales in the other; stepping
on a snake (Ibidem). As we have already argued,
this is rather a classical representation,
commonly seen in European iconography. See
for instance Eugne Delacroix, Liberty Leading
the People, which is by far the most famous of
the many images of liberty which appeared, in

Romanian nation. The latter aspect is what we try to

prove through the present study.
(9) The author makes reference to Panofskys essay
first published in 1939 in which the latter
distinguished three levels of interpretation
corresponding to three levels of meaning in the work
itself. The first of these levels was the preiconographical description, concerned with natural
meaning and consisting of identifying objects (such
as trees, buildings, animals and people) and events
(meals, battles, processions etc.). The second level
was the iconographical analysis in the strict sense,
concerned with conventional meaning (recognizing
a supper as the Last Supper or a battle as the battle of
Waterloo). The third level is that of iconological
interpretation, distinguished from iconography
because it was concerned with intrinsic meaning, in
other words, those underlying principles which reveal
the basic attitude of a nation, a period, a class, a
religious or a philosophical persuasion, p. 35-36.

(10) It is not a painting but a statue. Some call it a

statue of Liberty.

105

paint, plaster and bronze, in the aftermath of the

revolution of 1830 (Burke 2001, 61). In the
Romanian case, the sculpture combines both
classic and Christian symbols. It also mixes
symbols belonging to more than one classic
goddess: the broken chains are the key feature of
Liberty, whereas the pair of scales is usually
used for representing Justice. The artist not only
mixed the symbols, but he also adjusted them to
the context, as other romantic contemporary
artists did. We make reference to the pair of
scales as the symbol of Justice but, in
revolutionary times, it was an attribute of
Equality, represented also as a woman holding a
pair of scales, but without the blindfold
(Ibidem).
In consequence, we consider that the
first feminine allegory of the Romanian nation is
Romnia rupndu-i ctuele pe Cmpia
Libertii (Romania breaking off her chains on
the Field of Liberty), painted in August 1848
(Figure 2).
It is obvious that this representation
respects the canon, the classical typology of
nation. Romania appears as a young woman, in
ancient clothes and wrapped in with what had
already become, the national flag, the symbol of
the Romanian nation, breaking the chains, a
symbol of liberty, and holding a laurel branch in
her left hand. The artists second allegory,
Romania
Revoluionar
(Revolutionary
Romania) is also a symbolic capturing of the
Romanian national ideals of liberty and unity.
This time, he had a real model to inspire him:
Maria Rosetti, the wife of the Romanian
revolutionary C. A. Rosetti. One might notice a
possible paradox: Maria Rosetti was not a native
Romanian; she was English! Yet, there is no
doubt that she shared her husbands
revolutionary ideas (11), as the artist did as well.
The second allegory is also extremely generous
in symbolic meanings (Figure 3).
The painting was realized in 1850, when
the artist was in Paris, having in mind the great
impression of the revolutionary moments he was
actively involved in. This allegory, as the first
one, is perfectly anchored in the context: the first
is an expression of hope, whereas the latter
captures the idea that the fight had not yet
ended; just one battle had been lost. Romania is
now dressed in a national costume, still holding
or defending the national flag with its
flagpole broken (Ionescu 2008, 46). Both

paintings are to be seen as a remarkable

expression of the ideals shared by all Romanian
revolutionaries, despite the fact that the
paintings would be the private property of C. A.
Rosetti until his death when the owner donated
them to the state (Ibidem). But, taking into
account the compositions, it seems obvious that
they were addressed to the Romanian people.
This claim is argued by the visual language the
artist used. It is a simple one, easily understood
by common people. Moreover, we must mention
that the Revolutionary committee in Paris
decided to lithograph the first painting as
propaganda material (Pung 2008, 94).
The revolutionary moments would be
the source of inspiration for another Romanian
artist, Gheorghe Tattarescu. He would paint the
allegory named Deteptarea Romniei (The
Reveille of Romania). The painting is as explicit
as those of Constantin D. Rosenthal: Romania
awaking in the presence of faith, religion,
science and fine arts, while an angel unveils her,
rescuing her from obscurity (Ibidem, 103)
(Figure 4).
Although the painting was a gift for
Barbu tirbei, it was also intended for the
people, though the symbols are not as easily
readable as in the case of C. D. Rosenthals
paintings. But it was also propaganda material
considering that it was lithographed in Italy
(Ibidem). Likewise, the defeat of the revolution
inspired the artist to paint a second allegory, as
C. D. Rosenthal did in Paris. Unfortunately, it
remained just a project as we have only a sketch
called Romnia plngnd la sarcofagul
Libertii (Romania crying at Liberty
sarcophagus). It represents a woman dressed in
black, a widow crying at Libertys sarcophagus
(Ibidem). He will also find another source of
inspiration in the events from 1866 as he will
paint another allegory: 11 februarie 1866 Romnia Modern (11 February 1866 Modern
Romania.)
It is obvious that revolution was what
gave birth to the emergence of the feminine
personification of nations. It is true that, with the
exception
of
Romania
revoluionar
(Revolutionary Romania) which has a real
model, the images represent woman as a passive
actor. But we consider them to be closely
connected to the progress made towards
reconsidering the role and place of women in
contemporary society. In fact, the national
aspiration as well as the effort to modernize
Romanian society caused this revaluation of
womens role in that society. This claim is
argued by an entire literature which debates the

(11) Taking into account that the couple named their

daughter, born in 6/18 June 1848, Libertatea - Sofia,
(Liberty) (Netea 1970, 135).

106

great question of the age: the womans. Indeed,

we are just at the level of theoretical debate. For
instance, the correlation between societys
lagging behind and the peoples lack of
education is emphasized in the journals of the
period under review (Fodor 2013, 82). Illiteracy
was understood as a cause of this lag (Ibidem).
This is also the context in which the problem of
womens education is gaining more and more
scholarly attention (Ibidem). In discussion of the
educational issue, women would be seen as a
key feature of cultural nationalism (Hewer
2008, 52). They have a new role in the process
of constructing national identity. But this new
role is based on womens traditional roles: she is
first of all the Mother, but the mother of the
nation, which is obvious in the allegories as
well. Thus, the allegories are to be considered as
an indicator of the progress made by women, a
progress which would be more accentuated in
the second half of the 19th century. It is also
understandable why the progress is first obvious
at the symbolic level. The feminine allegories of
the Romanian nation would also increase in
number. Another significant national event
would be a source of inspiration to the artists:
the union of the Romanian Principalities,
Moldavia and Wallachia, in 1859. Nicolae
Grigorescu and Theodor Aman would both paint
such feminine allegories. One must also mention
that the artists as well, not just their work, would
become national symbols (12).
In conclusion, the 19th century was not
only the age of nations and modernization but
also the century of womens progress which is
so masterfully captured, in the romantic style, in
Rosenthal and Tattarescus paintings. Their
allegories would inspire as they were
themselves inspired by not only Romanian
womens involvement in the nations progress
towards achieving its goals, but also towards the
emancipation of their sex. They would gradually
become active members of the society. On the
one hand, they would be asked to be full
Romanian citizens despite their maternal
duties but they would also gain the right to be
actively involved in societys development. This
progress is also visible in the visual language.
Besides these feminine allegories where women
tended rather to be passive symbols than active
ones, we would have, in the context of the Great
War, the emergence of such active symbols as
Queen Mary of Romania. Thus we agree with
Jennifer Hewers point of view that it was not

only the language that favored the creation of

feminine allegories of the nation (Hewer 2008,
48) (13).
References
a. Papers in periodical journals:
Agulhon 1976 Agulhon, M., Un usage de
la femme au XIXe sicle:
lallgorie
de
la
Rpublique.
In:
Romantisme, 1976, no. 1314.
Fodor, Georgeta, Romanian
Fodor 2013
Women
in
the
New
Economic Context of the
20th Century. In: Annales
Universitatis
Apulensis.
Series Historica, 17/I, 2013,
p. 79-93.
Lungu, Emilia, Femeia
Lungu 1879
Romana
(Romanian
Women).
In:
Amiculu
Familiei (Friend of the
Family) (Cluj), no. 8, 13/25
novembre 1879, p. 69.
Pung,
Doina, Repere
Pung 2008
istorice n memoria artei
romneti Revoluia de la
1848
(Historical
Landmarks in the Memory
of the Romanian Art 1848
Revolution). In: Periodicul
Muzeul Naional de istorie a
Romniei (National History
Museum
of
Romanian
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p. 87-104.
b. Books:
Anderson
2006

Boia 1997

Anderson, Benedict, Imagined

Communities. Reflections on the
Origin
and
Spread
of
Nationalism, London, New
York, Verso, 2006.
Boia, L., Istorie si mit n
contiina romneasc (History
and
Myth
in
Romanian

(13)The author states that many country names and

associated terms were grammatically feminine thus
feminine allegories were natural choices to represent
the nation. But the answer is not simply linguistic;
the choice of a masculine or a feminine national
symbol as well as the particular kind of woman or
man it portrayed, often served to promote particular
forms of nationalism or imagined connections to the
nation.

(12) Nicolae Grigorescu is commonly referred to as a

Romanian national painter.

107

Burke 2001

Gellner 1997

Hobsbawm
1992

Ionescu 2002

Ionescu 2008

Mosse 1996

Netea 1970

Nicoar 2002

Yuval-Davis,
Anthias 1989
Perrot 1997

Consciousness),
Bucureti,
Humanitas, 1997.
Burke, P., Eyewitnessing. The
Uses of Images as Historical
Evidence, London, Reaktion
Books Ltd, 2001.
Gellner, Ernest, Naiuni i
naionalisme (Nations and
Nationalisms), Bucureti, 1997.
Hobsbawm, E., Nations and
nationalism
since
1780.
Programme, myth, reality,
Cambridge,
Cambridge
University Press, 1992.
Ionescu, Adrian Silvan, Artiti
documentariti i corespondeni
de front n Rzboiul de
Independen,
1877-1878
(Documentary Artists and War
Correspondences in the War of
Independence
1977-1878),
Bucureti, Editura Biblioteca
Bucuretilor, 2002.
Ionescu, A. S., Micarea
artistic oficial n Romnia
secolului al XIX-lea (The
Official Artistic Movement of
the 19th Century Romania),
Bucureti, NOI Media Print,
2008.
Mosse, G. L., The Image of
Man. The Creation of Modern
Masculinity, Oxford, Oxford
University Press, 1996.
Netea, Vasile, C. A. Rosetti,
Bucureti, Editura tiinific,
1970.
Nicoar, Simona, Naiunea
modern. Mituri. Simboluri.
Ideologii (Modern Nation.
Myths. Symbols. Ideologies),
Cluj-Napoca, Accent, 2002.
Yuval-Davis,
Nira,
Floya
Anthias (eds.), Women-NationState, London, 1989.
Perrot,
Michelle,
Femmes
publiques, Paris, Les Editions
Textuels, 1997.

Hewer 2008

Walby 1999

Direcii i teme de cercetare n

studiile de gen din Romnia.
Atelier
(Directions
and
Research Topics in Gender
Studies in Romania. Workshop),
Bucureti,
New
Europe
College, 2002, p. 62-94.
Hewer, Jennifer, Gender and
Nationalism. In: G. H. Herb,
D. H. Kaplan (eds.), Nations
and Nationalism. A Global
Historical Overview, I, 17701880, Santa Barbara, ABCCLIO, 2008, p. 43-58.
Walby, Sylvia, Woman and
Nation. In: Gopal Balakrishnan
(ed.), Mapping the Nation,
London, New York, Verso,
1999, p. 235-254.

List of illustrations
Fig. 1 Constantin Daniel Rosenthal, Statue of
Liberty (Constantin Daniel Rosenthal, Statuia
Libertii)
Fig. 2 Constantin Daniel Rosenthal, Romania
Breaking off Her Chains on the Field of Liberty,
1848 (Constantin Daniel Rosenthal, Romnia
rupndu-i ctuele pe Cmpia Libertii, 1848)
Fig. 3 - Constantin Daniel Rosenthal,
Revolutionary Romania, 1850 (Constantin
Daniel Rosenthal, Romania Revoluionar,
1850)
Fig. 4 - Gheorghe Tattarescu, The Reveille of
Romania (Gheorghe Tattarescu, Deteptarea
Romniei)

c. Chapters in books:
Blu, Ionela, Apariia femeii
Blu 2002
ca actor social a doua
jumtate a secolului al XIX-lea
(The Emergence of Woman as
a Socil Actor 2nd Half of the
19th Century). In: Ionela
Blu, Ioana Crstocea, (eds.)

108

Fig. 1 Constantin Daniel Rosenthal, Statue of Liberty

Fig. 2 Constantin Daniel Rosenthal, Romania Breaking off Her Chains on the Field of Liberty,
1848

Fig. 3 Constantin Daniel Rosenthal, Revolutionary Romania, 1850

Fig. 4 Gheorghe Tattarescu, The Reveille of Romania

109

The Bible Generator of Russian Literature in the Modern Era (F.

M. Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov)

Silviu Cristian RAD

PhD Candidate, Babe-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Faculty of Orthodox Theology
E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract. This study aims to present the role that the Scripture had in shaping the novel Fraii
Karamazov [The Brothers Karamazov]. The Scriptural text is an important source of inspiration for the
creation of this literary masterpiece. The use of biblical quotes in Dostoyevskys work seems to be a
general rule. Throughout his novels, we are to find references to Scripture.
The research is divided into three chapters. The first part of the study is dedicated to an analysis
of the concept of intertextuality and biblical intertextuality. What is the purpose for which Dostoyevsky
uses so the Bible quote so often? In the second section, we shall analyse the mythological aspect of the
novel, and we shall clarify some aspects of literary motives present in the novel. The final part intends to
investigate the Legend of the Grand Inquisitor - a pamphlet of genius.
Keywords: The Brothers Karamazov, intertextuality,
literaturerelationship, The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor

biblical

quote,

the

Bible-

describing what is contemporary, a testimony

stating that the text does not imply a closure in
itself, but that it has an opening for a dialogue
with other texts, a kind of distrust towards the
omniscient author and a confidence bestowed to
the committed reader (Ciocian 2013, 204).
The philosophy of intertextuality aims
at reducing the role of author (Fokkema 2000,
143) giving the reader a greater freedom to
figure out the mysteries of writing. The text
thus becomes a major generator of meaning.
The intertext seen in its connection to
the text works on other texts, so it is considered
an absorption and a transformation of several
previous texts. Each text is in a plurivalent
relation to other texts. The interaction of various
relationships in the inner text is called
intertextuality. The way of achieving
intertextuality in a text specifies the major social
and aesthetics feature underlying the text
structure. The text thus becomes an object which
allows reading a layered history by choosing a
limited temporality and by dialectically
interpreting in a plural series of signifying
practices (Sndulescu 1976, 439).
Ioan Pnzaru, in a generous study on the
textual interpretation, sets literature on a
privileged place among arts, considering that
the field in which the problem of interpretation
plays the banal and ungrateful role of a real
locus classicus is the one of literature and arts.

Theoretical analysis of the concept of

intertextuality and biblical intertextuality
The Holy Scripture, since the late 18th
century, has had a statute which was considered
a paradox at that time. The Bible becomes
absorbed by secular literature. Beginning with
the era of modernism we can speak of an
intermingling, a mixture of the sacred with the
profane, even a camouflage of the sacred in the
profane (Jinga 2001, 11). The concept of biblical
quote cannot be understood without an analysis
of the concept of intertext, generally speaking.
The universe of intertextuality is as wide
as it may be, being rooted in the dynamics of
literature from immemorial time. The theoretical
concept arises in the context of structuralism and
semiotics in the late 60s. The term is launched
by Julia Kristeva in a literary meeting in 1969.
Writing a paper about Mikhail Bakhtin, Kristeva
suggests the importance of the dialogue between
the text and its meaning, seen as a complex
system of codes and signs (Moyse 2002, 418).
Maria Nicoleta Ciocian, in a deep
insight into the world of intertextuality,
concludes the intertextuality is the best way to
explain or describe the world we live in.
Intertextuality is one of the concepts endowed
with the ability of redirecting literature at
investigating its own mechanisms. Being an
essential concept within the critical vocabulary,
intertextuality is a term that designates a way of

110

Literature is considered an a priori value, on the

one hand, because it is the bearer of an excellent
content (those thoughts attracting the admiration
of the learned ones, over decades), on the other
hand, because it belongs to the field of arts that
seduce and enchant. (Pnzaru 2012, 75).
The notion of intertext encompasses the
interpretative capacity of human being,
considered an essential intellectual function, it
is the origin of all assumptions and it is deeply
involved in creativity (Pnzaru 1999, 7). Ioan
Pnzaru considered text interpretation as being a
creative act whereby the interpreter creates
analog assumptions about the meaning of the
texts (Pnzaru 1999, 7). Through the
interpretation, a text is trying to find itself a
meaning. The study of literary interpretation
cannot avoid peregrinations within the related
fields, as is the case of theology in
Dostoyevskys
work,
investigating
the
properties of the text notwithstanding meaning,
starts from the presupposition that the work is,
from the time of its publication, an inert
exponent in a museum, deprived of semantic,
unrelated with the human world. (Pnzaru
2012, 22).
After reading Dostoyevskys literature,
we can notice that it is included in the category
of writings that have developed in relation to
The Holy Scripture. All Dostoyevskys
masterpieces are based on the biblical passages.
The Bible becomes a source of inspiration for
Dostoyevsky. In the Biblical books, we can
speak about a divine inspiration. In writing the
books of the Bible, we have to do with a
theandric process in which the role of the author
is, not at all, negligible. Even though, in the case
of literature, we may encounter common traits
with sacred writings, its formative role sets
literature in a different situation. Likewise is the
case of apocryphal writings.
The Bible quote is always at its place in
Dostoyevskys major writings, thus making the
connection with religion. Inserting biblical
quotations opens the way to reflections,
meditation and interpretations of the Christic
message.
The Biblical intertext should not be
confused with a hermeneutic act. Dostoyevsky
does not interpret the Scripture, but brings it in
actuality. Our attempt is to notify this act, as
well as the role that the Biblical text plays in his
novel. The biblical text, by the force of
cohesion, comes to give amplitude to
Dostoyevskys writings. Using the biblical
examples gives authenticity to his work. His
novels are perceived as being always up to date,

appealing to the demands of most exigent

readers. Through his writings Dostoyevsky is
trying to be a giver of meaning, refusing the
custom and seeking a better sense, more human,
more logical, closer to the truth and to the life of
his contemporaries.
The Bible had an impact in the novel
The Brothers Karamazov, influencing it not only
as a source of inspiration, but at the level of
designing the status of the literary text (Jinga
2001, 24).
The action of the novel The Brothers
Karamazov,
beyond
multiple
possible
discussions regarding the type of text
classification, the ideological and aesthetic
relations, is also the result of intertextual
influences from the Holy Scripture.
In Dostoyevskys writing, the use of
intertextuality is one of the multiple ways of
making the text and of creating the relationship
with the reader. In some places, the reception of
the dostoyevskian text implies difficulties from
the reader, who, for acquiring an in depth
understanding of the text, should firstly decode
the intertextual complex.
The Biblical intertextuality is one of the
essential components of Russian literature, in
general, and of Dostoyevskys writings, in
particular. As a result, the reader should be
cautious in the act of reading; he has to be able
to go beyond the writing, in the realm of ethics,
philosophy and religion.
Dostoyevskys literature is firstly an
accumulation
of
individual
experience.
Secondly, the reader can take a training course
by reading these fundamental books.
The novel The Brothers Karamazov,
through its ample narration and its active
involvement of all the characters, enables the
development of social intelligence. Practical
principles and life experience can be acquired in
an easier way by the stimuli offered during
reading, although the attachment to values is
rather obtained by the other process, namely
through personal involvement (Pnzaru 2012,
88-89).
The Mythological dimension of the novel The
Brothers Karamazov
In the second part of our research, we
will investigate the presence of the mythical
aspect in the pages of the novel The Brothers
Karamazov.
The mythological aspect of the novel
follows the line drawn by Platon, which defines
the myth as a way of translating opinion, not
the scientific certainty (Chevalier 1995, 308).

111

The trajectory traced in the novel is not strictly

scientific. Dostoyevsky is rather willing to
cultivate the symbolising function of
imagination (Chevalier 1995, 308).
Dostoyevsky gives us through his final
novel an example of configuring new myths by
using some of the biblical passages existing for
ages. It thus seems obvious that the desire of the
author is to bring forth, on the stage of the daily
life, special forms of the Christian myth.
In the novel The Brothers Karamazov
there are two parts where the presence Christian
is defining: the fifth book Pro & Cons and the
sixth book entitled The Russian Monk. In order
to enter the mythical perimeter of the novel, first
of all we have to identify and describe the
themes, the symbols and the words semantically
marked in their real order and connection. The
literary motifs and the novels mythical layer are
presented to us by Albert Kovacs, in an order
which takes into account the structure of the
chapter. The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor is
the main mythical mark of the whole novel,
encompassing the authors entire philosophical
and religious thinking (1).
The mythic dimension of Dostoyevskys
prose, carefully analysed by Albert Kovacs, can
be applied at several levels:
a) Language without a mythical
language, the narrative construction
would be deprived of authenticity and
veridicity. What is particular for
Dostoyevsky is the use of a simple
language, but not a simplistic one,

specific to the biblical one. Hence, the

dostoyevskian linguistic system acquires
a mystical aspect. All Dostoyevskys
novels respect this direction, as the
development of most of his writings is
based on some scriptural passages.
b) The atmosphere in which the action is
framed sometimes it becomes tangible
to the reader, as he feels himself
involved in the development of the
action, thus being established an acute
complicity between him and the text.
c) The temporality the action unfolds in
time, but, occasionally, the depth of the
created images exceeds time. The
development and the depth of the events
frame the reader an image of a time
beyond time. The feeling of the
irreversible loss of time and the
awareness of the anxieties appear
because of humankinds lack of
existential and eschatological meaning
(Iftime 2009, 39) as well as of a
rationalist thinking that considers the
existence of evil and suffering as the
main obstacle to the faith in God
(Berdiaev 1996, 197).
The Legend of The Grand Inquisitor a
pamphlet of genius (Crainic 1998, 161)
In this poem, one must search the
essence of Dostoyevskys conception about the
word, this being the peak of his creation. From
Berdiaevs point of view, this fragment solves
the fundamental theme of freedom and of the
human spirit (Berdiaev 1992, 124).
The legend of the Grand Inquisitor
represents a single episode in the novel The
Brothers Karamazov, but its relation to the novel
is so fragile that it can be regarded as a distinct
creation. Anyway, instead of an outer link
between this episode and The Brothers
Karamazov, there is an internal one, given the
fact that the whole novel centers on this literary
poem, which contains the main idea of all
Dostoyevskys novels: the freedom and the
autonomous reason of the human unrestrained
by anything (Crainic 1998, 162).
In order to understand the essence of
Dostoyevskys view in this poem, Nikolai
Berdiaev helps the reader with the following
remark: within the legend two fundamental
bases are faced and confronted freedom and
constraint, the faith in the meaning of life and
the disbelief in any meaning of life, the divine
love and the atheistic pity towards people, Christ
and Antichrist. (Berdiaev 1992, 125).

(1) Albert Kovacs undertakes a schematic description

of the literary motifs and the novels mythical layer:
1.
The human dignity defeating
material interest, pride and humility;
2.
Western ideas, contempt for the
people, threatening rivalry;
3.
Confidence in life, chaos, universal
order, tender buds, blue sky, the beloved
graves; faith, socialism, anarchism, the
denial of the world;
4.
Rebellion. Childrens suffering ask
for the punishment of their killers, who
cannot be forgiven, harmony cannot be built
on tears, the returned ticket back, the denial
of an absurd world;
5.
The Grand Inquisitor;
6.
Ivan closes his eyes to the
foreboding crime, which shall be committed
by Smerdeakov. It all ends with the sixth
book where Zosima teaches general
forgiveness, the acceptance of life, the
active love, heaven on earth (Kovacs 1987,
212).

112

This epic poem represents the main

landmark of the incursion of the biblical text in
the literary area. We encounter in this episode an
evangelical substrate, further on developed and
analysed by the author.
For an understanding of the enigmas
included in this episode, we have to investigate
the storyline behind this vast poem.
Dostoyevsky sets the action in the late 15th
century in Spain, the Inquisitions homeland, the
day after the grand inquisitor had burned at the
stake a hundred heretics ad Dei gloriam
majorem(The Grand Inquisitor 1997, p.13).
The Grand Inquisitor, a nonagenarian old man,
venerated by the people, makes the whole
process of the Christian doctrine for the
Redeemer. This is because, in his opinion, the
Christian doctrine is impossible. The Grand
Inquisitor believes that the Saviour brought
along a too strict doctrine for the man to
accomplish, that is why he reproaches: We have
followed another method than yours; You want
to raise the hopelessly low human at the height
of your doctrine, which is not possible; we, on
the contrary, have sought to drop away this
doctrine by adjusting it to the irreparable human
helplessness. That is to say an idea of complete
disfigurement of Christianity. (Crainic 1998,
162).
In his approach, Dostoyevsky could not
detach himself from the biblical word. The
temptation of Christ is the main episode to be
found in this literary passage. The hermeneutics
of the three temptations bears the key to the
message that the author intended to convey for
the reader of this novel. One could not find a
more eloquent passage for the Russian author to
use it order to criticise Westerns materialism
and its distancing from the true values.
Throughout the pages of this poem, one
makes reference to another key point of the
activity of Christ, the resurrection of Jairus
daughter (Dostoyevsky 2011, 310). The
Inquisitor cannot understand this miracle to its
fullest. The sense used by Dostoyevsky in
inserting this Gospel passage is also to be found
in the pages of the Gospel. The miracle of Christ
points towards His almightiness, and the love
that the Son of God has for the human being, in
general, and the youth, in particular.
The Russian author, by creating the
Inquisitor, presents the man ruled by selfishness.
Individualist rationalism is severely punished in
all of his novels. Such a creature cannot perceive
the mysteries of God, being inclined towards an
evil thinking, instead of Christs humility.
Through the use of the biblical text, his message

does not fall into desuetude, but remains forever

alive in the conscience of the reader.
The Grand Inquisitor is trying, by any
means, to assert his doctrine. If he fails to tempt
Christ in three ways, these turn into instruments
of mans domination by showing that, in order
to bring happiness to the world, miracle,
mystery and authority are needed. The Grand
Inquisitor does not give up, being aware of the
weakness in the human nature. Through this
diabolical plan, the inquisitor is willing to
subjugate the human being. The inquisitor wants
to show the Redeemer that the human nature is
hopelessly lowered, a fact which is a great error
(Crainic 1998, 165).
The entire epic building of the poem is
carefully interpreted by Albert Kovacs, who
implements this inversion of meaning in the
eyes of the oppressor. The Grand Inquisitor
turns any talent into submission and humiliation:
You wanted to give them the freedom to choose
between good and evil, you wanted their love
and obedience by free consent, but the hundreds
of millions are unable to be free, they laid down
their freedom at our feet, because they are weak,
rebels, man is much more villain than you had
expected (Kovacs 1987, 204).
At a careful reading of this poem, but
also of the biblical passage on temptation, two
questions are born. The first one is of exegetic
nature and the second one bears intertextual
references: why is the Inquisitor (the devil)
using these three temptations? Is Dostoyevsky
retaining the letter of the Scripture? In a
comprehensive study devoted to this event,
Stelian Tofan presents the theological
dimension of this story of the temptation of
Christ: the ordeal demonstrated the full
humanity of Jesus, in the sense that the man may
be tempted by the devil; the confrontation with
the devil has demonstrated the power of the
God-man, an hypostasis which the devil was not
accustomed to, the temptation has shown that
the devils temptations may be rejected by man
if we use the power of God (Tofan 2002, 171172). Dostoyevsky stays close to the biblical
passage, presenting it in its entire splendor.
In the mythical layer of the poem there
often appear real-psychological substrata caused
by Aleoas disruptions. The direct destination
of these intermingled structures is primarily the
constructive one, they not only help the big
brother to make his younger brother conscious
of the conventional and artistic-fantastic form,
clearing its meanings, but the writer also
demonstrates his poetic art (Kovacs 1987, 205).

113

The action of this legend ends with a

gesture encountered in the Bible pages as well,
namely the kissing gesture between the
Inquisitor and the Hostage. In the Gospel
passage, Judas kissed Christ. In Dostoyevskys
novel, the Hostage gives a kiss to the Inquisitor,
who remains steadfast in his determination (2).
Judahs gesture is one of treason, while the
gesture of the Hostage is one of profound
humility.
The Brothers Karamazov represents the
writers literary climax, the conclusion and the
coronation of all his works in which he
rephrases the questions that he had questioned
himself, in the same time seeking to solve them.
After making an overview of all
Dostoyevskys great novels, the conclusion is
that they are consolidated on an evangelical
substrate. The Brothers Karamazov is not an
exception, this novel being an updated parable
of the grain of wheat: unless a grain of wheat
falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone;
but if it dies, it produces much grain (John 12,
24). According to Ion Ianoi, this parable
crosses in fact all Dostoyevskys creation, as a
comprehensive and obviously laconic sign of the
authors belief that happiness is acquired in pain,
greatness comes from humility, death (physical
or spiritual, actual or symbolic) precedes the true
life. Saint Johns words define not only the
ordeal of Dmitri and Alexei Karamazov, but also
the sufferings of Marmeladova Sonia, Sofia
Marmeladova, Sonia and Prince Myshkin
Andreyevna, as well as Raskolnikovs final
salvation (Ianoi 2004, 251).

Biblical intertext within Dostoyevskys writing

is the artistic mood of a particular religious
sensibility. Both for Dostoyevsky and for other
writers from the Orthodox area, biblical
references are sometimes unavoidable.
The Bible has been and continues to be
an inspiration for literature. The authors of
modern literature had a call not only to enchant
the spirit through their creations, but also to look
for answers at mans great questions.
References
a) Papers in periodical journals:
Iftime,
Andreea-Oana,
Iftime 2009
Intertextul biblic n Idiotul
[The biblical intertext in The
Idiot]. In Constelaii ieene,
IV, no. 1(13), April 2009.
Moyise 2002 Moyise, Steve, Intertextuality
and biblical studies: a review.
In Verbum et ecclesia JRG,
23(2), 2002.
b) Books:
Berdiaev
1992

Berdiaev
1996

***

Conclusions
Dostoyevsky selects very carefully the
insertion of the biblical quotes, each time
creating a deep sense of wonder in front of the
sacred, thus paving the way for reflection. The

Chevalier,
Gheerbrant
1995
Ciocian 2013

(2) I meant to end it like this. When the Inquisitor

ceased speaking he waited some time for his Prisoner
to answer him. His silence weighed down upon him.
He saw that the Prisoner had listened intently all the
time, looking gently in his face and evidently not
wishing to reply. The old man longed for him to say
something, however bitter and terrible. But He
suddenly approached the old man in silence and
softly kissed him on his bloodless aged lips. That was
all his answer. The old man shuddered. His lips
moved. He went to the door, opened it, and said to
Him: Go, and come no more... come not at all,
never, never! And he let Him out into the dark alleys
of the town. The Prisoner went away.
And the old man?
The kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres
to his idea.(Dostoyevsky 2011, 440)

Crainic 1998

Dostoyevski

114

Berdiaev, Nikolai, Filosofia lui

Dostoievski
[Dostoyevsky's
Philosophy], Iai, European
Institute, 1992.
Berdiaev, Nikolai, Spirit i
libertate, [Freedom and the
Spirit], Bucharest, Paidea,
1996.
Biblia sau Sfnta Scriptur
[Bible or Holy Scripture],
Bucharest, B.O.R. Institute,
2001.
Chevalier, Jean, Gheerbrant,
Alain, Dicionar de simboluri
[Dictionary of Symbols], vol.
II, Bucharest, Artemis, 1995.
Ciocian,
Maria
Nicoleta,
Dinamica
fenomenelor
intertextuale citatul literar i
nonliterar n literatura romn
actual [The Dynamic of the
Intertextual Phenomena
Literary and Non-Literary
Quote
in
the
Current
Romanian Literature], (PhD
thesis), Cluj-Napoca, 2013.
Crainic, Nichifor, Dostoievski
i
cretinismul
rus
[Dostoyevsky and the Russian
Christianity],
Bucharest,
Anastasia, 1998.
Dostoyevski,
Feodor

2011

Ianoi 2004

Jinga 2001

Kovacs 1987

Pnzaru 1999

Pnzaru 2012

Sndulescu
1976

Tofan 2002

Mihailovici, Fraii Karamazov

[The Brothers Karamazov],
Bucharest, Adevrul, 2011.
Ianoi,
Ion,
Dostoievski.
Tragedia
subteranei
[Dostoyevsky.
The
Underground
Tragedy],
Bucharest,
Cultural
Foundation The European Idea
Publishing House, 2004.
Jinga, Constantin, Biblia i
sacrul n literatur [The Bible
and the Sacred in Literature],
Timioara, West University
Publishing House, 2001.
Kovacs, Albert, Poetica lui
Dostoievski
[Dostoyevskis
Poetry], Bucharest, Univers,
1987.
Pnzaru, Ioan, Practici ale
interpretrii de text [Practices
of the Text Interpretation],
Iai, Polirom, 1999.
Pnzaru,
Ioan,
Regimul
interpretrii. Literatura i
sensul
aciunii
[The
Interpretation
Rules.
Literature and The Sense of
Action], Iai, Polirom, 2012.
Sndulescu, Al., Dicionar de
termeni literari [Dictionary of
Literary Terms], Bucharest,
Romanian
Academy
Publishing House, 1976.
Tofan, Stelian, Introducere n
studiul Noului Testament,
Evangheliile dup Matei i
Marcu, Documentul Quelle
[Introduction to the Study of
the New Testament, vol. II, the
Gospels of Matthew and Mark,
the Quelle Document], ClujNapoca, Cluj University Press,
2002.

c) Chapters in books:
Fokkema, Douwe, The Concept of
Douwe
Rewriting. In Liviu Papadima,
2000
Mircea
Vasilescu
(coord.),
Cercetarea literar azi studii
dedicate
profesorului
Paul
Cornea [Literary Research Today
Studies Dedicated to Professor
Paul Cornea], Iai, Polirom,
2000.

115

The Gypsy in the Transylvanian Romanian Mentality.

19th Century
Elena Andreea TRIF-BOIA
PhD, Babe-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca
E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract. Arising for the first time as pilgrim groups, the Medieval Rroma fascinated the Old
Continent inhabitants. For a period of time they have been treated with consideration and even supported
in their travels throughout Europe. Soon, however, this benevolent attitude would change radically,
reaching the point where many monarchs would go as far as to order their extermination.
The present study analyzes the image of the Rroma people in the 19th century Romanian culture of
Transylvania, a province that was inhabited by people who were in their majority of Romanian descent,
but who were subjects of the Habsburgs and, subsequently, of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. We will
analyze these representations in close connection to similar projections encountered in the Danubian
Principalities and in other European countries, but, at the same time, we will also try to capture the
peculiarities of the local perspectives.
Keywords: the Roma people, imaginary projections, Romanian culture, Transylvania, 19th Century
The Rroma history is one riddled with
mysteries concerning their origin, the causes that
determined them to emigrate, as well as the
moment of their arrival in Europe, as in the
passage of time they stirred a series of
confusions, partly due to their status as a
nomadic people and to the inexistence of a
written history about them (1).
For a long time it was believed that they
were natives of Egypt, an error that had been put
into circulation since the Middle Age by their
ancestors (2). Important steps were made only in
the second half of the eighteenth century, when,
as a student of theology in Holland, Wli Istvn
noted the similarity between the Hungarian
Gypsies language in Hungary and that of his

Indian colleagues. With the latters help, the

Hungarian theologian drew up a vocabulary of
over 1000 words that, upon his return, he had it
read to the Gypsies in Gyr. Wli didnt publish
his findings, and the data that had been printed
in 1776 in a Viennese sheet came from notes of
one of his friends (Saru 1997, p. 11-14).
Through linguistics again one would be able to
elucidate the problem of the Rroma migration
trail, since old lexical elements of Afghani,
Persian, Armenian, Turkish, Greek, Romanian,
Slavic, etc. origin, feature the picture of their
route down to the Old Continent. However, in
order to dispel the mists placed over centuries, a
studies enhancement in this direction and a
serious analysis of the idioms lexicon in each
country are required (Ibidem, p. 15).
Conclusions do not follow with great
evidence neither with respect to the Gypsys
setting in Europe and in the Romanian inhabited
territories. A document of the Archangel Michael
Monastery in Prizen (in todays Republic of
Kosovo), dated 1348, has been interpreted by B.
P. Hadeu as proof of their early presence in the
Old Continent. More specifically, it is a bill of
the Serbs and the Greeks Tsar (16 April 1345),
Stefan Uro Duan, with the provision of

(1) Sections of this article have been published in the

work entitled Imaginea Celuilalt n cultura
romneasc din Transilvania. Secolul al XIX-lea
(Cluj-Napoca, PUC, 2012).
(2)The information appears in the work of Ioan Pop
Reteganul, volume that, in turn, is based on studies
such as those signed by I.G. Kohl, VlkerEuropas,
Gustav Dierks, Gartenlaube, M. Sttescu, ncercri
asupra originei iganilor, A. Bergner, Siebenbrgen.
Ioan Pop Reteganul, iganii [The Gypsies], Blaj,
Tipografia Seminarului greco-catolic, 1886, p. 7.

116

destining angar slaves to the mentioned

settlement (Hadeu 1867, p. 191, 193).
However, subsequent studies have shown that
the name cingarije refers to cobblers and not
to the Rroma ancestors (Angus Fraser 2010, p.
68).
In relation to their arrival in the Romanian
territories, the same author mentions a document
dated October 3, 1385, where among other
donations endowed by his uncle, Vladislav
Vod, to St. Anthony of Vodita Monastery,
Prince Dan Vod also specifies 40 Aigani
camps (Hadeu 1867, p. 192-193). Others
sources, this time dated 1388, are talking about
the endowing bestowed by Prince Mircea the
Old to Cozia Monastery, through which 300
Gypsy families were provided to this religious
settlement (Fraser 2010, p. 69). Finally, we will
equally remind a 1428 document by which
Bistria Monastery received from Prince
Alexander the Good 31 Gypsy and 13 Tatar tents
(Ibidem). When and how did they settle here is
far from being resolved, requiring years of study
and hard work, so long as all information is
coming from indirect sources, since Rroma
culture does not posses the practice of keeping
records of personal and collective historical
experiences. Therefore, extensive and parallel
knowledge of local history and lexicography
should be used, while framing up a general
vision of Rroma history, from the beginning of
their
migrations
until
their
medieval
establishment in the states of Europe, is
conditioned by the cooperation between
researchers of different cultural spaces.
Resuming the problem of their presence in
the Romanian territories, it should be recalled
that until the middle of the age of Nationalism
(1848) they had to deal with the status of slaves,
being used most often on the lands of the boyars.
The situation differed in Transylvania, province
under Hungarian administration, where they
were treated as serfs and enjoyed some freedoms
that were banned to their relatives across the
Carpathians (3).
The Gypsys image to the 19th century
Romanians is as much influenced by this lack of

data, as by the history of their status within

society, by the relations that arose between the
two ethnic groups, and, not lastly, by the values
system that was specific for each of them. Its
virtually a projection from the register of the
imaginary that has resulted following daily
contacts between the ethnical groups and less as
an outcome of scientifically analysis of data in
scholarly works. In effect, the didactical
literature did not reserve them any space, only
contending to remind their presence in
Transylvania with the mention that they may be
found in small numbers and that they are
spread around the country or, to use another
expression, spread among the Carpathians
(Marki 1899, p. 14, 42; Boiu 1869, p. 133; Popu
1870, p. 11; Dariu 1896, p. 36, 47; Rus 1842,
tom II, p. 18). A fairly sketchy material is
inserted within the columns of the Romanian
Encyclopedia. The works author presents them
as a nomadic people that originate from India.
Their coming in the Romanian Provinces is
timely localized in the 14th century and the
article invokes the official documents that we
mentioned earlier. About the Rroma from
Hungary it was known that they were divided in
two categories: that of the nomads who were in
continuous movement, and that of the settled
who were, precisely, the goldsmith and shoveler
artisans or the individuals whose trade consisted
in entertaining the inhabitants with their tamed
bears performances. What drew our attention
was the article gypsy words in Romanian
which was, actually, a brief overview of the
language terms that have been borrowed from
Rromani. They are able to reveal to us some of
the stereotypes that were attributed to them and
have made a long career in the epochs
mentality: a ciordi [to filch] = a fura [to
steal], benga [dickens] = drac [demon],
puradeu = copil de igan [gypsy kid], gagiu
[buck, dude] = stpn [master, boss], calu
[butcher]
=
gde/gde
[executioner],
andrama [rookery] = opron [barn], barac
[hut], cas ruinat [ruined house], tanan =
joc ignesc [Gypsy game] (Diaconovici 1904,
p. 1095-1096).
That there was some interest arisen on the
history of the Gypsies, on the issue of their
origin, emigration and settlement on the Old
Continent, is witnessed by the work of Ioan Pop

(3) Such as, for example, the right to travel in the

country, and to settle in the Crown lands. Also the
internal autonomy of Gypsy nomad groups.

117

tradition, no country or even any superstition

They don't have any traditional clothing, no
baptism, neither any special customs marks.
Among Tartars they dress like Tartars, among
Hungarians, they dress Hungarian and, usually,
they wear in any place what other people throw
them Their dictionary has no verbs for
concepts like to have, to possess, to have
to, indebtedness, law. They are like air
plants (Idem, p. 66).
Other kinds of blame share the same
trend, like the criticism regarding their lack of
bravery or courage to sacrifice their own good
for the higher good of the community and the
incapacity to resist any threats. The cowardice
and falsehood theme was a constant of the time,
whether we talk about prints, whether we take
into account the folklore, transmitted orally and
kept over generations. We hereby make recourse
to the descriptions of the same author that,
taking into consideration the Gypsy coming in
Europe, outlines a portrait almost devoid of
qualities: Without a warrior leader, without
weapons, enduring any calamity, succumbing to
any oppositions, scared like birds, they spread
all over Gods creation and settled wherever the
sunset found them (Ibidem). The more
suggestive are the humorous stories that
circulated in Transylvania both orally and within
the periodicals pages, stories where the Gypsy
fear reached shameful proportions, depicting
them in an ignoble position, devoided of all
dignity (Familia 1896, p. 12).
We have, therefore, the image of a halfcivilized people, immune to progress, devoid of
heroic deeds or extraordinary happenings that
would stir the worlds interest or admiration. But
a people that displayed a formidable resistance
against all acts that would intend to bring some
of the spirits enlightenment (Pop Reteganul
1886, p. 9-11), that of a people that had
infiltrated in the bosom of developed
communities and that was eager to preserve its
own specificity and customs that were
frequently catalogued as backward and
unworthy for the advanced spirit of the period. It
is the picture of a depraved community, devoid
of all moral norms and possessing a values
system completely opposed to that which was
specific to the peoples among whom they
stubbornly decided to live (Pop Reteganul 1886;

Reteganul, that was first published at Blaj in

1886. Using documents obtained from German
and Romanian scholars works, but also from
information that capture all concepts and beliefs
related to this community from the
Transylvanian territories, the writing accurately
highlights not only the European portraits of the
Gypsies, but also those which are specific for
our cultural space. With this purpose, Reteganul
inserts a series of narratives and popular verses
that reflect the often negative stereotypes that
were common not only among the Romanian
rural populace, but in the urban areas too, and
that resulted from differences that exist between
Romanians, on one hand, who adopted the WestEuropean cultural model, and the Gypsies, on
the other, a populace of Oriental origin who had
a specific values system that was opposed in
principle to that of the Old Continent.
Of course, there are also other factors that
have played an important role in shaping these
unfavourable projections of the Rroma people.
Beginning with the simple fact that they were
the aliens from within the community, the
imminent danger able to raise unrest and
concern (Boia 2010, p. 133) or, as a
contemporary saying states, the uninvited
guests among the most cultivated nations of the
world (Pop-Reteganul 1886, p. 4), up to aspects
that are related to the specificity of the nations
genesis historical period. The 19th century was
the moment when every people has passionately
examined their history with the purpose of
identifying the legendary deeds, the memorable
heroes, the most noble and remote origins and of
justifying, by this manner, their privileged
position in relation to their neighbors. Or, the
Rroma were confronted with a double
disadvantage: first, they did not have a state
institution, a specific space and a common
religion to be shared by most of its individuals;
then, the issue of their past wasnt yet
elucidated, not to mention that the efforts to
clarify it were mostly spent by European
intellectuals. It would suffice to recall the final
words of Reteganul from the above cited work,
which, even if some of them are exaggerated,
express very clearly the requirements of that
period of time which served as the template of
their critique and judgement: Gypsies had no
ideas, no dogma, no customs, no history, no

118

Familia 1896). Deficiencies such as falsehood,

leaning towards disqualifying activities, theft,
robbery, fraud and so on are considered their
most common traits, while references that
addressed their lack of intelligence and courage
have sometimes reached downright legendary
proportions (Pop Reteganul 1886, p. 22-58;
Zanne 1895). Anecdotes, popular stories, little
narratives concerning extraordinary happenings,
were scattered throughout the periodicals pages
and fully contributed at the strengthening of the
mentioned portrait. The editors of The Family
review, for example, were much amused by the
boastful and, at the same time, timorous
character of the Gypsies. A joke of the kind
reproduces the dialogue between a Rroma and
his Romanian friends. While the former praised
his acts of bravery during the war, the latter asks
him to give at least one example: Tell us one;
friends told him/ I cut the legs of a pasha [he
said]/ And why did you cut his feet and not
the head?/ Gee, yo! Because someone else
had cut it before(4). With another occasion
the same journal presented as real news a
happening with an almost identical comic
feature. Sentenced to six months in prison for
stealing a horse, the Rroma addressed the judge
with the request to double his sentence arguing
that he would need a cart too (Familia 1900, p.
225).
The one who best pointed out the Gypsys
portrait in the Transylvanian Romanians
mentality has been Ioan Budai-Deleanu.
Although, as he confesses by himself in the
opening letter of the lyrical poem, by iganiada
[The Gypsies Saga] he didnt have as purpose

to exclusively depict the Rroma habits, but by

the term Gypsy he also conflated others who
were and are doing alike, as the Gypsies
erstwhile. The wise man will comprehend
(Budai-Deleanu 2001, p. 14), his writing lays
down a true inventory of almost all stereotypes
already established during that period. The
scenes that best capture their pose before
battling the Turks exhale an almost grotesquely
comic as the entire scene is culminating with the
moment where the Prince tests their valance by
surprisingly attacking them with a disguised
military contingent. The verses of BudaiDeleanu are accompanied by a few comments of
Petru Maior that have been inserted as footnotes
with the purpose of supporting the texts general
mood and idea. Such is, for example, the
depiction of the Gypsies nature that starts with
the cowardice that they proved at the sight of the
Princes disguised army and continues with the
falsehood and the yarn manifested when hearing
the news that they were tested (Idem, p. 153154). On other occasions, their impatient
nature was revealed, their lack of ability to
listen to others and to let them achieve the
sentencing of their ideas, feature considered
specific to stupid yokels that lack education
(Idem, p. 30). Finally, we recall the references
related to Goleta Gypsy, according to the
author, jobless individuals who earn their lives
by begging and thieving only, or the excerpts
regarding their refusal to work and preference
for an idle lifestyle (Idem, p. 43, 277).
However, it would be wrong to consider
that such annoying clichs were specific to the
Transylvanian Romanian population. On the
contrary, they can be found both in the writings
of the Europeans (Grancea 2002, p. 64-67), as
well as in those of Romanians beyond the
Carpathians. We must keep in mind that the
main sources of Reteganuls work were German,
while in other European countries Rroma were
forced to paint their carriages in garish colours
in order to be noticed in advance, so that the
inhabitants would be able to take their goods to
cover (See Yoors 1987). Not to mention that in
past ages several countries of the Old Continent
tried even to exterminate them (Pop-Reteganul
1886, p. 9-11). In supporting the same ideas we
also mention the articles taken by Transylvanian
Romanian journalists from western publications.

(4)From a very long list, we underline the following

titles: Vitejia iganului, in Familia, no. 45, 6/18
Novemver 1894, p. 540. See also Familia, no. 1,
7/19 January 1896, p. 12. ncurctur igneasc,
Idem, no. 23, 10/22 June 1890, p. 275. iganul sfnt,
Idem, no. 45, 6/18 November 1894, p. 540.
Jurmentul iganului, Idem, no. 15, 8/20 April 1884,
p. 179. iganul i popa, in Gura satului, no. 4, 30
January/11 February 1869, p. 19. Spovedania
iganului, Idem, no. 18, 2/14 May 1870. iganulu n
cer, Idem, no. 27, 15 June/3 July 1873, p. 103.
Anecdote din popor. iganii, Idem, no. 22, 26
November 1878. O ceat de peste 30 de igani
bolovanesci, in Familia, no 69, 13/25 September
1881, p. 447.

119

One of them, for instance, reported a less

common experience of U.S.A. President,
Andrew Johnson (April 15, 1865-March 4,
1869). While visiting a Gypsy camp, suddenly
the U.S.A. President couldnt find anymore
neither his snuff-box, neither his wallet.
According to the journalists, he was able to
recover them only after having solemnly
promised that he would not take any legal action
against the perpetrator which turned out to be
the camps Rroma leader himself (Family 1867,
p. 160). Lastly, speaking about the Danubian
Principalities, we invoke the example of Anton
Pann. The Gypsies from Povestea vorbii [The
Story of the Word] are described as liars, thieves
and stupid. Let us recall the dialogue which
describes how the horse thief was caught on the
scene: Tell me, Gypsy, whats your trade?/
With the horse my wage is made./ With
the horse did you evade?/ May the Lord strike
me in coarse/If Im the culprit for the horse,/For
the guilt is with the beast,/It kidnapped me,
couldnt resist! (Pann 2002, p. 241-244). The
Gypsies cant find themselves in a more
favorable light neither in the proverbs published
by the Romanian composer. Ingratitude and lack
of appreciation are emphasized by witticisms
like The day the Gypsy would be king/ First,
his father hanged would swing (Idem, p. 196),
while their boastful character was the maxims
leitmotif All Gypsies praise their hammer
(Idem, p. 241).
The above negative portrait is also
completed with favorable depictions that
describe the Rroma as bohemian individuals,
with an erratic and riotous lifestyle, lacking even
the most common and petty worries, always
joyful, fallen in love with music and dancing, as
with liberty and the charm of living under the
open sky (Pop Reteganul 1886, p. 27). It also
captures the harmony of their physical traits,
while it often invokes the womens beauty. If
fortune has refused them the gifts of abundance,
nature has given the Gypsy with surfeit that
which one calls beauty, a journalist said
(Familia 1886, p. 105; Idem, 1883, p. 130),
while another, speaking about the Rroma
abilities in the realm of entertainment music,
assessed that it purely and simply ravishes the
soul, compels one to evade oneself through its
original beauty, just as a Gypsy girl frequently

does through her bodily talents and her two

glimmering eyes (Pop-Reteganul 1886, p. 21).
At the same time, their preferences for
glittering clothes, that quickly draw the
observers attention, are mentioned and their
love for noble metals is described as their most
outstanding character feature, the unique items
able to impose them the idea of sacrifice. Jewels
were, in fact, the Gypsies only material good
that was inherited from one generation to
another, while their preservation compelled them
to many precautions (Idem, p. 17).
Along
with
the
above-mentioned
representations, it also took shape in that era the
portrait of the skilled and handy craftsman, of
the individual who provides the welfare and a
smooth running of the household that he
manages. The iron processing seems to be their
main trade, but they may also be seen as trustees
of the boyars estates beyond the Carpathian
Mountains or, on the contrary, as bailiffs of the
Hungarian nobles houses obviously as slaves
or servants. George Dem Teodorescu, known
folklorist and literary historian, licensed of
University of Sorbonne, is the author of some
materials about Romanians beliefs, customs and
manners, materials that have been published
within the columns of The Family review and
that were drawn up at the time when he was still
studying in the French capital, in May 1877. The
intellectual raised the question of how did the
Romanians relate to Gypsies, achieving a true
inventory of clichs and stereotypes, some
negative and in agreement with the above
mentioned representations (5), others, on the
contrary, positive. It recalls the important role
that the Rroma slaves had in the masters houses,
since their tasks comprised not only caring for
the goods of the master, but also for the
education of their children. In the landowners
yard, which possessed 10 to 15 dwellings for his
bondsmen, the Gypsies accounted for the good
fortune and the good order of the house. The
Gypsy was a cook, and the best cook, a skilled
coachman, a diligent servant, a loyal business
adviser and a clever craftsman for all the
household tools. The Gypsy woman was the
(5) See G. Dem Teodorescu, Credine, datine i
moravuri romane. Miluirea iganilor, in Familia,
no. 21, 22 may/3 June 1877, p. 242.

120

teacher and the nurse for all the landowners

children, the stewardess of the house, the
chamber made, the laundress, the hen breeder
and a good help for whatever else would be
needed in the house (Familia 1877, p. 254). The
same issue was pointed out by Transylvanian
folklorist Ioan Pop-Reteganul, who, at the same
time, assures us that the practice was borrowed
by Hungarians nobles, citing, in this sense, a
maxim with large circulation among the
Romanians from the intra-Carpathian province,
The Boyar courtyard stands bad without
Gypsies, as the Church without tower (Pop
Reteganul 1886, p. 15-16).
Finally, we remember the depiction of the
Gypsy fiddler, a very talented individual,
destined to delight and entertain the
Transylvanian inhabitants in their leisure and joy
moments. Speaking about this indisputable
quality of Rroma people, Reteganul showed that
it almost didnt exist any village where the
orchestra would be played by other people than
Gypsies and, even more, that all successful
bands in the province include such individuals.
Even for the famous national anthem
Rakatzi's march, Gypsies are the only to know
how to sing it in such a way that it instantly
electrifies the Hungarians, insists the author
with a dose of malice, while he shows that the
number of Rroma musicians well recognized in
Hungary is very high (Ibidem, p 19). And,
indeed, the historical record does capture them
well from the second half of the fifteenth
century on. More specifically, there are several
records that registered payments made to
traditional musicians of Gypsy origin 1489,
1525 (Fraser 2010, p. 126).
However, we may assume that it generally
prevailed the negative vision of the ethnic group
in question, their semi-nomadic nature, their
specific lifestyle and power to overcome any
pressure coming from nations that they came in
contact with, being rather understood as
evidence of the stubborn resolve to live their
lives other than in accord with some generally
accepted rule among enlightened nations. This
prevalent perspective is, most likely, the effect
of the primacy of a specific vision of
nationalism, which puts the emphasis on the
influence of the self-affirming policy of peoples,

on their clotting as national States endowed with

a cultural and civilizing pursuit.
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Familia
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Familia
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Familia
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Familia
1896
Familia
1900
Hadeu
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List of illustrations

Fig. 1 iganc din Banat [Gypsy woman

from Banat], Familia, 1894
Fig. 2 iganc vrjitoare [Gypsy witch],
Familia, 1980

122

Newspapers articles
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Familia, no. 22, 29 May/10 June
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iganca [The Gypsy]. In:
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iganc din Banat [Gypsy from
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Familia, no. 1, 7/19 January 1896,
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Hadeu, B.P., iganii [The
Gypsies]. In: Arhiva istoric a
Romniei, tom III, 1867, p. 191194.

Fig. 1 iganc din Banat [Gypsy woman from Banat],

Source: Familia, 1894

123

Fig. 2 iganc vrjitoare [Gypsy witch],

Source: Familia, 1890

124

The Image of the 19th Century Worker in Wadysaw Reymonts

Literature
Diana CRCIUN
Student Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu
Email: [email protected]
Abstract. The paper analyses the image of the 19th century industrial city in a series of works by
Polish writer Wadysaw Reymont. The novel Ziemia Obiecana (The Promised Land) and some of
Reymonts short-stories reveal the grim conditions in which the workers lived and worked. The writer
illustrates the lack of business ethics, the abuses committed by the factory owners against their
employees, the immense pollution that characterized this incipient industry. d is a multiethnic city and
three ethnic images (German, Jewish, Polish) are also outlined. The ethnic situation is closely related to
the social one, as most employers were foreign, whereas the employees Polish.
Keywords: Reymont, Ziemia Obiecana, Lodz, 19th century industry, ethnic image
smoke disclosed a mysterious activity (Kossert
2006, 170). The immigrants gave the city a
heterogeneous character, enriching its ethnic and
religious diversity. In the continuation of
Kosserts article, several opinions and works are
presented, some pro, some against this image of
the industrial city, but the article is, all in all,
tributary to the historical clich of the industrial
revolution.
This historical perspective is relatively
new and is caused by the migration of a series of
concepts from the American historiography to
the European one, such as the melting pot,
from rags to riches and the American dream.
From this mental outlook, Wojciech Kallas tries
an analysis of the novel Ziemia Obiecana (The
Promised Land). Although this type of study can
prove to be interesting and can stress some
general human mechanisms, which functioned
both in the rising of d as an industrial centre
and in the foundation period of the United
States, the comparison is valid only up to a
certain point. If the promised land myth also
existed in the case of d, then that of the
melting pot is unsustainable, at least as shown
in Reymonts novel. According to a basic
principle of scientific research, the ideas of the
source cannot be altered to serve a theory and, as
it shall be seen, in The Promised Land there are
no arguments pleading for the idea of d as a
melting pot. The three inhabiting nations look
upon each other with contempt (situation also
acknowledged by Wojciech Kallas) and
cooperate temporarily, mainly if they are
motivated by financial interests; as soon as the
collaboration is not profitable any more, former
partners easily turn against each other. The

The myth of the industrial revolution

Although he is best known for his Nobel
Prize - winning novel Chopi (The Peasants), the
correct understanding of Wadysaw Reymonts
literature is vitally linked to the events of the
19th century such as the process of
industrialization and the Polish struggle for
independence. The praise of healthy, rural life,
that imbues his entire work cannot be separated
from its opposite, the critique of decadent, urban
life.
Nowadays, the industrial city is often
presented in an idealized and eulogistic manner;
the industrial revolution of the 19th century is
considered, in general, a period of great
scientific and technical progress and the starting
point of modernity. A good example for the aura
that envelops the industrial city can be found in
an article signed by Andreas Kossert, Promised
Land? Urban Myth and the Shaping of
Modernity in Industrial Cities: Manchester and
Lodz; in an attempt of comparing these two
industrial centres, the author speaks of the
vibrant and enthusiastic atmosphere of these
cities, which was due to the rapid accumulation
of wealth and social advancement: Many
entrepreneurs and workers arrived in these
textile centres to try their luck. Almost
religiously they entered the <<Promised
Land>>, where, as it seemed at first glance, not
church bells, but factory sirens and the
hammering of the looms told the hour (Kossert
2006, 171). Kossert also quotes Benjamin
Disraeli, who referred to Manchester as to the
most wonderful city of modernity and Leon
Faucher, who was talking about its
extraordinary atmosphere, where the chimney

125

characters do not borrow elements from other

cultures, remaining German, Jewish and
respectively Polish. The argument provided by
Kallas regarding the main character is invalid, as
Karol Borowiecki does not transform through
the course of the novel from an idealist aristocrat
to a businessman with no moral scruples, a
typical Lodzermensch. In fact, at the beginning
of the novel, he starts off as a cold, calculated,
success-driven person only to convince himself,
after achieving the desired status, that money
and power were not enough for spiritual
fulfilment. The humanity of him finally wins
and he decides to help others in finding
happiness, if he had lost his chance at it. The end
of the novel does not leave any doubts in this
aspect.

had a profound effect on British artists: for

example, Kossert quotes Charles Dickens
decision to do everything he could for the
unfortunate souls that lived in Cottonopolis
(Kossert 2006, 181). Another example is
Elizabeth Gaskell, who was also preoccupied
with the living conditions of the workers.
Even the most basic research on the
chaotic and destructive industry of the 19th
century reveals a grim picture, outraging for
sensitive souls, such as those of the artists. The
factories produced an incredible degree of
pollution and there was practically no clean air
in the cities. The working schedule was long and
monotonous (13 hours a day with one hour
lunch break) and the factory owner could fire
anybody he wanted, whenever he wanted and
could even close down the entire factory, if it
did not turn a profit. The living conditions were
no better; rents were high and families used to
sublet to others rooms of the house or even
corners of the same room in which they were
living. The lack of proper hygiene, the general
poverty and the crowding of people and animals
in small, unsanitary rooms were the main causes
for diseases and premature aging. In the pages
written by Reymont many portraits of
exhausted, miserable workers can be found:
The workers, only in shirts, barefoot, with gray
faces and faded eyes, as if burned by this orgy of
colours [in the factorys dyeing sector], were
moving slowly and mechanically, being just an
extension of the machines (Reymont 2011, 27).
Reymont himself lived in harsh conditions in
Warsaw, at the beginning of his writing career:
He lived together with three people in a room
on Switojaska and because he was the poorest
he had come to Warsaw only with 3 rubles and
50 kopecks and even those ones borrowed he
had the darkest corner, next to the kitchen [].
However, Reymont wrote and nobody ever
believed that the first works of the later great
writer were written in Saint Johns Cathedral.
That was the only place where the young
beginner had silence and enough light to be able
to see his own pen (Velea 1967, 28). Reymont
also had personal experience as a d worker
in the dye department of a large factory and as a
weaver in a small shop.
The writer wanted to show in detail the
miserable, burdened life that he had seen and
had experienced himself, as one of the common
folk. The Jasklski family from The Promised
Land is one of the many families of ruined
szlachta nobles that moved from the countryside
to the city. Their lodging is on a street without
name, next to the factorys sewer: The little

The 19th century industrial workers and their

living and working conditions
According to another clich frequently
used nowadays, the writers who pleaded for the
return to a more traditional lifestyle are
presented in a simplistic fashion, as exponents of
a conservative reaction of anxiety towards
change. But nothing could be further from the
truth than to state that great writers such as
Reymont were backward, opposing renewal and
progress; starting from the historical facts, we
will attempt to find an explanation for this
attitude, which, analysed in closer detail, proves
to have profound humane motivations.
We are not talking here about isolated
cases or about a reaction characteristic only for
intellectuals from Central - Eastern Europe,
where agriculture was still the dominant sector
of economy and had a powerful impact on the
mentality of the people. The first voices that
rose against the savagery of the industrialization
process were, naturally, British. John Ruskins
philosophy was widespread in the 19th century
and
influenced
numerous
personalities,
including Reymont. Literary critic Ignacy
Matuszewski stressed the resemblance between
the ideas expressed by the Polish writer and
those of British economist John Atkinson
Hobson, with the difference that Reymont
presents as a vivid image of the industrial city
and its inhabitants what the British thinker
enclosed into the formula of economic theory
(Matuszewski 1965, 221). Their conclusions are
not identical, the same critic expressing doubts
about Reymont ever reading Hobson
(Matuszewski 1965, 221). However, it was
natural that their ideas were similar, since the
realities that sprung them also bore
resemblances. The image of Manchester also

126

streets resembled with a garbage dumpster, full

of the debris of the big city. Jzio squeezed
through in a hurry and entered into an
unplastered house, with lights at all the
windows, from the basement to the attic, like a
lighthouse; it was seething of the tumult of the
people who were sheltered here. In a dark
entrance hall, impregnated with awful smells
and with mud on the floor, he touched the dirty
and sticky banister and rapidly descended to the
basement; on a long corridor, without floor, on
which litter and household objects were thrown,
also full of mud and human uproar, a lantern
was lit, flickering under the ceiling. He squeezed
through the objects that were barricading the
passage and got to the end of the corridor. He
was struck by heated basement air, combined
with mildew and dampness that were flowing
down the discoloured walls in rust-like traces
(Reymont 2011, 185). Inside resides the family
of the young man named Jzio, the parents and
five children, the oldest of them slowly dying of
tuberculosis, with the sole wish of seeing once
more his native village. Their meal is as poor as
the dwelling place, consisting of bread and tea.
However, on the mildewing walls the portraits
of their ancestors are hanged, because the
Jasklski family, although ruined, is still proud
of their noble origins. For this reason the head of
the family refused the job he was offered as a
warehouse guard, since he considered below his
dignity to be guard for the Swabians (Reymont
2011, 286). Taking into consideration merely
this brief description, it becomes understandable
why artists such as Reymont were horrified by
the inhumane living conditions in 19th century
cities and tried through their own means to open
the eyes of society.
Wadysaw Reymont dedicated the
novel The Promised Land and a few short stories
such Pewnego dnia... (One day...) and
Cmentarzysko (The Cemetery) to daily dramas
happening in the city of d. The workers look
sickly and are exhausted, reason why factory
accidents in which they are crippled are
frequent. [...] Reymonts anti-urbanism wrote
Professor Stan Velea takes violent forms when
he describes the machines that he considers an
unsuccessful product of civilization, which helps
the industrial city to grind human lives. The
machines are merciless beasts, which are on the
look-out for any moment of weakness, any
wrong move of the worker, in order to punish
him cruelly. The image of the technical rooms in
the novels One day... and The Cemetery
resemble, in the authors imagination, with a
thick forest in which the beast-machines are

hidden, ready to jump and tear apart their prey

(Velea, Foreword to Reymont 1967, 16).
Reymont insists especially on the description of
the transmission belts and of the immense
wheels of the machines. Across the entire novel
Ziemia obiecana there are scattered images of
workers mutilated by the factory machines,
images created in the naturalistic style, but
nevertheless true. The scene, where a worker is
literally crushed by a machine until he is
reduced to nothing else than a bloody piece
hanging on the wheels axle, is one of the most
moving scenes in the entire novel. The reaction
of the co-workers is also significant: a few
women start praying, the men are taking off
their hats, but there is no regret in their eyes,
only [...] a certain wild, severe apathy
(Reymont 2011, 161). The foreman of the sector
orders them to go back to work and complains
about the percale that was stained with blood,
whereas Borowiecki, the head manager of the
factory, does not have any reaction at all, being
used to this sort of accidents. Life in the city
jungle has taken its toll on everybodys souls.
Even more relevant for Reymonts populist (1)
mentality is the scene in which he portrays a
worker slowly dying on a field, in the shadow of
a birch tree. The physician Wysocki, intoxicated
with the love for Mela Grnspan, is walking
across the oat and rye fields in a euphoric state;
Reymont leads the reader through a sublime
description of nature, seen through the eyes of
the enamoured Wysocki, only to bring him
afterwards in front of the dying worker. The
technique has maximum effect. The worker, a
former peasant who had come from the
countryside to the city, had a working accident;
the doctors cut two times from his legs, but did
not manage to stop the gangrene. He is waiting
to die at the shadow of a birch tree, singing
religious hymns to the Virgin Mary. He is alone
because his wife is working in the factory and
all his children died, one in the factory and three
of ague. In a peasant manner, he is very grateful
to Wysocki, who tears his own shirt to change
his bandages, which are full of blood and puss.

(1) The term refers here to the literary and social

current (second half of the 19th century beginning
of the 20th century) which considered the peasantry as
the basis of development and pleaded for its
education and for the return to a traditional lifestyle.
Originating from the Russian Narodnik movement,
the ideas also spread into Poland and Romania, where
they were promoted by the Warsaw weekly Gos,
respectively by Viaa romneasc [Romanian Life],
Constantin Stere and Garabet Ibrileanu.

127

Reymont also presents the case of a

woman, who is waiting for months, together
with her children, to be paid the 200 rubles
compensation for her husband who died in the
factory. In fact, the sum should be much bigger,
but she is a simple woman, also a former
peasant, and does not know that she can sue the
factory. Even the payment of the 200 rubles is
constantly delayed and the factory clerks claim,
without any shame or compassion for human
suffering, that the worker committed suicide:
That boor intentionally put his head under the
wheel, he didnt feel like working any more, he
just wanted to rob the factory of money! And
now we have to pay his wife and his bastard
children! (Reymont 2011, 23).
The employers were aware of the state
of their workers, but there was no intention of
improving the conditions inside the factories or
of offering them medical care. On the contrary,
expenses were reduced as much as possible so
that they could obtain a maximum profit.
Stanisaw Mendelsohn reproaches to Wysocki
even the most basic medical treatments given to
the workers, although these had effect and the
workers soon returned to their duties. The
factory owners do not show any sign of respect
for human life, aware that the constant flow of
impoverished peasants, charmed by the
opportunities of the big city, provided them with
cheap labour force, no matter how many of the
already employed workers became ill or died.
Arrogant, they posed in parent figures that
provide the daily bread for their employees.
Bucholc, one of the kings of the cotton industry
in d, burns with pleasure all the letters that
are begging him for help, motivating his avarice
and lack of compassion through a dubious
moral, according to which those who were not
able to make a fortune have to be left to die.
The writer shows an even darker side of
the relationship between the employers and their
employees through the character Kessler, who
uses his influence to recruit women for orgies
from among the factory workers. Tyrannized
and threatened with dismissal, they accept to be
taken to his palace where they are given alcohol
and are passed from one guest to another. Some,
like Zoka Malinowska, become the permanent
mistresses of Kessler, seduced by his love
declarations and also driven by the desire to
leave behind the burdened worker life.
According to historian Norman Davies, women
were preferred in the case of unskilled labour,
being given lower wages than men (Davies
1982, 174). They lost gracefulness and acquired
masculine moves because of the work in the

factory. In Reymonts literature no cases of child

labour are presented.
The author also takes into consideration
the psychological effects produced by work in
the industry: the monotony of routine, the
repeated execution of simple operations, much
like a machine, annihilates human creative
energies. The lift attendant Pliszka from the
short story One day... is a perfect example of
psychological alienation, as a consequence of an
automated life: coming from a family of ruined
nobles, Pliszka has worked for twenty years in
the elevator of a factory, without medical leave
or vacation, the oldest machine in the factory
(Reymont 1967, 129; Reymont 1990, 91).
Spending all his time around machines, he
developed a cult for their force and durability;
people and their lives do not hold interest for
him anymore: He was smiling with contempt,
looking at their bent bodies, at their ghastly and
sunken faces, at their tired hands what were
they compared to these powerful giants, whose
shining, steel bodies he could always see, what
were they compared to their strength? Vanity,
dust, nothing (Reymont 1967, 129-130;
Reymont 1990, 92). His alienation is apparently
complete, but in his subconscious still resides, in
latent state, the longing for his birthplace, which
he has not seen in twenty years, and for another
kind of life, a more natural, humane one.
Reaching one day the outskirts of town during a
walk, the sight of the fields augments his
suffering. He decides to visit his native village,
but inside his heart and mind a genuine battle is
given, that will be won by routine: hearing the
sirens calling the workers, Pliszka cannot resist
and returns to his post.
The sirens that announce the beginning
and the end of the breaks are ubiquitous in the
novel The Promised Land as well; each worker
recognizes the calling of his factory and the
sirens are sarcastically named skylarks who
announce the calling of the animal (Reymont
2011, 146-147). Needless to say, noise pollution
was not a concern. Inside the factories, the
situation was even worse: Everything vibrated:
the walls, the machines, the floors, the engines
were roaring, the belts and the transmissions
were whistling stridently, the carts were jolting
on the concrete corridors, the motor wheels were
screeching, everywhere in this sea of broken
vibrations you could hear calls or the powerful,
noisy breathing of the main machine (Reymont
2011, 16). In addition to this turmoil, the fumes
and the vapours from the dyeing department
were covering everything and there was an
almost unbearable heating in the factory.

128

Borowiecki warned Bucholc that he would get

tuberculosis, if he spent another two years in the
printing department.
The idea of longing for the native
village and pure, untainted nature is a leitmotiv
of Reymonts literature, therefore also present in
The Promised Land. In his last days of life, the
millionaire Bucholc is looking more and more
outside the window, towards the fields and the
forest edge, intuiting at a subconscious level that
there lies a certain charm, a mystery of life that
he overlooked, too busy making a fortune. The
majority of Reymonts characters yearn for
another kind of life, one in harmony with nature,
away from the monstrous city. Borowiecki, in
his dilemmas, also turns his sight towards the
natural landscape.
The industry had a negative effect not
only on people, but also on the environment.
Reymont excels in rural descriptions, but also
succeeds in painting a gloomy picture of the
degraded urban nature. He especially insists on
the image of the trees poisoned by industrial
residue: Jzef kept playing the harmonica [...]
and from the gate answered the tender sound of
the shepherds flute, surely made there on the
spot from the willows that were growing near
ponds and played by the guard of the factory.
The flute had a strange voice, of mourning and
sorrow, like the moaning of these willows, of
these trees that yearned for sun, for the wind that
is frolicking on the fields, like the moaning of
these trees poisoned by smoke, suffocated by
walls, by the lack of air, by the dirty sewage of
the factory (Reymont 1967, 136-137; Reymont
1990, 96). The reason why Reymont insists so
much on the description of trees is their
resemblance to men: Only trees long like this in
some days of March, in times of sleet, when it is
cold and the storm is blowing, but trees long for
spring and sun, whereas men? Men, like trees in
eternal agony, long for those that were and are
not any more they long and weep
(Reymont 1967, 124; Reymont 1990, 89).
Despite the pitiable situation in d,
the city continued to grow, as more and more
pauperized people came with the hope of
creating a better life for themselves. Some were
intellectuals, wanting to obtain a patent for
inventions that would revolutionize the industry
and make them a fortune, but most of them were
peasants. Through the words of the character
Michalakowa, Reymont suggests that peasants
were even lured to move to the city: some of
them were paid and sent back to their native
village to lie about the great opportunities d
offered them, displaying ostentatiously their

wealth to be more credible (Reymont 2011, 2425). Michalakowas husband, the one later
crushed by the machines, was thus convinced to
leave for d and the woman was forced to
follow her man. Widowed with many children,
she regrets life in the countryside, where food
was easier to find, whereas in the city she almost
got to the status of a beggar, waiting month after
month the compensation for her dead husband.
Another peasant figure is Socha; he and
his wife are the protgs of Borowieckis wife,
obtaining jobs in the factory through her
favours. When hired, they insist on telling
Borowiecki the entire story of their family and
that of the fire that ruined their lives;
Borowiecki lets them talk for a while, knowing
that [] first of all, peasants like to speak about
their troubles (Reymont 2011, 80). As a sign of
gratitude for hiring them, they give Borowiecki
a few eggs from the only chicken that survived
the fire. Work in the factory changed them in
three or four months, but only at a physical
level. Both of them wear workers clothes,
giving up the traditional peasant clothing, and
the man complains that the factory fumes are
giving him chest pains. He misses horses, which
he used to work with daily in the countryside. At
a psychological level, they are still peasants:
[] d just dressed them in another
wardrobe. Give them a few square measures of
land and in a week there wont be not even a
trace left from the life there (Reymont 2011,
343). Their peasant mentality cannot change
overnight, lasting long after their move to the
city. Another character that provides an
argument for this is the weaver Maryka, who,
after finishing work in the factory, plows the
garden of the ruined nobles Jasklski, thus
pretending she is still in the country.
There was also a category of peasants
that decided to move even further away, to the
United States or Brazil. Reymont intended to
write a cycle of four volumes about the Polish
colonies in the United States, which he had
visited in two occasions. Unfortunately, he
passed away before he could complete this
project, only touching on the subject in the short
stories Powrt (Return), Spowied (Confession),
Sprawiedliwie! (It is fair!) and the novel Chopi
(The Peasants).
d rising
Due to its textile manufacturing
industry, the city of d was in the 19th
century among the most industrialized, if not the
most industrialized city in Poland. For this
reason, it is often compared to Manchester;

129

Czesaw Miosz also resorts to this comparison

in his History of Polish Literature: During the
last decade of the nineteenth century, d,
thanks to rapid investments in the textile
factories, grew from a small town into a kind of
Manchester of eastern Europe, exporting its
products all over Russias enormous expanses. It
was a city of speculation, of fortunes won in a
few days, of bankruptcies, and of the inhuman
exploitation of working people. In his novel,
Reymont compared it to a monstrous tumor and
described it with all the hostility of an alien,
migrant villager (Miosz 1983, 370). However,
in the opinion of British historian Norman
Davies, the comparison to Manchester is
somewhat unsuitable, since industry did not play
a dominant role in the economy or social life of
Eastern Europe up to the middle of the twentieth
century (Davies 1982, 163) and d, unlike
Manchester, did not bring innovations in the
textile technology (Davies 1982, 171). In the
novel The Promised Land, Reymont in a way
confirms
Davies
statements,
declaring
repeatedly that the characteristic products for
d where poor quality imitations. Although
behind a metropolis like Manchester, d did
have a staggering development in the second
half of the 19th century, the time when Reymont
lived and wrote.
The industrialization of Poland was not
the result of a continued, natural development
process, but rather the work of the three empires
that long ruled over the Polish territories. This is
also demonstrated by the fact that the three
Polish provinces had fewer industrial and
commercial connections with each other than
with the other territories of the empires into
which they were incorporated. Terms such as
unitary development and regionalization are
thus improperly used. The Polish historiography
distinguishes
three
phases
of
the
industrialization process in Poland: the first one
(1740-1815) was in fact a small-scale
modernization implemented by Polish magnates,
a mixture between the old type of crafts and the
large-scale industry. Only in the second phase
(1815-1939) industrialization started in the real
sense of the word, whereas the last phase is
represented by the Communist industrialization.
The process was several times interrupted by the
turbulent events that marked Polish history.
Mining, the iron and the coal industries
were the branches with the most consolidated
traditions; in the south of Poland, in the Holy
Cross Mountains (Gry witokrzyskie) are
traces of a prehistoric mining exploitation,
whereas the salt mines of Wieliczka, near

Cracow, have functioned for at least a thousand

years. The kings were the ones who had
monopoly over the exploitation of these mines.
After the Thirty Years War, textile
centres prospered for a brief period, and then the
old waving guilds started declining because of
the restrictive practices, of the middlemen and of
the manufactures open by the magnates. The
request for wool and linen decreased because of
the cotton industry.
The city of d was artificially created
in 1820 by Rajmund Rembieliski, governor of
Mazovia, who, during an inspection, decided to
build a new city between czyca and Piotrkw.
Close-by there were two more textile centres,
the aforementioned czyca and Zgierz. At the
beginning, d was the beneficiary of help
from the state, but the road from a small
settlement to a metropolis was with ups and
downs, much like the fortunes that were made or
lost over night in Ziemia obiecana. At the end of
the Napoleonic Wars, a large number of Silesian
and Saxon weavers were unemployed and
efforts were made to draw them to Poland
(Davies 1982, 172). Each weaver was given
land, materials to build a house and a six years
exemption from taxes, rent and military service
(Davies 1982, 172), conditions which probably
seemed very attractive to some peasants who
had an impoverished life. However, at the
beginning, d developed slowly; different
attempts were made, with wool, line and cotton
alike. The local supplier of raw material for
wool did not want to cooperate in order not to
prejudice the monopoly he had in the area and
the relations with the main market, Russia, were
fluctuating depending on the political events.
The first material that turned a profit was cotton,
and its success allowed the wool and linen
industries to be revitalised. The main production
centre for wool was Biaystock, whereas for
linen, yrardw, near Warsaw. In the second
half of the 19th century, Russian Poland
surpassed the other Polish partitions in the
textile domain.
Reading a pure economic history of the
beginnings of the Polish industry, such as the
chapter Fabryka from Norman Davies Gods
playground, one may be under the impression
that this process was an entirely positive one, a
great progress in the history of a predominantly
rural country and a factor in constituting a
multicultural society in Poland. Nothing of the
savagery and the corruption of this capitalist
beginning, nothing of inhumane lives of the
workers can be found in this type of economic
history. Accounts of the price paid for these

130

industrial achievements, mainly by the common

folk, can instead be found in the literature of the
epoch and in the documents related to the
workers strikes: to the 1892 events in d
more than 60.000 persons participated, the
biggest strike in the history of the Tsarist Empire
up to the 1905 one (Wachowska).

genuine Lodzermensch, [] cold, rational,

indifferent, ready to do anything [] (Reymont
2011, 28), to a man aware of the mistakes he
made, filled with regret, but determined to help
others find happiness, if he had lost his chance.
In the business started with the German Max
Baum and the Jew Moryc Welt, the only
uncertain endorser is considered Borowiecki,
because of his Polish origins (Reymont 2011,
32).
There are many different approaches to
the analysis of the ethnicity of these three
characters, which represent the three large ethnic
groups inhabiting 19th century d. According
to some opinions, too much attention should not
be paid to the ethnic traits assigned to the three
characters, since all of them have the same goal,
making a fortune and thus succeeding in the
capitalist world of d. Among those who
expressed this view are the Romanian scholar
Stan Velea (Velea 1966, 73) and director
Andrzej Wajda, who in 1975 made an Oscarnominated film version of the novel The
Promised Land: One of the three leading
characters is a Pole, the second a German, and
the third a Jew. These ethnic differences do
not come between them. They found a factory
together, and are linked by a shared business and
by a sense of belonging to the group of
Lodzermensch the men of Lodz. This
peculiar Polish-German-Jewish amalgam of
Lodz population at that time is extremely
interesting; it seduces with colour, variety of
customs and of human types and attitudes
(Wajda). Despite the fact that the three main
characters act similarly and have the same goals,
we consider that the ethnic traits cannot be
disregarded, due to the importance with which
Reymont himself treats them. The entire novel is
filled with comments about the three ethnicities
and with stinging ironies that they address to one
another.
Taking into consideration the traits and
the actions of the main characters, but also those
of the minor ones, three ethnic images can be
distinguished. The Poles are attributed with
noblesse, cultural refinement, but also obstinacy
in maintaining old customs and virtues that
constitute an obstacle in succeeding and even
surviving in the jungle of the industrial city.
Such is the case of Jasklski, who is not really
qualified for any job, lives in great poverty and
has a dying child, but still declines, out of an
incomprehensible noblemans pride, to be a
warehouse guard. Trawiski finds himself
several times on the brink of bankruptcy because
he refuses to adopt the unethical means used by

The industrial city, city of foreigners?

Foreign investments played a crucial
role in the development of Polish industry; at the
end of the 19th century, it was estimated that
60% of the capital used for industrial production
was foreign (Davies 1982, 175). The main
investors, with financial, logistic and expert
personnel contributions, were the Germans,
followed by the British and the French. The
relationship between them and the Polish
employees were less than cordial; in her analysis
of the d 1892 workers strike, Barbara
Wachowska mentions the tense interethnic
relations as one of the causes: Only 23.7 per
cent of the all-too-powerful foremen were
Polish. The Germans constituted 64.9 per cent,
and the remaining few consisted of Czechs,
French, Swiss, English, Russians and Belgians.
One third of them were not able to communicate
with their workers for they did not know Polish.
The workers commonly complained that their
foremen hated them because they were Polish,
called them <<Polish pigs>> hassled, hit,
punished, and cheated them. The workers
claimed that they no longer <<can tolerate their
[employers] arrogance>> and that <<they
would be much better off in prison than under
the oppression of their foreign foremen>>
(Wachowska). In The Promised Land, Reymont
presents a similar situation: a short evaluation,
of the companies in d, during a walk, reveals
that most of them have German or Jewish
owners and only now and then the name of a
Polish shoemaker or locksmith appears. At the
theatre, where only the elite of d went, most
spectators were also either German or Jewish. It
is also historically known that the biggest
factories in d belonged to the German Carl
Scheibler and the Jew Izrael Poznaski (Kossert
2006, 185).
The action of the novel revolves around
the foundation of a factory by three d
industrialists, one Polish, one German and one
Jewish. However, this business plan does not
lead to an authentic interethnic cooperation, but
rather to a temporary collaboration, motivated
by economic interests. The Pole Karol
Borowiecki is the main character, who
undergoes a spiritual transformation from a

131

the other industrialists. His wife is the most

cultivated woman in d, a true lady,
preoccupied with elegance and art, whereas the
others, such as Endelmanowa, just want to
impress their visitors with glittering kitsch.
The Germans, like Max Baum and the
millionaire Mller, have the image of generally
honest people, who are willing to work hard.
However, they are also simple, rudimentary
persons; the king of cotton, Mller, does not
restrain from laughing out loud in the theatre, to
the embarrassment of the ladies in his family,
who want to maintain a faade of refinement. At
parties, he drinks too much. Unlike the Jews,
who were the first to introduce credits, the
German bankers preferred to work with cash,
preference that also illustrates their stable, but
rigid mentality. Borowiecki, married out of
interest with Mllers daughter, feels isolated in
the new family, whereas his wife, although very
devoted to him, does not have the spiritual
finesse of the former Polish fiance.
The Jews have, by far, the most negative
image out of the three ethnicities. The Jewish
community in d grew over the course of the
19th century into the second largest Jewish
community in Poland (Shapiro 2010). In Ziemia
Obiecana, the Jews hold leading positions in the
textile industry, through influential millionaires
such as Szaja Mendelsohn, Grnspan, Grosglik
and Zuker. Their only goal is obtaining a profit,
no matter the means used to achieve this: arson
for the insurance money, organized bankruptcy,
various schemes with credits, assassination of
rivals etc. Reymont blames them for the poor
quality of the d products, which is also the
cause of the conflict between them and
Borowiecki, who wanted to raise the quality of
the merchandise and maintain his clients
precisely through this. They acted against him
by ceasing his credit, but also through his Jewish
associate, Moryc Welt. Cunning, he assures
Borowiecki of his friendship, but at the same
time slowly takes control of the entire factory.
Reymont attributes to the Jews a more
pronounced ethnic solidarity than in the case of
the other two nationalities. The contempt
between Poles and Jews is mutual: the banker
Grosglik considers the Poles fit only for manual
labour, whereas the noble woman Wysocka does
not allow her son to get married to a Jew and
dirty his blood. However, these attitudes of
scorn also existed between the Germans and the
Poles: Bucholc says that the latter have talent
only for foreign languages and for begging, thus
offending Borowiecki, although he was his best
employee.

A scene that perhaps illustrates well the

three ethnic images is the one in which
Borowiecki reveals to his partners precious
economic information, obtained through stealing
a telegram from his mistress house. For the
Polish stereotype, it is emblematic Borowieckis
decision to share these pieces of information, as
a gesture of respect and good will towards his
partners. Moryc Welt is surprised by
Borowieckis attitude, because he would not
have done the same. He is thrilled by the
possibility of a future profit, he calculates again
and again, seized with fever. Max Baum is
sleeping while Borowiecki and Welt are talking,
at some point he wakes up with difficulty, eats,
drinks, lights his pipe and tells the others to
briefly give him the news, he gives them his
endorsement and then he goes back to sleep.
The conflicts between the Jews, the
Germans and the Poles are numerous, from
economic competitions to bar fights, and
nothing indicates the situation of a veritable
interethnic cooperation. These conflicts certainly
existed in reality as well and Reymont merely
transposed them in literature. The novel has to
be considered as a document about the mentality
of an epoch and not judged, especially since
Reymonts lines do not transmit a feeling of
hatred toward an ethnicity or the other, but
rather general compassion for humanity and
condemnation for everything that causes harm to
it. A poor understanding of the writers
conception often made scholars refrain from
quoting certain passages and discuss only those
that were not controversial.
Although certain ethnic images are
outlined, it cannot be stated that Reymonts
characters are stereotypes, since the writer
portrays them from a human perspective,
illustrating the causes that led them to the
present state. With great skill, Reymont creates a
wide variety of characters, corresponding to the
natural diversity of the human soul. Although
the image of the Jews is disadvantageous, it is
not completely negative. Not all Jewish
characters are interest-driven, covetous; good
examples are Blumenfeld, for whom music is
the only escape from the monotony of the office
work, Mela Grnspan, who falls in love with the
doctor Wysocki and is sacrificed to her familys
interests, forced to accept Moryc Welt as
husband. Zuker, although lacking any scruples
in business, sincerely loves his wife and what he
desires most is to have a child with her. When
he finds out about her affair with Borowiecki, he
cries in front of her lover and begs him to deny
the rumors. Not even the king of cotton, Szaja

132

Mendelsohn, has a completely negative image.

Reymont gives information about his burdened,
miserable life in the past, his iron will and the
abnegation that allowed him to make a fortune,
although this burning desire destroyed his
sensibility. Reymont does not present only cases
of rich Jews: he also mentions the poor Jewish
neighbourhood in d, as well as the weavers
village of Kurow, inhabited by Jews who were
earning a decent living, in the best case.
The Germans are not portrayed merely
as the rudimentary nouveau-riche Mller, but
also as employers who care about their workers,
who defend the ideas of honesty, humanity, even
with the risk of bankruptcy. Such a businessman
is Baum the senior, Max Baums father, who
defends the manual industry against the steam
colossi, borrows his last money to any honest
industrialist and in the evening plays with his
granddaughters in a pleasant, heart-warming
family atmosphere. At the opposite extreme is
millionaire Herman Bucholc, who despises
everybody, considers himself a deity and
unloads his fury by hitting his butler across the
face with a cane. He is representative for what
critic Julian Krzyanowski called [] the
traditional Germanic arrogance on foreign soil
[] (Krzyanowski 1969, 527).
Although a Pole himself, Reymont did
not create a completely positive, idealized image
for his ethnicity and the best argument for this is
the behaviour of the main character, Karol
Borowiecki. In most cases he is indifferent to
any humane manifestation, acting only selfishly,
for the satisfaction of his own goals and own
pleasures. He cynically seduces women,
regardless if they are married or not. When
Zuker begs him to deny the relation with his
wife, he falsely swears on the icon of the Holy
Virgin Mary and he even manages to write a
small note to Zukerowa to not admit anything,
while conversing with her husband. Although he
used all her dowry money to build his own
factory, he breaks the engagement to Anka and
he gets married to Mada Mller, because this
relationship can save him after the factory
burned down.
Regardless of the ethnicity of the
nouveaux riches, the literary critics have
underlined the lack of culture and of sensibility
that is characteristic for all of them. Most of
them have modest origins and endured all sorts
of misfortunes on the way to the top, which
dehumanized them and caused them to develop
an unusual avarice. Despite the fact that they
possess large sums of money, they all
relentlessly cling to every kopeck. Grosglik

forbids his bank employees to make tea, so long

as he is paying for the gas. At Bucholcs funeral,
the workers get half of day off to attend the
ceremony, but this is cut from their payment, to
compensate for some of the funeral expenses.
The millions owned by these nouveaux riches
stimulated their arrogance and selfishness,
believing that they have the right to treat those
less fortunate as they please. Szaja Mendelsohn
reduces the payment of a factory worker because
he dares to have fun while Szaja is ill. Asked by
Trawiska and Endelmanowa to donate money
for the summer camps of the workers children,
Szaja gives them a small sum and only because
the two ladies say that his rival, Bucholc, also
gave them money. In addition, he insists his
contribution to be mentioned, so that everybody
can find out how generous he is. He is disturbed
by the death of his rival, which demonstrated to
him that not even millionaires are immortal,
despite the fact that they are treated almost like
gods in their lifetime; he is gripped by fear,
becomes more religious and establishes an
asylum and a hospital for workers, but continues
the merciless exploitation inside the factory.
The nouveaux riches have humble
origins and they become ridiculous in their
desire to imitate the aristocracy, without having
its education. Grosglik confuses Victor Hugo
with Henryk Sienkiewick and Endelmanowa
declares she likes her paintings to be glanz, to
shine as new, covering them up with layers of
gloss until not much of the original can be
distinguished. Mller, originally a simple
weaver from the German lands, built himself a
sumptuous palace to rise up to the standards of
the other millionaires, but does not live in it. His
palace is filled with expensive furniture, but
arranged without taste and without life; he owns
the books written by all the great names of
universal literature, but nobody in his family
knows even their titles. Their pretences are
downright comic for the others: But Knabe is
not silly? What about old man Lehr who, when
sitting in a restaurant and hearing somebody
shout: <<Waiter!>>, stands up immediately
because he was once a waiter; what about Zuker,
who even in my mothers time was bringing
home leftovers from sale. Lehr, for example,
knows only how to sign, but receives his clients
in the cabinet, holding a book that his butler
always hands it to him open, because there were
cases when Lehr was holding it upside down in
the presence of his guests (Reymont 2011,
276). The children of these nouveaux riches do
not seem to rise above the previous generation,
being portrayed as having no ideals and no

133

preoccupations, used to have everything without

making the slightest effort for it, bored of
everything, even of having fun.
This bourgeoisie replaced the Polish
nobility, who slowly withers and dies and whose
life philosophy started to be behind the times.
The phenomenon was widely illustrated and
debated in the Polish literature of the epoch. In
The Promised Land, one of the few aristocratic
figures is Adam, Borowieckis old father, who
cannot understand how Stach Wilczek, the boy
who used to guard their cows, is now juggling
with huge sums of money or how a former
peasant, Karczmarek, can afford to buy his
estate. Between the nobility and the nouveaux
riches is a mutual contempt: for example,
Borowiecki refuses to shake Wilczeks hand,
considering this below his dignity, while the
other one is offended by the fact that the noble
still sees him as inferior, despite his climb on the
social ladder.

uplifting and noble things. In his businessman

style, he adds that Protestantism is not a brand,
like the Pope is (Reymont 2011, 431). After a
bar fight between Germans and Poles, Mateusz,
Borowieckis servant, declares emphatically that
he will not forgive [] the ridiculing of his
Catholic blood (Reymont 2011, 78).
The degradation of the sacred in the
industrial city can be best observed in the scene
that describes a funeral procession, particularly
moving because it is the funeral of a child, but
also because of the utter indifference displayed
by the other citizens. The funeral is a poor one,
barely moving forward through the mud. Those
who take part in it are constantly forced to move
on the sidewalk, driven away from the middle of
the road by coaches, carriages and trucks with
merchandise, which repeatedly splash the coffin
with mud. Few passers-by have time to watch
because most of them are running toward the
factories that call them back to work.
Although
Reymont
makes
few
references to religion, in reality, it probably
remained strong in the mentality of the workers.
According to Barbara Wachowska, during the
1892 strike, the workers sang the religious hymn
Boe co Polsk, that wasnt sung since the
January Uprising of 1863-1864, and the anthem
of Poland Jeszcze Polska nie zgina
(Wachowska). It is widely known the stereotype
Polak, to Katolik, therefore these songs were
an anti-Tsarist manifestation, but also a protest
against their direct oppressors, the Judaic or
Protestant supervisors. The presence of a
religious dimension, closely related to the
national one, during a time of crisis,
demonstrates the deep roots of Catholicism in
the workers mentality, although religious
manifestations were, in general, less frequent in
urban regions.

A desacralized environment
The depiction of the industrial city
would not be complete without mentioning the
diminished role of religion in the life of those
inhabiting d. Reymont mentions religion
only briefly, which can also constitute an
indication that this is not a primary concern in
the big city. In sharp contrast, the novel The
Peasants, set in the rural area, is filled with
comments related to religious beliefs or
celebrations.
In d, the ones who go to church or
synagogue are few. In the short-story One day...,
Pliszka prays, but refuses to go to church,
claiming he doesnt support the Jesuits. In The
Promised Land, nobody attends church;
Borowiecki goes only once, while in the
country, forced by family duties. However, his
factory is blessed by the priest in Kurow, during
the inauguration festivities. Church bells can
never be heard in the industrial city, which is
dominated by factory sirens. The only one who
constantly prays is Szaja Mendelsohn, who calls
singers from the synagogue to his palace. After
the death of his rival, Bucholc, he prays even
more. Anka and Borowieckis father, who
moved from the small settlement of Kurow into
the city, pray mostly because they miss the rural
life, the author thus suggesting that religious
devotion is an exclusive attribute of the
countryside. The banker Grosglik speaks against
Protestantism, claiming he needs beauty in his
life, whereas the Protestant churches do not have
any decorations on the walls and the pastor
preaches about Hell, instead of speaking about

For capitalism with a human face

In conclusion, the image of the
industrial city in Reymonts works is a sombre
one, from spiritual and material perspectives as
well. In the novel The Promised Land, even the
few positive characters seem to be swallowed
by the corruption around them: Max Baums
father went insane after losing his wife and after
the closing down of his factory, Mela Grnspan
is separated from Wysocki and is forced into
marrying Moryc Welt, Anka is abandoned by
Borowiecki, who instead gets married to Mada
Mller, only because it was more profitable.
After the close observation of this
gloomy picture, one might draw the conclusion
that
Reymont
was
fully
opposing

134

industrialization, which is false. The Polish

writer merely fights against the inhumane sides
of this process, against corruption and the
seeking of profit by any means and with any
sacrifice. His sympathy for the manual industry
is obvious when the factories of Trawiski and
Baum are illustrated, maybe because Reymont
was influenced by John Ruskins ideas. These
factories are quickly closing down and their lack
of success is caused by the firm, dignified
attitude of their owners: both wanted to work
honestly, did not arrange fake bankruptcies or
burned their factories for the insurance money.
Their factories did not represent only a means of
profit, but also an idea, they used manual labour,
wishing to salvage this type of industry, and
refused to use steam machines instead.
Trawiski kept salaries at a decent level, even
though he found himself several times on the
brink of bankruptcy, and his attitude made him a
thorn in the side of the big industrialists: []
yesterday at Kesslers the entire filature stopped.
Why? Because the foremen and the workers said
they will not work anymore until they are paid
as Trawiski pays his workers! Nice situation
for a factory so strained by deadline orders that
has to accept anything! If Kessler will have with
10 percent less this year, it will be because of
Trawiski! (Reymont 2011, 364). Only half or
even less of the weaving looms in Trawiskis
factory are working, as the manual industry is
rapidly and surely ruined by the steam colossi.
Compared to the humble manufactures, Mllers
enterprise
was
dominating
the
entire
neighbourhood: The factory was rising like a
powerful force tank, whose respiration seems to
level to the ground the lines of miserable,
crooked houses. It could be felt that these big
buildings, in which hundreds of machines were
whirring, slowly suck all the vigour of this old
neighbourhood, inhabited by a swarm of manual
weavers, were eating and swallowing
irrevocably the small manufacturing industry,
once flourishing here, which was desperately
defending itself, because there was no more
hope for victory(Reymont 2011, 166-167).
Taking into consideration the aversion that the
writer repeatedly manifests towards the huge
industrial machines that were replacing dozens
and hundreds of people, his sympathy for the
manual industry becomes obvious and
understandable.
Reymonts vision of the 19th century
industrialization can also be interpreted in
ideological terms, as it was naturally influenced
by the ideologies of the time, but much more
important than this is the understanding of the

real conditions that determined the writer to

have this vision. In his works, Reymont dealt
with subjects that even today are problematic:
interhuman relations, such as interethnic and
employer-employee relations, human rights, the
impact of mans activities on the environment
etc. Going through the lines written by
Reymont, we might draw the conclusion that the
past is not as we imagined it or wanted it to be.
However, the solution is not to cover it with
makeup, but to understand the pasts lesson for
present and future use. The eternal value of
Reymonts work is universally recognized and
the fact that this great 19th century writer can
still catch the attention of todays reader is also
demonstrated by the publishing in 2011 of the
first edition of the novel The Promised Land in
Romanian. The editors compare the situation in
d with the first years of the market economy
in Post-Communist countries, what can
constitute another reason to reflect upon the
novel.
References
a. Books:
Davies,
Norman,
Gods
Davies 1982
playground, volume II, New
York, Columbia University
Press 1982.
Krzyanowski Krzyanowski, Julian, Dzieje
Literatury Polskiej, Warszawa,
1969
Pantwowe
Wydawnicwo
Naukowe, 1969.
Matuszewski,
Ignacy,
O
Matuszewski
twrczoci
i
twrcach,
1965
Warszawa,
Pastwowy
Instytut Wydawniczy, 1965.
Miosz, Czesaw, The History
Miosz 1983
of Polish Literature, 2nd
edition,
Berkeley,
Los
Angeles, London, University
of California Press 1983.
Reymont, Wadysaw, Fiu de
Reymont
nobili [A Noblemans Son],
1967
Bucureti, Editura pentru
literatur, 1967.
Reymont,
Wadysaw,
Reymont
Pewnego dnia i inne nowele,
1990
Warszawa, Nasza Ksigarnia,
1990.
Reymont,
Wadysaw,
Reymont
Pmntul fgduinei [The
2011
Promised Land], Bucureti,
Lider, 2011.
Velea,
Stan,
Reymont,
Velea 1967
Bucureti, Editura pentru

135

literatur, 1967.
b. Chapters in books:
Kossert, Andreas, Promised
Kossert
Land? Urban Myth and the
2006
Shaping of Modernity in
Industrial Cities: Manchester
and Lodz, in Cristian Emden,
Catherine Keen, David Midgley
David (coord.) Cultural History
and
Literary
Imagination,
volume VIII (Imagining the city:
The Politics of Urban Space,
volume II), Bern, Peter Lang
AG, 2006.
c. Internet sources:
Kallas, Wojciech, New Global
Kallas
Mapping: The City of Ldz in
Wladyslaw St. Reymonts The
Promised Land, Centrul de
cercetare
a
imaginarului,
http://phantasma.ro/wp/?p=3164
Shapiro 2010 Shapiro, Robert Moses, d,
YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in
Eastern
Europe
(2010).
http://www.yivoencyclopedia.or
g/article.aspx/odz
Wajda,
Andrzej,
Ziemia
Wajda
obiecana [Promised Land],
http://www.wajda.pl/en/filmy/fil
m18.html
Wachowska,
Barbara,
The
Wachowska
Revolt in d in 1892, The
American Association for Polish

Jewish
Studies,
http://www.aapjstudies.org/inde
x.php?id=112

136

Cultural History and Literary Representations of Jews in Slovenia

Irena Avsenik NABERGOJ

Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
Institute of Cultural History
E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract. A general overview of stereotypes of Jews and other ethnic groups in Slovenian folk
tradition, in culture, in general, and particularly in literature, from Primo Trubar (15081586) and Janez
Vajkard Valvasor (16411693) onwards, shows that in the history of Slovenia as a part of the common
Middle-European cultural area, stereotypes of Jews are commonplace: Jews are portrayed as the enemies
of Christ and Christianity (during the Middle Ages), as money-hungry, money-lenders, nit-picky, stingy
misers having large and hook noses, immoral and disgusting to look at. Jewish women are often portrayed
as used to privilege and materialistic. Some stereotypes are grounded in truth; generalizations derived
from experiences with individuals of Jewish ethnic and religious groups from Slovenia and the
neighboring countries. Stereotyped comic portrayal of Jews in literature is, however, not yet in itself a
sure indication to what extent individual writers were anti-Semitic, all the more when the same writer
uses also stereotypes of the same ethnic group in a positive manner. Another important indication of the
attitude towards a particular ethnic group is the way of portraying characters taken from representatives of
their own people and from other ethnic, racial and religious groups (Germans, Austrians, Hungarians,
Bulgarians, Turks, Arabs, etc.). If there is certain balance in portraying characters from different ethnic
groups, writers might not exaggerate differences between groups. Poets and writers throughout centuries
might have been introduced to stereotypes of Jews which they were not previously aware of, in order to
demonstrate that in moral core of human nature ethnic groups are more alike than different.
This paper gives a review of the representations of Jews as they have appeared over the course of
Slovenian literature. It presents the older legacy of folk songs, tales and legends that often include Jewish
characters and stereotypes. Also, it focuses on the works of literature in the modern sense especially on
the works of the two most exposed figures of Slovenian literary canon, the poet France Preeren (1800
1849) and the poet, writer and dramatist Ivan Cankar (18761918), emphasizing the representations of
Jews and Jewishness in their texts. Its particularly interesting how the greatest Slovenian writer, Ivan
Cankar, exploits established Jewish stereotypes and integrates them into the thematic and symbolic
structures of his letters and of his huge opus of literary works in several literary genres.
Keywords: history of Jews, image of Jews, anti-Semitism, Slovenian Literature, France Preeren
(18001849), Ivan Cankar (18761918)

137

centuries, they made their way to virtually all

regions of Europe. On the basis of economic
activities they were linked to the economic and
commercial centres of the time, which is why
they established themselves primarily in places
that ensured them possibilities for survival.
The first Jews are thought to have come
to Slovenian lands from the Rhineland; the
earliest mention of Jews in the Middle Ages, in
ethnically Slovenian territory, places the Jews in
the region of Carinthia, which was the most
socially and economically developed Slovenian
region of the time. According to one
explanation, they arrived there after having fled
Germany at the outset of the Crusades; another
one is that Jews were already there because
Jewish villages (Judendorf) have been a trade
centre. Jews also came to Ljubljana, Gorica and
Trieste. Among towns in Slovenian Styria, in the
late Middle Ages, the most important economic
centres were Ptuj and Maribor.
The first known Jewish residents in
Maribor date between 1274 and 1296, while in
Ptuj the first Jewish property was recorded in
1286; in Celje and in Slovenj Gradec, Jews are
first mentioned in the first half of the 14th
century, and in the 2nd half of the 14th century in
Slovenska Bistrica (To 2012, 18). In a
historical view these towns were linked to the
whole of Europe through the Jewish population
(Valeni 1992, 5; To 2012, 18), since the
activity of Jews reached beyond the borders of
countries along with the nobility and high
clergy, Jews were the most mobile segment of
the population in the society of that time
(Jelini Boeta 2008, 42).
The strongest and most influential
medieval Jewish community was in Maribor,
where Jews developed the liveliest economic
activities. The religious, spiritual and cultural
centre for the Maribor Jewish community was
the synagogue. The Maribor synagogue is first
mentioned in 1429, but it is surely older, as the
simple straight-winged building probably
existed even before the well-known Maribor
rabbi Abraham, who lived there and died in
1379 (To 2012, 19).(2) In Maribor, the Jewish
community was involved in banking, wineselling and trades, although they also owned
mills and vineyards, especially in the Maribor
region and in Slovenska Gorica. They sold wine
primarily in Carniola and Carinthia; they traded

Introduction
An historical overview of the relation of
the majority population with Jews in Slovenian
lands shows that the aspects of anti-Semitism in
Slovenia were, for the most part, the same as
elsewhere in the world. The unique history and
religious/cultural influence of the Israeli or
Jewish people was, in various historical periods,
the reason for the special status Jews had among
immigrants throughout the world. Because they
were in general also successful in each new
homeland, they were recognizable everywhere
and placed in the spotlight of representatives of
other peoples and cultures. However, throughout
the history of various countries their
recognizance and success often gave rise to envy
and fomented hatred towards Jews, which in
extreme cases went so far as to kindle pogroms
against them. It is understandable that in
Slovenian lands it could not be different than in
the neighbouring regions. Placing literary works
in their larger cultural and social context leads to
a better understanding of relationship between
historical reality and literary modification of
what poets and writers were attempting to
achieve with Jewish characters.
1. The Presence of Jews in Slovenia
throughout History and Anti-Semitism
Various sources indicate that Jews were
already present in Slovenian lands during the
Roman period, while a permanent Jewish
settlement can be detected from the 11th century.
(1) In German lands, Jews were known already
before 1000; in Slovenian lands, though, they
settled permanently in the 12th and 13th
centuries, when the first urban settlements arose
(To 2012, 18). Jews played an important role in
Slovenia, especially in the field of economy and
in culture. On account of their productive
activities, long-distance commerce in the early
Middle Ages and economic activities in later
(1) As Klemen Jelini Boeta writes, Jews have been
present in Slovenian lands for almost 2000 years,
namely, since late Antiquity in the 1st century AD.
They have lived not only in the area of the presentday Republic of Slovenia, but also in the historically
Slovenian lands of Istria, Trieste, Gorica, Austrian
Carinthia and Styria, Prekmurje, Porabje and
Carniola (Jelini Boeta 2009, 7, 9). An overview of
findings reveals growing persecution of Jews
between 313 and 430, while simultaneously revealing
that Jews were greatly involved in everything, even
in loftiest aspects of city life throughout the Empire;
they worked as merchants, doctors, soldiers, judges,
and were also land-owners (Jelini Boeta 2009, 12).

(2) The Ptuj synagogue is mentioned in 1344, making

it, in terms of the preserved documents, the firstmentioned synagogue in Styria (To 2012, 20).

138

in horses and wood, selling the latter in Istria,

Venice, Dubrovnik and Prague. Trade with
Venice was especially profitable; from Venice
they imported cloth, silk, spice, tropical fruit,
precious stones and gold (To 2012, 18). At the
head of their community was the Jewish rabbi.
Disputes with Christians were resolved by the
so-called Jewish court, which was headed by a
Christian.
In Ljubljana, the capital of what is now
the Republic of Slovenia, a synagogue is
mentioned already in 1213; the Ljubljana Jews
were tradesmen, merchants and bankers. At their
settlement in the city Jews were granted
privileges (1327). The Jewish quarter was at
Novi trg (New Square) by the city wall
between the vidames court and the Ljubljanica
River, on the todays Jewish Street and Jewish
Lane.
Although up until the 15th century Jews
in the Habsburg Empire lived in urban settings,
they were, in contrast to the majority Christian
population, separated and had, in comparison
with them, a marginal position. Because of the
social difference between Christians and Jewish
town-dwellers Jews were forbidden from allying
with each other. Though this was not desired yet
from a religious viewpoint, sources nevertheless
mention love and even sexual relationships
between adherents of both faiths and even
conversion from one faith to the other. From the
14th century on, Slovenian society became
increasingly less accepting of Jews, and began to
expel them. The first permanent settlements of
Jews from the period of Napoleons conquest
were also renewed, when the principle of
universal human rights asserted itself.
The First World War also had an
influence on the Jewish communities in
traditionally Slovenian lands; Jews began to
emigrate, as economic cooperation has become
difficult; there were more mixed marriages.
After the First World War Slovenian newspapers
expressed opposition to Jewish immigration, and
there were even demands to expel Jews from the
entirety of the newly-conceived country
Yugoslavia.
The Holocaust for Slovenian Jews
primarily means the destruction of the more than
600-year-old Jewish community in the town of
Gorica, on Italian border, and the more than
200-year-old Jewry in Prekmurje region, on
Hungarian border. In 1991 there were 201 Jews
by confession, and 37 by language and
nationality.
In his recent monograph on Jews in
Prekmurje, Marjan To rejects the widespread

view that Slovenians knew no anti-Semitism or

that they were never anti-Semitic. As he argues,
educated Slovenians encountered Jews while
studying in Vienna, but also in journeys
around Austria-Hungary and elsewhere (To
2012, 190192).
2. A Survey of Representation of Jews in
Slovenian Literature
Literature is a special cultural area for
showing the place, significance and connotations
of Jews in Slovenia. Literature has been, from
the very beginnings, a medium for transmitting
obsolete, thousand-year-old stereotypes of Jews.
In the long period of Slovenian literary
creativity, from the oldest handed-down folk
songs to contemporary artistic creations, many
literary works in which Jews are presented under
various viewpoints have arisen. When we
approach this sort of cultural heritage it becomes
clear that literary creators primarily see Jews as
a symbol that transcends their historical and
sociological framework. But whatever the
prejudice be it racial, ethnic, class or sexual
the only valid tool for combating it is the truth.
Among the oldest historical sources that impart
information about the position and role of Jews
in Slovenian lands are those by Primo Trubar
(15081586), who was a pioneer of written
Slovenian language and literature and the
leading protestant writer; (3) the polymath Janez
Vajkard Valvasor (16411693); as well as the
Slovenian preacher and literato, the capuchin
Janez Svetokriki (16471714).
Jews appear already in Slovenian folk
songs, and later in works of Primo Trubar,
Janez Svetokriki (Svetokriki 1974, 137138)
and Janez Vajkard Valvasor (Valvasor 1994,
272), and they are also significant in Slovenian
literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. The
figure of Jews is already evident in certain
poems by France Preeren; Jakob Sket mentions
them in the evening tale Miklova Zala (first
published in 1884); Josip Vonjak first devotes
particular attention to them in his Memories
(19051906) (Grdina 2005, 74) and we read
(3) Catechismus and the language primer
Abecedarium, with which Trubar set the foundations
for Slovenian literary language and literature, were
published in 1550 in Tubingen. In addition to these
works, Trubar also translated the entire New
Testament (1582); he also translated and published
the psalms (Ta celi psalter Davidov) in 1566. He
published, furthermore, songs and prayers in
Slovenian while laying down the rules for the
Slovenian Protestant Church in Cerkovno ordnungo
(1564).

139

about encounters with Jews also in poetry of

France Preeren, Simon Jenko, Anton Akerc, as
well as in the works of Ivan Cankar, Oton
upani, Anton Novaan, Miko Kranjc and
Zlata Voka Medic. (4) In addition to these
names, we find Jewish figures in the works of
other authors, such as Simon Gregori, Janez
Trdina, Janko Kersnik, Stanko Majcen, Preihov
Voranc, Lojze Ilija, and Andrej Hieng. In his
poems.
Sources from the period of Middle Ages
are not many; all the more they are of relevance.
A Medieval Easter poem contains a condemning
of Jews:

And he will sit in the Divine temple as

show himself as God and tell the Jews: I
am the Christ that was promised to you. I
have come to redeem you, to assemble
you dispersed ones, so that all Jews who
are ready to accept the Messiah will come
to him. He will be elevated and glorified
and in him there will be the plenitude of
all wrongdoings. He will became a king
above all sons of pride; of all those who
will persist in the faith he will make
martyrs. [] And then he will, through
seduction and magic arts, pretend that he
plans to die for the redemption of the
Jews and that he will rise again after three
days and all Jews who believe in him will
be glorified in honour and rewarded with
riches. When the basest seducer with this
Godless teaching will have filled the
hearts of the Jews, he will command that a
ram be slaughtered before all eyes. To the
Jews it will appear that they are killing
him. Then he will hide for three days. The
third day he will be dressed in regal attire,
shining in gold and pearls and crowned in
fame he will show himself to the people.
And he will send throughout the world
people who will proclaim that he has risen
from the dead as Christ did before him
(Poganik 1974, 138139)

God was so merciful,

He left his own Son to us,
of Maria He was born,
and brought joy to the whole world.
He tried to teach the Jews
to serve righteously God alone;
they took offence at this,
and spread him out on the cross.
(Poganik 1974, 48)(5)
Slovenian Medieval prose links Jews
with the Antichrist:
The Antichrist, who opposes Christ in
everything, will be born of the Jewish
people from the Tribe of Dan, according
to the prophet: Dan will be like a snake
on the path, like a horned beast on the
wall! [] Like a snake he will wait by
the side of the road and hide in the path to
harm and murder with the venom of his
evil those who walk along the path of
righteousness. He will be born of a union
between father and mother and not as
some say only of a virgin. But he will be
conceived in sin, in sin he will be born,
and in sin he will enter the world.
(Poganik 1974, 135)

And these will disseminate, in false

piety, the enemy faith:
But when the impious preachers will
proclaim this misfortune not of Christ but
of the devil, Divine judgement will fall
upon them. And he will be killed
according to the testimony of the apostle
Paul either by angels or something else,
as it will be concluded. He will be killed
on the Mount of Olives in a tent that will
be a sort of holy place for him, at that
very place from which our Lord Jesus
Christ, Gods son, ascended to heaven.
And when the Antichrist will have ended
thus, again the deceived Jews will keep
watch there for three days for him to arise
from the dead. On the fourth day, when
they will pour the flames of eternal fire
over his decaying body, entirely dead and
destroyed, the Jews will begin to lament
at having been so bitterly betrayed; and
they will beat their sinful breast and turn
to Lord Jesus Christ and renounce their
Jewish faith. Not until then will they
clearly recognize what was prophesied

According to Medieval texts, the enemy

of Christ would present himself, through his evil
seduction, only to the lost people, that is, to
Jews:

(4) Igor Grdina analyses the figure of Jews in these

authors in a 2005 article.
(5) The Easter Poem: after Trubar in the song-book
Ta celi katehismus; cited here from the 1584 edition,
123127.

140

about Lord Jesus. (Poganik 1974, 139

140)

suddenly flares up and only then extinguishes

completely.
It is almost the same with the light and
unfolding of the holy gospel, which should
shine according to the eternal, unchangeable
resolution of Gods light in the dark world, as
it is written: true light is that which
illuminates all people who enter the world. It
was in the world and the world arose in it and
the world did not recognize it. And again:
judgement lies in the fact that light came to
the world but the people loved darkness more
than light. And in the Psalms it is written:
Thy word [is] a lamp unto my feet, and a
light unto my path.
This light, which has shown since the
beginning of the world, and which especially
Christ, our Lord (who was eternal light) in
the times of the apostles shone upon the
world, immediately gave a mighty dawn over
the whole world through numerous signs and
wonders. The darkness of Jews and heathens
was banished and both nations were
enlightened in heart and soul for the true,
truthful and living recognition of God.
But, later, when mighty kings and the
powerful of the earth ventured to extinguish
this light in many ways, thereby spilling the
blood of countless innocents, it nevertheless
and against their will remained in the world
to the present-day, even if at times it burned
more weakly and shone less than at other
times. Yet those who resisted it perished and
were lost.

The Jews will be overwhelmed by fear

of hellish beasts that will rise from the abyss, but
Christ will refuse to redeem them:
They will admit their sins and receive
baptism and in fear await his Second
Coming and feel horror at the Final
Judgement, so that that prophecy that
says, though the number of the children
of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a
remnant shall be saved may be fulfilled.
But when the Jews will begin to believe
and give themselves to Christ, Judgement
Day will soon come. Yet Christ the
Redeemer, who does not desire for
anyone to be lost, will grant the chosen
ones forty days to repent in accordance
with the prophet Daniel so that they may
be saved from the Antichrist. (Poganik
1974, 140)
Since the Middle Ages, literature
transmitted old stereotypes about Jews. To these
stereotypes there were added new ones, namely,
those which pertained to Jews living throughout
the world, including in Slovenian places. Among
the stereotypes there were also those linking
Jews with commerce and money-lending. In his
monumental work, Die Ehre des Herzogthums
Crain (The Glory of Carniola), published in
1689, Valvasor mentions Jews in various
circumstances and roles. He looks back to the
Middle Ages and says, among other things, In
1213 the Jews in Ljubljana reconstructed their
old synagogue and made it lovelier than before,
as they were very wealthy and traded with
Venetians, Hungarians and Croatians...
(Valvasor 1994, 272).
We also find the motif of Jews in Trubar
(15081586) (Poganik, 1974, 107, 132). In the
dedication in the First Part of the New
Testament, written in the Cyrillic alphabet, in
1563, he writes:

In the Postil from the Dedication Trubar

writes:
For the Devils wrongful faith is also old,
for the Devil even in the heavens
established his wrongful faith against
Gods son and then attracted and brought
unto himself, to his old wrongful faith,
Adam, Even, Cain and his descendants,
heathens, Jews, Turks and Papists.
(Poganik 1974, 132)

Most illustrious, high born count and lord,

lord Albrecht the Elder, duke and master,
mater Albert the Elder, Margrave of
Brandenburg, Stettin, Kashubia, Wenden, etc.
peace and mercy from God our Father of our
Lord
and
Redeemer
Jesus
Christ.
Enlightened, high born duke, merciful lord!
The light which he lit is first a ray and shines
forth until it grants equal, constant light; and
finally, when it has already waned, it

The roots of Christian prejudices were

planted into the folk mentality also by the
Baroque writer Janez Svetokriki (On Saint
Stephens Day).
These evil and hard-necked Jews, in order
not to hear Gods wisdom and not to be
compelled to recognize the true faith,
started to cry out loudly and block their
ears and soon all ran at Him and threw
141

prisega), Job, In Defence (V obrambo, with its

figure of Job); Samson and Delilah (Samson in
Dalila) and others. (6)
The novels The Soldier with the Golden
Buttons (Vojak z zlatimi gumbi, 1964) and
Marpurgi (1985) by the Jewish authors Miriam
Steiner and Zlata Medic-Voka, respectively,
have made a contribution to the Slovenian
literature. Among contemporary writers, Andrej
Hieng subtly includes the motif of the Ahasver
in his novel udeni Feliks (Miraculous Felix,
1993) to portray the awakening of Jewish
identity against the backdrop of hateful Nazi
anti-Jewish propaganda just before the Second
World War, thereby expressing his premonition
of the horrific consequences of anti-Semitism,
which in its bedrock is essentially linked with
the problem of accepting otherness and the
foreign. The background of Hiengs novel is the
horrifying premonition of the Holocaust that can
be felt, and it is this that induces the writer to
search for the reasons for the destructive logic
of racism. It is not by chance that the author
employs the motif of Ahasver. In his novel
Billiards in Dobray (Biljard v Dobrayu, 2007)
Duan arotar writes about deportation to the
Auschwitz concentration camp and also of the
return of some Prekmurje Jews, including the
writers grandfather, the merchant Franz
Schwartz. (7)

Him out and cast stones at Him.

(Svetokriki 1974, 137138)
Svetokriki also mentions Jews in other
circumstances and in other roles. In the Chapter
on Remarkable Events in the City of Ljubljana
Valvasor he notes among other things:
In 1408 they imprisoned a Jew for
fornicating with a Christian woman; when
he admitted to the act, they murdered him
by sword. The Jews were sullen at this,
muttered to themselves and took umbrage,
such that as a consequence there were
fights between them and Christians: three
Jews were murdered. (Valvasor 1994,
272)
In his notes from the years 18701879 Janez
Trdina states that
the Jew came to sniff at these places to see
how the Abrahamites could settle. [] He
stated openly that in Carniola no flowers
would bloom for his tribe, because the people
are too sly and crafty. (cited from Zibelnik
2007, 22).
Janko Kersnik in the feuilleton Moody Letters
(Muhasta pisma) applies this figure when he
critically describes Count Alexander Auersperg.
Stanko Majcen mentions a Jewish person in the
legend The Bride (Nevesta) from the collection
of stories and legends Bogar Meho, which he
wrote during the Second World War.
Preihov Voranc represents a Jew in his
novel Doberdob, in the chapter Black War,
namely as someone who cannot be trusted
(Ibidem, 25). The figure of Jews as market
traders without whom the best market is
useless is contained in Vorancs novella Jirs in
Bavh. Lojze Ilija has a Jewish theme in the
historical novel The Last Rabbi in Ljubljana
(Zadnji rabin v Ljubljani), Josip Debevec in the
tragedy Liberalism or the Eternal Jew
(Liberalizem ali Veni id, 1897), Andrej Hieng
in the novel Miraculous Felix (udeni Felix).
In his poems, Simon Gregori mentions
travelling Jewish salesmen (At the Market [Na
semnju], 1888), a Jewish market stall (I Gave
you my Heart, 1901), Jews as deceivers
(Hermes, published 1925), Jews as exploiters of
workers (the cycle To the Workers [Delavcem],
1902), Jews who ride roughshod over Slavs and
the Christian faith (Incorrect Psalms [Narobe
psalmi]). Gregori also wrote many poems with
biblical characters: Jephthahs Vow (Jeftejeva

3. The Figure of a Jewish Maid in France

Preeren
In 1845, the greatest Slovenian poet France
Preeren (18001849) published the verse
romance The Jewish Maid (Judovsko dekle)
(Slodnjak 1964, 268; Preeren 1996, 5556,
251254; Preeren 1999, 3437). In this poem
he revisits a youthful love experience whose
only known details are those expressed in the
poem. As it is known, during the 1828 holidays,
Preeren stayed with the pupil Emmanuel
Dubsky at the Dubsky castle in Lysice near
Brno, in Moravia. There he became allied with a
young Jewish girl, though their relationship did
not last beyond summer 1828. There is an
( 6)
It worth mentioning here the newer or
modernizations of some of Gregoris biblical
poetry: Snoj 2005, 241263.
(7) A brief overview of the image of Jews in
Slovenian literature is given also in my articles Jews
in Slovenian Literature (2011), Prejudice to the Jews
in Ivan Cankar and Stefan Zweig (2011), The
interaction metaphors, stereotypes and personal
experiences of Jews in the social functions of
language (2013) and in some other studies (Peri
1985; Grdina 2002; Zibelnik 2007, etc.).

142

original and a later version of the poem; the

second version differs primarily in its
conclusion. In the first version, Preeren states
that the love affair broke up on the account of
religious differences. In the final version, instead
of the resignation of the lovers, he emphasises
the primary nature of their love, which
overcomes all obstacles, even differences of
faith. In the first half of the poem, the poet
shows the contradictions between the cultural
and religious environment for Christian girls. In
her loneliness, the girl asks her father to let her
walk in the park, where fair flowers grow there
tier on tier / and happy birds are singing clear /
while nearby graze the timid deer. On the way,
she meets a young Christian; smitten by the
Jewish girl, he begins to court her, though the
girl is aware that they can never marry because
of the fateful difference in faith and birth.
Strophes 813 read:

(Preeren 1999, 3437)

Preerens original poem has a different
conclusion:
It was love that joined them,
but faith kept them apart. (8)
In the first version Preeren emphasises that the
young pair is divided forever by religious
differences. Insofar as this poem imparts the
poets real experience, the question of whether
faith was really the reason that the affair
between him and the Jewish girl did not last
remains open. It seems more likely that other
reasons prevailed. In comparison to the poem
about the Jewish girl, Preerens poem From the
Iron Road (Od elezne ceste) is a witty idyll in
which two young people engage in a battle of
words (Slodnjak 1964, 270; Preeren 1996, 35
38, 235241). They waggishly tell each other of
how they could find some other partner, each
trying to incite jealousy in the other, though it is
nevertheless clear that this is merely a prenuptial battle of words in which each wants to
prove his or her irreplaceable value to the other.
Among other things, the boy claims that he will
travel by train to Brno to propose to a baptised
Jew, marry her, and collect interest from his
rich Jewish wife. But the girl will not be bested
and confidently replies that the miserly Jew will
yield nothing to him. She compared her with the
Satan and said:

//
While in the park she takes the air,
By chance this Jewish maiden fair
Meets with a youth, a Christian, there.
And while her hands in his are pressed,
He holds her closely to his breast,
She hears these sentiments expressed:
To love all people I am bade,
My faiths command must be obeyed;
Do you love me, my Jewish maid?
Her snow-white hands from his she
pries,
And tears come quickly to her eyes,
And with these words she now replies:

Bet your Sarah will turn feral,

When shes got you in the bag;
No more honey in your cereal,
While shes mistress of the swag.
(Preeren 1999, 1920)

Though you may truly love me so,

I know full well, and you well know,
This marriage knot you must forego.

The battle of words concludes with the

ascertainment of both that they love each other,
that they would like to marry as soon as possible
and that they will remain true to one another; the
boy in truth wants to take his girl away, by train,
as his wife to Vienna, to Graz, to Trieste, as he
said:

And home she goes, to fate resigned,

And knees to God with brooding mind:
The lad was not her faith or kind.
Clearly this was requited, primary love, which is
why Preerens final version in the last, 14th
stanza ends optimistically (though there is no
possibility of marriage); he writes of the Jewish
girl:

I will take my highland lassie,

Off to Gradec, Dunaj, Trst,
Flaunting there my mate first-classy
Though a christening might come first.
(Preeren 1999, 20)

And often to the park she goes;

Her faith a lasting firmness shows,
Her love neer any weaker grows.

(8) Translation: dr. Jason Blake.

143

How different the Jewish motif in this poem

is in comparison to the motif in the poem The
Jewish Girl is evident from the fact that Preeren
implies that the young man will easily be able to
seek out a lover, that he will not come into
conflict with his surroundings; he will propose
to the Jewish convert. Here it is neither a matter
of faith nor of nationality, but merely of money.
The girl answers in the same spirit, describing
the Jewish girl on the basis of prejudices and
tropes about miserliness, lack of generosity, and
craftiness. Preeren took the motif of the crafty
and miserly Jew from folk representations
without showing his stance towards them.

historical and social background and under his

mainly symbolist representation of reality shows
that historical rationale is however not quite
adequate for judging Cankars literary treatment
of Jews. A suitable methodological point of
departure allows for a helpful comprehensive
survey of the phenomenon of both unpleasant
Jewish stereotypes used in his depictions of
concrete lifes situations and original artistic
representations
of
Jews
within
his
predominantly fictional and symbolist writing.
The purpose of this chapter is to provide
a fairly exhaustive survey of Cankars use of the
image of Jews in his literature in order also to
provide a sufficient basis for raising the question
of to what degree Cankar was expressing his
personal attitude toward Jews when he took his
image of a Jew ready-made from his historical
surroundings and from literary sources. While it
is true that the Jewish stereotype has remained
unsettlingly stable throughout the centuries,
dealing with great literature shows that the Jew
is integral to the content, style, and artistic
vision of the individual writer. Rosenshield has
this to say about the image of Jewish characters
in Gogol, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky:

4. Representation of Jews in the Works of

Ivan Cankar
Discovering and examining Jews in the works of
the greatest Slovenian writer Ivan Cankar
(18761918) is illuminating, especially when
they are considered in the context of his entire
opus. The chapter could set the image of Jews in
Cankar alongside that of a nearer contemporary
of Cankars and consider a larger number of
studies on literary representations of Jews in
other
European
literatures
(Rosenberg,
Schechter, Rosenshield, etc.). It is limited to the
ways of representing Jewish characters within
the vast range of the works of Ivan Cankar by
choosing relevant examples from his literature.
( 9)
Ivan Cankar manifested his relation with
Jews in many of his letters, works of literary
criticism, poems and other literary texts. (10) His
descriptions in letters are a particularly clear
indication that Cankar encountered Jews in
Vienna in various situations. Though in several
passages he presents Jews in a completely static
manner, as stereotypes rather than human
beings, in others he presents Jewish characters in
an original and artistic manner, providing the
reader with a sense of Jews as individuals. An
analysis of Ivan Cankars entire opus both under

Like Shakespeare, Gogol, Turgenev, and

Dostoevsky not only exploit the Jewish
stereotype, they integrate the stereotype
into the thematic and symbolic
structures of their works. But just as in
Shakespeare, the Jewish stereotype in
the Russian works, perhaps because it is
so well integrated and extensively
exploited, also becomes disruptive,
problematizing even undermining
the assumptions and values that it was
supposed to promote (2008, 3).
One of the important circumstances to
be considered in judging the complex
background of writers using stereotypes of Jews
is the rich Jewish literature, beginning with the
Hebrew Bible, which is full of satire created by
Jewish prophets and parodists. In more modern
times, there has hardly been a Jewish poet or
author who did not attempt to write parody
principally as a weapon of mocking anything
that was morally or legally defective, or as a
means of deriding his ideological adversaries.
Some well-known Jewish authors and poets
occasionally wrote parodies on other writers and
on literary works, some of them simply for
amusement and entertainment, others as a means
of genuine criticism.

(9) The author of the article is dealing with Cankars

literature since 2000. She published several articles
and three monographs (one in Slovenian (Ljubljana:
Mladinska knjiga
2005) and two in English
(Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2008, 2013). The third
English monograph is in press and will be published
by Peter Lang in 2014).
(10) To date, Janez Peri (1985), Igor Grdina (2005),
and, most exhaustively, Luka Zibelnik (2007 and
2011) have written on the problem of anti-Semitism
in Cankar, but even Zibelnik deals more with the
historical background and other circumstances of
anti-Semitism than with literary characteristics
peculiar to Cankar.

144

A survey of Cankars use of the image

of Jews in various literary genres in relation to
circumstances of his own time and environment
shows that we must first distinguish between his
short statements within critical writings and
those that are absorbed into the broader
structures of a particular literary work that is,
into the larger literary representations of a
particular life situation or of a particular
character. Short statements within short critical
writings reflect much more clearly a cultural,
historical, political, or social context than larger
literary representations which are predominantly
symbolist in nature.

strange that hes hypocrite but it is strange that

he so naively admits to his double-edged ways;
like a ifut on the Viennese editorial staff who
writes, to the right and writes to the left and
is ashamed of neither one nor the other
(Cankar, ZD 29, 216). In a letter written on
Valentines Day, 1908, he uses the same
pejorative term while expressing his assessment
about humankind in general: I do not believe in
the absolute filthiness or spitefulness of man,
even if its a ifut (Cankar, ZD 29, 157).
Most frequently, Cankar uses in his
literary sketches, stories, novellas, essays, and
articles the established image of the Jew as a
money-lender portrayed with a hooked nose and
a bright red wig. Cankar drew the bloodthirsty,
covetous money-lender stereotype, along with
physical features such as crooked or bent bodies
from the long history of European anti-Semitic
associations and stereotypes that had spread
throughout common life, arts, passion and
morality plays, popular and mass-market
literature, the specific genre of anti-Jewish satire
and jokes, and especially the food of 19th
century caricatures circulated in postcards,
journals and advertisements. Anti-Semitic
stereotypes reflect the complementary figures of
the more or less prescribed social role and
changing position of Jews within the AustroHungarian Empire. In art works their faces were
portrayed as depraved and vicious, and therefore
Jews easily became scapegoats for any kind of
crisis in the land. Literary works and performed
theatre pieces, despite being based on persistent
negative stereotypes, sometimes allowed for
sophisticated variations on the model; however,
there was little change in the development of
Cankars attitude from his earlier tentative, to
his later mature artistic works.
In his tale Dve druini (Two Families,
1896), Cankar describes the saleswoman
Marijcas attempt to conceal an enormous
difference between the purported and the actual
value of goods the supplier Majar had delivered
a day before: She measured out the flour so
economically that every customer would insult
her if she were to sell in such a Jewish
manner (Cankar, ZD 6, 65). In the sketch
Vinjete: Signor Antonio (Vignettes: Signor
Antonio, 1898), Cankar presents the figure of a
miserly Jew who suffered economic collapse:
The Jew Abraham Lewy leaned at the window,
watching the coach drive off (Cankar, ZD 7,
158). In a 1900 letter to his brother Karlo, who
was a Catholic priest, he employs a popular
German saying Haust du meinen Juden, so

4.1 Cankars Stereotypical Terms for and

Portrayals of Jews
A striking feature of Cankars treatment
of Jews is his fairly frequent use of the
pejorative term ifut in his private letters and
parts of his ideological writings. The expression,
which comes from a Turkish word (ifut)
derived from the Arabic Jahud, (11) is used in
those Balkan countries that were under Turkish
domination for centuries, but very rarely in
Slovenia. How this term entered Cankars
cultural vocabulary, alongside the more common
expression id, remains an unsolved riddle. In
the sketch Vinjete: Poglavje o bradavici
(Vignettes: A Chapter about a Wart, 1899)
Cankar describes a certain public hall:
Lilac ornaments crept along the walls:
stylized Jew-faces [i.e. ifuti faces] with
long noses and pointed beards. Curly
hair stretched from head to head in
beautiful waves; the eyes looked quietly
and dully, like the turned-up pupils of a
dead person. [...] From the walls gazed
dead and mute glass Jewish eyes... [...]
The stylized Jew-faces on the walls
dreamed melancholically; the red female
bodies trembled against the purple
windows (Cankar, ZD 7, 5962).
In a letter to Fran Govekar dated April
4, 1900, Cankar mentions a work he has
submitted to the ifut named Graf (Cankar, ZD
26, 145). In a January 28, 1902 letter to
Franiek Levec, he complains, Publishers are
such ifuti!!! (Cankar, ZD 26, 208). Similarly,
in a letter dated December 9, 1906, he criticizes
Fran Govekars hypocrisy by saying: Its not
(11) See Petar Skok, Etimologijski rjenik hrvatskoga
ili srpskoga jezika, Zagreb, Jugoslavenska akademija
znanosti in umjetnosti, 1971, p. 322.

145

hau ich deinen Juden! (12) as he criticizes

clericalism (Cankar, ZD 26, 70). In a letter to
Albina Lffler from April 28, 1910, Cankar
suggests to his former (German-speaking)
landlady to sell his dictionary to a Jew: Heute
mag ich nicht weiter schreiben. Was sollte ich
auch? Wenn Sie in Not sind, verkaufen Sie mein
Lexikon. Ein Jud wird das schon besorgen. Ich
brauche ja den Plunder nicht. Aber tun Sie es
nicht vor Montag (Cankar, ZD 28, 176). (13)
In a 1909 letter written in German to Steffi
Lffler, Cankar expresses his negative attitude
toward Jews in connection with his attempt to
buy something for her: Schon letzhin haben wir
mit Dr. ari berlegt, was wir kaufen sollen;
vielleicht gelingt es uns, das Herz des
erbrmlichen Juden soweit zu erweichen, dass er
uns nicht die Haut ber die Ohren zieht!
(Cankar, ZD 29, 110). (14)
The short story Kralj Malhus (King
Malhus, 1899]) from Cankars Vienna period
includes the Jewess Milena Timaeus the
daughter of the rich merchant Timaeus, who
deals in Persian carpets as the owner of the firm
Jordan & Timaeus who proves both pernicious
and fatal for her husband. Cankar describes her
as a lady with a white face and deep, pensive,
dark-grey eyes who is practically still a child,
dressed in a bright dress which [] winds itself
covetously around the young, trembling limbs
(Cankar, ZD 8, 216). The king falls hopelessly
in love with her and his fulsome desire makes
him weak. When Milena leaves him for the
slovenly student Milan, the king bans sexual
intimacy throughout his kingdom (Cankar, ZD
8, 238).
In the early article Melanholine misli
(Melancholy Thoughts, 1900), Cankar writes
that a Jewish vagabond in Czech lands was
accused of murdering two Christian girls. We
can see from Cankars description of the events
that he condemns the raw, fanatical, bloodthirsty persecution of the alleged criminal
(Cankar, ZD 9, 271). Cankar emphasises that it
is on account of some sort of primary, brutal
passion due to their unchangeable nature

that people persecute those they perceive to be

different. He points out that this human brutality
is in sharp contrast with the touching phrases
one hears, and that these words are contradicted
and thus rendered hypocritical by our crimes; all
great works of the human spirit are thus
trifling. He even believes that a man with an
innocent smile is capable of ritual murder
(Cankar 1976, 272).
The sketch Hudodelec (The Criminal,
1900) is a masterful description of the
bloodthirstiness of dignitaries who wanted to see
the execution of the criminal Maslin as close as
possible. Since the courtyard was very crowded,
the dignitaries started to climb the chestnut trees
in order to secure a better view of the gallows:
Soon all the chestnut trees were full of
dignitaries; tailcoats hung down like
bizarre black flowers; at the top of the
highest chestnut a Jewish journalist
squatted, and it looked as though a
goatee-bearded and stiff-eyed head was
growing from the thick trunk. [] And
so, standing in the courtyard at the foot
of the gallows there were three hundred
dressed-up and decorated dignitaries,
representatives of Church and secular
power. Above them, on the top of the
highest chestnut, the journalists dull
eyes gawked (Cankar, ZD 8, 210211).
In Cankars novel Na klancu (On the
Slope, 1901), a Jewish figure remains silent and
does not intervene when Christ is scourged. The
writer uses the figure of the heartless Jew as an
analogy for the heartless people who did not
want to see the suffering of the poor young
female protagonist (who is based on Cankars
own mother and including her unhappy
childhood). Like the Jew in the church who sits
to the side and watches as they beat Jesus, the
pilgrims do not want to wait for little Francka as
she runs, crying behind the coach that is the
head for pilgrimage hill (Cankar, ZD 10, 18).
The tale Tujci (Foreigners, 1901), which
reflects Cankars own experiences and which is
the fictional biography of the artist Slivar,
includes several meditative passages about the
fate of an artist. In one of these reflections
Cankar writes about Slivars dealings with a
Jewish merchant who ridicules his works,
calling them insane. Slivars reaction was that
he would not sell them, and he thinks: The Jew
frightened them now they are consecrated!
[] They pushed me for so long that I ended up

(12) Translation: If you beat my Jew, I will beat your

Jew!
(13) Translation: I cant write any more today. Why
should I? If you are in need, sell my dictionary. A
Jew will take care of that. I do not need that bit of
rubbish. But dont do it before Monday...
(14) Translation: Recently Dr. ari and I were
thinking what we should buy; maybe well succeed in
softening the heart of the miserable Jew to the point
that he wont take advantage of us.

146

[doing] insane things damned Jew!

(Cankar, ZD 9, 106).
In the sketch Uboge roe! (Poor
Flowers!, 1902), Cankar writes about his
impressions in connection with a public feast in
Vienna. The writer and his companion, Steffi
Lffler, found themselves in a tremendous
crowd. At the appointed time the first coaches
appeared. Two white horses were harnessed to
the first coach:

dilemma about whether to sell his poems or not.

Franc declines the proposal of his friend
Gorjanec: I will not sell them to anyone and
do you think they would fight for them? I dont
like to haggle with the Jews, perhaps to
humiliate myself, to beseech, as if for Christian
charity. And as a result they [i.e. the poems] are
not even copied (Cankar, ZD 11, 254). In the
sketch Idealizem v kavarni (Idealism in the
Coffeehouse, 1905), Cankar complains about the
fate of art in his country: A person can get
angry Think about that bargain! Like a Jewish
huckster! Art by the yard! (Cankar, ZD 6, 198).
In the sketch Nespodobna ljubezen (Improper
Love, c. 1906/1907), Cankar pejoratively
characterizes Jews, when he uses stretched-out
hands and spread-out fingers as a typically
Jewish gesture (Cankar, ZD 15, 92).
Cankars
sketch
Materina
slika
(Mothers Picture, 1905) contains one of the
most negative portrayals of a Jewish individual.
In this autobiographical sketch the narrator
recalls having foolishly sold a suitcase at a time
when he was short of money. The suitcase
contained a sketch he had drawn of his mother
just before she died, an image that meant the
world to him. When realizing that he has lost it,
he is both overwhelmed by pain and sure that
without it he will no longer be able to conjure up
the face of his deceased mother; he fears that his
bond to her will be severed. He races to the shop
in order to retrieve the suitcase, but the Jewish
shop owner behaves in an unfriendly and surly
manner toward him. The writers zeal he has
offered one hundred, then a thousand units of
currency for the suitcase makes the merchant
suspicious and he believes that he has before
him a thief who has hidden goodness knows
what in the suitcase. He shoots the writer off and
smiles a dirty smile. On seeing the merchants
malice and Schadenfreude, the writer concludes,
Hes a Jew and he delights in my misfortune
(Cankar, ZD 17, 329).
In the novella Pavlikova krona
(Pavlieks Crown, 1906), from the collection of
novellas and sketches Za kriem (Behind the
Cross), Cankar uses one aspect of the
stereotypes of the Jew: He bowed his head yet
lower, raised his shoulders and spread his arms
out like a Jew (Cankar, ZD 17, 195). In the
novella Novo ivljenje (New Life, 1908), Cankar
refers to the role of Jews as money-lenders in a
scene depicting a mans downfall:

Sitting in the carriage there were two

very fat people, a husband and wife; two
fat, sweaty, contemptuous Jewish faces,
full of the bakers pride. And the
crowd pushed, pulled, tugged, women
fell amongst masses to their knees,
scrambling after the dirty, crushed
carnations that had lost their color and
fragrance in the sweaty hand of the fat
Jewish woman.
Thats Mrs. Mayer, thats Mr. Mayer ...
Mayer ... Mayer ... echoed for half an
hour along the alley, and the woman
pressed, their hands trembling with
respect, the crushed carnations to their
breasts, because they had been touched
by the richest woman, the benefactor of
the universal proletariat, the wife of the
factory-owner who was served by two
thousand slaves, Mrs. Mayer Mayer
Mayer (Cankar, ZD 9, 285).
In the tale Polikarp (Polycarp, 1904), from the
collection Zgodbe iz doline entflorjanske (Tales
from St. Florians Valley), Cankar feels
disgusted by the cruelty of the people:
When I was in the town, think of what
happened there. Lying in the morgue is a
company of dead, godless people,
vagrants who ended their own lives with
the hands of infidels. The doors were
locked tight but in the morning, look,
lying in front of the doors, all bruised,
was an old and slack Jew. At midnight
[], the comrades beat him and threw
him out of the morgue because he was
disgusting and smelled unpleasantly.
Such are people! (Cankar, ZD 16, 116).
In the novella Srea (Happiness, 19031904),
from the collection Mimo ivljenja (Passing by
Life), Cankar expresses his disappointment at an
exhibit of Slovene artists in Vienna more
specifically, toward the young poet Franc Rihas

He quickly came to reign, and his reign

ended just as quickly. At precisely the
right time. And the day that he turned
147

white and lay down on the bed, they

counted out the last ducats: the father,
three uncles and three aunts, twelve
relatives and twelve friends, along with
thirty-three Jews. There was enough left
over for a magnificent funeral and
proper mourning (Cankar, ZD 17, 85).

And Ive sought, greedily sought,

suffering for justice! Had I lived in
Jewish times, I would have been a
disciple of Christ, already for this
reason, for He announced suffering for
injustice and He gladly bore his cross.
But I know well that I would have
denied him, would have stood silently
by his way of the cross, and I would not
have greeted him in order that no word
might betray me. Every Peter has denied
his Christ, everyone has rued, yet gone
on denying and denying with fulsome
ruing (Cankar, ZD 20, 9091).

Cankar writes pejoratively of Jews in the

feuilleton Zgodovinska seja (An Historical
Meeting, 1910), in which he lampoons the
national artistic council that was created, at the
suggestion of Evgen Lampe, by the National
Council of Carniola, in February 1910 (Izidor
Cankar claims this arts council did nothing
significant). In this feuilleton piece, Cankar
ironically mentions Jews as being among those
who over the ninth country proclaim news
about the existence of art:

In the sketch etrta postaja (The Fourth

Station) from the collection Podobe iz sanj
(Dream Visions, 1917), Cankar portrays Jews in
the context of Christs Passion:

Over the ninth land a voice suddenly

echoed out that there is art in the world.
Some said that a Jewish petty tradesman
who had travelled from village to village
with colorful scarves, ties, and garters
proclaimed this news; others said that it
was a prodigal student who thought up
this gospel in his drunkenness; but there
were also people who said that on the
summer solstice a cry from heaven had
made itself heard (Cankar, ZD 24, 221).

I looked at the swarthy, savage faces

seething with hatred and brutality; yet I
was not afraid of them; they were in no
way ruthless executioners who had
come from the Orient to murder all that
was dear to me, for they seemed to
belong to Jesus and the Virgin as
shadow belongs to light, and I felt that
without them this imposing drama
would forever be impossible (Cankar,
ZD 23: 87; trans. Druzina 1982, 85).

Though a beautiful Jewish girl could

prove fatal for a man, she was ultimately just a
Jew, not a Christian saint before whom one
might genuflect. And so in the short story
Melitta from the collection Volja in mo (Will
and Power, 1911) Cankar describes the Polish
Jewish girl Melitta as having transparent white
cheeks and notes the dark lights of her eyes.
Melitta worked as a model for artists and
students and each of these, in his turn, had fallen
passionately in love with her. But Melitta
remained distanced from them. She was calm
and white as a queen, already blasphemed by the
worthless desire itself; she was rational,
unapproachable and unobtainable, as he writes:
Melitta was so beautiful that a man would kneel
down dazed before her, if she told him that she
was not the Polish Jewess they took her to be,
but rather a Christian saint, Saint Agatha herself
(Cankar, ZD 20, 2223).
In the story Dana from the collection of
three tales Volja in mo (Will and Power, 1911),
Cankar reflects:

In 1901, in his review Almanahovci (The

Almanachers) a play on the title of a collection
Almanah (Almanach) Cankar disparagingly
makes reference to the liberal Jewish newspaper
Neue Freie Presse (Cankar 1975, 100). He also
condemns this newspaper in the article Kako
sem postal socialist (How I Became a Socialist,
1913), which he had written already in his later,
Ljubljana period. He calls it as a mouthpiece for
both German-speaking Vienna Jews and for
the Austrian intelligentsia of all nations and
religions, while calling the editorial articles,
which Moritz Benedikt writes in a singing,
Palestinian style, an Austrian gospel (Cankar,
ZD 25, 12021).
4.2 Cankars Artistic Portrayals of Jewish
Characters and the Motif of the Wandering
Jew
When analyzing Cankars best works we
notice his ambivalent attitude toward the Jewish
characters. They are presented as evil, comic
and, more rarely, as favorable figures within the
multiethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire. On the
one hand, there are quite favorable Jewish
148

characters in his novel Hia Marije Pomonice

(The Ward of Our Lady of Mercy, 1904); on the
other hand, there is the demoniacal, comicgrotesque literary representation of the
extravagant and exotic Jewish inn-keeper in the
tale Krmar Elija (The Publican Elija, 1911). In
the latter, a Jewish character arrives in a small
village and appears to be the incarnation of all
evils in this local society. Given Cankars
human and social sensitivity we may assume
that Jewish characters are portrayed positively in
his literature only when they are in a position of
weakness, when their position is equal to that of
others.
Cankar wrote The Ward of Our Lady of
Mercy after the death of Amalia Lffler, the
terminally ill child he came to know and grow
fond of when he was living in Vienna at the
Lffler household, and by whose side he stood
during her serious illness. The girls illness
became increasingly severe even as he watched
her, and she eventually was moved to a hospital,
where Cankar continued to visit her up until her
death, in 1902. It was during such visits to the
hospital that he encountered other sickly
children and came to know their backgrounds.
The novel provides, through the main character,
an account of Cankars experience of Amalias
death. She dies having fully accepted her past,
and without any demand for retribution, and
without even feeling a need to avenge her
undeserved suffering; she renounces all that is
worldly and she accepts death. In this novel,
which stylistically is a combination of
naturalism and symbolism, Cankar portrays
fourteen sickly girls in a hospital ward called
Our Lady of Mercy. Their illnesses are a
consequence of their immoral and corrupt home
environments, where they lived without love,
and under the constant threat of emotional and
physical abuse. One by one, the girls die, and
those who remain alive want death to come as
soon as possible, as they fervently long for
communion with God. With solemn piety they
speak of death and their hearts smile in the
victorious expectation of the final journey.
Cankar is sympathetic toward the dying
Jewish girl Paula in the novel. He describes her
especially carefully as a girl with unusually
clear and comprehending eyes, who lives a
solitary existence among the other girls in the
room, speaking with no one. As it is the case
with the other sickly girl, the Jewish girl Paula
is visited every Sunday in the hospital by her
family. In Chapter II the writer describes Paula
and her brother Edward:

Paula kept to herself and did not speak

to any of the others. She was the only
Jewish girl in the room. She did not find
it easy to move along in her chair, so
that she was always gasping for breath
and there was a sweat on her forehead
by the time she reached the table. Her
eyes were unusually bright and as
intelligent as those of grown-up people.
Her face was not pretty. She had sores
on her lips and they were very swollen
(Cankar, ZD 11, 21; trans. Leeming
1976, 31).
Cankar does not differentiate between
Paulas values and those of the gentile girls.
This is perhaps most evident in the scene in
which the dying Katie has a nocturnal vision of
her mother at the moment of her death. In this
dream, the mother takes a beautiful red flower to
her and comforts her. Angels, whose faces
resemble those of the sick girls, including Paula,
then enter the room. In Chapter VII, we read:
They moved quietly around the room
Katie suddenly realised that she knew all
their faces. Toni with her great, unseeing
eyes smiling happily, Malchie who had
such a tender little face and such lively,
understanding, thoughtful eyes and a
forehead white as snow; and there was
Paula, the Jewish girl, too. A dazzling
radiance flooded the room and they
walked in that radiance, dim, white
figures, silent angels, with their feet
hardly touching the ground... (Cankar,
ZD, 78; trans. Leeming 1976, 103).
That Jewish girls met with prejudice is obvious
from Cankars comparison between them and
Christian girls.
The most striking view of Jews in
Cankars fiction occurs in his satirical tale
Krmar Elija (The Publican Elijah, 1911). Here
Cankar portrays the inn-keeper Elijah Nahmijas,
who one day arrives at the parish of Osoje to
debauch the people and exploit their laziness in
order to become rich. The priest, on seeing
Elijah for the first time, is overcome with
ominous forebodings and breathes his last. The
parishioners grieve deeply for the deceased
clergyman and it seems to them as if the hand of
God has taken them all to a different place. But
when the sadness passes, they begin to drink
heartily in the pub of the newcomer Elijah.
Instantly the description of his physical
appearance awakens discomfort and an
149

impression of dishonesty in the reader, as

Cankar reveals the disharmony between Elijahs
mellifluous words and smile and his grabbing
gestures:

his underlings as their queen: You have a king,

now greet the queen! (Cankar, ZD 19, 146).
The Osoje parishioners behave respectfully
toward her: wherever she appeared and
wherever she went the underlings humbly
greeted her; and not even behind her back did
they spit. Her name was not Christian either:
Elijah christened her Izis (Cankar, ZD 19, 146).
But it turns out that the woman is even craftier
and more calculating than Elijah, and the proud,
fulsome woman soon drives him to bankruptcy.
When he can no longer serve her because he has
fallen into poverty, he beseeches her: Izis, what
about love and about faithfulness, not a word?
Izis answers: But weve never spoken about
love and faithfulness! (Cankar, ZD 19, 146
47). Izis then collects her things and, richly
attired, departs for the city. Elijah drinks himself
into unconsciousness and does not wake up for a
week. From then on he spends all his time
imbibing and when he, one day, steps drunkenly
into the street, he does not see a cart racing
from the hill into the valley like a bird from the
sky (Cankar, ZD 19, 149). He loses his balance,
falls in the dust, and is trampled by hooves and
wheels so that his black blood flows into the
dust.
When the sad story ends, a new life
begins in the parish. The upstanding and earnest
young men, who have been absent in the years
when the Jew Elijah reigned over the parish,
return from the valley and begin to re-establish
homesteads.
In connection with Jews, Cankar
exhibits the certainly far more interesting motif
of otherness when using the motif of Ahasver,
the Wandering Jew. This popular image of the
Jew, which is imbued with the negative
stereotyped and collective myth of the Jew,
reflects not only the supposed inherent flaws of
Jews, especially as usurers who love and
worship only money, but also their mocking of
Jesus; therefore Jews were encountered
frequently in various modes of literature,
portrayed as servants of the Devil, as those who
rejected Christ and were condemned to perpetual
unrest and wandering in the world (Bechtel et al.
2009). This type of stereotype is reflected in
passion plays and religious art that transmitted
the Gospel story without elaboration, and it is
difficult to unearth the origins or even the degree
of attachment to these traditions when it comes
to the works of Ivan Cankar and of other
Slovenian poets who reflected anti-Jewish
prejudices prevalent in European culture. The
figure of the Wandering Jew found its place
within Slovenian literature especially with

The foreign bartender stood at the door

and affably said goodbye to his drunken
patrons. Though his face was grey and
entirely bare, his smiles was sweeter
than honey; his fingers were long and
bony, like claws, but they stretched out
gently and affably for the hands of the
parishioners; it seemed odd to the
drunkards that the inn-keepers black
cloak was buttoned to the neck and
reached down to his ankles (Cankar, ZD
19, 84).
The self-absorbed residents of the Osoje parish,
taken in by Elijahs politeness, remain blind to
his covert stingy and usurious intentions. He
benumbs their reason through the alcohol he
serves and grabs hold of their land and fortune.
Some parishioners despair and commit suicide,
while others merely stare alienated and
powerless into the crafty face of Elijah, who
reveals himself to them in a naked, entirely
different, though true light. The downfall of the
former master Kova and the recognition is
painful, for Elijah concludes his dealings with
him by saying: As long as you were a master, I
gave; now youre no longer a master (Cankar,
ZD 19, 116117).
When Kova recognizes the whole truth
about Elijah and his wiliness, he beats Elijah
until his face is bloodied; Kova is then locked
up for his rage-driven attack. Soon other people
from Osoje see through the publicans treachery
and grow livid at him, calling him Antichrist
and Satan, before burning his homestead.
When they cannot find Elijah among the flames,
one yells: He has sunk down into the earth,
since he was not human! Another shouts: He
remained in the fire but he did not burn, for he is
evil itself. Yet, another trembles: Woe to us if
he is alive! (Cankar, ZD 19, 141).
Elijah, however, is in fact curled up
beneath a bush; after some time passes he builds
a stately house on the site of the fire. With his
subordinates he deals more harshly than a
steward would deal with his underlings
(Cankar, ZD 19, 142). But Elijah also takes to
drinking. The inn-keepers enterprises turn sour.
At the height of his calculating powers, he
becomes smitten with another stranger, a woman
who does not come from Osoje. She ensnares
the publican, and he introduces her smilingly to
150

Cankars contemporary Anton Akerc (1856

1912), who devoted much attention to this motif
in some of his poems, using it as a symbol of an
unsettled soul: Ahasverova himna noi
(Ahasvers Hymn to the Night), Ahasverov
tempelj (Ahasvers Temple), Ahasver pod kriem
(Ahasver under the Cross), Ahasver ob grmadi
(Ahasver at the Stake), Ahasver oznanja novo
vero (Ahasver Announces a New Religion).
It is probably in this respect of
Ahasver as an unsettled pilgrim that
Cankars symbolistic story ivljenje in smrt
Petra Novljana (The Life and Death of Peter
Novljan), in which Cankars experiences of
youth and his perceptions from his residing in
the Vienna suburb are interwoven, is to be
understood. There Cankar writes: Where are
you from, pilgrim, you old Ahasver with the
sneaky young face, you liar by birth? What are
you doing among people? You, who saw death
when you were born? (Cankar, ZD 10, 213).
Especially interesting is the use of the motif of
the Wandering Jew in Cankars tale Krmar
Elija (The Publican Elija, 1911), analyzed
above. An unknown foreigner, a gipsy, appears
in the parish Osoje and piques the parishioners
curiosity regarding his origin. In a conversation
he claims:

(Cankar, ZD 30, 39). His autobiographical

sketch Moja miznica (My Desk Drawer) from
the cycle Vinjete (Vignettes) opens with the
statement: Im getting ready to leave here.
There is something of Ahasvers blood in me
(Cankar, ZD 7, 187). In his literary tale
Krpanova kobila, IV. Poslednji dnevi tefana
Poljanca (Krpans Mare, IV. The Last Days of
tefan Poljanec, 1906), Cankar writes in the
end: Not that Ahasver was describing his
experiences and expertise, and would be in such
a way immensely beneficial to the tribe of
Poljanec; he wrote a long and tedious discussion
of impressionism in the novella (Cankar, ZD
15, 182). Because the somewhat other in the
figure of the Wandering Jew is an emblem of
any individuals otherness, it is no great surprise
that Cankar turns this figure against his
contemporary poet Anton Akerc, who used it
most frequently among the Slovenian poets and
writers. In his article Pisma Jeremijeva (Letters
of Jeremy, 1909), he criticizes Akerc:
All of Akercs books published in
recent years bear a sign that is very
important, for it is the sign of a liberal
era. Akerc roams ceaselessly. But, as
his very books show: not due to a
natural pining for that which is far away
but often only as a result of a desolate
force that drives these or those exotic
people, some liberal whistlesFrom the
last of his beautiful poems to this day,
Akerc wanders abroad and in the
distant past. Not that he might bring a
single piece of bread with him to todays
culture; he wanders because he has no
home, just as all of the Slovenian
liberalism does not have one. (Cankar,
ZD 24, 205206)

I am last, a gypsy, a traveler without a

path, without a home, without peace.
My time is when the torrents are already
driving down. Its always been that way
with me, since ancient centuries.
The youngest [villager] was stunned,
and laughed:
How come for ancient centuries? Are
you the cursed Jew?
The gypsy sighed and looked toward the
bright stars.
At times I have roamed thirsty and
hungry and weary to the death, but I did
not collapse, and my legs moved on and
on, God alone knows how. Thats when
I truly felt that I was the cursed Jew and
the eternal traveler, who does not know
who he is and what his judgment is.
Why do you roam without peace? The
cursed Jew is driven by judgment of
God, but you did not insult Christ so that
you have to do penance until Judgment
Day. (Cankar, ZD 19, 129)

To sum up the analysis of Cankars literary

representations of Jews, we realize that Cankars
primary aim in writing was to uncover social
injustice and moral hypocrisy. He was critical of
the higher social classes, but considerate and
compassionate toward the poor even if they
were not morally irreproachable. His
surprisingly frequent depictions of Jewish
characters, mostly as secondary literary figures,
are generally negative throughout all periods of
his artistic creation. Such figures reflect his own
experiences with Jewish individuals in his
homeland and in Vienna. This fairly exhaustive
literary analysis of where and how Jews appear
in Cankar shows that he portrays them positively
in his literature only when they suffer; he depicts

In his letter to Stephanie Bergman dated

December 23, 1910, Cankar concludes: And
never entirely forget the pilgrim Ahasver, who
certainly recalls beautiful Ronik every hour
151

them in a more critical and satirical manner

when they abuse positions of power. Since the
use of the image of Jews reflects his general
sensitivity to all kinds of injustice, his use of
such images does not reliably indicate a deeplyrooted
anti-Semitism.
Although
Cankar
generally writes negatively of Jews, the most
oppressive characters in his works are not the
others, but the depraved fellow Slovenians. It is
particularly significant that in his literature and
correspondence, Cankar also compares himself
with a Jew when he accuses himself of
stinginess and of lacking compassion for weaker
individuals, especially suffering children. In his
later works, Cankar equates himself with
Ahasver, the Wandering Jew, for since
childhood, when his family became homeless
after losing its house, Cankars fate was to
wander in solitude. This wandering continued
when he became an artist and traveled abroad,
encountering extreme poverty, social inequality,
sickness and injustice.

had its place already with France Preeren, and

especially with Anton Akerc, who devoted
much attention to the motif of the Wandering
Jew and used him in some of his poems as a
symbol of an unsettled soul. It is in this sense of
a person as an unsettled and unhappy pilgrim
that Ahasver can probably be understood also in
Cankars tale The Life and Death of Peter
Novljan. That the motif of the wandering
Ahasver is remarkably widespread throughout
European literature finds its true reason in the
broader context of the motif of foreignness as an
existential problem. The foreign is resisted
because it upsets ones constant order and
comfort. Experience of the other and of the
foreign entails disturbance because it challenges
and forces one to think through how widespread
ones representations about values in human
existential and cultural surroundings are. What
disturbs an individual under normal
circumstances, however, becomes a problem in
special circumstances, when social and other
straits arise. In circumstances of crises one subconsciously seeks a guilty party, and most easily
alleviates himself if guilt for misfortune can be
pushed on to those who are different. This also
explains why Jews precisely in times of crisis
became a target for hatred, attacks and
persecution. As it seems, anti-Semitism is also
linked to human egotistical endeavour to inflate
a sense of value, and often also to compensate
for a sense of incapability by treating difference
as a moral lack. Endeavouring to find reasons
for
prejudices in
specific
personality
characteristics is in truth an attempt at
rationalizing the true motive, which is narrowmindedness and defensively abjuring the
fundamental human rights of other people,
which is that they be judged as individuals.
Anti-Semitism, thus, does not necessarily arise
from hatred, but from egotistical urges to
increase the sense of self-worth at the expense of
others.

Conclusion
In the long period of Slovenian literary
creativity, from the oldest legacies of folk songs,
legends and fairy tales to modern artistic
creations, many works have arisen in which
Jews are presented from various viewpoints.
Studies about the presence and lives of Jews in
Slovenia throughout the centuries have
transmitted much valuable data about the
circumstances that influenced the image of Jews
among Slovenians. Though, literary creators see,
in the motif of Jews, primarily a symbol that
transcends the historical and sociological
framework. Critical assessors of Jews
behaviour in relation to the people of their new
homeland have, of course, discovered in Jews
also the reasons for their criticism, especially
because Jews were very active in the area of
finance; hence the stereotypes about Jewish
greed and ruthlessness stem, and not even Ivan
Cankar was able to avoid these in his works.
In connection with Jews, Cankar
exhibits the certainly far more interesting motif
of otherness and foreignness. This viewpoint
a. Books:
Avsenik
Nabergoj,
Irena,
Avsenik
Ljubezen in krivda Ivana
Nabergoj
Cankarja [Love and Guilt of
2005
Ivan
Cankar],
LjubljanaZagreb-Beograd-SarajevoSkopje-Sofija,
Mladinska
knjiga, 2005.
Avsenik
Nabergoj,
Irena,
Avsenik
Mirror of Reality and Dreams:
Nabergoj

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154

Eerie Beauty: Premature Death in 19th Century Post-mortem

Photography
Gabriela GLVAN
Lecturer PhD, Faculty of Letters, History and Theology, West University of Timioara
E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: A significant theme of Western Romanticism, the death of the young has been present
in literature and photography in a vast spectrum of representations, from the tragic to the strange
bordering the macabre. A closer exploration of the subject must take into account the multiple layers of
significance post-mortem photography involves, therefore the methodological approach should involve
concepts and interpretations specific to art history, cultural theory, anthropology and literary studies. 19th
century post-mortem photography reveals the changing attitudes towards death in recent times, while also
documenting the many contexts and rituals surrounding this crucial moment in human existence. Since
post-mortem photography is part of a larger visual tradition of death imagery in the 19th century, its
evolution reflects the multiple social and cultural changes that consolidated the modern world.
Keywords: post-mortem photography, Romanticism, 19th century, premature death
and rituals. The media greatly influenced this
new perception, facilitating a growing
familiarity of the viewer with countless aspects
and facets of violence, mass murder and explicit
atrocity. Numerous political conflicts such as
wars and revolutions infused everyday life with
a rich imagery of death and suffering, and the
major impact of the film industry generated an
ever-growing fictional imagination of horror and
gore. Meanwhile, the traditional view of death
as an essential part of life has been steadily
obscured, its natural processes hidden in
specialized institutions, in an out of sight
periphery. In Geoffrey Gorers terms, this new
attitude is one that could be rendered by an
unequivocal formulation theres a certain
pornography of death (Gorer 1955, 49), as it
has gradually become a forbidden territory, its
secret realities unsuitable for discussion or open
display. In a concise formulation, Elizabeth
Kbler-Ross argues that death is a subject that
is evaded, ignored, and denied by our youthworshipping, progress-oriented society. It is
almost as if we have taken on death as just
another disease to be conquered. (Kbler-Ross
1975, x) Indeed, as Philippe Aris
conceptualized in his double approach
(synchronical and diachronical) to the history of
Western attitudes toward death, there is an
obvious interdict laid upon death by
industrialized societies (Aris 1974) and an
even more evident alliance with eroticism, in
order to express the break with the established
order (Aris 1974, 105).

A central theme of the Romantic

imagination, death has been hypostasized and
depicted in numberless contexts in recent times,
yet few of them are as strange and surreal to our
contemporary sensibilities as the 19th century
tradition of post-mortem photography. There is
little consensus among art historians,
anthropologists and cultural theorists when it
comes to a critical analysis of the phenomenon,
especially due to the general prejudice that postmortem photography is a practice strictly
pertaining to the 19th century. It has been
considered a cultural response to the new
challenges of the modern world, one of the
specific ways in which Westerners were
adapting some long-enduring traditions, such as
posthumous portraiture, to the new means of
visual reproduction available from around 1840.
In his seminal Secure the Shadow. Death and
Photography in 19th century America, Jay Ruby
argues that, although the practice is still
common in various communities throughout the
world, there are undeniable changes in the
modern, contemporary response to death and its
visual representations. Aesthetically fascinating,
the once common practice of post-mortem
photography may now be regarded as rather
morbid and distasteful, and the academic study
of its meaning and impact as an unorthodox and
taboo challenging enterprise (Ruby 1995, 2).
That may be explained by the fact that the 20th
century gave rise to a new and completely
different attitude towards natural death, hence
the notable shift in the perception of its imagery
155

Wilhelm Meisters Apprenticeship (1795)

details in tragic terms the death of the angelic,
androgynous Mignon, and the drowning of
Eduard and Charlottes son in The Elective
Affinities (1809); William Wordsworth, a
veritable child executioner (Ferrucci 1989)
tells, in the lyrical tone of the Lucy Poems
(1795) the story of a little girl who disappears
during a snow storm; Charles Dickens The Old
Curiosity Shop (1841) evokes, in some
memorably dramatic pages, little Nells death.
Furthermore, in Emile Zolas His Masterpiece
(1886), an artist paints The Dead Child
inspired by the death of his own son; a young
boy dies of fear in Henry James ambiguous
ghost novella The Turn of the Screw (1898);
Little Father Time kills his brother and sister,
then commits suicide in Thomas Hardys Jude
the Obscure (1895). This fictional framework is
supported by an even darker historical reality,
common throughout the Western world: death
was a common occurrence in most 19th century
homes, and childrens death was perceived as
the most difficult challenge a family could face.
England and Wales are relevant examples when
it comes to statistics referring to deaths per
1,000 live births for children aged 1 or younger:
154 in 1840, 148 in 1860, 153 in 1880, and 154
in 1900 (Jalland 1996, 120). The beginning of
the 20th century showed small encouraging
signs, as numbers dropped to 132 in 1906, 105
in 1910, 100 from 1916, and less than 16 in
1983. Infectious diseases or epidemics such as
scarlet fever were to blame for the largest
number of deaths. Infants would fall prey to
diarrhea, pneumonia, bronchitis, or convulsions,
and, after the first year, measles and whoopingcough would pose serious threats to their lives
(Ibid.) Psychologically, the only consolation
came from the church and its impressive corpus
of Christian devotional literature and, more
privately, from personal rituals of writing and
confession to family and friends. The death of a
child was, therefore, not only a supreme test of
faith, but probably the most difficult experience
19th century families were faced with.
Given this rather dramatic context, it
may become easier to understand the reasons
behind perpetuating the centuries-old tradition
of posthumous portraiture in a century when
death was accepted as a common occurrence of
life. Around 1830, historians noticed a dramatic
increase in the number of families requesting
posthumous portraits of their children in which
they were meant to appear as being alive (Lloyd
1980, 73). More importantly, the painter had to
finish the portrait as quickly as he could, so that

Death of the Innocents

The origins of the practice of post-mortem
representation are deeply rooted in 17th and
18th century painting, more specifically in
mortuary (funeral) portraiture and posthumous
mourning paintings. As Aris highlighted in
Images of Man and Death (1985), Death loves
to be represented...The image can retain some of
the obscure, repressed meanings that the written
word filters out. (Aris 1985, 11) These two
rather divergent traditions are founded on
different modes of representing death while
mortuary portraiture directly depicted the dead,
posthumous mourning portraiture had the role of
restoring the dead to their living image, while at
the same time inserting visible elements that
suggest that the subject, although presented as a
living person, is, in fact dead: a willow tree in
the background, dark clouds, a wilted flower in
his/her hand, a clock displaying the hour of
death (Ruby 1995, 37). However, as Anton
Pigler noted, a survey of European art shows
that, of all pictorial expressions of the thought of
mortality, funeral portraits were able to
withstand longest the rising tide of
enlightenment and classicism...the habit of
funeral portraiture persisted throughout the
nineteenth century, with more or less tenacity in
different countries. (Pigler 1956, 69) Although
funeral portraiture, post-mortem photography
and posthumous mourning painting coexisted
for a long period in the 19th century, Jay Ruby
considers that there was little competition
among them, since the motivations for
commissioning a painting or a photograph were
clearly different: Painters created the illusion of
life in death. In comparison, photographers [...]
offered a much more imperfect even shoddyillusion, that is, the pretence that the person was
merely sleeping than dead.(Ruby 1995, 43)
Even when employing more sophisticated
techniques in order to make the dead look alive,
they appear spectral (Barthes 2000, 14) and the
impression of death is even stronger.
The present article aims at identifying and
analyzing the features and significance of a
particular subdivision of post-mortem imagery
the one representing premature death. While
posthumous and mortuary portraiture depict
people of all ages, the majority of 19th century
post-mortem photography is focused on the
young. Premature death concentrates a
mythology of its own, and there is a solid corpus
of literary texts that explore this particularly
dramatic perimeter of the Romantic imagination.
Franco Ferrucci (1989) investigated the
archetypes of this theme: J.W. Goethes
156

it could be incorporated into the mourning

process (81). Modern psychologists have agreed
upon a five-stage structure of this process:
denial, isolation, anger, bargaining, depression
and acceptance (Kbler-Ross 1969) and it
appears that the double function of both
posthumous
portraits
and
post-mortem
photography, that of denying and, at the same
time accepting death (Beattie 2005) could be
activated in most of these stages.
Moreover, not only visual memory was
cardinal in the harsh negotiations with the
devastating reality of a childs death, theres a
significant material culture surrounding the
grieving process, from specific jewellery to
strict dress codes (gendered and rather motheroriented). A lock of the deceaseds hair played a
major role in preserving the most concrete
material memory the family could have, since it
was the sole part of his/her body that would not
become subject to decomposition. It would be
kept in lockets or would be integrated into
jewellery as an item of incommensurable value.
In 1855, Ann S. Stevens wrote: Hair, the most
imperishable of all the component parts of our
mortal bodies, has always been regarded as a
cherished memorial of the absent or lost. A lock
of hair from the head of some beloved one is
often prized above gold or gems, for it is not a
mere purchasable gift, but actually a portion of
themselves, present with us when they are
absent, surviving while they are mouldering in
the silent tomb. (Stevens 1855, qtd. in Evans
1986, 51).
The complex role of post-mortem visual
representations (portraits and photography) is
reflected in what Aris termed as la mort de
toi, the death of another (Aris 1974, 55), by
which the individual was dramatically faced
with his own mortality and existential limit. The
19th centurys culture of contextualizing,
interpreting and assimilating the meanings of the
end of life is visible in a new Romantic,
rhetorical treatment of death (Aris 1974, 56)
This artistic framework is the ideal hosting
perimeter of a highly niche aesthetics, that of
post-mortem
photography
immortalizing
premature death and the tragic intersection
between beauty and the Thanatos.

result: Jai obtenu dja un trs beau rsultat en

prenant limage dune personne morte. (Bolloch
2002, 112) This now lost first artifact of the
post-mortem tradition would soon be followed
by numberless others throughout the Western
world: in a time when posthumous portraits
could generally be afforded only by the upper
classes, the democratization of image
reproduction brought about by photography
marked a dramatic shift in preferences.
Although they coexisted until well into the 20th
century, the daguerreotype grew increasingly
more popular, especially among the middle and
lower social classes. In 1843, the poet Elizabeth
Barrett Browning wrote a letter to Mary Russell
Mitford, in which she praised the qualities of the
daguerreotypes over those of painted portraits: I
long to have such a memorial of every being
dear to me in the world. It is not merely the
likeness that is precious in such cases but the
association and the sense of nearness involved in
the thing the fact of the very shadow of the
person lying there forever I would rather have
such a memorial of one I dearly loved than the
noblest artists work ever produced. (Browning
qtd. in Sontag 1977, 183).
The small
dimensions
of
the
daguerreotype (ranging from 8x7cm. to
13x10cm), its jewel-like case and often precious
appearance were important features that helped
to incorporate it into the mourning ritual, as it
could easily become a personal effect, carried
around, kept in the palm of ones hand,
generating a continuous intimacy with the image
of the dead. As mentioned before, most 19th
century daguerreotypes, preserved in museums
and private collections represent children, and so
do tintypes and, later, cartes-de-visite. In an age
of high mortality and significantly lower life
expectancy than nowadays, the post-mortem was
usually the only image a bereaved family had of
their loved one. In a surprising twist of
perceptions, this very narrow part of death
imagery is still in use today, although in a
limited manner. Modern therapy specializing in
treating pathological grief or in counselling
parents of stillborn children have reinvented
post-mortem photography and openly advocate
it as a standard practice (Ruby 1995, 9).
Somehow, this aspect of dealing with death
deviates from the standard contemporary refusal,
that of hiding or sanitizing death.
There`s an entire arsenal of tools the 19th
century photographer used in order to create the
illusion of life in the image of the dead, and
children and adults fall into different categories
once again. If adults would often be propped up

Staring at the Void

In a letter written in 14 October 1839,
Dr. Alfred Donn prided himself with
successfully using the daguerreotype in order to
immortalize a dead person the perfect
candidate for such an enterprise, since standing
still was crucial in obtaining the best possible
157

by an invisible mechanism holding the body in a

standing position, their open eyes refreshed with
glycerine drops (or redrawn by the painter as
open, if they had to remain closed when the
photograph was taken), photographing children
imposed a more aestheticized regime. Since the
role of the photograph was to capture the image
of the deceased in a non-traumatizing manner
for the viewer, the most widely used convention
of the post-mortem was the last sleep, meaning
that the dead would be represented as peacefully
asleep, merely resting, not forever gone.
Especially with children, this technique was
favored more than others, since it gave the
impression of a serene departure in the world of
dreams, rather than a brutal severance from life.
In yet another ramification, children and youth
were often represented as sleeping beauties
(Burns 1990), with girls composed as young
brides, in communion dresses and little boys
displaying their most elegant attire. Infants
would resemble angelic creatures surrounded by
flowers or their favorite toys, and, until around
1880, an entire domestic universe would be
rearranged to accommodate them one last time,
in such a manner as to avoid the dreaded image
of the coffin. Dead children would be placed on
sofas, in cribs, on a bed, in perambulators, in
their mothers arms, or they would be held by an
adult hidden behind a white sheet or be placed in
an especially constructed dcor resembling an
idyllic natural setting, in the photographers
studio. In the words of the editor of a 19th
century
photography
magazine,
The
Photographic and Fine Art Journal (July, 1858),
the effort often paid off: Life from the Dead.
We have been shown a daguerreotype likeness
of a little boy, the son of Thomas Dorwin, taken
after his decease, by Mr. Barnard, of the firm of
Barnard & Nichols. It has not the slightest
expression of suffering and nothing of that
ghastliness and rigity [sic] of outline and feature
which usually render likenesses taken in
sickness or after death so painfully revolting as
to make them decidedly so undesirable. On the
other hand it has all the freshness and vivacity of
a picture from a living original the sweet
composure the serene and happy look of
childhood. Even the eyes, as incredible as it may
seem, are not expressionless, but so natural that
no one would imagine it could be a post-mortem
execution. This is another triumph of this
wonderful art.
Three years earlier, in 1855, N. G.
Burgess details the process even more
generously, although in darker, less enthusiastic
tones: The occupation of the Daguerrean Artist

necessarily brings him in contact with the most

endearing feelings of the human heart How
often has he been called upon to attend at the
house of mourning to copy that face who, when
in life was so dear to the living friendsIf the
portrait of an infant is to be taken, it may be
placed in the mother's lap, and taken in the usual
manner by a side light representing sleep. If it is
an older child, it can be placed upon the table,
with the head toward the light, slightly raised,
and diagonally with the window, with the feet
brought more towards the middle of the
window.Should the body be in the coffin, it
still can be taken, though not quite so
conveniently, nor with so good results. The
coffin must be placed near the window, and the
head placed in the same position as upon the
table. It is of considerable importance that the
coffin should not appear in the picture, and it
may be covered around the edges by means of a
piece of colored cloth, a shawl, or any drapery
that will conceal it from view. By making three
or four trials, a skilful artist can procure a
faithful likeness of the deceased, which becomes
valuable to the friends of the same if no other
had been procured when in life. All likenesses
taken after death will, of course only resemble
the inanimate body, nor will there appear in the
portrait anything like life itself, except indeed
the sleeping infant, on whose face the playful
smile of innocence sometimes steals even after
death. This may be and is oftimes transferred to
the silver plate. However, all the portraits taken
in this manner, will be changed from what they
would be if taken in life all will be changed to
the sombre hue of death. How true it is, that it is
too late to catch the living form and face of our
dear friends, and well illustrates the necessity of
procuring those more than life-like resemblances
of our friends, ere it is too late ere the hand of
death has snatched away those we prize so
dearly on earth. (Burgess 1855, 80)
A short history of the photograph, as it
evolved throughout the 19th century, is briefly
summarized by Kent Norman Bowser in his
exploration of the post-mortem in America:
Although expensive, because they required
silver-plated copper sheets for support,
daguerreotypes were popular from 1839 until the
Civil War. Ambrotypes, using glass for
supporting the emulsion were popular from 1854
until about 1866; tintypes, which were popular
from 1856 until 1865, used sheets of iron as
emulsion supports. Later, popular processes
used paper as the support: cabinet cards were
made from 1866 until about 1910, and paper
prints were popular from the 1870s onward.
158

(Bowser 1985, 6) The almost prohibitive price

of a post-mortem daguerreotype, usually $75
(Rinhart quoted in Bowser 1985, 13) may be
correlated to the fact that the majority of early
post-mortem
daguerreotypes
represented
children families would make an often
consistent effort in order to have a portrait of
their gone too soon young members.
The year 1854 marks a significant
breakthrough in the art of photography, as Andr
Adolphe-Eugne Disdri patented the new
technique of the carte-de-visite, which allowed
the photographer to take eight different images
on a single negative, then transfer them on
cardboard mounts. It was the beginning of a new
era in the history of death as a photographic
subject: for centuries, and even after the
daguerreotype gained popularity, the image of
the dead subject was unique, in the sense that
there was only one copy of the painting or the
photograph available. With the advent of
cardboard photography, this uniqueness was
lost, since the negative allowed for the
reproduction of multiple copies of the same
image. Even the most perfect reproduction of a
work of art is lacking in one element: its
presence in time and space, its unique existence
at the place where it happens to be. (Benjamin
1970, 218)
In the case of post-mortem
photography, the aura of uniqueness resided in
the bonding role of the image inside the complex
relationship between the living and the dead.
The artistic nature of miniature daguerreotypes
perpetuated the long-standing tradition of
funeral portraiture in the sense that it preserved
contact with the dead and provided
psychological support in a direct, although
paradoxical manner (by helping the bereaved
accept death while at the same time encourage
him/her to deny it). Its unique nature as an
object of art may have been lost as cardboard
photographs could be multiplied, but its core
function was maintained and improved: families
would order more copies of the photograph of
the dead and would give them to other relatives,
some living in other cities, thus strengthening
the connections and relationships inside the
social nucleus.
A socially constructed artefact and
object of material culture (Ruby 1995, 6), postmortem photographs offer valuable insight into
the dress codes of the 19th century and its
generic beautification of death (Aldridge 2008,
54). Since for many families the post-mortem
would be the only photograph they would have
of their beloved dead one, it is safe to assume
that, at least in the case of infants, children and,

generally, the young, their funeral dress

(probably the same as the one worn at the time
the photograph was taken) reflected social
status, the fashion of the moment and an obvious
effort to make the dead subject appear well
taken care of and peaceful. An analysis of
American dress codes in post-mortem
photography (Aldridge 1995) reveals interesting
yet not completely surprising aspects. If, in the
case of adults, day dress and occupational dress
(popular among the military and clergy) was the
norm, children and the young (mostly girls)
would often be dressed in nightgowns, as if to
strictly follow the convention of the last sleep
and nurture the Romantic illusion of death as a
mere dream, not an irreversible departure.
Social class differentiation is problematic in the
case of post-mortem photography, since even
more modest families would try to dress well
their dead ones. Young girls would wear
accessories, such as coral necklaces, given to
them during their lifetime for protection against
illness (Severa 1995, 162), fingerless gloves or
hair bows, and it would not be uncommon for
boys to appear in school clothing. Infants and
very young children would be dressed in white
infant gowns long ones for infants 6 months
old or younger and shorter ones for toddlers.
Some family portraits depict two siblings, one
dead and one alive, or a mother with two
children, again one living and the other one
dead. In this case, the dead child would wear
visibly better clothes, as the dead one was
probably photographed in [her] best dress for the
final portrait (Aldridge 1995, 86). A rather
striking image is that of a mother holding two
babies in her arms, one of which would be
covered in a white sheet signifying its passing
and inherent absence.
The Romantic taming death, to use
Aris terms again, is doubled, as it has been
mentioned before, by its resigned acceptance.
This apparently paradoxical knot reunites a
remarkable effort to aestheticize and mask the
disturbing brutality of death as material decay
and a rather serene acknowledgement of its
inevitability, marked by the presence of
undeniable signifiers: lividness, patches of
blood, a dropped jaw, the coffin, etc. As Kathryn
Beattie argues, this apparently unsolvable
opposition reflects the paradox of the
Victorians` simultaneous acceptance and denial
of death (Beattie 2005, 3).
The fascination of the abomination
When, in 1858, Henry Peach Robinson
displayed his now famous composite
159

photograph, Fading Away, he caused quite a stir.

An albumen print combining five different
negatives, the image depicts a young girl dying
of consumption, surrounded by her relatives.
This fictionalization of death and the implied
transfer of meaning from the realm of the real
into that of imagination were regarded as a clear
deviation from the 19th century norm that
accepted only real death as a suitable subject
for photographic representation. The essentially
private function of post-mortem photography
could not undergo such a radical metamorphosis
and become a theme of visual fiction. Almost a
century and a half later, between March 5th and
May 26th 2002, the Muse dOrsay hosted the
Last Portrait (Le Dernier Portrait) exhibition,
reuniting over 200 works of death-related art,
from death masks to funeral portraiture and
post-mortem photography, from the end of the
Middle Ages to the 20th century. In an essay
published later the same year, Emmanuelle
Hran, the curator of the exhibition, presented
some excerpts from the visitors book, voicing
the powerful impression the artistic event had on
the public. Disturbing in a way that leaves me
somehow changed forever. (Hran 2002, 185);
Inadmissible! Taking photographs of babies
and displaying them in a museum (186);
Despite the respect and dignity of these last
portraits, I find regrettable the morbid curiosity
that almost invades the last breath of these
persons Unsettling as they are, the faces of
death has persisted in collective memory in the
most diverse manners, eliciting paradoxical
reactions that prove its key role as the primal,
irrational fear of human condition.
The Romantic, beautiful death seduced
the modern collective imagination once again on
May 1st, 1947, when the gracious New Yorker
Evelyn McHale, aged 23, fell to her death from
the Empire State Building, in one of the most
famous suicidal gestures of the 20th century.
Quite inexplicably, her body fell on top of a
black limousine parked near the building in a
posture that left her beautiful appearance intact
and unaltered. With her legs gently crossed and
her gloved left hand holding a string of pearls
around her neck, Evelyn resembled the sleeping
beauties of the 19th century, as she was lying
peacefully on the dark bed of folded metal and
broken glass framing her delicate doll-like body,
a modern muse reminding of John Everett
Millais Ophelia. The striking image of the dead
young woman, engaged to be married in less
than a month, was photographed a few minutes
after her fall by art student Robert C. Wiles, and
was placed on the 12 May 1947 cover of Life

magazine. Evelyns last wish, written in a note

found in her pocketbook was I dont want
anyone in or out of my family to see any part of
me. Years later, Andy Warhol used this image
in his Suicide (Fallen Body) serigraph and
integrated it in the Death and Disaster series he
created between 1962-1967, turning it into an
iconic image of the 20th centurys fascination
with abnormal death. Jay Rubys conclusion
provides a suitable closing argument: Our
cultures censors have decided that exposing us
to the act of procreation or birth is not healthy.
However, dismemberment, death by torture,
suicide, mass murders to name only a few, are
acceptable viewing events. (Ruby 1995, 12)
One of the strongest metaphors of
modern culture, the young dead body, as it is
represented in 19th post-mortem photography,
proves to be a strong bearer of aesthetic
meaning, since the reunion of beauty and
premature death is a nexus connecting the
permanently opposing forces that support and
suppress life.
References
a. Books:
Aldridge, Ryan Jerel, Dress in
Aldridge
the United States of America
2008
as Depicted in Post-mortem
Photographs,
1840-1900,
Louisiana State University,
2008 (Master of Science
Thesis, The School of Human
Ecology).
Aris, Philippe, Images of Man
Aris
and
Death,
Cambridge,
1985
Massachusetts,
Harvard
University Press, 1985.
Aris,
Philippe,
Western
Aris
Attitudes
Toward
Death,
1974
Baltimore and London, The
Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1974.
Aris, Philippe, The Hour of
Aris
Our Death, New York,
1981
Vintage Books, 1981.
Barthes, Roland, Camera
Barthes
Lucida, London, Vintage,
2000
2000.
Bowser, Kent Norman, An
Bowser
Examination of Nineteen1983
Century
American
PostMortem Photography, MA
Thesis, The Ohio State
University, 1983.
Burns, Stanley B., Sleeping
Burns
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1990

KblerRoss 1975

KblerRoss 1996

Jalland
1996

Ruby
1995

Severa
1995

Sontag
1977

Stevens
1986

Matha V. Pike and Janice Gray

Armstrong
(eds.),
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Museums at Stony Brook,
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Beauty.
Memorial
Photography in America,
Altadena, CA, Twelve trees
Press, 1990.
Kbler-Ross,
Elizabeth,
Death: The Final Stage of
Growth, Prentice-Hall, New
Jersey, 1975.
Kbler-Ross, Elizabeth, Death
and
Dying,
Touchstone
edition, New York, Simon &
Schuster, 1996.
Jalland, Pat, Death in the
Victorian Family, Oxford/New
York,
Oxford
University
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Ruby, Jay, Secure the Shadow:
Death and Photography in
America, The MIT Press,
1995.
Severa, J., Dressed for the
Photographer:
Ordinary
Americans and Fashion, 18401900, Ohio & England, The
Kent State University Press,
1995.
Sontag,
Susan,
On
Photography, New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
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Stevens,
Ann
S.
(ed.),
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Portfolio
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Fancy
Needlework,
New
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quoted in Valerie Evans,
Mourning, Material History
Bulletin, Spring, 1986.

c. Papers in periodical journals:

Burgess, N. G., Taking
Burgess
Portraits After Death. In: The
1855
Photographic and Fine-Art
Journal, vol. 8, no. 3 (March
1855), 80.
Ferrucci, Franco, The Dead
Ferrucci
Child: A Romantic Myth. In:
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MLN, Vol. 104, No. 1, Italian
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Gorer, Geoffrey, Pornography
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Encounter with Victorian Postmortem Photography. In:
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Pigler
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b. Chapters in books:
Benjamin Benjamin, Walter, The Work
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1970
Mechanical Reproduction. In:
Hannah
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(ed.),
Illuminations, Cape, 1970, p.
219-226.
Bolloch, Joelle, Photographie
Bolloch
aprs dcs: pratique, usages
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et fonctions. In: Le Denier
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161

From Seppuku to Hikikomori.

Suicidal Patterns in the 20th and 21st Centuries Japanese Literary
Imaginary
Mihaela HAU BLAN
PhD, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
E-mail: [email protected]

Motto: Death doesnt lie at the opposite pole of life, death is part of life
(Murakami Haruki; Murakami 2002, 32)
Abstract. This paper is aiming at an overview of the image of suicidal death in the Japanese
modern and contemporary literature. The research involves an X-ray of the suicide patterns that the
Japanese society has been confronting with in a controlled, but also out of control way. We are writing
this topic neither in favor, nor against suicide, but somewhere in-between, in a less judging and more
analytical position so that we further grasp into the psychological depth of the mind, into the cultural and
sociological resorts of choosing voluntary death, from a literary point of view. Our methods will include
classification of suicidal acts that the Japanese society had experienced and is experiencing at the
moment, contrastive outlook of European and Far East cultural patterns regarding our issue and analysis
of a few novels that cross upon suicide. The main ideas that are to be developed are the cultural tradition
of suicide in Japan as opposed to the West, the unprecedented social crisis that leads people into
committing suicide out of lack of communication, loneliness, shame of failure, no religion restrictions,
literary outbursts as a way of exorcizing and bestselling it in some novels of Natsume Sseki, Mishima
Yukio, Taichi Yamada, Inoue Yasushi, Abe Kb, Murakami Haruki, Taguchi Randy.
Keywords: suicide, death as ritual, Japanese literature, seppuku, hikikomori, shinju
several categories, and we shall discuss further
on those shapes that the Japanese history and
culture have established as their own in the large
arena of suicidal human behavior. The Japanese
as social entity has built a tradition of suicide,
and, from both historical and religious points of
view, it has an open attitude towards death.
Religion has put a mark on the lack of dying
taboos, encouraging a permissive vision upon
life and death. Psychology and sociology have
also treated the subject with intense and, up to a
certain point, abstract, statistical and theoretical
interest.
For a more extended view, it is
necessary to mark a mise en abme and refer to
the Western perspective on suicide. George
Minois, analyzing the history of suicide in the
Western society, has come to the conclusion that
suicide is a taboo that must be wrapped in
silence () repressed along with the other great
social interdictions. Suicide is everything, lest
the manifestation of human freedom (Minois
2002, 336). The author presents Sigmund
Freuds theory of suicide as reverse of the
aggressiveness against the self (Ibidem, 337)

Introductory Notes on Suicide

Death is a part of life, and though an
end, a gate or a beginning, it is still a dreadful
mystery. Since mankind remembers, man has
strived to understand it, acknowledge it, fight it,
mock it, pray for it, tame it, and, of course, write
about it. So, weve written it and painted it and
sung it. Weve immortalized it so that the
unreachable seem somehow more reachable.
Literature, among other arts, has the power to
get into peoples minds and souls and explore
our limitations, our pains and fears, and, by
converting them into stories, it has given us
ways of dealing with them.
Suicide is defined by mile Durkheim
as any death that results in a mediate or
immediate way from a positive or negative act
committed by the victim oneself (Durkheim
1993, 11). It takes many shapes, but basically, it
may present itself as of two types: an active
suicide, which stands for killing oneself [nn] and
a passive one, which is letting oneself die [nn].
The suicidology as a scientific approach has
quantified the phenomenon and classified it by
162

and concludes that the rate of suicide is higher in

countries with low crime rate as a form of
repressing the violence by turning it from
outside towards inside, from somebody else
towards the self. A similar idea is presented by
Durkheim (Durkheim 2002, 39), in which
insanity and suicide are repressions of the social
human being and countries with fewer madmen
are the countries with the highest number of
suicides.
A philosophical approach can provide a
suicidal overview, structured on three
dimensions: 1) For suicide; 2) Neutral position;
3) Against suicide. We see that over time suicide
has interested various fields of knowledge,
among which the philosophical one relates to all
the others, like medicine, religion, literature.
From a negative position as Saint Augustines
belief that nothing justifies suicide, or Albert
Camuss who states that suicide is the rejection
of freedom, or Kants idea of suicide as
unethical behaviour, to a positive position,
encountered in the ancient Greece and Rome, in
liberalism, which states that a persons life
belongs only to oneself, or in psychiatrist
Thomas Szaszs idea that suicide, as freedom of
choice, is the most basic human right so that
death control should be as rightful as birth
control. At last, but in our main interest, the
code of Confucianism, which encourages
altruistic suicide, being praiseworthy if it is done
for the sake of certain values, suicide finds a
way as a neutral position in David Humes
ideology that lies emphasis on situational
stances, when suicide is either considered an
affront to God, or it can be justified or even
desired. The in-between position is to be further
developed in this paper, as ritual suicide or
heroic suicide set against crisis or pointless
suicide in the Japanese literary imagery.
From sociological and psychological
perspectives, suicide occurs on two basic
grounds: a pathological ground, when the
subject is not fully aware of the act, and a
consented one. At this point, we can oppose the
psychological collapse that leads to total recluse
from society, which stands for a spiritual
suicide, later on surpassed by physical suicide
(egotistic suicide, in the terms of Durkheim),
to fully awareness of the act justified by
prohibited love, patriotic duty, and fidelity to the
Lord or the Emperor, altruistic suicide as
mile Durkheim classifies it. Referring to the
Western society, the author speaks about Danish
warriors who committed suicide to avoid
disgrace and shame, or the Gaul servants who
had to follow their master into death. We can

notice here the similarities to the Japanese

behaviour.
Concerning religion, the Japanese have
a specific and quite unusual way of dealing with
it, paying a lot more attention to the rites, than to
the conceptual, abstract faith, determining
Octavian Simu say in his work on the Japanese
traditional civilization that it may seem odd and
inefficient the effort to analyse the religions of a
people proved to be not at all religious (Simu
2004, 51). The symbiosis of the Shintism and
Buddhism interweaves in a very practical
manner, so that Ian Readers phrase Born
Shint and die Buddhist (Reader 1991, 56) may
stand for the essence of the Japanese religious
experience. Since they perform Shint rites to
celebrate life as an animistic reminiscence of the
inner self of this nation, they also perform
Buddhist rites to see the deceased through and
tame the Spirits. The most impressive religious
syncretism has defined the Japanese spirituality.
From the ancient animism to the New Age
religions, Japan has burnt like a melting pot:
primitive religious practices, exorcisms,
shamanism, purifying ceremonies, animism,
later developed into Shintism; India borrowed
Buddhism, Zen Buddhism; China borrowed
Confucianism and Taoism, and Christianity
(Simu 2004, 5).
Thus, in such a diversity, death has been
surrounded by divergent and, more important,
practical attitudes. The main direction leads us
believe that death is not feared, nor tabooed. It
may be simply an act in the process of existing,
a disappearance in the invisible world, a
becoming a kami, a family spirit (Shintism), a
state of harmony with the universe (Taoism), an
endless cycle of death and rebirth called
transmigration or a state of endless happiness as
reached Nirvana (Buddhism), a benevolent
cutting off life in the spirit of honour or in
avoiding dishonour (Confucianism). The only
religious pattern left, the Christianity, has a very
clear definition of the life and death paradigm,
where death is also seen as a passing through
towards an afterlife, but, at this point, the
similarities end. In Christianity, as we know,
death is tabooed and mystic, and suicide is
forbidden, doomed to eternal damnation, due to
moderate individualism, characteristic of
Christianity (Durkheim 2002, 179).
Another issue to grasp in the Japanese
mentality is the idea of life after death. We can
understand that in the Japanese religious realm
life overcomes death, as a primary principle of
being in the world. The afterworld is somewhere
after or beyond life, but there is little concern
163

about it. Their whole culture and philosophical

thought is based on the principles of intense life
(haiku, ikebana, tea ceremony, martial arts) and,
at the same level, intense and practical death.
Zen masters have a saying: If you want to see,
do it of a sudden, for if you start to think, you
lose the essential. That is why voluntary death
comes along so easily, with not much emphasis
or anxiety from society. The doctrine of
Confucianism focuses on the ethical code of the
family and, by extension, the state, leaving out
of the existence all the transcendence of the
spirit by building a rigid code of life. Here death
is welcomed as an act of honourable or
redemptive sacrifice for the Lord (seppuku).

well as an unquestionable education of almost

ascetic endurance, obedience and sacrifice,
consolidated in the subconscious for centuries.
Another pattern of honourable and, at
the same time, obligatory death is kamikaze, the
heroic bomb charging pilots in World War II.
Literally, the word means the wind of gods,
where we can see the Shint influence and,
acknowledging today, a lot of fanatical despair
in some officers decisions that led to an
organized insanity (Naito 1995, 241). The story
tells that a powerful wind has turned back the
ships of the Mongolian invasion under the
command of Kublai Khan in the 13th century. At
the uncomfortable sight of receiving the first
war defeat in the nations history, Japanese
ultranationalists desperately proposed the use of
certain special attack units by which young
soldiers (at first volunteers picked up from
universities) were sent to a blind death in bomb
planes, called Kamikaze; manned rocket
bombs, named ka; Shiny boats, or
simplified submarines, called Kaiten (Cook
1932, 316). It must be said that kamikaze is not a
suicidal act per se. The soldiers have accepted it
as a deep sense of self sacrifice for their
families, dear ones and country, but they have
not despised their lives. The terror of those days
is unspeakable. The very few survivors tell the
same story of being deceived, sent to a sure
death, turning the human being into a lifeless
tool, which hardly had it been trained to be one,
and which had to repress all emotions, fear and
uncertainty, in the spirit of the deep implanted
Confucian education that wouldnt allow shame,
weakness or disbelief in superiors judgment.
Shinju represents the double suicide. It
may take the shape of joshi-shinju, meaning
suicidal couples whos love is fulfilled in death
(Kat 1998, 51) due to social, financial or
political obstacles. Like the mandarin ducks, the
two lovers, who are socially different, prefer
dying together than living apart. This type of
double voluntary death is well known also to the
European culture and literature, famous couples
embracing it as a form of ultimate fight against
social obtuseness. Variations of it in the
Japanese society are boshi-shinju (mother-child
suicide), ikka-shinju (all family suicide).
The last two patterns belong to the
second type of voluntary death, that of let
oneself die [nn]. Recurrent in contemporary
times, they are the expression of a social and
psychological collapse. These deaths are not at
all honourable or altruistic. They are not entirely
egotistical either, but somehow anomic,
because they represent the malfunctioning

On Japanese Suicidal Forms

Japanese suicidal acts are wide and
frequent because, on one side, death is regarded
with much permissiveness and, on the other
side, afterlife is either a rebirth or dissolution
onto the Energy of the Universe, and hence the
concept of penitence is merely acknowledged in
the cycle of reincarnations. From a historical
point of view, we can speak about three main
categories of suicide as a phenomenon: the
traditional ritual of seppuku, the war kamikaze
and the modern shut-ins hikikomori. In-between
there are other forms of suicide, some of which
are similar, like jisatsu (general term for
suicide), junshi (following the Lord in death),
shinj (double suicide), boshi-shinju (motherchild suicide), ikka-shinju (all family suicide),
kodokushi (lonely death). With such heritage of
suicide, the Japanese have established a suicidal
cultural identity, which is to be seen in stamps,
literature, film, kabuki and Noh theatre.
Seppuku is known as the ritual of
suicide by cutting open ones belly, followed by
the decapitation performed by an assistant. It has
been the expression of honour and obligation for
the samurai code (bushido), whose moral
precepts included the assimilation of death as
the way of the warrior, so that Confucian rigid
conduct has fused with the three Shint
elements: love and mercy (the gem), rightness
and neatness (the mirror), and courage and
firmness (the sword) (Simu 2004, 146).
Therefore, dying of seppuku was perceived as
the highest honour for a military man to follow
and serve the superior in the after death world
known as junshi, while for females the only
honourable allowed way of junshi was the rigaki
(cutting ones throat). Also, seppuku was
performed if guilt lay upon a samurais life, the
suicidal act redeeming his good name. Dying by
ones own hand requires a mental strength, as
164

social mechanisms (Durkheim 2004 in Minois,

337). The history of modern Japan is very
impressive for its efforts to rebirth both
physically and morally after the defeat in World
War II. The economic boom has been a visit
card for the inner power that this people has
when they are motivated. So it has been the
fanatic behaviour of the war. The crush has
begun in the 60s when the student protests have
alerted the authorities, then in the 90s the
economic down fall has increased the social
crisis and a smoulder identity problem. Since the
young generation found the familial, social
restrictions and pressure too intense and
frustrating, and the elder generation couldnt
understand the new reality, nor fit in the new
industrialized world where the company
considerably diminished their social life and the
divine essence of the Emperor has been
publically abolished, social and cultural identity
dissolution has increased the individuals
identity crisis.
Kodokushi are elderly people that die
alone, in total solitude as a result of being left
out by the society they have served with loyalty.
They represent a case of solitary deaths, when
there is nobody to care for them, because they
have worked their whole life and had no time for
social life, family life, or their children are
away, busy, living in the same workaholic way.
Their bodies are found in bad conditions.
Hikikomori, on the other side, are young
males (from 15 to 30 years old), who isolate
themselves indoors, shutting off all external
communication, up to such a degree that they
die in total reclusion. The major causes are: lack
of communication, high degree of repressing
their feelings, shame of failure, high social and
familial expectations, all intrinsically related to
the Confucian educational legacy in a maledominated society, with a consistent heritage of
suicide. Hikikomori are at best internet addicted,
representing a negative effect of modernization.
An alarm signal suggests that they might be
indicators of a pandemic of psychological
problems that the global internet-connected
society will have to face (Shinfuku 2011).
Considered social parasites, these
youngsters have lost the social dimension of the
human nature, developing a homophobia that for
many of them leads in death. They isolate
themselves in their rooms or in the kitchen and
live there with or without magazines, computer
or music. That room is the only place secure,
which in a psycho-analytical interpretation can
be associated to the protective womb. They are
fed by the family who cant let them die and

some are reintegrated in society. Studies that

discuss hikikomori show that it is a social
psychological disorder caused mainly by the
modernization, and Japan had experienced an
ultrafast economic over-grading, leaving behind
social and spiritual equivalent. Statistics show
that the phenomenon is taken care of, various
centers being initiated and supported by the
Health Ministry (Hakamada, Shimbun 2010).
Michael Zielenziger, the author of Shutting Out
the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost
Generation, in which he analyses the problems
of the Japanese young generation after the 90s
economical breakdown, states: They are not
depressives or psychotics; nor are they classic
agoraphobics, who fear public spaces but
welcome friends into their own homes. ()
Japanese psychiatrists say that hikikomori is a
social disorder, only recently observed, that
cannot be found within other cultures. These
men as I found during months of conversations
with them are often intelligent, stimulating,
highly open and responsive adults full of cogent
ideas and fascinating insights into society and
themselves. () in the confinement of Japan's
neo-Confucian society, which preaches the
importance of obedience, discipline, selfinhibition, and group harmony and where even
individual identity is deeply swathed in mutual
interdependence men like Jun and Kenji have
imploded like vacuum tubes, closing themselves
in, cutting themselves off, and utterly
marginalizing themselves (Zielenziger 2006,
19).
Literature and arts have played in Japan
the role played by philosophy in Europe.
Therefore, all the individual and collective
struggles have been transfigured, analysed in
fiction or poetry, art in general functioning as a
catalytic axe. As we have mentioned above,
there is a gap in Japanese society reflected in
literature, too. Starting with the Meiji Era (18681912), when the country opened to the West,
assimilating in a fast rhythm technology,
medicine, culture, philosophy, and putting at
ease their old principles, the Japanese have built
a new country, modern and still Japanese. They
succeeded what has been called the Japanese
miracle. While the country became the second
world economic power, literature was taming
and revealing the true problem of the nation: the
individuals alienation, loss of cultural identity.
Modern and contemporary Japanese literature
reveals a dark side of the cherry blossoms:
solitude, lack of communication, alienation,
drug, sex and alcohol, and death everywhere.
Suicide in Japanese Literature
165

Voluntary death is as we have seen a

widely ranged social pattern and writers have
not escaped it. There are novelists that have
committed suicide, with different motivations
and by different means. The most famous
suicidal writers are Kawabata Yasunari (157),
first Japanese Nobel prize winner, who has
gassed himself at 73 years old, although his
death was considered by his family as
accidental. Dazai samu has committed shinju
at 39 years old, by throwing himself and his
lover in a river. Akutagawa Rynosuke has
killed himself at the age of 35 by a drug
overdose. The most spectacular suicide of all is
that of Mishima Yukio, who committed seppuku
in 1970 at 45 years old, as an extreme gesture of
punishing the ultimate disappointment: the
moral support that the Emperor had on the
Japanese people was lost, by reducing his divine
essence to a mortal, non-significant presence.
His traditional death, wonderfully crafted, wellstaged, and exposed (Hosea 2005, 124) had to
be and had been a demonstration, a public
denunciation of his countrys traditional
(cultural and social) death. His entire literature is
scenting, foreseeing death, and at some point
revealing seppuku rituals.
The authors and novels proposed in this
paper are Natsume Ssekis Kokoro, Mishima
Yukio, Runaway Horses, Inoue Yasushi, Tea
Master, Abe Kb The Box Man, Taichi
Yamada, Strangers, Murakami Harukis
Norwegian Wood, After Dark and Taguchi
Randys Outlet.
Natsume Ssekis Kokoro tells the story
of a tormented sensei who finally commits
seppuku out of guilt for his youth friends
suicide over the woman they both loved and
sensei married. Guilt is progressively consuming
him so that at some point he thinks of a
liberating way: I have started to live with the
sensation that its long time since Im not among
the living anymore (Natsume Sseki 1985,
193). We can find here Jean Amrys idea of
living with death in ones mind (Amry 2010,
135). The ethical, cultural and historical
implications are deeper. Sensei decides to take
his life after enduring its sufferance all his
mature life, at short time after General Nogi
committed junshi in respect for the death of the
Meiji Emperor, Mutsuhito. Yamanouchi Hisaaki
writes: in early Meiji, forward-looking
modernization and right spiritual values
appeared inseparable. By the end of Meiji this

coherence was breaking apart, with the spiritual

ideals increasingly overshadowed and atomized
by the material progress of an impersonal
industrialization.
Senseis
suicide
then
represents one answer to the predicament of
perceptive intellectuals in a post-Meiji Japan
(Yamanouchi Hisaaki 1978, 70).
Natsume Sseki, studying in London for
a few years, grew a permanent feeling of
estrangement, even when returned in Japan, due
to the rapid changes in society. This alienation is
obvious in his literary work, as it is obvious in
the novels of the most modern and
contemporary writers. And it is precisely this
rootlessness lived at a social, psychological and
cultural levels that leads to suicide.
A modern writer who pulled out of
history the traditional honourable death is Inoue
Yasushi with his Tea Master. It is the story of a
famous tea Sensei who had lived in the
traditional Japan (Keich Era) and committed
ritual suicide out of obedience to his Daimyo,
Hideyoshi and in defense of a belief: the
spiritual power of chad, the way of the tea.
Tea ceremony has become my preparation
ceremony for death says Sensei Riky (Inoue
Yasushi 2007, 177). A short epistolary novel,
concentrated to its essence, The Hunting Gun,
goes deep down a womans soul and engraves
what Mihai Eminescu used to call deaths
voluptuousness. A lovers betrayal is stalked by
death and the repeated words crime, crime,
crime leads the mistress to poison herself in
order to escape the guilt.
Mishima Yukio, masters the ritual
suicide in the second part of the Tetralogy Sea of
Fertility, Runaway Horses. It is known the
predictability of the writers death in his literary
work, the quest for a rebirth of the traditional
identity of the Samurai. Therefore, the novels
either hint at the old way or expose the entire
cultural, social, military imagery of the samurai
as in the rebel movement named Shinpren in
Runaway Horses. Seppuku is described here as a
glorifying death for the Emperor and it is
performed by samurai of the Shinpren (back in
Meiji Era), but also by the character Isao Iinuma
that renewed the group in order to revive the
power of the Emperor in Shwa Era. What is
striking for the reader and perhaps the touch of
the author is the name of the rebellious group,
Shinpren, which is an alternative reading of the
same ideograms that were read Kamikaze in the
Second World War. Thus seppuku is explicit on
many occasions, and perceived as the highest
self-sacrifice gesture that a man must be able to

(157) The names of Japanese authors follow their

specific order, which is last name and first name.

166

do to fulfill the ideal of bushido (way of the

warrior).
Another type of suicide, presented in the
novel of Murakami Haruki, The Norwegian
Wood, experiences the mental instability, which
leads to suicide. Naoko, the adolescent heroine,
whose boyfriend inexplicably kills himself, cant
find a way out of the more and more
surrounding death. The narrator, a mutual friend,
tries his best at rescuing her, but her solitude and
alienation are as deep as a dark forest: I feel as
if I would have lost myself in a deep forest. It is
cold and dark and nobody comes to save me
(Murakami 2002, 146).
A contemporary, postmodern type of
suicide is the hikikomori. It is a social reality and
also a literary subject. Total reclusion can
substitute physical death with a spiritual and
social death. This kind of solitary and alienated
existence is fictionalised in some novels such as:
Abe Kbs The Box Man, Murakami Harukis
After Dark, Taguchi Randys Outlet. Although
in the first two novels there is no suicidal act, we
have chosen them because of the social suicide.
Abe Kbs The Box Man is an
experimental novel in the spirit of Kafka and
Beckett. The box man is a critical metaphor of
the contemporary society, idle, alone and
without an identity, an amorphous mass. A, the
hero of the novel, desist his human condition as
a form of protest against dehumanisation and
absurdity of life. This regression to a non-human
form of existence is a painful counterpoint of
mans reality, day by day surrounded by
machines. He builds up a box as a home
surrogate, from under which he sees the world,
but he is not seen. It is the ultimate form of
isolation in the world. It is a symbolic death for
the world. He doesnt exist, more than that, he is
not human anymore. He is a box man. He has
comprised the world in his box. This social
withdrawal is the literary form of the social
reality of hikikomori.
Similar, but with mythical insights, is
Murakami Harukis After Dark, where the
reclusion is inside a TV set. The story of a
young girl, Asai Eri, who is asleep for two
months and Mari, her sister, who struggles to
wake her up. Eris sleep is not natural, as she
transgresses the physical world and is awake on
the other side of the TV set, in a room like an
office. The surrealist accents of the plot and
scenery entitle the text as fiction, but beyond
that, the message reveals the same social
reclusion from the world. Mari remembers Eri
say: from now on I will sleep a while
(Murakami 2007, 179).

The case of another hikikomori suicide

is revealed in the end of Taichi Yamadas novel:
Strangers. Kei is shutting herself in because of a
scar on her chest that could not be removed by
any plastic surgery. She becomes a hikikomori
and on the one refusal at her attempt to socialize,
stubs her chest. The plot evolves from Haradas,
the main character, perspective her victim,
who she haunts into a love story that sucks the
life out of him, but the only one who notices is
Haradas friend, who, at the end saves him by
confronting him with the truth. Fantastic
elements draw the net, where the character is
caught like in a parallel world.
Outlet by Taguchi Randy is the open
story of a hikikomori, the brother, Taka, of the
heroine, Yuki. She is given the news that Taka
was found dead on the floor of his kitchen and
cant understand how that could have happened.
She rememorizes with her psychology professor,
as a patient, Takas life, sensing that there is
more about him than just a simple suicide. Taka
was a hikikomori, a reclusive man (dead at 40
years old), who had quit school, couldnt hold
on to a job, careless with himself, in bad
relationships with their parents. She tries to
integrate him in society, but fails, and Taka
disappears one day. From this point on, the
novel is a shamanic quest for identity. The main
conclusion being that suicidal let oneself die
may be a gate to a different perception of life
and death, an open road to heal an agonizing
society, which has lost contact with
transcendence, and a shamanic perspective,
according to which those who can transgress the
worlds can mend the inner troubles of an
ontological blocked society.
Japanese
literature
proposes
an
alternative to suicide and alienation. There are
ways (d), new ways, to regain human hood.
Suicide is a social act, individual through
execution and collective through cause and
motivation. Thus, society must step aside and
look at the whole picture so that to see the
problem, the cause and the solution. Suicide is
not a solution. We cannot grasp beyond the
close door at what death is like on the other side,
and we shouldnt be curious, because, as
Epicure had said: Death doesnt regard us,
because as long as we exist, it doesnt, and when
it comes, we no longer exist (Epicure 2012 in
Amry, 30).

References
a. Books:
167

Amry 2010

Amry 2012

Cook 1992

Durkheim
1993

Hosea 2005

Inoue 2007

Kat 1998

Minois 2002

Murakami
2002

Murakami
2007
Naito 1995

Natsume
1985

Amry,
Jean,
Despre
mbtrnire.
Revolt
i
resemnare [On Aging: Revolt
and Resignation], Bucureti,
Art, 2010.
Amry,
Jean,
Despre
sinucidere. Discurs asupra
morii liber alese [On Suicide:
A Discourse on Voluntary
Death], Traducere din limba
german de Corina Bernic,
Bucureti, Art, 2012.
Cook, Haruko Taya and
Theodore F. Cook, Japan at
War. An Oral History, New
York, The New Press, 1992.
Durkheim, mile, Despre
sinucidere [On Suicide], Iai,
Editura Institutul European,
1993.
Hosea, Hirata, Discourses of
Seduction.
History,
Evil,
Desire, and Modern Japanese
Literature,
Cambridge,
London, Harvard University
Press, 2005.
Inoue, Yasushi, Maestrul de
ceai [The Tea Master],
Bucureti, Humanitas, 2007.
Kat,
Shichi,
Istoria
literaturii japoneze (de la
origini pn n present) [The
History of Japanese Literature
(From its Origins to Present)],
vol. I, Bucureti, Nipponica,
1998.
Minois,
George,
Istoria
sinuciderii.
Societatea
occidental n faa morii
voluntare [The History of
Suicide. The Western Society
Facing Voluntary Death],
Bucureti, Humanitas, 2002.
Murakami,
Haruki,
Pdurea
norvegian
[Norwegian
Wood],
Iai,
Polirom, 2002.
Murakami, Haruki, n noapte
[After Dark], Iai, Polirom,
2007.
Naito, Hatsuko, Zeii tunetului.
Povestea piloilor kamikaze
[Thunder Gods. The Story of
Kamikaze Pilots], Bucureti,
Nemira, 1995.
Natsume, Sseki, Zbuciumul
inimii [Kokoro], Bucureti,

Univers, 1985.
Pinguet, Maurice, Moartea
voluntar n Japonia. De la
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[Voluntary Death in Japan.
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Contemporary
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Hampshire, U.K., MacMillan
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tradiional
[Traditional
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Saeculum I.O., 2004.
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Out the Sun: How Japan
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Created
Its
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Talese, 2006.
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1997

b. Internet resources:
Hakamada, Takayuki, What
Hakamada
support is available for those
2010
who shut themselves away
from society?. In: Mainichi
Shimbun,
www.mainichi.jp,
July 27, 2010, accessed on
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Shinfuku,
Naotaka,
Are
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accessed on 12.02.2012.

168

The European Idea Reflected by the Post-communist Romanian

Intellectual Elite in Dilemma
Loredana-Mihaiela SURDU
PhD Candidate, University of Bucharest, Faculty of History
E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract. The paper aims to present a historical analysis of the European idea perceived and
reconstructed at a cultural level by the intellectual elite during the 19932007 period in Romania. The main
idea stresses throughout the study states that Europe perceived by the Romanian society has suffered
remodeling due to the internal and external transformations. The debate regarding the European idea has
generated multiple opinions in cultural circles. Parts of them can easily be studied through the scrutiny of
the articles present in the cultural journal Dilema [Dilemma] which afterwards became Dilema Veche [Old
Dilemma]. Therefore, the main result of the study would be the acknowledging that the position of the
Romanian intellectual elite, in regard to the European idea has indeed been a metamorphosing and
independent one, subject of real and substantial analysis.
Keywords: Europe, cultural magazine, transition, analysis, Euro-Realism
left by the communist system. Thus, in
December 1989 appeared Adevrul [The Truth]
a newspaper which previously was known as
Scnteia Popoarelor [The Spark of the People]
and Libertatea [Freedom] previously edited as
Informaia Bucuretiului [The Information of
Bucharest]. In the early 1990s also ran
Tineretul Liber [The Free Youth], Dimineaa
[The Morning], Universul [The Universe] and
Dreptatea [The Justice]. There were also edited
weekly or monthly journals like: Zig-zag, 22,
Expres or Romnia literar [Literary Romania],
Contrapunct [Counterpoint], with a lower
circulation (1). However, these weekly papers
had the advantage of deeper analyzing the
problems at hand.

1. Background
The Romanian communist regime,
publically denounced as illegitimate and
criminal (Tismneanu et al., 2007, 628), has
created a rift between the Romanian society and
Western Europe for approximately 45 years. The
fall of the Romanian communism has been
characterized as an uncontrollable, passionate,
and violent revolution (Carey, Eisterhold 2004,
1). Accordingly, the transitional period that
Romania was supposed to overcome in the next
years had met a Leninist heritage [] more
persistent and resilient than in the other
countries in Eastern Europe (Tismneanu,
2004, 27). This problem, amplified by the lack
of democratic exercise on the part of the newlyformed politically parties, has led to a slow
evolution to the much desired functional
democracy. The intellectual elite, typically
responsible for the resurrection of civil society
(ODonnell, Schimitter, 1984, 44) in cases as
these, found itself in the position of having to
blindly-guide the enormous mass of Romanian
population. Hence, during the 90s, an entire
spectrum of specialists and opinions on different
subjects surfaced.
The press played a valuable role in the
process of rebuilding the state in accordance
with the international demands (rule of law,
separation of powers, human rights and so on)
and in recreating the Romanian identity capable
of facing the challenges of the new internal and
international realities. On this matter, many
newspapers appeared in trying to fill the void

2. Dilemma and Old Dilemma

One of the main magazines that were
edited from the January 1993 and were available
for sale twice a month was Dilema [Dilemma].
(1) The information regarding the evolution of press
is obtained from the articles: Vasile Surcel, 1990:
Ziare, ziare, ziareee!!! in Jurnalul Naional, 12
March 2010, online http://jurnalul.ro/specialjurnalul/1990-ziare-ziare-ziareee-538325.html
(17
June 2014), Alexandra Buza, FOCUS: 20 de ani de
ziare ntre idealismul dat de libertate i afacere, n
capitalism in Mediafax, 23 December 2009, (online)
http://www.mediafax.ro/cultura-media/focus-20-deani-de-ziare-intre-idealismul-dat-de-libertate-siafacere-in-capitalism-5201723, (17 June 2014) and
information regarding appearance of newspapers
online http://www.e-ziare.ro/index.php?z=ziare-a-z
(on 17 June 2014).

169

This magazine has easily been categorized as a

cultural, sociological, occasionally political,
and resolutely European (2) one. The founder of
the journal, Andrei Pleu, has been described as
a philosopher, a former dissident of the
communist regime (3), a prominent intellectual,
and a former Romanian minister of culture (4).
The collaborators of this magazine were
considered to be intellectuals as they exert
critical thinking [] upon society (Mihilescu,
2010), among them being: Teodor Baconschi,
Alexandru Duu, Bogdan Ghiu, Teodor
Melecanu, Vitil Mihilescu, Alina MungiuPippidi, Alexandru Papilian, Andrei Pleu,
Dumitru Solomon, Mircea Vasilescu, Mihai
Zamfir, Zigu Ornea and many others. The
majority of the publishers were professors at the
university level, journalists or researchers, hence
being considered an authority in the domain that
each of them activated in. The program of the
magazine has been described as being one of
political, social, and cultural analysis, features,
and essays by leading writers, intellectuals, and
journalists. (5)
The impressive number of collaborators
did not prevent the problems that were to appear
in 2004, namely the rupture between the
Romanian Cultural Foundation that transformed
into the Romanian Cultural Institute and the
editorial group that managed Dilema (Dilemma).
As a result, on the 5th of January 2004 the
following statement was issued by the editorial
team:
Starting January 1, 2004, the entire
editorial staff of the magazine Dilemma has
stopped working at ICR.
As is known, Romanian Cultural Foundation
which edited the magazine Dilemma since
1993 recently became Romanian Cultural
Institute (ICR). According to the law of
organization, honorary president of the Institute
is the President of Romania, and the Board is
formed of members appointed by the President,
Government and several ministries.

Under these circumstances, the editors

expressed their concern that the new
institutional structure could pose problems
regarding the independence, credibility and
unbiasedness of the magazine and could affect
the spirit that has imposed on public
consciousness. Therefore, since September,
when the Institute was just created, I asked Mr.
Buzura Augustin, President of ICR, for a
meeting with the entire editorial team in order to
clarify the status of Dilemma in the structure
of the new institute, as well as our professional
status. The discussion was all the more
necessary as no directory member had informed
us of the changes that were to be applied by the
Romanian Cultural Foundation, the editorial
team never being summoned at the meetings of
the Foundation. Due to the lack of interest from
management regarding Dilemma, we decided
that together with Mr. Andrei Pleu, founding
director of the magazine, to present to Mr.
Chairman of the ICR the solution of a cordial
separation given to us by the pathways provided
by law, the name Dilemma (upon which the
editorial has the moral right), to finding a
private source of funding in order to ensure
continuity in the spirit of its original issue. Mr.
Augustine Buzura rejected the idea to assign the
name and did not comply with the request to
discuss with the editorial team.
Having been put in this situation and
taking into consideration the tensions between
the editorial team and the management of
Romanian
Cultural
Foundation/Romanian
Cultural Institute, the members of the editorial
board demanded the termination of employment,
and the president of ICR agreed with this
solution. []
Old Dilemma will continue to promote
the free expression of all points of view, to put
questions without a formula of definitive
answers and to cultivate intellectual dialogue
and debate ideas. Although with a new name,
the spirit of Dilemma of the past 11 years will
continue.
We thank the Dilemma readers because they
have been with us during all this time. We hope
that they will become readers of our new
magazine, Old Dilemma.
On behalf of the editorial team,
Mircea Vasilescu
Editor in Chief (6)

(2) Old
Dilemma
description
(a)
http://www.voxeurop.eu/en/content/sourceinformation/30481-dilema-veche (on 14 June 2014).
( 3)
Old
Dilemma
description
(b)
http://www.eurozine.com/journals/dilemaveche/selfd
escription.html (on 14 June 2014).
( 4)
Old
Dilemma
description
(c)
http://www.voxeurop.eu/en/content/sourceinformation/30481-dilema-veche (on 14 June 2014).
( 5)
Old
Dilemma
description
(d)
http://www.eurozine.com/journals/dilemaveche/selfd
escription.html (on 14 June 2014).

(6) The statement of the editorial team is reproduced

only fragmentary, the entire discourse is available in
Romanian (online): http://www.stiri.com.ro/revistadilema-veche/i-165.html (on 17 June 2014).

170

In this context, the journal Dilemma

continued to be available for the readers by
using the alias Old Dilemma and also by using
the private funding of Adevrul Holding (7), a
Romanian media trust. The majority of the
editors decided to remain part of Old Dilemma,
several editors being added to the team:
Magdalena Boiangiu, Adrian Cioroianu, Radu
Cosau, Andrei Manoliu, Matei Martin, Cezar
Paul-Bdescu, Iaromira Popovici or Simona
Sora (Buza, 2009) and many others.

recognition of the Romanian membership of the

European continent and, above all, culture is the
most important development. However, taking
into account that the studies have only a limited
impact on the masses, the best course of action
for a wheel steering cultural elite was to reach
the public faster through smaller, relatable
articles, which were to be delivered weekly to
those who were concerned with the changing
realities.
Even with the help of the above
mentioned studies, the existing debates that
emerged in the Romanian cultural press during
the 1993-2007 period remain relevant, as it not
only analyzes the impact of the joined
administrative and legislative, but also how
Europe is perceived geographically and
institutionally.
Thematically speaking, the articles chosen
for this analysis are those that present the
perception of Europe as a geographic area. The
main focus being the Western European states:
Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy,
Greece, Portugal and also the USA, and the
Eastern part of Europe represented only by the
Russian Federation. Romanian intellectuals, who
were involved in the process of writing articles,
addressed the problem at a rate of approximately
2% from the total number of articles considered,
in both the Dilemma and Old Dilemma. The
articles that reflect the institutional / legal
presence items are around 97% of the number of
articles taken into consideration. Europe in its
mythological meaning is found only in a
fragmented way, in certain articles, with the
obvious aim of arguing different points of view,
the theme not being considered as a subject on
its own.
The presence of articles translated from
other languages (especially the English articles
from the U.S.A., but also French and German
ones) shows interest in the topic of the European
idea and, at the same time, need to fill a vacuum
type information on this aspect. The number of
articles translated decreases proportionally with
the increasing number of articles written by
Romanian intellectuals during that period.
On the matter of intellectuals interested in
presenting and analyzing the many aspects of
Europe, we may list: Mircea Vasilescu, Andrei
Pleu, Zigu Ornea, Teodor Baconschi, Vintil
Mihailescu. Their articles are constantly
referring to Europe's problems and how they are
perceived by Romanian intellectuals.
The differences of opinion in the articles
are minimal, as each member tries to present
Europe based on his/her own knowledge,

3. Issues and typology

The European idea in the post-communist
period is presented by the Romanian
historiography from the angle of the institutional
Europe (the formal term generally used is the
European Union) and only tangentially
presented the debates that prevailed in the
Romanian cultural circles. These considerations
tend to reflect the inner struggles, fears and
hopes of the intellectual elite during a very
problematic period, the transition period. As a
consequence, the number of studies that actually
define, analyze, and illustrate the idea of Europe
is quite limited. However, some researchers
have used their expertise in order to present a
cultural or identity aspect of Europe. One of
these researchers is Adrian Marino, in his work
Pentru Europa. Integrarea Romniei. Aspecte
Ideologice i Culturale [For Europe. The
Romanian Integration. Ideological and Cultural
Aspects.] presents the main unifying cultural
links between Romania and Europe (8).
Alexandru Duu, in Lumea dinuntru i lumea
din afar [The Inner and the Outer World]
stresses upon the historical linkage that has
existed for a very long period of time between
the West and the East of the European
Continent. Andrei Marga, in his work Filosofia
unificrii europene [The Philosophy of
European Unification] tries to underline the
need for unity between the nations of the
European continent. These studies establish the
fact that one of the primary concerns was of the
Romanian membership of the European
continent and, most of all, of the European
culture. The researchers who have been named
here have different fields of interest, providing
different types of arguments in order to support
the main ideas of their studies. Hence, the
(7) http://www.brat.ro/membru/adevarul-holding
(8) Adrian Marino presents not only the links between
Romania and the Western Europe, but also the
existing one between Romania and the Eastern
Europe.

171

addressing only certain themes that relate to the

skills and knowledge of each intellectual.
Articles written by Andrei Pleu fall
within the above mentioned parameters as part
of the type of articles published. The editor tries
to demonstrate what are the Romanian needs
regarding the geostrategic realities in relation to
the European Union and the Russian Federation.
Most articles of the former foreign minister of
Romania with suggestive titles: Geopolitica
[Geopolitics], Nucleul tare al Europei [Hard
Core of Europe], Europa i cltoriile [Europe
and Travelling]), and so on. In the article
Geopolitics (Pleu 1993, 3), the diplomat and
essayist tries to argue the fact that the smaller
countries and therefore Romania should
diminish the negative impacts and draw
advantages from the favorable elements. In the
Hard Core of Europe (Pleu 2004, 3), Pleu
presents the center-periphery report, the FrancoGerman solidarity and as such, Romania does
not belong to the core of decision-making in
Europe. In the three articles entitled Europe and
Traveling (Pleu 1994 a, 3; Pleu 1994 b, 3;
Pleu 1994 c, 3), the author tries to demonstrate
that Europe has always desired to expand itself
and has, from the beginning, experienced the
wish to expand and the fear of external
influences.
Regarding the articles written by Mircea
Vasilescu, they are focused primarily on a wellargued criticism and on how Romanians
perceive themself during the accession to the
EU. Literary historian and critic, Mircea
Vasilescu entitles his articles O nzbtie [A
Foolery], Ca-n Europa [Like in Europe] or
Vorbe naionale, reguli europene [National
Talks, European rules] denotes the editors
interest in practical elements of Romanias
adherence to EU. A Foolery (Vasilescu 2004,
20) describes the frustrations created by the
endless transition and the continuous delay in
the process of adhesion to the European Union.
Like in Europe (Vasilescu 2004 b, 20) discusses
the problems that Romania faces when
negotiating its EU membership in using the old
Eastern ways. National Talks, European rules
(Vasilescu 1998, 3) is the article in which
Mircea Vasilescu debates the Romanian
competitively on the European market.
Zigu Ornea, a philosopher and literary
historian, presented with the issue of Europe,
decided to focus on the problem of the European
integration, mainly on the history of refusal to
join the European structures through articles
such
as:
Europenizare
i
autohtonie
[Europeanization and Autochthony], Din

tradiia mpotrivirii la autohtonism [In the

Tradition of Opposition to Autochthonism],
Tradiionalismul i refuzul Occidentului
[Traditionalism and the Refusal of the West].
Traditionalism and the refusal of the West
(Ornea 1993, 6) states that the Romanian
traditionalism is a 19th century attitude.
Europeanization and Autochthony (Ornea 1997,
10) upholds that the traditional way of thinking
only delays modernization in general. In The
Tradition of Opposition to Autochthonism
(Ornea 2000, 10), Ornea concludes that even if
euro-skepticism has strong roots in the
Romanian cultural space, the European idea had
more and more supporters.
Teodor
Baconschi,
a
religious
anthropologist, presents the idea of Europe with
the issue of religious perspective, pointing out
that the current political organization known as
the European Union is rooted in the basic
principles of Christianity. His articles, Noi i ei
[Us and them] and Europa reanimat
[Reanimated
Europe]
highlighted
this
perspective and even tried to argue the necessity
of perpetuating Christian principles so that the
Europe that we are familiar with may carry on.
In the article Us and Them (Baconschi 1999, 6),
Baconschi states that the difference between
Romania and Western Europe is the lack of
assimilation of the Christian principles, while in
Reanimated Europe (Baconschi 2000, 11) he
underlines the fact that the only way for Europe
to overcome its problems is by reconnecting
with its past and its traditions.
Vintil Mihilescu, psychologist and
anthropologist, describes in his articles Europa
[Europe], Europeni second-hand [Second-hand
Europeans] and Cealat Europ [The Other
Europe] the issue of differences and similarities
of institutional type of social activities and also
the problem of morality during accession to the
European Union. In Europe (Mihilescu 2000,
3), Vintil Mihilescu discusses the Romanian
Europeanization,
while
in
Second-hand
Europeans (Mihilescu 2001, 3) the author of
the article explains that the Romanian people
have to pay in order to feel equal to the Western
Europeans. The Other Europe (Mihilescu 2002,
3) presents the great difference that exists
between social Europe and the legal Europe.
The typology and evolution of these
articles demonstrate the growing interest shown
by the Romanian intellectuals regarding the
theme of Europe, whether it refers to the
geographical relevance or regional organization
that addresses the subject of evolution the
European Union. Initially, during the 1990-1997
172

period, most articles written by Romanian

intellectuals was mainly based on some general
considerations (e.g.: EU developments, the
basic principles of the idea of Europe and the
manner in which Europe could be successfully
reconfigured). As soon as the desire to apply for
accession to the European Union, the articles
present in the cultural press registered a series of
transformations, their typology changed visibly.
Editor chooses to write pieces in almost every
article that met the practical needs of Romania
during the course of negotiations and subsequent
integration into the European Union. Hence, a
series of articles that dealt with problems of
various sensitive nature were published, the best
examples being the Romanians inferiority
complex in relation to other EU citizens, the
equality of chances (compared to the citizens of
other EU countries), the issue of identity and the
rise of euro-scepticism in Romania and so on.
Each subject is detailed and argued in manners
that would prove important for the further
development of Romania in the EU
organization. As a result, clear descriptions of
problems were presented and practical and
sustainable solutions offered.
By analyzing the position of the
Romanian intellectuals (specifically those
involved in the drafting of articles published in
cultural magazines) as a group, the European
Union was mainly from the perspective of Eurorealists because their attitude could be
categorized as realistic but critical of the EU
and European integration overall (9). However,
by the beginning of the 20th century, the
Romanian intellectual attitude displayed new
tendencies, as the intellectual perception has
undergone a number of changes. A part of the
newer intellectual generation displayed more
Pro-European views Adrian Cioroianu,
Constantin Rudnitchi, Victor Neumann and
others presented Europe in a lesser critical
manner, counteracting the inferiority complex.
However, the opinion remained essentially
critical and applied to the needs of Romania.

own ground so that the public may be properly

informed of the challenges that laid ahead. This
fact is easily demonstrated by analysis of the
articles selected for the study. The advantages,
the disadvantages and the problems that were to
appear were accurately described in many
articled.
The main fields of interest for the
Romanian intellectual elite were the institutional
Europe and establishing Romanias adherence to
the European continent.
References:
a. Papers in periodical journals:
Baconschi Baconschi, Teodor, Ei i noi
[Us and Them]. In: Dilemma,
1996
VII, no. 310, 15-21 January
1996, p. 6.
Baconschi Baconschi, Teodor, Europa
reanimat
[Reanitamted
2000
Europe]. In: Dilemma, VIII, no.
399, 6-12 October 2000, p. 11.
Mihilescu Mihilescu, Vintil, Europa
[Europe]. In: Dilemma, VIII,
2000
no. 364, 4-10 February 2000, p.
3.
Mihilescu Mihilescu, Vintil, Europeni
second-hand
[Second-hand
2001
Europeans]. In: Dilemma, IX,
430, 25-31 May 2001, p. 3.
Mihilescu Mihilescu, Vintil, Cealalt
Europ [The Other Europe].
2002
In: Dilemma, X, 509, 13-19
December 2002, p. 3.
Ornea, Zigu, Tradiionalismul i
Ornea
refuzul
Occidentului
1993
[Traditionalism and the Refusal
of the West]. In: Dilemma, I, no.
15, 23-29 April, 1993, p. 6.
Ornea, Zigu, Europenizare i
Ornea
autohtonie
[Europeanization
1997
and Autochthony]. In: Dilemma,
V, no. 241, 5-11 September
1997, p. 10.
Ornea, Zigu, Din tradiia
Ornea
mpotrivirii la autohtonism [In
2000
the Tradition of Opposition to
Autochthonism]. In: Dilemma
VIII, nr.7-13 June 2000, p. 10.
Pleu 1993 Pleu, Andrei, Geopolitica
[Geopolitics]. In: Dilemma, I,
no. 26, 9-15 July 1993, p.3.
Pleu 1994 Pleu, Andrei, Europa i
cltoriile (I) [Europe and
a
Travelling (I)]. In: Dilemma, II,
no. 65, 8-14 April, 1994, p. 3.

4. Conclusions
To conclude with, even though the
Romanian political factor has considered the
European Union the only possibility for the
post-communist period and thus rendering all its
efforts into obtaining the accession, the
intellectual elite has proven itself to stand its
(9) The definition of Euro-realism, online
http://www.wordvia.com/dictionary/Eurorealism, (on
16 May 2014).

173

Pleu 1994 Pleu, Andrei, Europa i

cltoriile (II) [Europe and
b
Travelling (II)]. In: Dilemma, II,
no. 66, 15-21 April 1994, p. 3.
Pleu 1994 Pleu, Andrei, Europa i
cltoriile (III) [Europe and
c
Travelling (III)]. In: Dilemma,
II, no. 67, 22-28 April 1994, p. 3.
Pleu 2004 Pleu, Andrei, Nucleul tare al
Europei [The Hard Core of
Europe]. In: Old Dilemma, I, no.
2, 23-29 January 2004, p. 3.
Vasilescu,
Mircea,
Vorbe
Vasilescu
romneti, reguli europene
1998
[Romanian Talk, European
Rules]. In: Dilemma, VI, no.
302, 13-19 November 1998, p. 3.
Vasilescu, Mircea, O nzbtie
Vasilescu
[A Foolery]. In: Old Dilemma,
2004 a
I, no. 4, 6-12 February, 2004, p.
20.
Vasilescu, Mircea, Ca-n Europa
Vasilescu
[Like in Europe]. In: Old
2004 b
Dilemma, I, no. 5, 13-19
February, 2004, p. 20.

Mihilescu
2010

Surcel 2010

Tismneanu
et al 2006

b. Books:
ODonnell, ODonnell, Guillermo, Schmitter
Schmitter Philippe, Tentative Conclusions
about Uncertain Democracies,
1984
Baltimore and London, The John
Hopkins University Press, 1984.
c. Chapters in books:
Carey,
Henry,
Eisterhold,
Carey,
Cristopher, Introduction. In:
Eisterhold
Carey Henry F., Romania since
2004
1989,
Oxford,
Lexington
Books, 2004.
Vladimir,
Tismneanu Tismneanu,
Understanding
National
2004
Stalinism:
Legacies
of
Ceauescus Socialism. In:
Carey Henry F., Romania since
1989,
Oxford,
Lexington
Books, 2004.
d. Internet resources:
Buza, Alexandra, FOCUS: 20
Buza 2009
de ani de ziare ntre idealismul
dat de libertate i afacere, n
capitalism. In: Mediafax, 23
December
2009,
online
http://www.mediafax.ro/culturamedia/focus-20-de-ani-de-ziareintre-idealismul-dat-de-libertatesi-afacere-in-capitalism174

5201723 (on 18 June 2014).

Mihilescu, Vintil, Nu prea
avem intelectualitate, [We Do
not Really Have Intellectuals].
In: Adevrul, 27 August 2010,
online
http://adevarul.ro/news/societate
/vintila-mihailescu-nuintelectualitate1_50ae9e327c42d5a6639e7a4f/i
ndex.html, (on 30 March 2014).
Surcel, Vasile, 1990: Ziare,
ziare, ziareee!!! [Newspapers,
Newspapers, Newspapers!!!].
In: Jurnalul Naional, 12 March
2010,
online
http://jurnalul.ro/specialjurnalul/1990-ziare-ziareziareee-538325.html (on 17 June
2014).
Tismneanu,
Vladimir,
Dobrincu,
Dorin,
Vasile,
Cristian,
Raport
Final,
Bucureti, Humanitas, 2007,
consulted
at
http://www.presidency.ro/static/
ordine/RAPORT_FINAL_CPA
DCR.pdf, on 17 June 2014.

Turks' Image in the Romanian History Textbooks, in the PostCommunist Period

Adriana CUPCEA
Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities
Email: [email protected]

Abstract. The study aims to identify, based on a semantic analysis applied to the educational
texts, the main national stereotypes applied to Turks, created and perpetuated by the history textbooks
used in the post-communist period. In order to achieve a systematic analysis of the educational texts, we
have identified the major themes that address or just transit the Ottoman or Turkish history, which are
reflecting the structure of the study: the Creation and Expansion of the Ottoman Empire, Christianity
versus Islam, the Fight of the Romanian Principalities against the Ottomans during the 14th-18th Centuries,
the Eastern Question, the Phanariot Century, the Fight for Liberation of the Peoples from the Ottoman
Empire the Revolution of 1821, the War of Independence.
Keywords: stereotypes, history textbooks, Turks, ethnocentrism, Ottoman Empire, postcommunist Romania
The first contact of students with the Turkish
civilization and with the beginnings of the
Introduction (1)
The study aims to identify, based on a
Ottoman State can be summarized in an
semantic analysis applied to the educational
omnipresent chronological picture, which
texts, the main national stereotypes applied to
includes, with small variations, the following
Turks, created and perpetuated by the history
elements: the Islamization of Turkic tribes after
textbooks used in the post-communist period. In
the 7th century, the creation of the Seljuq Turkish
order to achieve a systematic analysis of the
state in the 11th century, its partition into several
educational texts, we have identified the major
states, after three centuries of domination over
themes that address or just transit the Ottoman or
Asia Minor, culminating with the election, as
Turkish history, a categorization which served to
head of one of these states, of the emir Osman I
simplify and systematize our analysis. From the
or Othman (1299-1327) a structure which will
methodological point of view, it is necessary to
be the basis of the future state, taking over the
differentiate between the alternative history
etymology of its founder's name Ottoman
books introduced in 1996 in secondary schools,
(Bluoiu et al. 2008, 67).
and in 1999 in high schools and the unique
Educational texts gradually focus on the
books used in the first half of the '90s. However,
topic of the Ottoman advancement in the
we must mention that we have not made a
Balkans and then continue with the topic of
separate analysis of the unique history books
national unity and of the Ottoman resistance,
used before the introduction of the alternative
these being essential aspects of the development
books in 1996 and in 1999. Seeing that large
and projection of the Romanian national
topics related to Turks' image and identified in
consciousness.
the texts overlap to a great extent, obviously
In spite of its approach and importance
with some exceptions, the books are
in the context of universal history, and of its
differentiated by the type of approach used for
longevity, the Ottoman Empire, more precisely
these topics, herein discussed.
its creation and expansion, has been presented
for four hundred years in a limited space. For
example, it is a two-page lesson compared to the
The Creation and Expansion of the Ottoman
next lesson on the Creation and Development of
Empire
Romanian Medieval States, covering four pages
The first information on the Turks in
the post-communist history books refer to their
(Bichman et al. 1992, 232-235). At this level, the
geographical origins, located in Central Asia.
quantitative aspect is a message indicator of the
importance and place of that period in the
chronology and importance of universal history,
(1) Research for this paper was supported by CNCSand of the place that the receiver, i.e. the student,

UEFISCSU, PN-II-RU-TE-2012-3-0077.

175

must grant to this topic in his/her global

historical knowledge.
As we said, the presentation of the
beginning of the Ottoman state coagulates
around two interrelated topics that explain each
other, and that include military dimensions of
the Turkish image, i.e. the creation and the
expansion of the Ottoman Empire. The basic
idea, which also can be detected in the lesson
titles, is the expansion of the Ottoman Empire.
The affirmation and reaffirmation of the
expansion-conquest concept represents the
essence of the central message deriving from the
text, which indicates the main attribute of the
Ottoman state, and actually the essence of its
creation. Taking into account that we are mainly
talking about textbooks for the 5th grade, we
should note that they represent the first contact
of students with the history of Turks. Therefore
the texts induce the idea that the Ottoman state
was created through the conquest of certain
territories in Asia Minor, and that the Turkish
expansion took place through the conquest of the
Balkan Peninsula, of the Byzantine Empire, of
new states in Africa, Asia, and Europe. The
conquest of Constantinople in 1453 (Bluoiu et
al. 2008, 68) is considered to be one of the most
essential moments which contrastively marks the
fall of the Byzantine Empire and the fierce
advancement of the Ottoman Empire in the
perimeter of the Balkan Peninsula, as well as the
irreversible penetration of this space in the
Ottoman political and cultural area.
The emphasis of the factual history leads
to a delineation of the basic hypostasis of Turks,
the Ottoman state. This implies a general image
of the Turks, which comes down to this abstract
political notion. More rarely, but in an
identifiable way, historical texts refer to the
group of Ottoman Turks, which is delineated as
a collectivity. Therefore, we can say that the
historical narrative is valuated around two basic
entities, one state, political, abstract the
Ottoman state and one related to the group
the Ottoman Turks.

This orientation is also reinforced visually,

through figurative representations, providing an
image of the abstract notion of the Ottoman
state, while remaining strictly in the political and
military area. These confirm and visually
reinforce the autocratic nature of the Ottoman
state and the portraits of sipahis and janissaries
reinforce the military, warlike nature of the
Ottoman society and state.
The portrayals of personalities can be
considered standardized; they are not
individualized and they serve their original
purpose, namely asserting the militaristic and
autocratic nature of the state. An example is that
after presenting the personality of sultan
Mehmet II on half of a page, insisting on his
military career, and on some aspects of his
personality and physical appearance, thus trying
to individualize him, the question accompanying
the text marks the idea induced to students by
the authors, directing in this way the selection of
the memorization process: Why was Mehmet II
called the Conqueror?, which reiterates the idea
of the warlike, militarist nature (Bluoiu et al.
2008, 68).
The Group Image - Ottoman Turks
The group image attributed to Turks is
also structured on a military dimension, this time
generating ethno-psychological valuations. We
can identify human-moral considerations, which
are obviously also connected to the
communicated basic concept expansion by
conquest.
The texts indirectly induce the idea of
the deceivable, mean nature of Turks, by using
in several lessons the verb to take advantage of,
in the context of explaining the beginning of the
expansion in the Balkans, which automatically
generates the idea of the opportunistic nature of
Ottomans, this being one of the few situations
where the Ottoman Turks appear in the text
represented as a group, while preferring for the
rest the above presented concept, that of the
Ottoman state. Thus, taking advantage of the
lack of political unity and of the fights between
the Balkan states, they conquered many
territories, turning Bulgaria into a pashalic and
Serbia into a vassal state (Bluoiu et al. 2008,
69).
The
predatory
nature,
cruelty,
inclination to make a living by depriving others
result also implicitly from two recurring lesson
topics related to Turks: the organization of the
Ottoman army and the tribute of blood. An
example is the definition given by a universal
history textbook for the 5th grade, from 1992.

The Ottoman State

The portrayal of the Ottoman state is
built exclusively on its military dimension,
emphasizing
the
exclusively
warlike
preoccupations of the Ottoman state, confusing
it with the idea of army organization and of
conquest, as a major preoccupation. Within this
hypostasis, we note that the political-military
generalization is doubled by a tendency to
personalize the Ottoman state, by presenting
some state, military personalities of the time.
176

Janissaries (new bands) came from the most

beautiful and healthy children of the conquered
people (Bulgarians, Greeks, Armenians,
Albanians, Bosnians), given as a tribute. They
were raised in a spirit of sacrifice and dedication
to the sultan and to Mohammedan religion
(Bichman et al. 1992, 229). We can identify
another similar example in the 6th grade history
book from 1999. The Turkish army, a true war
machine, was made of riders (sipahis) and foot
soldiers (janissaries). Infantry soldiers were
recruited from among young people offered as
tribute of blood by the Christian states
conquered by the Ottoman Porte (Pippidi et al.
1999, 50).
The military dimension is the one which
indirectly outlines in the reader's mind the origin
environment of the otherness represented by the
Turks. Although the cultural or social
perspective on the Ottoman Empire is only
shortly presented, the exclusively military
presentation of Ottomans and the prevalent
presence of the abstract state of the Ottoman
Empire suggest a warlike society. As shown in
the educational texts, emphasizing the
importance of the organization and efficiency of
the Ottoman army, the centrality of the sultan's
personality, both indicating a militarized,
autocratic state, the expansion desire and
actions, together with the visual component,
usually presenting ritual scenes from the Sultan's
Court, fighting scenes and depictions of the
army contingents, all these talk to the student
about a warrior society strongly militarized and
rigorously hierarchized.

the Ottoman expansion, defined as the greatest

danger befalling on Christian Europe (Scurtu et
al. 2004, 90). A textbook from 1998 chooses to
explain the expansion and the Ottomans' warlike
nature only from a religious perspective, as a
consequence of their belonging to the Muslim
religion, saying that: Islamic religion divided
the world into two, the House of Islam or the
House of Peace, which included the Islamic
nations, and the House of War, or of infidels.
This latter included people with a religion other
than the Islamic one and had to be conquered by
the Ottomans. This explains the warlike
character of the Ottomans and their unceasing
battles against Christians (Vulpe et al. 1999,
53).
The term of crusade is explained in the
same context, being defined as an action for
banishing the Muslims from Europe (Vulpe et
al. 1999, 53), a term which will be abundantly
used in the context of a vastly approached topic,
i.e. the fight of the Romanian Principalities
against the Ottomans. Explaining the idea of
crusade also occasions the visual consolidation
of the Christianity-Islam (including the
Ottomans) antinomy, an example being the
painting of the destruction of the Holy Sepulcher
from Jerusalem by the Muslims.
The Fight of the Romanian Principalities
against the Ottomans during the 14th-18th
Centuries
The fight of the Romanian Principalities
against the Ottomans, for preserving their
independence and national unity, represents the
core of the historical narrative of the period
between the 14th and 18th centuries, becoming a
place of national memory, where the historical
personalities of the period and their battles
against the Turks are turned into core symbols of
the national consciousness, by force of the
attributes with which they are vested in the
history books. Therefore we can say that the
fight against the Ottomans is a central topic,
indispensable for the first and the second
generation of history books, appearing as a
defining element of the Romanian identity in the
medieval period.

Christianity versus Islam

Another approach of the beginning of
the Ottoman state is based on the religious
dimension, which automatically implies a
dichotomous perspective: Christianity versus
Islam. Starting with the chapter titles such as
Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire
(Bluoiu et al. 2008, 66), and of the related
lessons The Ottoman Empire. Christian
Europe and Islam, there is a message on the
opposition between the two parts of the
historical narrative by repeatedly suggesting the
religious antinomy between the Ottoman Empire
and Europe at the political level, overlapped by
the religious antinomy Islam/pagan and
Christianity. This idea is repeated throughout the
lessons, by subtitles such as Christian Europe
and Islam (Bluoiu et al. 2008, 70) or Christian
Europe and the Muslim World (Scurtu et al.
2004, 90). Within this dimension we notice the
overlapping and connection between Islam and

The 14th 16th Centuries

Within this topic, the Turk, in its two
hypostases, as a group Turks and as a state
the Ottoman Empire, is the image of the absolute
enemy, who, through his robbery and
conquering policy (Pascu et al. 1997, 95),
represents a serious threat to the independent
political essence of the Romanian Principalities
177

(Daicoviciu et al. 1994, 104). Such direct

statements are characteristic for the first
generation of post-communist textbooks, as the
alternative textbooks insist on explaining the
situation of the Romanian Principalities,
resulting from the international context of the
time, which clearly emphasizes the statute of the
Ottoman Empire as an ascending military power
and the problem of its territorial expansion as a
stringent issue within the international relations
of the Romanian Principalities.
The history of the Romanian
Principalities takes place, between the 14th and
the 15th centuries, in a complicated international
context. It is marked by the expansion of the
Ottoman Empire and by the sufferings suffered
from the Christian kingdoms Poland and
Hungary who were trying to subordinate the
Romanian Principalities and to expand their
control in the areas of the Lower Danube and in
the Balkan Peninsula (Dumitrescu et al. 2008,
103).
The
fact
that
the
Romanian
Principalities entered under Ottoman suzerainty
in the 14th century is explained around an
equation that is omnipresent in the postcommunist history books: unequal balance of
powers capitulations tribute suzerainty
autonomy (Crn et al. 2000, 37). Its first
component, the unequal balance of powers,
which particularly refers to the numerical
inferiority of the Romanians, has a justificative
role. The fact that Romanians obtained some
political and diplomatic victories against the
Ottomans, despite this inequality, fulfills a
compensating role for the self-image of the
Romanians, the preferred term in many second
generation textbooks being that of asymmetric
conflict (Dumitrescu et al. 1999, 42), taken over
from the works of the historian Florin
Constantiniu.
The conclusion of Capitulations, the
acceptance of the Ottoman suzerainty, the
payment of the tribute to the Porte and the
maintenance of internal autonomy instead is a
recurrent unit, where the signs of a form of
submission are counterbalanced by elements of
pride and national dignity the internal
autonomy.
Romanian Principalities kept their
sovereignty and state organization. But they
were forced to accept, under an undeniable
superiority of the Turks, the suzerainty of the
Ottoman Empire, materialized in the payment of
a tribute (haraci), which expressed only a
ransom for peace, and not another form of
dependence (Bluoiu et al. 2008, 71).

The fight against the Ottomans,

described as a continuous and constant effort
throughout the 14th-16th centuries, coagulates
around the personalities of the Romanian leaders
of the time, as the lessons related to this subject
of the anti-Ottoman resistance are actually a
broad and detailed presentation of the pantheon
of historical-heroic characters of the time:
Mircea cel Btrn, Alexandru cel Bun, Iancu de
Hunedoara, Vlad epe, tefan cel Mare and
culminating with Mihai Viteazul. The textbooks
use the individual image for enhancing the
politico-military actions undertaken by princes,
which may be considered an essential
characteristic concerning the approach and
structuring of the lessons treating the battles
with the Turks. Some examples are the battle of
Rovine of Mircea cel Btrn (1394), the battle of
Belgrade of Iancu de Hunedoara (1456), the
night attack from 1462 of Vlad epe, the battle
of Vaslui of tefan cel Mare (1475) (Manea et
al. 1997). In this context, a prince archetype is
outlined, a pattern-model, endowed with military
and moral qualities, a pole of the fight against
Ottomans. Through their acts of bravery and
perfect human personality they are endowed
with, in the text, princes intermingle with the
political and regional identity of the Romanian
Principalities and represent the dichotomic
element of referential operations, for the
delineation of the image of Turks/Ottoman
Empire. From the structural point of view, we
can identify some basic dimensions, each
coagulating around some ideas, expressions,
many of them being transformed, through and
excessive repetition, into identical forms, clichs
and stereotypes.
The human dimension. If self-image is
individualized by focusing on historical figures,
endowed with qualities such as patriotism, the
spirit of justice, bravery, perspicacity, diplomatic
and military skills, the image of Turks emerges
in contrast with the Romanian princes. At this
level, we identify the trend of personifying the
image of Turks through the standardized figures
of sultans, present both in texts, and especially at
the visual level and representing the archetype of
the conqueror and supreme autocrat. These
images are indeed placed in contrast with the
image of the Romanian princes, but, at the same
time, they visually consolidate the ideas of the
educational text such as the Ottoman state as a
militarist state, the Ottoman society as a
warrior society.
In the two hypostases mentioned above,
as a group and as a state, Turks are invested with
attributes such as the spirit of and the
178

preoccupations for conquest, invasion (Pascu et

al. 1997, 95), aggression (Daicoviciu et al.
1994, 105) or by integrating them in lexical
formulas introduced in the lesson texts, like
peoples threatened by the Turks (Pascu et al.
1997, 95), or a serious danger (Daicoviciu et
al. 1994, 105), thus outlining their exclusive and
unilateral image of the enemy. The second
generation of the textbooks prove to be more
balanced in dosing the attributes used in the
authors' texts, for Turks/the Ottoman Empire,
but, in their case, another characteristic is
identified. In theory, they use a practice that can
provide a multiple perspective on the studied
period. For example, in a 2004 manual, the
actual text of the lesson is completed by sources,
official documents of the time. Thus, within the
lesson on the reign of tefan cel Mare, for
exemplifying the support requested by the prince
to the Christian princes of Europe against the
Ottomans, authors quote the text of the tefan
cel Mare's letter to the Christian princes: (...)
and I tell you that the infidel king of Turks has
been for a long time and still is the loser of the
entire Christendom, and every day he is thinking
about how he could submit and destroy
Christendom. (...) Hearing and seeing all that,
we took our swords and with the help of our
Lord, God almighty, we went against the
enemies of Christendom... (Scurtu et al. 2004,
98). In order to avoid a decontextualization, we
must note that the textbook also presents the
Ottoman perspective, exemplified by a text of
the chronicler Kemal-Paa, on the battle of
Vaslui, who calls the army of tefan the army
of giaours with a wicked nature, which moved
off like a hurricane and like a strong wind
causing catastrophes (...) (Scurtu et al. 2004,
98). Indeed, we can see that these sources
communicate the conflicting relations between
the Ottoman Empire and the Romanian
Principalities, being an expression of the official
opinions and policies of the time. However, the
use of these textbooks as opinion makers has the
power to transform the political, ideological and
religious conflicts dominant during that
particular historical period into present, current
attitudes. This feature is also reinforced by the
absence from the historical picture of the
Ottoman period, of the economic, social,
cultural, administrative and even religious
perspective, on the relationships existing within
the provinces or vassal territories of the Ottoman
Empire (Mantran 2001). Neglecting these issues
and balancing the educational text on the factual,
conflicting component result into fixing the

student's final perception on the RomanianTurkish military antagonism.

The politico-military dimension is
combined with the religious one. We can notice
the dichotomous image of the Turks, resulting
both from the political-military antagonism, and
from ranging the Turks as pagans compared to
the Christian Romanians. The two types of
opposition derive to a large extent from the
collocation Gate of Christendom (Bluoiu et al.
2008, 72) assigned through the actions of the
princes of the Romanian Principalities, which
puts them on the undeniable position of defender
of the Occident, in contrast with the Ottoman
Empire, which is outlined as the danger which
threatens Christendom (Crn et al. 2000, 39).
Thus, the anti-Ottoman resistance gets an
European significance, by the fact that the
Romanian Principalities assumed the position of
an outpost of Christendom on the Danube
(Dumitrescu et al. 1999, 104), an idea constantly
repeated, and which is mainly revealing for
deciphering the meaning attributed to the leitmotif of the battles with the Turks (Boia 2000,
233), in relation to their own self-image, as it is
projected in the Romanian consciousness.
Thus, through Iancu de Hunedoara's
Victory from Belgrade, the penetration of the
Turks on the Danube to Central Europe was
delayed for a while (Crn et al. 2000, 39).
Mircea cel Btrn's victory from Rovine and
tefan cel Mare's victory had a European echo,
turning Romanians into the most important
factor of the fight against the Ottomans in these
regions (Bichman 1992, 235). All these, given
the fact that the historiography of this issue talks
about the advancement of the Ottoman armies,
on the Belgrade-Buda-Vienna line, and then to
Rome (Gemil 1991, 170), which implied the
eccentricity of the Romanian Principalities, in
relation to this axis (Boia 2000, 235-236).
Among the few counterexamples exposing, to
this extent, a balanced perspective connected to
the historical truth, there is a textbook for the
12th grade, published in 1999. While, as we
already said, most textbooks depict the
Romanian Principalities as a bastion for
defending Christendom, situated on the central
line of the Ottoman advancement into Christian
Europe, the textbook in question states that the
Romanian Principalities were not on the
strategic advancement direction towards Central
Europe which was Vienna but somewhere at
the edge of this direction (Dumitrescu et al.
1999, 32).
We should note one aspect in the
relationship between self-image and this
179

important chapter of our national history,

through its importance for Europeans and
universal history, i.e. battles against the Turks.
More precisely, the defeats in these battles
against the Ottomans are also due to the
ingratitude of the Occident, the abandon of the
allies or the refusal of Christian states to provide
the Romanian Principalities with military
support in difficult times. For example, in the
case of Mircea cel Btrn, the lack of a real
support in the fight against the Ottoman Empire,
both from Poland and Hungary, made him ...
accept to pay tribute to sultan Mehmet I (1415)
(Dumitrescu 2008, 41).
The numerical inferiority-superiority
antinomy is part of the same line of depiction,
pertaining to the military dimension of the
Turkish image. The acceptance of the Ottoman
suzerainty is, as we have already stated above, a
result of the unequal balance, of the disparity of
power between the two parties, the Romanian
Principalities and the Ottoman Empire (Bluoiu
et al. 2008, 72).

of Europe (Manea et al. 1997, 382) (Haniolu

2008, 79) widely spread in that era. The merit of
these textbooks is that of defining the Eastern
Question, coinciding with the Ottoman Empire
during this period, by providing the necessary
elements for a complete, comprehensive and
educational definition. For example, we clearly
chose one of the most relevant examples of a
balanced exposure of this issue:
The defeat of the Turks under the walls
of Vienna in 1683 and the peace of Karlowitz
(1699) marked the beginning of the decline of
the Ottoman Empire. The old content of the
Eastern Question (the danger represented by the
Ottoman expansion to Christian Europe) was
replaced with a new one (the difficulty of
maintaining the European political balance in the
context of the Ottoman decays and of the
Russian rise). The object of the fierce
competition in the 18th century between the
Habsburgs and the Romanovs was the
partitioning of the Europe's sick man's territories.
A series of wars troubled South-East Europe and
led to territorial losses for the Ottomans
(Crn et al. 2000, 50).

The Eastern Question

Although a decisive and important issue
in the development of the international relations
during the 18th century, the Eastern Question as
a context, at least in the first generation
textbooks of the post-communist period, plays
second fiddle. The emphasis is on the content
elements of this issue, on the deployment of this
period, without them being necessarily presented
as such: the Phanariot rules in the Romanian
Principalities, the Russian-Austrian-Ottoman
wars, the battles for national liberation of the
late 19th century, from South-Eastern Europe.
There is no clear contextualization in terms of
the international relations, the image of the
Ottoman Empire being outlined only in relation
to the particular developments mentioned. The
terms preferred for describing the situation of
the Ottoman state are those of internal crisis or
decline of the Ottoman Empire, marked by the
parallel affirmation of the two great empires, the
Habsburg and Russian Empires (Daicoviciu et
al. 1994, 153). The most complete explanation
which can be found in these textbooks is that of
a consequence of the military defeats suffered by
the Ottomans, complemented by the popular
riots and by the rebellions of some military units
(Manea et al. 1997, 382). In the case of the
second generation of textbooks, we can see a
change of approach. The Ottoman Empire is
predominantly presented in relation to the
emancipation tendencies of the Romanian
Principalities, using the phrase of the sick man

The Phanariot Century

The lessons on Phanariot rules usually
begin, especially in the first-generation
textbooks, with the anti-Ottoman actions of
princes Dimitrie Cantemir and Constantin
Brncoveanu, with the episode of this latter's
killing together with his sons by the Turks, and
the suppression by the Porte of local rulers as
punishment and, as a consequence, the
establishment of Phanariot rulers (Manea et al.
1997, 325).
The Phanariote epoch strengthens the
image of the Turks as an oppressor, rapacious
state, which survives by dispossessing others,
with an emphasize on such elements like the
suzerainty-vassalage relation between the Turks
and the Romanian Principalities, the tightening
of the Ottoman domination and pressure on
these latter, accompanied by the penetration of
the Greek elements. In the presentation of this
period, the image of the Turks is a
predominantly institutionalized one using the
appellative of Porte. Phanariot rules represent a
continuous aggravation of the Ottoman
domination over the Principalities... Obligations
to the Porte were bigger and bigger. Reign
confirmation taxes (the mucarer), occasional
gifts (peskes) and obligations in kind (wood,
sheep, grains) are added up to tributes,
especially in wartime. They were not clearly
established, a new request could have intervened
180

anytime from the Porte, and not paying it

attracted the loss of the throne and sometimes
even the loss of life (Vulpe et al. 1999, 80).
Taking the Romanian Principalities their
right to appoint local rulers (Murgescu 1999),
and granting this privilege to the Phanariots of
Greek origin, also leaded to a negative change of
focus on the ethnic group of Greeks. However,
the Turks remained the central enemies, the
main responsibles for the Phanariote epoch, one
of the most noxious periods of national history.
Autonomy was severely affected by the
sultan appointed rulers from among the Greeks
or Hellenized Christians from the Phanar in
Constantinople, reduced to the status of simple
servants of the Porte, any foreign policy
initiative for their own use was canceled, the
essential responsibilities of domestic institutions
were lost and the economic obligations to the
Turks were continuously increasing (Crn et
al. 2000, 51).
We may notice a significant difference
between the two generations of textbooks in the
evaluation of the influences of the Phanariot
century on civilization and mentalities.
Textbooks used immediately after 1990 admit an
orientalization phenomenon of the Romanian
society only at the level of the political class,
saying that the majority of the population
practiced a traditional lifestyle largely
unchanged (Manea et al. 1997, 387). On the
other hand, the second generation textbooks
provide a broad perspective on the
orientalization phenomenon, pointing out the
vertical influences on the Romanian society and
civilization, from architecture, clothing, culinary
arts to attitudes and behaviors, indicating at the
same time Romanians' effort to detach from this
model and to orient, especially from the
ideological and cultural point of view, towards
the Western European model (Barnea et al.
2005, 46). An example for the approach of the
Romanian attitudes and of their subsequent
reference to the Turks and the Orient, as a
whole, is the textbook of Alexandru Barnea,
published in 1999. He uses some important
works of the current historiography as Lucian
Boias Istorie i mit n contiina romneasc
(History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness)
(1997), which explains the blaming of the
neighboring peoples and cultures as a result of
the rupture with the East, decided by the elite of
the 19th century. Using the same work as a
source, the textbook concisely exemplifies the
perception on the Turks and on the Ottoman
domination in the Romanian society: Turks
have their share of guilt in the evolution of

Romanians: Salwars, some very large pants, as

we know, the enter with long and floating
sleeves, over which they put on another coat
with split sleeves or a giubea with large and
short sleeves, all these bear the mark of a life of
ease and idleness (Barnea et al. 2005, 47). The
multiple-perspective approach of the subject is
completed by the exercise section. Instead of the
absolute truth assertions, students are asked to
bring some pro and con arguments in support of
the examples offered by Lucian Boia in his book
(Barnea et al. 2005, 47).
The Fight for Liberation of the Peoples from
the Ottoman Empire - the Revolution of 1821,
the War of Independence
Throughout the 19th century, the antiOttoman fight coagulates around two moments
of national history: Tudor Vladimirescu's
uprising of 1821, culminating with the War of
Independence of 1877-1878.
The Revolution of 1821 led by Tudor
Vladimirescu is placed within the fight against
the Ottoman rule in the Eastern and SouthEastern parts of the continent (Cristescu et al.
1992, 7), where the fight is updated in the
context of the anti-Ottoman movements of the
local leaders against the center. If the firstgeneration textbooks insist on the fact that the
objectives of the revolution are directed in the
sense of the idea of national emancipation
(Cristescu et al. 1992, 14), the textbooks
published after 1999 note that beyond the antiOttoman project, the movement of 1821 was a
response of the Romanian society to the
problems it faced. It observed the changing
mentalities (homeland is the people and not the
tribe of robbers) and the need to restructure the
state outlined in a coherent program (the
Demands of the Romanian People). The state
must be based on people sovereignty and the
laws ordered without its consent had to be
cancelled. The ruler had to be chosen by the
country and the boyars' privileges had to be
abolished... (Crn et al. 2000, 58).
The War of Independence is presented
in the general context of the disintegration of the
multinational states and of the creation of
national states, on the background of the
assertion of nationalist ideology, in the second
half of the 19th century (Barnea et al. 2005, 60).
In the context of national history, authors insist
on the developments of the Eastern Question, i.e.
the anti-Ottoman movements in South-Eastern
Europe, Russia's involvement in this context, its
place in this political-diplomatic and military
equation, and the emancipation tendencies of the
181

Romanian
Principalities under
Ottoman
occupation (Vulpe et al. 1999, 98).
As an obvious turning point is the War
of Independence of 1877-1878. In this context,
the first generation textbooks insist on the idea
of fight against the Ottoman domination of the
conquered peoples. Both in these textbooks and
in the new generation ones, the military
confrontations of the war in which Romania
participated together with Russia represent the
focus of lessons, enhancing the militarized
image of Turks and decisively contributing in
the formation of an antagonistic perception of
the students. They insist on the military training
and on the persistence of the Ottoman resistance
in order to emphasize Romanians acts of
courage. The conquest of Grivia redoubt on the
front of Plevna is a symbol of Romanian
heroism and of the triumph of independence
against the Ottoman rule.
Regarding the image of the modern
Turkey in the post-communist history books,
we can agree to this effect with the analysis
made by Luminia Murgescu in her article on the
image of Turks in the 19th and 20th century
history books. She notes that the Ottoman
Empire enjoys a much wider attention in the
Romanian history books compared to the
modern Turkey. She explains this through the
Ottoman influence exerted on Romanian history,
for almost five centuries (Murgescu 1999, 284).
This pattern also expands in the case of history
books published after 1990, where Turkey, heir
of the Ottoman Empire, occupies a more limited
space, since it no longer plays such an important
and direct role regarding our national history.
We can identify some historical moments,
mentioned in most history books: Turkey's
participation in World War I, the rejection of the
Treaty of Svres strongly affecting the
sovereignty and territorial integrity of the
Turkey, the national movement led by Kemal
Atatrk (Barnea et al. 2005, 86), the imposition
of the Treaty of Lausanne, the creation of the
Republic of Turkey in 1923, along with its
participation together with Romania in the
Balkan Entente of 1930 (Oane et al. 2001, 63).

the historical, social and political explanation of

the practiced discourse vis--vis the Ottoman
past.
Thus, in the case of the Romanian
Principalities we notice their status as
autonomous states under Ottoman suzerainty,
over the 14th-19th centuries. We may say that, for
the presentation of this period in history books,
the antagonistic perspective is defining, being
based on two characteristic discourse
components: the ethnocentrism and blaming of
the other, i.e. of the Turks. Thus, with few
exceptions, the core coordinate of the historicaleducational narrative on the Ottoman period is
the relationship between us (the Romanians) and
the others (the Turks), a direction that can be
seen, for example, in the tendency to integrate
the Turks' presentation in the national history, in
a direct correlation with their own history. An
exception to this are the parts presenting the
origin and expansion of the Ottoman state, but
the emphasis on the factual perspective and
depersonalization, counterbalanced by the
militarized portrait of the Turks prepares their
subsequent transition to another hypostasis. That
is the hypostasis of the perpetual enemy in
which Turks/Ottomans are reflected within the
lessons dedicated to the Ottoman period of the
Romanian Principalities.
In conclusion, one of the essential
characteristics of the Romanian history books
derives from the relations with the Empire, more
precisely, the separation from the Ottoman
Empire. Thus, we can see a tendency of denying
their appurtenance, by overbidding the special
autonomous statute of the
Romanian
Principalities within the Ottoman Empire. Also,
in this regard, we note the antagonistic
placement in their relation to the Turks and the
non-recognition of the Ottoman heritage, of
cultural and social elements that could be points
of congruence between the current Romanian
society, the Ottoman culture and other Balkan
communities.
References
a. Books
Boia, Lucian, Istorie i mit n
Boia 2000
contiina romneasc [History
and
Myth
in
Romanian
Conciousness],
Bucureti,
Humanitas, 2000.
Gemil, Tasin, Romnii i otomanii
Gemil
n secolele XIV-XVI [Romanians
1991
and Ottomans in the 14th-16th
Centuries] Bucureti, Editura

Conclusions
In order to draw out a conclusive
comparative analysis of the image of Turks in
Romanian post-communist history books, we
consider it is imperative to adopt an approach
using the perspective of the political and legal
status of the Romanian Principalities during the
Ottoman administration. Only such an approach
can reveal any interrogations in this regard, and
182

Haniolu
2008

Mantran
2001

Murgescu
1999

Academiei Romne, 1991.

Haniolu, M. kr, A Brief
History of the late Ottoman
Empire, Princeton and Oxford,
Priceton University Press, 2008.
Mantran,
Robert,
Istoria
Imperiului Otoman [The History
of
the
Ottoman
Empire],
Bucureti, Bic All, 2001.
Murgescu, Mirela Luminia, The
Turk in Romanian History Text
Books (19th-20th Centuries). In
Nedret Kuran Buolu, The
Image of the Turk in Europe from
the Declaration of the Republic in
1923 to the 1990's, Istanbul, The
Isis Press, (1999) p. 273-285.

et al. 1994

Dumitrescu
et al. 2008

Dumitrescu
et al. 1999

b. Textbooks
Valentin,
Vlad
Bluoiu et Bluoiu,
Constantin,
Istorie.
Manual
al. 2008
pentru clasa a VI-a [History.
Textbook for the 6th Grade],
Bucureti, All, 2008.
Barnea, Alexandru, Manea Vasile
Barnea et
Aurel, Palade Eugen, Stamatescu
al. 2005
Eugen, Teodorescu Bogdan,
Istorie. Manual pentru clasa a Xa [History. Textbook for the 10th
Grade], Bucureti, Corint, 2005.
Bichman et Bichman, Eliza, Neagu Vasilica,
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184

Georgian musical art in the context of European and nonEuropean musical culture
(The Case of Globalization in Georgia)
Mariam CHINCHARAULI
PhD Student, Institute of Cultural Studies
Iv. Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, Georgia
E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract. The present paper focuses on the ongoing transformation of Georgian musical art under
the influence of globalization. In particular, it examines both popular music and folk music in the cultural
context of both traditional and innovative music.
Musical culture, as it is dealt with in this paper, consists of folk, classical, and modern music.
Modern music depends on a connection with past musical cultures, as it builds on the foundation of the
musical traditions that preceded it. The 21st century is characterized by new tendencies and styles, and the
field of music is no exception. Modern musical culture represents a mixture of different tendencies,
thoughts and worldviews, and globalization is a key factor in their development and dissemination. In
modern times, this topic is very significant. Researchers take contradictory stances as a result of different
perceptions of and attitudes towards the process of globalization.
In contemporary culture, one very important issue is determining and defining the influence of
globalization on the cultural sphere. Is this influence destructive for national identity and values? How
does globalization influence modern musical culture? From this angle, this report will analyze the
synthesis of traditional Georgian folklore and different musical trends in jazz, rock, and pop music.
The analysis of globalization in 20st century musical culture requires complex consideration.
This will be conveyed by the study of modern musical tendencies and their structural analysis. From this
perspective, Georgian traditional culture, which is undergoing certain changes in the post-modern epoch,
seems to be very interesting. We consider combinations of folk and jazz elements and entirely new folk
jazz bands to be representative for this change. We would also like to mention that the aesthetics of
Georgian folk jazz is built upon the search for enrichment of the musical-technical side through the
combination of folk, jazz, and the so-called world music.
Georgian popular music is abreast with the current musical tendencies in Western pop culture. It
is important to note that there can be found in popular music the transformation of folk music, which is
used in its entirety and in the form of citations, giving a specific musical touch to the composition.
Keywords: culture, globalization, musical art, 21st century, world music
most urgent nowadays. The positions of
researchers are contradictory, a fact which is
caused by their non-uniform apprehension of the
globalization process.
Some researchers consider that the
globalization process is the main reason for
losing national culture and peculiarities, the
result of which being a global cosmopolitan
culture, where everything national is lost (Smith
2008, 198). Other researchers think that the
process of globalization is unable to change
national features of culture and its diversity as
globalization aims at making different cultures
grow familiar among themselves. There also is
one more view, according to which the currently
ongoing processes serve to merging national
cultures and the formation of a new multi-

Musical culture is a multiform

phenomenon, which embraces music of all styles
and trends. Modern music cannot be imagined
without cultural memory, because cultural
memory is a link connecting modern and past
musical cultures, whereas modern music is being
formed and developed on the basis of the past
and by taking the past into consideration. For us,
the 21st century is the period of searches, artistic
tendencies, the artistic decade of the
generalization of style. Modern musical culture
is a synthesis of various trends, thoughts,
outlooks of the world, in the development and
spreading of which the process of globalization
plays an important role. Globalization is a
phenomenon, characteristic to all the spheres of
present-day epoch. Discussion of this issue is
185

national global cultural network (Gills 2006,

20). Thus, it becomes apparent that, as a result
of globalization, national cultures experience
serious changes. It is interesting to see how these
changes look like and how they are reflected in
different cultures? The works of G. Holton, S.
Huntington, B. Barber, U. Beck, and others are
dedicated to this very issue. In the opinion of the
British sociologist A. Smith, global culture
involves three peculiar features, namely:
university, technical capacity and existence
without time (Smith 1995, 20).
Within modern culture, it is of great
importance to make clear the impact of
globalization and how it is actually felt in the
sphere of culture, whether its influence is a
destructive force for national cultural
peculiarities and values and how globalization is
perceived in modern musical culture.
One of the most important issues for
modern musical culture is the 20th - century
musical-intonational thought, which changes in
compliance with the new cultural prevalent
features, caused by the strengthening of multinational relationships in the 20th - century music
(East and West and so on), in the past and
present dialogue among different musical
systems, through the inter-relation of various
cultures and their assimilation, by the synthesis
of different trends, styles, and genres. From this
viewpoint, musical culture is of great interest.
Georgian musical culture has absorbed elements
of different musical cultures and has not lost its
national
peculiarities.
Because
of
its
geographical location, Georgia is placed on the
border between East and West. Consequently,
along the centuries it has been the economic and
cultural hub of Transcaucasia, which involved
the spreading and existence of elements of two
cardinally different cultures (Kavtaradze 2003,
508). In the meantime, representatives of other
nations have also been living on the territory of
Georgia: Armenians, Azers, Abkhazians, Jews,
Kurds, Kists, Ossetians, and Russians, all of
whom possessing their own sub-cultures.
Proceeding from this, it can be said that Georgia
is a multi-cultural country, which is different
from others due of its ethnic multiplicity and
diversity. It should be mentioned, however, that
it has not lost its traditional national
peculiarities, a fact proved by Georgian musical
folklore. From this viewpoint, modern Georgian
ethno music is very interesting, being a synthesis
of both traditional and popular music.
It should be also mentioned that the
yearly festival Art-Gene plays an important
role in the development of modern Georgian

ethno music. Ethno musicians from different

countries participate in the festival. Parallel to
traditional music, this festival includes concerts
of popular music as well.
Among modern Georgian ethno musical
bands we can distinguish: Zumba da
Chveneburebi (Zumba and our people), 33a,
which are the most popular within the Georgian
musical space. Both bands are characterized by
creative individuality and unite the elements of
Georgian folklore tradition, rock, and reggae
elements. They use traditional folk instruments
and also guitar, bass-guitar, wind, and
percussion instruments.
The band Shin enjoys a special place
among Georgian ethno musical bands, and deals
with elements of jazz, folklore, oriental, and
western cultures. The word Shin means in
Georgian the way home. For many musicians,
the way signifies the return to the beginnings,
national culture, and the age-old traditions. The
band members are: Zaza Miminoshvili (guitar,
panduri, vocal), Zurab Gagnidze (electronic and
acoustic bass, vocal), Mamuka Gaganidze
(percussion, vocal). The Shin musicians
amalgamate Georgian folklore and jazz,
elements of Flamenco, ancient oriental, and
modern European music. It is difficult to define
in one single word that musical trend, in which
this band falls-fusion? Folk jazz? World music?
New age? The Shin musicians themselves call
it Iberian-Caucasian style.
The band Shin was founded in 1998 by
emigrant musicians working in Germany. It
should be mentioned that the group Shin is not
the first attempt in the process of searching for
national music and modern forms. In 1990, the
same musicians founded the group Adio,
which was quite an interesting experiment in
Georgian musical space. It was a synthesis of
Georgian national and modern music, and a
search for novelty. It can be said that the band
Adio was the first band of the ethno jazz trend
in the Georgian musical space.
Ethno jazz is one of the several
directions in jazz, which is apprehended as being
the quintessence of world musical traditions. It
has got its own definite socio-cultural context
and aesthetics, based on national-cultural music
of different peoples worldwide, formed in the
course of centuries. A synthesis of tradition and
modern, old and new, ethno jazz witnesses the
existence of two simultaneous origins: one the
one hand, a conservative origin, directed
towards the past and enforcing the hereditary
relationship with it, and on the other hand, a
creative origin, oriented towards the future
186

(Kamien 1992, 583). Ethno jazz is generating

new values on the basis of the cultural-historical
experience of the previous generation. It should
be mentioned that by basing ethnos on
traditional folklore, ethno jazz is open to the
cultures of the peoples; a dialogue is gaining
ground among their values and traditions. On the
other hand, this process is promoting the
exposure of national self-identification. The
national component of ethno jazz is being
revealed, due to the fact that it is based on
folklore. Dialectical mutual influence of
traditional and innovative elements in ethno jazz
is representative for national culture in the world
music space.
Jazz-fusion is a musical style which
combines the elements of jazz, pop, rock,
reggae, funk, hip-hop, electronic, and ethnic
music. Its origin is connected with the 1990s,
when jazz musicians began to mix different
forms and improvisational technique with
electronic instruments, blues, and soul rhythms.
The music of fusion is mostly instrumental. It is
characterized by complex rhythm and
compositions of long improvising type. As to
world jazz, it is essentially synonymous to folk
jazz.
As we have already mentioned, the
activities of the band Shin are most varied. The
use of traditional folklore holds a foremost
place, namely, folk song and instruments.
Polyphony is the main attribute of Georgian folk
song. It is characterized by free musical play,
improvisation, variations, and a live creative
process. Proceeding from this, we can say that
the principles resembling formation of musical
structures are characteristic to Georgian folklore
and jazz (Tsurtsumia 2008, 626). It is the
unfixed-live process of improvisational and
compositional principles of development that are
particularly merged. Just this specificity has
become the basis of the so-called Georgian jazz
original style. In the creative activity of the band
Shin, Georgian musical folklore participates as
the means for the self-expression of individual
artistic will. It is this very case, when as a result
of creative mastering of the folk tradition a new
artistic-aesthetic value is being born. Thus,
Georgian musical folklore, just like the folklore
of other nations, has revealed an ability of
creation in different systems of modern artistic
thinking, in result of which it directly takes part
in and exerts an influence on modern musical
practice. First of all, the concerts of Shin are of
great scenic interest, where vocal polyphony is
merged with different instruments and
choreography. Their musical style is based on

the mutual shift of melodious voices,

parallelism, and polyphonic conformity. In vocal
polyphony, scat is used a specific means of
jazz vocal improvisation in the course of
which voice is used for imitating a musical
instrument, and where the word does not have
any sensible meaning (Berliner 1994, 67). It is a
musical dialogue of the question-answer type
among musicians. The instrumental music of the
band Shin is a dialogue among cultures, which
involves elements of Spanish flamenco and
represents
the
merging
of
musical
accompaniment, song, and dance, masterly solo
guitar parts, and the strengthening of the
rhythmic origins by means of applause. From
the viewpoint of musical language, the sounds
of modern and old folk instruments are
organically merged with one another. The music
of Shin forms unusually harmonious melodic
lines, combinations of archaic and contemporary
music, expressed in the dialogue of the ancient
and new, oriental and western cultures.
It is important that members of Shin
do not limit themselves only to concerts. They
also compose music for films, theatres,
cooperate with famous musicians and
composers, such as: Gia Khancheli, Randy
Bracker, Chaka Khan, Okay Temiz, Giora
Feidman, Shankar Lal, Theodossii Spassov,
Jorge Pardo, and others. In recent years, Shin
has implemented many interesting projects. In
2006 Shin had a successful appearance in the
most important forum of world music, the
Womex in Sevilla. Then, concerts followed in
many countries, winning the German
competition of world music. One of their
albums, Es ari, was recorded by the Georgian
band together with a few Latvian musicians.
This album was nominated as the best album in
Latvia. In Stuttgart, Shin has formed a new
unique band, The Open World project, in
which musicians of Argentina, Algeria,
Germany, and Georgia are taking part. It may be
said that the present project represents one of the
best samples of musical cosmopolitism.
From the viewpoint of the problem
discussed in the present paper, an interesting
experiment is the Assa party project of the
Georgian national ballet Sukhishvilebi, in
which with new compositions are created by
making use of traditional musical elements. It is
important that the formation of a new musical
discourse is followed by innovations in
choreography, costumes, scenic movements, and
the use of elements from different national
dances.

187

Consequently, based on the case of

Georgia, it can be said that in the process of
evolution and dynamics of the 20th century
musical culture a new cultural pyramid has
been created, brought about by the context of
globalization, which points to its transition to a
new stage, which will be cardinally renewed and
is apprehended as being different from the
previous epoch.
As for the influence of globalization
processes on culture, it is difficult to evaluate it
from one viewpoint positive or negative
because it contains both positive and negative
elements.
In addition, globalization is the means to
develop and establish the nations place in the
world, it is especially important for small
nations and their cultures (Erlmann 1998, 14).
This consideration is, however, quite debatable,
as the threat of assimilation of cultures of small
nations exists. Thus, it is expedient for us to
discuss the attitude of different cultures with
respect to globalization, which will facilitate us
to better analyze the nature of this process, as
what is acceptable for one, may be unacceptable
for another. The influence of globalization on
culture is positively apprehended when, as a
result of the approaching and merging of
separate cultures, it is their mutual enrichment
that takes place, national values not being lost,
whereas another culture experiences innovation
and is enriched with elements of other national
cultures.

Grossberg
1997

Green
2011
Kamien
1992
Kohnen
1984
Smith
1995
Smith
1991
Turner
1988

William, R., Globalization and

Global History, London and
New York.
Grossberg, L., Dancing in
Spite of Myself: Essays on
Popular
Culture,
Duke
University Press.
Green, L., Learning, Teaching,
and Musical Identity, Indiana
University Press.
Kamien,
R.,
Music
in
Appreciaton, 5th edition, New
York.
Kohnen, W., Birth of jazz, Sov.
composer.
Smith, A. D., Nations and
Nationalism in a Global Era,
Oxford.
Smith, A. D., National identity,
University of Nevada Press.
Turner, V., The Anthropology
of Performance, New York,
PAJ Publications.

b. Papers in periodical journals:

Brennan, T., World Music
Brennan
Does Not Exist. In: Discourse,
2001
Vol. 23/1, p. 44-62.
Cornell, John, Gibson, Cris,
Cornell
World
music:
2004
deterritorializing place and
identity. In: Progress in
Human Geography, Vol. 28/3,
p. 342-361.
Erlmann, V., How Beautiful is
Erlmann
Small? Music, Globalization
1998
and the Aesthetics of the
Local. In: Yearbook for
Traditional Music, Vol. 30, p.
12-21.
Feld, S., A Sweet Lullaby for
Feld 2000
World Music. In: Public
Culture, Vol. 12/1, p.145-171.

References
a. Books:
Albright, D., Modernism and
Albright
Music: An Anthology of
2004
Sources, Chicago, University
of Chicago Press.
Berliner, P., Thinking in Jazz:
Berliner
The
Infinite
Art
of
1994
Improvisation,
Chicago,
University of Chicago Press.
Gills, Berry, Thompson, K.,
Gills 2006

c. Chapters in books:
Gillroy, P., Diaspora,
Gillroy
utopia and the critique of
1991
capitalism.
In:
Paul
Gilroy, There Aint no
Black in the Union Jack:
The Cultural Politics of
Race
and
Nation,
University Of Chicago

Inda 2002

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William, R., Globalization and

Inda, Jonathan Xavier,
Rosaldo,
Renato,
Introduction: A World in
Motion. In: Jonathan
Xavier Inda & Renato
Rosaldo
(eds.),
The
Anthropology
of

Kavtaradze
2003

Tsurtsumia
2008

Globalization. A Reader.
Malden

Oxford,
Blackwell Publishers, p. 134.
Kavtaradze,
M.,
Transformation
of
traditional
musical
cultures
within
typologically
foreign
cultures. In: Proceedings
of the First International
Symposium on Traditional
Polyphony, Tbilisi, Tbilisi
State Conservatoire, p.
508-520 (in Georgian and
English).
Tsurtsumia, R., Georgian
polyphony in modern
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In: Proceedings of the
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623-629 (in Georgian and
English).

189

The Dialogue between the Contemporary Writer and the Bible

Maria-Nicoleta CIOCIAN
University Assistant PhD, Babe-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Faculty of Psychology and Education Science
E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract: The present study analyzes the dialogue between the contemporary writer and the
Scripture. We refer to the analysis of biblical quotations that exist in a text written by a contemporary
Romanian writer Livius Ciocrlie. It is about the text Cu faa la perete [Facing the Wall]; more
specifically, the latest quotations from the first part of the text and the second part of the text under
discussion.
The quotations are from Ecclesiastes, Book of Ephesians and the Old Testament. The envisaged
aspects (recognition, grumbling, interpretation, searching, curiosity and the upside down reading) reveal
an ingenuous and competent reader, also honest, serious and with theological knowledge. The dialogue
with Bernardo Soares retains many types of interpretation. The confession of the author and the selected
quotations reveal modesty, the personalization of the religious sentiment, the desire to renew the
intertextual sources, the troubles of unfaithfulness and also the indirect exhortation to read the Holy
Scripture.
Keywords: intertextuality, biblical quote, dialogue, Bible-literature dialogue
The Bible is a reservoir of inspiration for
the current literature. Parables, proverbs or
biblical narratives impregnate the literature and
are often a prolific source of inspiration. The
effort of the current literature to explain the
Sacred Text is materialized in an attempt to find
out the meaning of a world in a continuous
change.
The present study represents an attempt
to analyze the dialogue between the
contemporary writer and the Scripture. We will
refer to the analysis of the biblical quotations
that exist in a text written by a contemporary
Romanian writer Livius Ciocrlie. It is about
the text Cu faa la perete [Facing the Wall];
more specifically, the latest quotations from the
first part of the text and the second part of the
text under discussion, because the quotations of
the first part of this text were the subject of
another article (The Bible Source of
Postmodern Literature. Scriptural Quotation in
Contemporary Literature), published in
Brukenthalia Romanian Cultural History
Review. Supplement of Brukenthal. Acta Musei,
no. 3, 2013, p. 180-191.
The second part of the text Cu faa la
perete [Facing the Wall] transcribes the biblical
quote seen through the eyes of Bernardo Soares.
The dialogue of the contemporary writer with
the sacred text leads to several conclusions that
capture a valorisation of the Bible by the
contemporary. We consider from the beginning
that Livius Ciocrlie's text reader is an informed

one, a reader who is able to establish the

intertextual relationship between the two types
of so different texts.
We shall deal with the modes of being
of the Sacred Text itself into the text that quotes,
but we shall deal also with the functions that the
biblical quote has in a diaristic text, highlighting
the advantages of the inclusion of such a
hypotext in a literary text.
Northrop Fry entitled one of his books
dedicated to the literary study of the Bible The
Great Code. The Bible and Literature, revealing
the archetypal and paradigmatic discourse of the
Bible as the fundamental codex for the
imaginary of Western cultural tradition, revealed
as an enigma at the heart of our cultural
heritage, and like the great Boyg or the sphinx
from Peer Gynt (Fry 1999, 22). The starting
premise of the Canadian literary critic confirms
that within the territory of literature, the biblical
passages are becoming models codices that
preserves the basic configurations of the sacred.
The presence of the biblical quotations
in the contemporary literature shows sensitivity
and a constant desire to relate to the divinity.
The sacred text is and will remain alive and
challenging for the writers of all times. The
coherent way in which the Bible renders the
eternal themes and expresses the feeling of
possessing an origin justifies the writers to have
such a prolific dialogue with the Grand Text of
mankind.
190

The Last biblical quotes of the first part

of his book are from Apostle Paul and
Ecclesiastes:

the Lord's work in and through Him

(Moldoveanu 2001, 328), thing that didnt make
him happy, but because to those posing as
<<apostles> > and which overturned the way of
the Lord and his gospel (Moldoveanu 2001,
328) and in face of this danger, Paul used the
praise that considers it foolishness.
We dont want to load the memory of
the readers with too many contextual details of
exegetes in order to explain scientifically some
misunderstandings. The writers annotations
are here in point of the Biblical Interpretation
St. Paul was like his Saviour: unchanged. How
he firstly comes to the Corinthians, like it was
the second time and so a third time. He is
unyielding against the way of the Gospel. He
doesnt leave anything unfulfilled, both in his
life and in the lives of the brothers
(Moldoveanu 2001, 339).
The biblical intertext continues with
verses from the Epistle to the Galatians of the
Apostle Paul (Chapter 2: 20) and with the
Epistle to the Ephesians of the Apostle Paul
(Chapter 3: 13):

The Holy Apostle Paul:

<<For the weapons of our
warfare are not carnal but
mighty in God for pulling down
strongholds,
casting
down
arguments and every high thing
that exalts itself against the
knowledge of God, bringing
every thought into captivity to
the obedience of Christ, and
being ready to punish all
disobedience
when
your
obedience
is
fulfilled>>.
Impressive! Lenin would have
talked in the same way. Oh, yes,
but here it is about the faith. But
Lenin did not believe? No
wonder that the say <<new man
>> of Paul started (Ciocrlie
2010 a., 162).
Chapter 10: 5 speaks about the struggle
of Satan against the man for the deviation from
the true knowledge of God. The interpretation of
Livius Ciocrlie is, through the mention of
Lenin, one inside out, and by mentioning of the
faith, one in the spirit of the Gospel.

The Apostle Paul: <<I

have been crucified with Christ;
it is no longer I who live, but
Christ lives in me; and the life
which I now live in the flesh I
live by faith in the Son of God,
who loved me and gave Himself
for me>> (Ciocrlie 2010, 164165).

It follows the chapter 12: 11 and Chapter

13: 2 of the same epistle:
The Holy Apostle Paul:
<<I have become a fool in
boasting;
[b]
you
have
compelled me. For I ought to
have been commended by you;
for in nothing was I behind the
most eminent apostles, though I
am nothing>>. So ingenuity you
cannot sympathize. But he also
said: << I have told you before,
and foretell as if I were present
the second time, and now being
absent I write [b] to those who
have sinned before, and to all
the rest, that if I come again I
will not spare>>. He spared not
even up to being a Christian. He
changes only the master. The
sympathy was running out
(Ciocrlie 2010 a, 164).

The Apostle Paul: <<

Therefore I ask that you do not
lose heart at my tribulations for
you, which is your glory>>
(Ciocrlie 2010, 167).
And again, the Epistle to the Ephesians (Chapter
5: 25 and 5: 33):
In the Bible is a lot of
truth about man, I have said.
There are also omissions. Paul:
<<Husbands,
love
your
wives>>. Love and duty are not
even opposites. They have
nothing in common. However,
the chapter ends en fanfare: <<
and let the wife see that she
respects her husband >>.
Thanks! (Ciocrlie 2010, 168).

The exegetes of the Holy Scripture

counted as madness that Paul was to boast of

Here, the interpretation of Livius

Ciocrlie wants to be the one that would detect
191

the so-called scriptural inadvertencies, but at a

careful study of the text or of the comments on
the text, we find out that Livius Ciocrlie makes
only a surface reading, adding the final ironic
remark. The omissions of the sacred text are
considered by Valeriu Anania as challenging
the uncomfortable reactions in modern social
mentality, and that, for the reason that it is not
understood and applied within the analogy of
Christ-Church, namely love-submission(1).
It seems that the interpretation made by
Livius Ciocrlie is not very far from the
scriptural in point, but it seems to ignore the
latest interpretations. The complexity of the
forms that may take the biblical intertext and its
annotations on the text by Livius Ciocrlie is
demonstrated once again; the literature is not
stopping to move beyond in the science of the
literature. The temporal distance seems to be
cancelled; the rereading of the sacred text
always actual, the biblical intertext creates a
distinct image in the current literature.
The recognition of the scriptural
quotation is easier in the following pages where
the author confesses exactly on the source from
where he has quoted.

human reality, which he subjected to a relentless

critical examination and which did not discovers
him but one certitude: << the vanity of vanities,
all is vanity >> (Bible 2001, 848).
It continues with the same book of the
Old Testament:

We read the Ecclesiastes with

the feeling that I should not comment
and I am, however, unable to murmur.
For example, I would say at most <<
What remains of all human labor >> and
not << What remains to man of all his
labor ... >> (Ciocrlie 2010, 194).

The author reads the Bible upside-down,

interpreting and searching for a legitimate
response to satisfy the curiosity of a reader
ingenuous and competent at the same time.
Another attempt of penetration of the Christic
mystery is transcribed below:

Is the Old Testament the

religion of authoritarian and
vindictive Father and the New
Testament,
the Jesus loving
religion? Yes and no. In N.T. we are
taught to hate our life and in the Old
Testament the Ecclesiastes says>:
<< Behold, what I have seen to be
good and fitting is to eat and drink
and find enjoyment in all the toil
with which one toils under the sun
the few days of his life that God has
given him, for this is his
lot. Everyone also to whom God has
given wealth and possessions and
power to enjoy them, and to accept
his lot and rejoice in his toilthis is
the gift of God>> (Ciocrlie 2010,
195-196).

<<There is a vanity that

takes place on earth, that there
are righteous people to whom it
happens according to the deeds
of the wicked, and there are
wicked people to whom it
happens according to the deeds
of the righteous. I said that this
also is vanity>>. This is true, but
then why even talk about God?
The answer seems to be: for
human being, everything looks
vanity because man does not
understand God. <<Then I saw
all the work of God, that man
cannot find out the work that is
done under the sun. However
much man may toil in seeking,
he will not find it out. Even
though a wise man claims to
know, he cannot find it out>>. If
this is true, the whole speech so
powerful about vanity has
softened. It's not vanity, only it

The murmurings on the edge of the

sacred text prove the impossibility to keep and
the accurate reading of the verse is not far from
the interpretations of the experts in the domain:
even a controversial move by the Jewish circles,
the book of Ecclesiastes was later adopted by
Christianity because it is crossed from one end
to another by the gray thoughts of a man who
finds that his whole faith in a God of justice and
harmony is contradicted by the immediate
(1) The Holy Bible: Letter of Saint Paul to the
Ephessians.
The same exegete, Valeriu Anania, believes that
anything above (v. 21) it talks about his fear
<<(against) Christ>>; the one who loves we
answehim not only loving, but also with awe, as of
one that inspires and deserve. Some Protestant
translators offer this concessive phrase: <<respect the
man>>, which, however, is far from the real
meaning, because the respect for one is a cold, aloof,
disengaged, feeling lacking the necessary affection in
a marriage - Biblia sau Sfnta Scriptur [Bible or
Holy Scripture], Bucureti, BOR Institute, 2001.

192

seems to me, because I do not

understand. There's nothing so
powerful, only that perhaps it
would be accessible to me, <<I
think, because it is absurd>>.
No, I need to repeat to satiety:
<<So the Lord wants, and I
cannot understand>>. Faster, I
would say that the Lord is
surpassed by his own creation.
He created the life, and life is so
that, often, the righteous are
rewarded as the wicked - and
vice versa. If it would not
happen, the life, it would soften
(Ciocrlie 2010, 195).

dialogue with the Holy Scripture. Another aspect

of the biblical quotation from Cu faa la perete
[Facing the Wall], consists in the reading of the
sacred text through the eyes of Bernardo Soares:
If I were intellectual, I would
know which the connection between the
Old and the New Testament is. B. S. The
gospel
recommends
loving
our
neighbor: no talks about love for man or
mankind, to which anyone would be
really interested. It would be saw the
original. To recommend in this context,
it's funny. Or, are there the Gospels
more realistic than I thought? It's more a
trickery of B. S. Isaiah speaks of the
hungry, the poor, the naked which we
are not close. To recommend, it does the
City Hall: Do not go out in the street for
a while. She has: to sweep the snow
from the front of the house. Like the
man or humanity << not bother us>>
(Ciocrlie 2010 a., 214).

Further on, it requires a review of the

biblical moments that the author referred to by
the end of the journal: after returning (2) to the
Old Testament - Isaiah 47: 3 and Isaiah 50: 6,
Isaiah 53: 4, 5, 9, Isaiah 54: 15,12, 5, 8, Livius
Lark says: I do not read the Old Testament as a
holy book, Im reading it like a great novel.
(Ciocrlie 2010a, 211). Is the confession the
sample for honesty? At a first reading yes, but
the rereadings remove from the surface of the
text only an apparent honesty. The Book of
Books is reading like a novel just in some parts,
many passages denoting the serious and detailed
theological knowledge.
Biblical quotes that follow this
confession: Isaiah 65: 12, 20 (3), then the
question, What am I going through right now?
At Solomon's book. To find out what's wisdom
(4). The literary Reading from the Book of
Wisdom (Chapter 2: 24 Chapter 3: 8, 10,
Chapter 10: 17 Chapter 13: 1, 9) ends the

The essential moments in the reading the

Old and New Testament are cited and analyzed
so they would to fit into a kind of summary
approach: the parable of the lost sheep, the
episode of the Last Supper, the miracle of the
multiplication of the loaves, the trial of the Jesus
the Jewish-phase, etc. In this dialogue with the
sacred text, the reply of the author in his
dialogue with Bernardo Soares seems essential:
B. S.: ..... not even know if God exists!
Not that the problem of God's existence
seems important. The important thing is
to be able to believe in Him (Ciocrlie
2010 a., 130).

(2) In the chapter Oracle for the fall of Babylon is

told of a virgin:<<Your nakedness shall be uncovered
and your disgrace shall be seen. I will take
vengeance, and I will spare no one>>. The avenger
can be only one. Why urging her to undress? In order
to be able to take revenge? God is blamed for many
things wicked! Livius Ciocrlie, quoted work, p.
205.
(3) <<I will destine you to the sword, and all of you
shall bow down to the slaughter, because, when I
called, you did not answer>>. God speaks as a feudal.
And make promises too affected: << No more shall
there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an
old man who does not fill out his days>>. At the end
they get, but how? Ibidem, p. 217.
(4) I read the first chapter. Only threats. God slip into
any nook. In the hidden thoughts. They bring out and
of course, punished. I'm a little tired. But Solomon
says something impressive about unbelievers
Livius Ciocrlie, quoted work, p. 219.

It is, I think, the justification of the presence of

the biblical passages in his diaristic text and the
origin of the existence of many types of
questions (on the front or inside out) of the
various Bible verses. The problem of faith
becomes the healthy patience paradigm: it
means to remain into the race >> << beyond the
ubiquity of all the stumbling blocks. (Pleu
2012, 95).
After another confession not faithful,
but living under the weight of the original sin
(Ciocrlie 2010 a., 135) a request is
forthcoming a few pages later: I ask who is
reading me, if he reads me, he should not learn
anything from me. (Ciocrlie 2010 a, 197).
After going through several important moments
of the Scripture, the author seems to have
193

exhausted the sense of the circuit of the

biblical intertext, but not of it only, and
exclaims:

fact, of all the books written by Livius Ciocrlie)

regarding the religious feeling:
I missed God since I had a
child. Apart from the stories about
Jesus, at primary school, the week of
Easter when we went to Eselnita and the
trees were lit in the churchyard, with
silence, near the water, the sun was out
over the hill, and maybe, after we
identify the gifts under the tree, in the
evenings of the Christmas Eve, when
Heilige Nacht is playing at the radio, I
do not had emotional contact with
religion(Ciocrlie 1988, 15).

Suddenly Im saying ready! I

do not want the New Testament
anymore,
no
more
Romanian
modernism, I do not want Bernardo
Soares. Maybe on another day, who
knows when. (Ciocrlie 2010 a, 173).
Comparing the quoted text with the text
which quotes, we find no deviation from the
source (the cut is regular in terms of group ),
fact that denote a thorough search of the sacred
text, any text cutting out and moving to another
one, firstly says something about the who cites.
In the text by Livius Ciocrlie, the biblical text
is inserted, without any processing or styling.
The quote is accompanied often by a comment
that develops around him.
A legitimate question is born: why were
there chosen biblical passages and not another
type of quotations? The fact of choosing a
particular text is a matter of taste and becomes
thus a good opportunity for self-definition. The
inserting of the scriptural passages in a diaristic
text also means the inclusion of the literature
into a universal system. So frequent biblical
quotations in the text of Livius Lark denote a
kind of personalization of the religious feeling.
V. Daniel Boyarin, in a book about
intertextuality, considers that the rabbis are the
ones who discovered that the production,
explicitly, of a literature with intertextual
features represents the ideal and the regenerator
tool, able to preserve the privileged status of the
biblical text by his release like an immutable
block(Boarin 1994, 28).
As we have emphasized in the previous
article, the appetite for biblical quotes can be the
cause of inability to believe (or the lack of
healthy patience) and the hope that, in this
way, the biblical text replaces the inability / the
lack of an internal order witch is absent. Also, so
fecund presence of the fragments from Scripture
reveals the need for authentic and stable points
in a changing world, an increase in the value of
the dialogue in itself, a desire for a renewal of
the intertextual sources or to establish a
minimum reference point for itself and for
readers.
Clopotul scufundat [The Sunk Bell]
contains some confessions (the only ones, in

In the dialogue with Mircea Benea, the

latter considers that the religious feeling which
his dialogue partner is trying is as part of a series
of paradoxes of Livius Ciocrlie. The writer
confesses to not having more deeply contact
with religion neither from the family, nor at
school, but their own readings were those who
had aroused his interest of the New and Old
Testament (Ciocrlie 2010 b, 18). The
narrative and earthly reading (My reading
was and remained terrestrial (Ciocrlie 2010 b,
18)) of the Old Testament offered him a view of
a tyrannical God:
Reading of the Old Testament
narrative left me perplexed. A world full
of noise and rage, mightily watched by a
tyrannical God. I did not understand and
even today I do not understand what
kind of shyness could generate this
writing, if is not somehow about the fear
of God. There's a certain sense of social
utility (although, in everyday life I do
not really notice the effects), but who
otherwise I despise nearly as much as I
despise the Pascal's Wager [...]. To kill
your son in order to please to a proud
God! I did not raise any meaning to the
story of Jov. I read the Old Testament as
a Shakespearean tragedy, as a great
novel. I would be disappointed to find
out that it must be <<deciphered >>
(Ciocrlie 2010 b., 18-19).
And then he confesses his frustration
with those who live the spirituality, because the
necessary sense was not cultivated when he was
little:
You can be a dumb man of
spirituality, either because you lack the
194

necessary sense, either because at a

decisive age it has not been cultivated. It
is my case also, which I live with
frustration not as an atheist (Ciocrlie
2010 b., 19).

he confesses his unfaithfulness so firmly, the

author responds:
It's a serious problem, an important one.
I find that the religion is gathering more
thinking and most creativity. And, as
such, to find that so many people have
support in faith and for you it cannot be
like for the author, it really did not leave
me
indifferent.
I
knead
my
unfaithfulness (Ciocrlie 2012).

The questions regarding the fidelity or

the infidelity to the biblical quotes to the original
text are not entitled, because the comparison of
the two texts shows that the text written by
Livius Ciocrlie does not contain and does not
assume false or degraded biblical quotes.
The upside-down readings, ad-litteram
of the first meeting with the biblical text Cu faa
la perete [Facing the Wall], seems to be entirely
subordinated to confessions of Livius Ciocrlie,
confessions that we transcribed above. But, a
more careful bending over the text of Scripture
and the frequency with which the biblical text is
brought into question reveal a unique
configuration of the text by Livius Ciocrlie
according to this intertextual source. Is it about
an enlightening experience during the writing of
the volume in question? We do not guarantee the
fixation of such an experience during the writing
of the book, but we are sure that there is such a
revelatory experience of the religious sentiment.

Entering into a dialogue with the author, the

reader of such texts makes a pact that consists in
the promise of reading the Sacred Text in order
to become a real dialogue partner of the
Romanian writer, Livius Ciocrlie.

References
a. Papers in periodical journals:
Dac m-a lua n serios ca
Ciocrlie
scriitor, m-a mbolnvi de ficat.
2012
[If I Would Take Myself
Seriously as a Writer, I Would
Get Sick Liver] Interview with
Livius Ciocrlie. In Cultural
Observatory, no. 630, 29. 06.
2012.

I had such an experience,

manifested as a sudden illumination of
the sky far as the horizon, accompanied
by an intense feeling. I remember with a
kind of horror that time. I do not support
the bright light, I am attracted by the
negativity. Regarding the mysticism,
Im sensitive to the apophatic, who
seeks God in darkness and nothing
(Ciocrlie 2010 b., 19).

b. Books:
Look
Daniel,
Boarin 1994 Boarin,
Intertextuality and the Reading
of Midrash, Bloomington,
1994.
Biblia sau Sfnta Scriptur
*** 2001
[Bible or Holy Scripture],
Bucureti, BOR Institute, 2001.
Fry, Northrop, Marele Cod.
Fry 1999
Biblia i literatura [The Great
Code.
The
Bible
and
Literature], translated by Aurel
Sasu and Ioana Stanciu,
Bucureti, Atlas, 1999.
Ciocrlie, Livius, Clopotul
Ciocrlie
scufundat [The Sunk Bell],
1988
Bucureti, Cartea Romneasc,
1988.
Ciocrlie, Livius, Cu faa la
Ciocrlie
perete [Facing the Wall],
2010 a
Bucureti, Cartea Romneasc,
2010.
Ciocrlie, Livius, ...pe mine s
Ciocrlie

- a possible supporting experience of the Old

and the New Testaments. Or the experience of
the prayer (confessed in a very recent interview)
for the four people so closed (Ciocrlie 2012), or
the belief that the reading of the fundamental
religious writings cannot miss from the band of
an educated man. Even if, perhaps, God does not
exist, it remains and is the most important of
all God's problem, as Cioran said. Until the
understanding at least intellectually, if not
spiritual of those writings, you should start by
making from the history of religions not just of
a particular one an important object of study in
schools (Ciocrlie 2010 b, 19-20).
The author offers the same type of
justification-solution of the sacred text
researching in the same interview. Asked why

195

nu contai. Convorbiri cu
Mircea Benea urmate de o
addenda ...do not count on
me.
Conversations
with
Mircea Benea followed by an
addendum], Postfa de Liana
Cozea, the 2nd edition, Piteti,
Paralela 45, 2010.
Moldoveanu Moldoveanu, Nicolae, Hristos
ndreptirea

meditaii
2001
duhovniceti la cartea Epistola
lui Pavel ctre Romani,
capitolele 1-16 [Christ Cross
Spiritual Meditations of the
First Epistle of St. Paul to the
Corinthians], Deva, Comorile
Harului, 2001.
Pleu, Andrei, Parabolele lui
Pleu 2012
Iisus adevrul ca poveste
[Parables of Jesus - the truth of
like
story],
Bucureti,
Humanitas, 2012.
2010 b

196

Convenient Truths: Representations of the Communist Illegalists in

the Romanian Historiography in Post-Communism
Dumitru LCTUU
PhD Student and Research assistant, Research Center for Contemporary History Cont*texte
Faculty of History, University of Bucharest
E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract: The present paper analyzes the post-1989 historiography of the underground
communists, in order to identify their main representation in the scientific literature. I highlight the
existence of continuity between the interwar and the post-communist discourses; historiography was
regarded by historians rather as a moral reform than a method of scientific investigation. I will show
that the research on the Communist Party between 1921 and 1944 was not among the main interests of
the historians and researchers.
Keywords. The underground communists, depictions, historiography, interwar period, postcommunism
coming from high ranking authorities. Such an
inspiring personality was the magistrate colonel
Introduction (1)
Petre Popescu-Cetate, prosecutor in the trial of
The history of the underground
Ana Pauker and 18 other communists in June
communists was an understudied topic after
1936 at Craiova; he authored the book
1989, as most historians have focused their
Conspiraia comunist n Romnia i evreica
attention on the communist regime. Hence, the
Ana Pauker n faa Justiiei militare. In his
abundant scientific literature on communism
work he identified their tactics, namely from
covers numerous aspects such as communist
all their thoughts and words only results the
repression, collectivization, penitentiary system,
hatred against everything national, Christian and
history of Securitate, etc. The communist
moral. According to the former prosecutor and
movement from May 8th 1921, the foundation of
political prisoner during the communist regime,
the communist party and August 23rd 1944, the
the first enemies that the communists tried to
moment when the communists moved from the
destroy were family, church and motherland
underground directly to power, has been
[Emphasis in the original]. (Popescu-Cetate
scarcely addressed in historical literature.
1941, 46). The depiction of the communism as
imminent danger for the priceless material and
The main characteristics of the
spiritual values of the Romanian people (D.
historiography
Zamfirescu 1995, 18) is an idea which
The few studies on this topic are usually
originated during the interwar period. This
biased, governed by preconceived ideas, and
conviction has annihilated the critical debates on
with very little flexibility towards interpretation.
the Romanian communism between the two
Most of the studies on interwar history of the
wars.
Communist Party published after 1989 reflect
Another book written in the 1930s,
the mentality of the times when they were
notorious for its extremely violent approach is
written.
Jos masca! (Mask off!), by I. Dragomir; it
Some of them have simply resumed
describes the communists sentenced in the 1936
ideas stated in the 1930s in propagandistic works
Ana Pauker trial as not only traitors of the
Romanian national interest, but also as
dehumanized beings, deprived of any human
(1) This work was supported by a grant of the
feature. For Dragomir, the communists had fat
Ministry of National Education, CNCS UEFISCDI,
faces, dolt minds, and their sight caused
project number PN-II-ID-PCE-2012-4-0594, project
repulsion to anyone [] a lawless mob of
title Social structure of the Communist Party of
foreigners who wanted to start a revolution in
Romania in its illegal era Prosopographies.
Members, sympathizers, conspirators and fellow
Romania but cant even speak Romanian, and
travelers.

197

who talk of communism and humankind

happiness but their retarded minds cant help
them understand its meaning (I. Dragomir
1936, 13).
After 70 years, the approach of some
historians hasnt significantly changed; some of
them still analyze this part of Romanian history
in a dichotomist perspective, lacking the critical
perspective and moderate language, as is the
case of Vasile Pascu, historian and history
teacher at Gheorghe Lazr high school. In his
book, which is a history of the communist
regime in Romania, he presents the communist
party as follows: the communist party and its
doctrine held nothing sacred, both in religious
and humanistic sense, and therefore they had no
respect for anything, staining everything that
was touched by its aberrant politics. Its main
purpose was to transform the society into a
collection of people to clap their hands like
penguins in front of the supreme leader. It was a
return to humankind Prehistory: savage,
ignorant, brutal [Emphasis in the original] (V.
Pascu 2007, vol. I, 12).
Some
authors
have
changed
perspectives after 1989, as is the case for
Gheorghe Neacu and Marin Stnescu, former
researchers at the Communist Partys Institute of
History, or Ctlin Zamfir, a communist
historian who in the 1990s became head of the
Institute of Quality of Life Analysis of the
Romanian Academy.
Generally, the Communist Party was
presented as an entity alien to the Romanian
society, formed outside the Romanian people,
mostly by ethnic minorities such as Jews,
Hungarians, Bulgarians. This assumption issues
from a generalization of the study of Partys
leadership in 1921-1944 interval (see the studies
of Dan Ctnu, Gheorghe Neacu, Marin
Stnescu, Ioan Chiper) who conclude that these
leadership positions were actually dictated by
the Comintern. Actually, there is no scientific
analysis so far on the number and ethnic
structure which to corroborate such a
generalization.
Another feature shared by all these
studies is their moralizing aspect, regarded as
part of the attempt to reform a society which was
dominated by the communists for 50 years, as
well as the revealing of a truth that was
impossible to say during the communist epoch:
Thus, a process of falsifying the national
history commenced, coordinated by the former
<underground fighters> trained in Moscow as
docile puppets (D. Zamfirescu 1995, 17).

Analysis of the past was not among the

purposes of the main historiographic works, but
rather was the presentation of a truth that could
not be said during the communist years. The
historians have thus taken the role moral
reformers of the society, aimed at: demolishing
the myth built upon lies and the affirmation of
the historical reality the way it was (R.
Ciuceanu 1995, 74). The same historian
regarded the restoration of the truth about
communists and communism as a redress act
for moral cleansing of current and future
generations (R. Ciuceanu 2001, 14).
Florin Tnsescu, editor of several
collections of documents regarding the early
years of communism in Romania, stated that this
truth contained the following assumptions: The
communist
structures
from
Romania
undoubtedly demonstrate that at their initial acts
they were organizations alien to the Romanian
spirit and tradition, nations interests and
aspirations, diverging from the nations
independent existence within its natural borders
and aspirations in 1918 (F. Tnsescu 1995,
vol. I, 109).
In support for this idea, he stated a truth
that during the communism used to rest
unspoken: according to their traditions,
psychical structure and aspirations, Romanians
reject the bolshevism and went further by
arguing that through their very nature as
the history shows Romanians are not
inclined to adhere to political extremist
movements [Emphasis in the original]. (F.
Tnsescu 1997, vol. II, 47). This statement is in
sharp contrast with the Romanians attitude
towards the Legionary party.
The study of the documents from that
period reveals a situation different from the facts
presented by the historians. Among the
communists, some were supporting full
commitment to the Comintern program, while
others were advocating its modification
according to Romanian context. They were also
supporting the rights of Romania upon
Basarabia, a topic that was debated in the first
interwar years and was revived during Nicolae
Ceausescu (see the memoires of the first
secretary general of Romanian Communist
party, Gheorghe Cristescu-Plpumarul, In:
ANIC, Colecia 60, ds. 447).
The role of history in moral reformation
of a society traumatized for 50 years can be
identified not just in the works on the interwar
communist movement, but also in the study of
another topic massively approached in post-1989
historiography,
namely
the
communist
198

repression. This side of the historians mission

was clearly expressed by Marius Oprea, one of
the most reputed scholars on the matter. He
argued that writing the history of Securitate and
communist repression was not just a
historiography but also a moral approach. He
concluded that writing about Securitate equals
standing for a moral reformation of the
Romanian society (M. Oprea 2008, 13, 15).
Historians highlighted some of the
particularities of the party in interwar period:
permanent competition for leadership, and the
existence of several rival groups inside the party.
For the end of 1930s, the historians have
identified three such groups: the communists
from Moscow, led by Ana Pauker, the
communists from Romania, led by Gheorghe
Gheorghiu-Dej, and the free communists from
Romania, led by tefan Fori, secretary general
of the party (A. Cioroianu, 2007, V. Frunz,
1999).

Thus, the historians efforts were

oriented towards discrediting the documents
indicating other numbers. In one of the most
important studies on the number of the
communists before the communist regime, I.
Chiper states that in 1974, during the 11th
congress of communist party, an internal note
mentioned that until that moment had been
acknowledged total of 5237 members prior to
August 23rd 1944, of which 4385 had been
members before 1940. The same historian
mentions another document in which the total
number of member in 1940 was 4210. This
disparity has led Chiper to disregard their
importance of these documents, found by
accident; he also tried to parallel those who
claimed they took part in the 1989 revolution
and those who claimed to be communist after
august 1944. He argued that these claims were
motivated by the privileges and benefits that
could be attained by those who declared to be
former party members or were involved in the
revolutionary activities (I. Chiper 1996, 25-26)
The main method to discrediting these
documents was the projection of contemporary
assumptions on documents belonging to the
past. Employing such reasoning was most likely
facilitated by the fact that many contemporary
historians were aware of the means to obtain a
revolutionary certificate, which convinced
them that such methods have been previously
used by the communists after World War II.
The
historians
conclusion
was
confirming Ana Paukers estimation which,
although vague, is close to the truth and
confirmed by other sources (I. Chiper 1996,
26). In his paper, the author does not indicate the
documents and sources. From the quotations he
used one could infer that it is about documents
created during the 11th congress of the
communist party.
Actually, the documents which provide
information on the communist party structure
during the underground period were not created
during the Ceausescu regime, but within the first
years of the communist regime. The document
was based on an internal census of communist
members in 1950-1951. It was created shortly
after the examination of the party members, an
operation which resulted in the exclusion of
192,000 members (see S. Tnase 1998).
Communist membership for the interwar
period was only validated after the verification
of the activities: when and where people were
active and with whom. After naming the
communists they were working with, they were
thoroughly checked. These three questions were

The number of the underground communists

Most of the researchers agree with an
estimation made by Ana Pauker that at the end
of the underground period the Party had ca.
1,000 members. Also referring to the number of
the members, V. Frunz stated that between the
wars, the communist party was a head, maybe
two, in the search of a body (V. Frunz 1999,
180). It is worth mentioning that during the war,
the communist leader had no longer contact with
PCdR and knew nothing about the structure of
the party, because contacts between Comintern
and PCdR were suspended (see C. Diac 2010).
As a matter of fact, Ana Pauker, the
representative of the Moscow group was
interested in reporting a low number of
Romanian communist members and fellow
travellers because of its political implications: it
was standing against the demands of the
Romanian communists who stayed in Romania
during the first years of World War II and were
led by Gheorghiu-Dej. By minimizing their
number, their role in the struggle for power
could be diminished. In the struggle for power,
their main arguments were their relatively high
number and years spent in Romanian
penitentiaries.
Regarding the number of communist
members before August 23rd, 1944, one can talk
about a true historians consensus which
hampered the historical debate on the documents
mentioning the numbers of communists from
Romania and which could contradict Ana
Paukers statements.

199

only a few of the many included in the form for

underground communist inventory.
It is hard to believe that people would
choose to provide false information on
underground activities in a climate dominated by
terror. Moreover, the Securitate had already
obtained the archives of Sigurana and courts of
law on the communist movement (see the
statements of Teohari Georgescu, In: ACNSAS,
fond Penal, dosar 246, vol. 4).
Thus, by setting a minimum number for
the members at ca. 1000, as well as stressing the
presence of numerous foreign members within
the party, the historians aimed at highlighting
the illegitimacy of communist regime and party
ever since its early years.

present the history of the Romanian communism

from the founding of the party until 1964 (Ghi
Ionescu), until 1980 (R. King), or until 1989 (A.
Cioroianu, V. Frunz). Unlike other works, they
are less biased and generally less influenced by
the stereotypes on interwar communism.
Nevertheless, these volumes cover only briefly
the period before August 1944.
Within the third category, among the
best publications are Robert Levy, Gloria i
decderea Anei Pauker, Iai, Polirom, 2002;
Stelian Tnase, Clienii lu tanti Varvara: istorii
clandestine, Bucureti, Humanitas, 2005;
Lavinia Betea, Lucreiu Ptrcanu. Moartea
unui lider comunist, ed. a II-a, Bucureti, Curtea
Veche, 2006; Lavinia Betea (coord.), Viaa lui
Ceauescu. Ucenicul partidului, Bucureti,
Adevrul Holding, 2012; Dorin Liviu Btfoi,
Petru Groza. Ultimul burghez. O biografie,
Bucureti, Editura Compania, 2004; Thomas
Kunze, Nicolae Ceauescu. O biografie,
Bucureti, Editura Vremea, 2002 plus some of
document collections already mentioned above.

The main categories of books

When consulting the literature that
covers the subject, three main categories of
works can be identified: document collections,
synthesis works and biographies. Within the first
category, the following volumes should be
mentioned, rather for the raw information than
for the interpretations employed in introductory
chapters: C.
Fenean, Sub
Steag strin,
Bucureti, Editura Enciclopedic, 2011; Alina
Tudor Pavelescu,
Copilria comunismului
romnesc n arhiva Cominternului, Bucureti,
Arhivele Naionale ale Romniei, 2001; Florin
Tnsescu (coord.),
Ideologie i structure
comuniste n Romnia, vol. I-III, Bucureti,
Institutul
Naional
pentru
Studiul
Totalitarismului, 1995-2001. Among other
works worth mentioning are Dan Ctnu, Ioan
Chiper, Cazul tefan Fori. Lupta pentru putere
n PCR de la Gheorghiu-Dej la Ceauescu.
Documente: 1940-1968, Bucureti,
Editura
Vremea, 1999 ; Stelian Tnase, Rakovski. Dosar
secret, Iai, Polirom, 2008 ; Gheorghe Brtescu,
O anchet stalinist. Lichidarea lui Marcel
Pauker,
Bucureti,
Editura
Univers
Enciclopedic, 1995; Ilie Oana, Cornel
Constantin Ilie, Gheorghe Cristescu
Plpumaru, primul secretar general al PCR.
Corespondene, documente, imagini, Bucureti,
Editura Semne, 2009.
The highlights of the second category
are the books of Adrian Cioroianu, Pe umerii lui
Marx. O introducere n istoria comunismului
romnesc, Bucureti, Editura Curtea Veche,
2005; Victor Frunz, Istoria comunismului n
Romnia, Bucureti, Editura Victor Frunz,
1999; Robert King, A history of the Romanian
Communist Party, Stanford, Hoover Institution
Press, 1980; Ghi Ionescu, Comunismul n
Romnia, Bucureti, Editura Litera, 1994. They

Conclusion
It appears thus that the history of
interwar communism was a topic scarcely
covered by scholars. Their attention was rather
oriented towards 1944-1989 period, with
particular attention to communist oppression.
The literature on the Romanian communism is
governed by a few stereotypes, i.e. the partys
ethnic structure (Jews, Hungarians, Russians,
Bulgarians, etc.) or its sectarian character (most
often referred to as a cult). Aside from their lack
of scientific ground, they represent a simplistic
generalization of a few authors conclusion on
the number and leadership ethnic structure of the
partys underground years: Typical for
leadership structure was that most people
belonged to ethnic minorities, and the
percentage of Jews and Hungarians was
sometimes overwhelming (M. Stnescu 1994,
99). During the interwar period, only one
secretary general was Romanian, Gheorghe
Cristescu-Plpumarul.
The predominance of such clichs in
Romanian historiography can be explained by
the preferential focus on oppressive aspects of
the communism (especially 1945-1964), the
spirit of the post-1989 era which tried to explain
the red plague through the activity of ethnic
minorities, but also because some documents on
the interwar period have only recently become
available in archives.
References
200

a. Archives
***
***

ACNSAS, fond Penal, dosar 246, vol.

4
ANIC, Colecia 60, dosar 447

b. Books
Cioroianu, Mihai, Pe umerii lui
Cioroianu
Marx. O introducere n istoria
2005
comunismului romnesc [On
Marxs
Shoulders.
An
Introduction to the History of the
Romanian
Communism],
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2005.
Diac,
Cristina,
Partidul
Diac 2010
Comunist din Romnia n anii
celui de-al Doilea Rzboi
Mondial. Cazul tefan Fori
(1940-1944) [The Communist
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Second World War. The Case of
tefan Fori (1940-1944)] tez
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2010.
Dragomir, I., Jos masca!... (sau
Dragomir
istoria unui proces) [Mask off!...
1936
(or the History of a Process)],
Bucureti, Tipografia Ziarului
Universul, 1936.
Frunz,
Victor,
Istoria
Frunz
comunismului n Romnia [The
1999
History of Communism in
Romania], Bucureti, Editura
Victor Frunz, 1999.
King, Robert, A history of the
King 1980
Romanian Communist Party,
Stanford, Hoover Institution
Press, 1980.
Ionescu, Ghi, Comunismul n
Ionescu
Romnia
[Communism
in
1994
Romania], Bucureti, Editura
Litera, 1994.
Marius,
Bastionul
Oprea 2008 Oprea,
cruzimii. O istorie a Securitii
(1948-1964) [The Bastion of
Cruelty. A History of Securitate
(1948-1964)], Iai, Polirom,
2008.
Pascu 2007 Pascu, Vasile, Regimul totalitar
comunist n Romnia (19451989)
[The
Totalitarian
Communist Regime in Romania
(1945-1989)], vol. I, Bucureti,
Editura Clio Nova, 2007.
Popescu-Cetate,
Petre,
Popescucomunist
n
Cetate 1941 Conspiraia

Stnescu
1994

Tnase
1998

Romnia i evreica Ana Pauker

n
faa
Justiiei militare
[The Communist Conspiracy in
Romania and the Jew Ana
Pauker to the Military Justice],
Bucureti.
Stnescu,
Marin,
Moscova,
Cominternul, filiera comunist
balcanic i Romnia (19191943).
Studii
documentare
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the
Balkan
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(1919-1943).
Documentary
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de Editura, Pres i Impresariat,
1941.
Tnase,
Stelian,
Elite
i
societate. Guvernarea Gheorghe
Gheorghiu-Dej:
1948-1964
[Elites
and
Society.
The
Government
of
Gheorghe
Gheorghiu-Dej:
1948-1964],
Bucureti, Humanitas, 1998.

c. Papers in periodical journals

Ctnu,
Dan,
Neacu,
Ctnu,
Gheorghe,
Conducerea
Neacu
Partidului
Comunist
din
1998
Romnia, 1921-1944 [The
Leadership of the Communist
Party from Romania, 19211944]. In:
Arhivele
Totalitarismului [The Archives of
the Totalitarianism], (1998) no.
1-2.
Ctnu,
Dan,
Neacu,
Ctnu,
Gheorghe, Componena PCR n
Neacu
perioada 1945-1970. Evaluri
1998
statistice [The Composition of
PCR in the period 1945-1970.
Statistical Evaluations]. In:
Arhivele Totalitarismului [The
Archives of the Totalitarianism],
no. 1-2.
Chiper,
Ioan,
Consideraii
Chiper
privind evoluia numeric i
1998
compoziia etnic a PCR ntre
1921-1952 [Considerations on
the Numerical Evolution and
Ethnical Composition of PCT
between
1921-1952].
In:
Arhivele Totalitarismului [The
Archives of the Totalitarianism],
(1998) no. 4.
Zamfirescu Zamfirescu, D., Sovietizarea
Romniei.
O
perspectiv
1995
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geopolitic [The Sovietisation

of Romania. A Geopolitical
Perspective].
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Totalitarianism], an. III, (1995)
no. 1.
d. Chapters in books
Ciuceanu, R., Cuvnt nainte
Ciuceanu
[Foreword]. In: F. Tnsescu et
1995
alli, Ideologie i structuri
comuniste n Romnia. 19171918 [Ideology and Communist
Structures in Romania. 19171918], vol. I, Bucureti, INST,
1995.
Ciuceanu, R., Cuvnt nainte
Ciuceanu
[Foreword]. In: F. Tnsescu et
2001
alli, Ideologie i structure
comuniste n Romnia. 1
ianuarie 1920 - 3 februarie 1921
[Ideology
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Communist
Structures in Romania. January
1, 1920 February 3, 1921],
Bucureti, INST, 2001.
Tnsescu,
F.,
Studiu
Tnsescu
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[Introductory
1995
Study]. In: F. Tnsescu et alli,
Ideologie i structuri comuniste
n
Romnia.
1917-1918
[Ideology
and
Communist
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1995.
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1997
Study]. In: F. Tnsescu et alli,
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December 31, 1919], vol. II,
Bucureti, INST, 1997.

202

B. CROSS-CULTURAL
PERSPECTIVES ON WAR

203

204

The Happy Few, the Band of Brothers and the Two World Wars
Dana PERCEC
University of Timioara
E-mail: [email protected], [email protected]
Abstract: William Shakespeare was evoked, in the late 19th century and the first decades of the
20 century, as a memorial figure, symbolizing the moral and intellectual fraternity of men, a notion
vastly in use during World War I and World War II propaganda, in Britain, but also quite surprisingly,
though justifiably in enemy countries, like Germany. The paper will look at the history of Shakespeares
reception during the two world wars, when the English Bards historical plays (such as Henry V, with its
memorable exhortations to the happy few and the band of brothers) were commented, staged, adapted
in such a way as to raise political issues, increase peoples patriotism, and justify military actions.
th

Keywords: brotherhood, historical plays, patriotism, propaganda, reception, war

Shakespeares resurrection, in the 18th
century, was, in many ways, the resurrection of
the British spirit. For the Anti-Gallicans,
Shakespeares time and work was vital, virile,
inspired, as opposed to contemporary
Francophile effeminacy and hypocrisy. The
Anti-Gallicans were neo-Elizabethans rather
than anything else and Shakespeare became the
exclusive logo and mascot of British nature.
The actual institutionalization of Shakespeare
probably came with David Garrick, actor and
theatre director, who devoted his career to the
adaptation and staging of Shakespeares work,
being one of the first who gave shape to what we
call today a Shakespearean canon. The Bards
rediscovered plays, staged by Garrick, presented
the early modern playwright and his famous
characters as paragons of British glory. The
Shakespeare cult based on an extensive cosmetic
surgery performed on both the Bards text and
his private life reached a climax at the Stratford
Jubilee, in 1769, when Garrick established the
Bard as national deity, in an Ode to Shakespeare
which he composed and recited on the occasion:
To what blest genius of the isle,/Shall Gratitude
her tribute pay,/Decree the festive day,/Erect the
statue, and devote the pile? [] Tis he! tis
he!/The god of our idolatry! (Dobson 1995,
217). Needless to say that, with all the
encomiastic evocation, with all the pageants and
speeches in the Bards honour, Shakespeare was
totally irrelevant to the entire proceedings. His
works had a purely symbolic value: at the
celebration devoted to Shakespeare, not a single
Shakespearean line was uttered. Even an
allegorical procession of Shakespearean
characters that Garrick was supposed to lead was
cancelled due to heavy rain.

Introduction
As recent and less recent history proves,
Shakespeare has been most successful in the
process of appropriation, the international
phenomenon in which various cultures and even
subcultures have loosely employed the Bards
texts in order to reclaim elements that were
connected to their identity, political ambitions,
or cultural projects. As early as the 1750s, a
pressure group which was very influential in
Britain, the Anti-Gallican Society, wanted to
extend the commerce of England [] and
oppose the insidious Arts of the French Nation
(Dobson 1995, 200) with the help of
Shakespeare. For them, the glorious world of the
chronicle plays and the Elizabethan rule, which
defeated the Spanish and French Catholicism,
were major propagandistic tropes. In a political
essay of 1747, William Guthrie, one of the main
representatives of the Anti-Gallican Society, was
writing:
Where is the Briton so much a
Frenchman to prefer the highest stretch
of modern improvement to the meanest
spark of Shakespeares genius. Yet to
our eternal amazement it is true, that for
above half a century the poets and the
patrons of poetry, in England,
abandoned the sterling merit of
Shakespeare for the tinsel ornaments of
the French academy. [] the British
spirit at length prevailed; wits with their
patrons were forced to give way to
genius; and the plays of Shakespeare are
now as much crowded as, perhaps, they
were in the days of their author.
(Dobson 1995, 198)
205

national poet, a performance of Twelfth Night

staged in Berlin had Feste add in the Prologue,
quite absurdly, that he was a fugitive who sought
in Germany a second home (Engler, in
Alexander and Wells 2000, 110). This was the
predictable result of a process of naturalization
which Shakespeare had undergone in Germany
for more than a century. In a word, Shakespeare
contributed to the creation of a sense of German
nationhood just as he contributed to the
establishment of British patriotism. The Bard
was, in 1916, an ideological object fought over
by both nations, in a different manner: while
England recognized his patriotism more than his
literary genius, Germany praised the poet as a
man whose opinions on war coincided with the
Kaisers propaganda.

Shakespeare at War
At the end of April 1916, England
celebrated the tercentenary of Shakespeares
death with due pump and circumstance on the
now long established pattern of the 1769 Jubilee.
April meant Shakespeares birthday, Saint
Georges Day (the patron saint of England), and
that, year, Easter. To mark this three-fold
holiday, a committee, with the Prime Minister
himself as president, prepared elaborate
ceremonies. For an entire week, important
institutions in the public sector paid homage to
Shakespeare: for example, on Sunday the
Church, on Monday the Government and
political parties, on Tuesday the arts, on
Wednesday schools and universities (Engler, in
Alexander and Wells 2000, 101). Consequently,
Shakespeare sermons were preached in churches
all around the country about the enduring
English spirit embodied by the Bard. Special
performances took place in London, in the spirit
of the Bayreuth festivals, in the presence of the
King and Queen. A memorial volume, A Book of
Homage to Shakespeare was issued, with lavish
illustrations and hundreds of pompous
addresses, poems and critical essays in many
languages. In schools, children were given
badges with the Bards portrait, sang songs
devoted to Shakespeare and said a Shakespeare
prayer. Speeches were given to students about
Shakespeares patriotism. During this week,
Shakespeare was used as an instrument to stir
patriotic feelings in a time of war when the
conviction of British glory in the hearts of
Englands sons and daughters was essential.
Paradoxically, at the very same time, in the
opposite camp, Germany also organized
celebrations for Shakespeare, where similar
messages of patriotism and nationalism were
delivered. Official speeches made it clear that
Shakespeare is among the oldest and most
beautiful conquests of the German mind, which
we shall defend against the entire world, like our
other spiritual and material possessions (Engler,
in Alexander and Wells, 2000, 104).
Shakespeare could be rightfully claimed by the
Germans as he was, since the German
Romanticism, a genius of the Germanic North,
placed near Schiller and Goethe (the
Shakespeare Gesellschaft had been established
nowhere else but at Weimar) and, just like for
the Anti-Gallican Society in England two
centuries before, Shakespeares icon had been
used to oppose the influence of French
classicism and French culture. In the same year
1916, when Britain was saying prayers to the

Henry V and the longbow

brotherhood
Among Shakespeares dramatic texts,
the historical plays, especially those which
dramatized important wars in the history of
England, were overexploited during periods in
which war propaganda was a priority and
boosting peoples patriotism was a necessity.
Among the figures most frequently evoked in
such moments was Henry V, a legendary warrior
and a spectacular feudal leader. In the dispute
with France over the territories on the Continent,
he believed in the rightfulness of his cause with
obstinate enthusiasm (Allmand 1993). The
English medieval chronicles, indeed, present a
skilled soldier, who reached maturity on the
battlefield at the age of fourteen, during the
conflicts with the Welsh rebels. At sixteen, he
helped his father in the battle of Shrewsbury. He
was in his late twenties when he annihilated a
heretic rebellion and barely thirty when he
negotiated a truce with the King of France.
During this negotiation, Henry demanded Anjou
and Normandy, which the English had
considered their birth right since the legacy of
William the Conqueror. King Charles VI
refusal triggered another stage in the One
Hundred Years War. When Henry won at
Agincourt, in 1415, this victory offered him the
desired territories, the French princesss hand in
marriage and a medium-term peace with France.
Unfortunately, although Charles was planning to
let his son-in-law sit on the French throne, Harry
was unable to enjoy this privilege. His dream,
the dream of all Plantagenet kings, to hold the
double crown of England and France, was about
to come true in 1422, but Henry died at 35,
grown old prematurely because of the long and

206

difficult military campaigns he had started so

early in his life.
Shakespeares portrayal of Henry V is
somewhat different from the historical evidence,
the Bard insisting on the spectacular evolution of
a young and spoiled brat, as Prince Hal is in
Henry IV, into a mature, heroic leader, an
inspiration to his people, in Henry V. This latter
play evokes Harry as one of the most luminous
figures, the king who was closest to win in the
Anglo-French arch-rivalry. The Bard borrows
from
chroniclers,
accordingly,
the
characterization of a popular but just leader,
fortunate in battle, merciless with his enemies,
with thieves and traitors, a loyal, virtuous friend
(Maurois 1970). But the peculiar details of the
battle of Agincourt, recorded in history and
processed by Shakespeares chronicle play, are
as significant as all of Henrys biography. Late
medieval and early modern England was
significantly different from other European
kingdoms in that it preserved, amongst its
military structures, a traditional category and
weapon the longbow. Famous for the victories
against the French and the Scots many centuries
on end, the English found it hard to say goodbye to the longbow. Henry VIII, a conservative
admirer and practitioner of archery, kept the
longbowmen active in his army and the Scottish
rebellions during his reign and during Elizabeth
I had no chance against the skill and agility of
the yeomen-archers.
The presence of longbowmen in the
English army is to be seen against two other
categories. On the one hand, the cavalry, the
noblest segment of any European army from the
Middle Ages to the early 20th century, was in
sheer contrast with the archers, who were, by
definition, pedestrian commoners. On the other
hand, the mercenary groups, appearing in the
15th century, very expensive and not fully
reliable, offered another contrast with the
yeomen who fought for their king according to
the most basic principles of vassalage. The most
famous and sought after mercenaries were the
Swiss and German ones, highly paid by most
European princes. But, while Emperor
Maximilian fought the French with Swiss
soldiers in Italy, Henry VIII made war in a
traditional manner, with soldiers he recruited
with the help of his loyal peers, employing
Spanish and German mercenaries only during
his last war against France, in 1544-1545
(Ridley 1988). Elizabeth I was still hesitant
about employing mercenaries some decades
later, when she helped the Dutch Protestants
against the Spanish invaders. While most of the

important battles of the time were won with the

skill and experience of paid soldiers, England
was a special case. English kings refused
mercenaries not only because they were great
patriots and the paid soldiers were very
expensive, but also because the traditional
system of military vassalage still worked well
here, while it had already disappeared on the
Continent. The mercenaries may have been more
experienced, but their financial claims and
dissatisfactions often led to subversive actions in
the military camps and confusion among the
other soldiers. The national troops, conversely,
were more loyal and stable, a reason why
English princes and lords were envied by their
European counterparts.
In Shakespeares Henry V, mercenaries
are negligently evoked at a certain point, for
three reasons: firstly, the configuration of an
ethnic distinction between the two armies,
engendering distinctions of strategy and
recruitment; secondly, the projection of a
divided image of war mercantile, purely
functional, cold-hearted (for the paid soldiers)
vs. heroic, enthusiastic and sublime in the
supreme sacrifice (of the natives); thirdly, the
provision, in the aftermath of the battle, of a
social balance, the soldiers giving back the
hierarchies to their commanders. For example,
Henry V, in his exhortative speeches, promises
his yeomen friendship and brotherhood, but later
grows distant, while the French mourn the dead,
trying to separate, even in death, the native
princes from the mercenaries:
That we may wander oer this bloody
field
To look our dead, and then to bury
them;
To sort our nobles from our common
men.
For many of our princes woe the
while!
Lie drownd and soakd in mercenary
blood;
So do our vulgar drench their peasant
limbs
In blood of princes; (IV, 7)
The English longbow was not an
ordinary arch. The French were also good
archers, but their bows were much smaller,
slower and inefficient on longer distances. The
English or Welsh longbow was a formidable
weapon, 6 feet long (1.83 m), initially used for
hunting purposes, later carried to all the wars
fought by the English for centuries (Percec et al.
207

2010). Only during the One Hundred Years

War, the longbow was victorious at Crcy
(1346), Poitiers (1356) and, certainly, Agincourt
(1415). The success of this weapon resided in
teamwork. A single arrow could not annihilate
the metal armours. But thousands of successive
arrows, launched very high and very fast,
worked wonders against the infantry and the
cavalry, thanks to the soldiers skill and the
weapons flexibility (Cornwell 2009).
The importance of the longbow in the
English military history and the symbolic impact
of this profession are unquestionable. It only
takes the figure of Robin Hood and his merry
men to understand that the longbow was the
materialization of an ideal of freedom,
independence and the expression of the pride of
those who handled it. Robin Hood, just like
Henry Vs archers, was a yeoman, a middle
class between the gentry and the peasants, a free
category who took pride in their independence
and the free choice they had to serve their king
at war. The longbow is also an equivalent of
military victory, a reason for pride and the
development of a sense of belonging. The fact
that the English were the only ones who could
handle the longbow makes it stand out as a
marker of ethnic, cultural, linguistic and spiritual
uniqueness, of a cohesive group identity.

wars. This has to do mostly with the stirring

battle speeches, which have been so often used
out of their original context. According to Stefan
Goebel (2006, 11), the Middle Ages, with their
chivalry and medieval spirituality, as brilliantly
embodied in plays like Henry V, provided rich
material imagery and narrative motifs for
people to give meaning to the way in which they
connected to the events of, later the legacy of,
the Great War especially. In 1914, when war
was declared, the official discourse promised to
transform England into a land of heroes, an
encouragement which bore many similarities
with the Plantagenet kings military discourse.
But the Great War came to acquire this name for
the very reason that it was so different from all
the wars in the past, despite the initial
announcement of a chivalric code continued and
extended from one historical age to another.
World War I was not only the first global battle,
but also the first modern one (Bull 2002). New
machines designed to kill people not one by
one, but by the hundreds of thousands such as
tanks, submarines and machine guns were now
used for the first time. The machine gun was
introduced while army generals still believed in
traditional combat, an ill-timed strategy which
cost all countries involved an appallingly high
number of casualties. Only in Britain, one in
eight men died between 1914 and 1918, after the
expeditionary army was decimated in the first
weeks of battles in the fields of France and
Belgium. To protect themselves from machine
guns, soldiers dug trenches, which were
permanently flooded and rat-infested, adding
dysentery and typhoid fever to wounds and
mutilations.
In August 1914, the moment when the
war broke out coincided with the opening of the
Shakespeare summer festival in Stratford. For
some years, this had been a much awaited threeweek event, which, although initially scheduled
for April, Shakespeares birthday, started to take
place in full summer. The famous Benson
Company, under the supervision of Frank
Benson, staged a special performance of Henry
V on the eve of the great recruitment in
Stratford. On the night of the show, every line of
Shakespeares play was meant as an
encouragement for the young men who were
preparing to leave for France. At the end of the
play, the company marched on the stage, armed
with weapons like spears and halberds. The
actors in the Benson Company were famous not
only for their dramatic skills, but also as
sportsmen and patriots. The next day, the
company, led by Frank Benson himself, took

The referentiality of Henry V during

the two world wars
The battle of Agincourt turned into a
myth as soon as it took place, a myth all English
generations after it continued to look up to,
inspiring and encouraging them in many
moments of national crisis. This is, probably,
also because of the most important scenes in the
play takes place in the night before the battle, in
the English camp, when Harry takes the disguise
of a common soldier to check on his soldiers
moral. In a play which, like most contemporary
writings, tells the story of Agincourt from the
point of view of the monarch, the lords, the
generals and the bishops, an insight into the
minds of ordinary people is all the more
valuable. The soldiers are different in many
ways: infantry rather than cavalry, common
rather than noble, provincial rather than
Londoners, some of them Welsh rather than
English. They are few, scared, hungry and
homesick, awaiting the confrontation with an
army of well fed and overconfident knights.
The extent to which a community can
refer to a founding myth in moments of great joy
or despair is proved by the huge popularity of
Shakespeares Henry V during the two world
208

part in the recruitment. The Stratford recruitment

was significant not only because of the direct
link with the Shakespeare festival, but also
because here, a much higher proportion of
young men than the national average signed up
(Fogg 2008, 12). Bensons own son enrolled and
died in the early days of the war. In mourning,
Frank and Constance Benson interrupted the
festival for a couple of years.
Decades later, during World War II, in
1944, one of the first Technicolor films ever
produced in Europe was the adaptation of Henry
V, directed by the famous actor Laurence
Olivier. The film relied massively on the
dramatic moment of the eve of Agincourt, which
surely triggered painful memories in its English
viewers. As D Day had not arrived yet and the
outcome of the war was still unpredictable, the
suspense of the story told by Shakespeare
increased with every line recited by Laurence
Olivier and his fellow actors. The day and night
before the victorious battle were reminiscent of
the most recent experiences of waging war on
the French territory. More remote, but still fresh
in the English consciousness, were the years of
the trench warfare, during the Great War.
Harrys infantry, short of food supplies, stranded
in the French fields far away from home, poorly
equipped and with their morals very low because
of hardships and diseases, significantly fewer
numerically than their enemies, was an efficient
portrayal of the huge estrangement that World
War I had brought in the consciousness of its
survivors. An entire generation of writers, called
the War Poets, tackled somber themes inspired
by the horrors of the Great War (Kendall 2013).
Their lyrical testimonies are all the more
touching since many of them lost their lives in
the trenches. The fields of France and Belgium,
where other wars had been fought throughout
the history of England, were now the sites of
slaughter and disaster. Among these poets,
Rupert Brooke, who died in the first year of
combat, wrote about the idealism and
disillusionment of the first months of war.
Wilfred Owen, who died in the last year of the
Great War, just one week before the armistice,
focused on the nightmarish atmosphere of the
trenches, on the formidable experience of young
men facing death, a harsh, realistic poetry in
sheer contrast with Brookes romantic
patriotism. Siegfried Sassoon, one of the few
important war poets who survived, used poetry
as therapy, but his poems are dominated by an
overwhelming sense of waste.
Closer in time, there were the events of
1940, at Dunkirk, when all the equipment of the

British army had been abandoned on the French

beaches and the soldiers could be barely rescued
from the advancing German army. The
operation, code named Operation Dynamo
(Dildy 2010), which was supposed to help the
French troops, initiating the so-called Battle of
France, was a huge disaster. The British, French
and Belgian troops were cut off and surrounded
by the German army. It took a miracle to rescue
them, at the high cost of leaving behind all the
expensive and modern military equipment
England was vaunting at that moment. Until
1944, the British had not yet been given the
opportunity to get back.
Olivier filmed the scene of the
Englishmens march towards the camp of
Agincourt against a sunset in blood-like colours.
The camera shot close ups of the meager figures
of the few soldiers remaining in Harrys army,
with blank, almost resigned looks on their faces,
looking forward only to the brief moments of
peace and quiet during the night before the
battle. The Chorus started to recite the lines
opening Act IV, placing the moment and the
characters in a universal, timeless frame,
suggesting, among other things, the fact that
history repeated itself, that all wars were
tragically, absurdly similar, and that,
notwithstanding the truth of one camps cause,
the only justness resided in the human
dimension:
Now entertain conjecture of a time
When creeping murmur and the poring
dark
Fills the wide vessel of the universe.
From camp to camp through the foul
womb of night
The hum of either army stilly sounds,
That the fixed sentinels almost receive
The secret whispers of each others
watch:
Fire answers fire, and through their paly
flames
Each battle sees the others umberd
face;
(Act IV, Prologue)
Here, Olivier decided to move away
from the Shakespearean source, filming the
scene in the French camp later (in the original
text, it preceded the English moment).
Shakespeares French army was reckless, merry,
slightly irresponsible, over-confident in their
victory. In the 20th century, both in 1914-1918
and in the 1940s, the French were no longer the
enemy. Both wars had been and were still being
209

waged on the French territory, against a third

party, an enemy that was silent, invisible, but
overwhelming. Olivier saw the French camp,
accordingly, in a different light. More
responsible and more mature, the differences
could be located somewhere else: an elitist,
aristocratic cavalry, feeling superior not only to
Harrys yeomen, but also to their Dauphin, a bit
too young to be a convincing army general. The
French officers pass their time in a pleasant
torpor, making sophisticated conversation,
socializing. They seem to represent a decadent
social order which, according to evolutionary
rules, must disappear to make way for a more
resourceful, energetic, young world. This
observation appeared, indeed, more as the result
of a comment about the aftermath of the Great
War, in which the two empires of Central
Europe collapsed in the enemy camp, while the
Allies camp saw, on the one hand, the
consolidation of the USA as the new world
power and the inability of another great empire,
the British one, to rise victorious from this war
without the American support. The moment can
also be read as a premonition, since, in the
aftermath of World War II, the British Empire
lost its prestige and colonies, one by one. The
long war, the German raids and economic
blockade, the isolation and financial depression
gave Britain few reasons to rejoice in 1945, as
many years of hardship were to follow and its
position on the international geopolitical map
was to change forever.
Back in the English camp in Oliviers
film, the camera focused on the soldiers who
were unable to sleep and waited for the first
lights of dawn, announcing the start of the battle
which they had very modest chances to win. The
scene occasioned a profound meditation on the
way in which man faced death. The
Shakespearean experiment, so valuable in the
Elizabethan age, when wars, epidemics and
public executions made death a daily business
for everyone, was adapted by Olivier to the
situation of Britain facing the experience of the
two wars in the 20th century, which had been and
were still the most atrocious events the Western
civilization had ever struggled to survive. The
specters are numerous, again: the trenches
warfare, the absurdly high mortality rate, the
apparent futility of the war effort, when tens of
thousands died during one single day of battle
for a few inches of land; then, there was
Dunkirk, when the best military equipment and
the elite of the British army were abandoned on
French soil, awaiting the confrontation with a
better prepared enemy. The three soldiers in

Shakespeares play, who talk to their king

without knowing it was Henry himself, are
transported, in Oliviers film, into a timeless
realm, which makes their dialogue easily
applicable to other historical contexts. The boy
who tells Harry about the pointlessness of
violence, questioning the rationality of warfare,
with his provincial accent, with his simplicity,
his eyes wary and sad, became the ideal
projection of the universal hero, the anonymous
private who was to lose his life on the
battlefield. His youth was a painful reminder of
the juvenile sacrifice the Great War had come to
be associated with, a standard image against
which all future references would be made.
Shakespeares epic story about Saint
George winning at Agincourt is the first play
adapted to screen which gained international
acclaim. Oliviers Henry V became immediately
popular with both critics and the general public.
This success, which went beyond the quality of
the adaptation, the feeling of patriotism and
pride it ignited, was to be the very basis on
which British cinema in the post-war period
would develop. Oliviers success was all the
more significant as the actor, trained on the
stage, had repeatedly declared that Shakespeare
must not and could not be put on celluloid
(Jackson 2010, 70-126). Still, in the 1940s, those
in charge with war propaganda had realized that
only the cinema had the popularity and coverage
they needed to provoke a national reaction. The
impact was first tested on the radio, which had
already played its part in boosting the peoples
moral, with George VI regularly addressing the
nation since the outburst of the war, in 1939,
especially through the hard years of the Blitz,
1940-1941, when London and other important
cities were bombed by the Luftwaffe every
night. Olivier read an excerpt from
Shakespeares play the exhortation Harry
utters before the siege of Harfleur, which begins
with the famous lines:
Once more unto the breach, dear friends,
once more;
Or close the wall up with our English
dead. (III, i)
As the reception was very positive, BBC
producers made huge efforts to obtain the
funding necessary to shoot the film in colours, a
considerable effort in the austerity context of the
war years. The fact that the money for the film
was found soon indicates that the British
authorities considered the maintenance of high
collective spirits a major priority. After its
210

premiere, the film stayed in cinemas for eleven

months in London only, a record for the British
film industry at that moment (Agee 1946). As
soon as the war was over, the Hollywood
infrastructure turned Oliviers Henry V into an
international blockbuster, selling it as a war film
(a genre with contemporary connotations,
therefore), rather than as a historical one.
In 1944, when Europe was on the verge
of disintegration, the idea that war, good or bad,
had to be assumed collectively was necessary.
The years of sacrifice were to be repaid after just
one more sacrifice, a last effort to be made
before the old order could be reinstalled. Harrys
encouragement in front of the gates of Harfleur
couldnt have worked better, in this context. It is
true that the British public in the year 1944 no
longer remembered that the siege was the action
of an occupation army. Nor did they seem to
care that, when Shakespeare wrote the play for
his contemporaries, the enemy was no longer
France, but Spain. The traditional Anglo-French
rivalry was gone anyway, in 1944, now that they
had a common enemy, Hitlers Germany. The
arrival of the English army on the French shore
was no longer interpreted as an occupation,
despite the explicit aggressiveness of Henry Vs
encouragements, who wanted his men to be
savages in their assault:

slaughter of the French prisoners during the

battle of Agincourt, in Act IV, etc. Treason and
espionage, as well as the treatment of prisoners
of war, were taboo subjects in the 1940s.
Because class issues were (for once) irrelevant
during the war, Olivier who was a member of
the gentry, educated in a prestigious and
expensive public school, Central School of
Speech and Drama in London chose to portray
an almost abstract English army on the day of
the battle, elegant and clean in their brightly
coloured uniforms, receiving their commanders
homage when being addressed as friends and
brothers. This is the scene preceding the clash
at Agincourt on a day which, historically, was
rainy, but Olivier chose a sunny, shiny dcor, in
which weapons and armours sparkled, the tents
were smartly tugged in the background, and the
flags fluttered gaily in the breeze. This hygienic
image was a startling contrast with the actual
war experience, with the muddy, rat-infested
trenches the 1944 public could easily remember
but would, unconsciously, want to put behind in
order to accept the novel challenge of another
war experience.
As I pointed out, Shakespeares play
was supposed to make Englishmen proudly
remember the most recent English military
success, which was the defeat of the Spanish
Armada at Tilbury, in 1588, a success which
looked as much a miracle as Agincourt itself.
Although the Anglo-Spanish war had never been
declared officially, the confrontation which
resulted in the death of 5,000 Spaniards and the
destruction of Philip IIs galiots was the first
moment in its military history when England
appeared on the international geopolitical map
of super-powers (Martin and Parker 1999).
Elizabeth I and her contemporaries regarded
Tilbury as proof of divine support (a medal was
ordered by the sovereign, with the inscription
He blew with His winds, and they were
scattered), a justification for their actions and
success. It was no mere coincidence, therefore,
that, in Henry V, Shakespeare had the king
explain the victory of 6,000 longbowmen against
30,000 French soldiers as the result of divine
intervention, on Saint Crispin Day:

In peace theres nothing so becomes a

man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our
ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the
blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favourd
rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; (III, 1)
Discretion and meekness were to be left
behind, at home with the soldiers wives and
children. In Oliviers film, the landing of the
English army referred back, on the one hand, to
the presence of the expeditionary force in France
during the Great War and in 1941, but, on the
other hand, it also looked ahead, as an ideal
projection of D Day, 6 June 1944, the military
operation that the Allies had been preparing for
so long. In the same spirit, Olivier gave up the
scenes in Shakespeares original text which were
less flattering for King Henrys heroic figure:
the execution of the traitor in Act II, the

This day is called the feast of Crispian:

He that outlives this day, and comes safe
home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is
named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old
age,
211

Will yearly on the vigil feast his

neighbours,
And say To-morrow is Saint Crispian:
Then will he strip his sleeve and show
his scars.
And say These wounds I had on
Crispins day.
(IV, 3)

hills; we shall never surrender, he famously

said during the Blitz. And he added, after the
Battle for Britain, in 1940, paraphrasing Henry
Vs repetitive pattern of the happy few: Never
in the field of human conflict was so much owed
by so many to so few (Churchill 2010).
Conclusions
The absolute referential character of
such rhetorical formulas, the invisible
connections behind war speeches in various
moments of English history seem to create a
genuine
archetype,
activated
by
the
Shakespearean play. A war novel, written by
Stephen Ambrose, Band of Brothers (1992),
adapted for the screen by HBO, is only the last
example of a series of books and films about the
exceptional destiny of the British and American
pilots who fought back the Luftwaffe during
World War II. Solidarity and uniqueness are the
most important soldierly virtues, which writers
and directors refer to with the help of
intertextuality and the link to Shakespeares
Henry V. Harry and the longbowmen, like the
Anglo-American pilots, become symbols of
camaraderie, courage, resilience, determination
to do their duty with grace and honour, all
famous attributes of the equally famous
brotherhood once invoked, rhetorically, at
Agincourt.

Then Harry concludes, counting the dead in the

English camp:
Edward the Duke of York, the Earl of
Suffolk,
Sir Richard Ketly, Davy Gam, esquire:
None else of name; and of all other men
But five and twenty. O God, thy arm
was here;
And not to us, but to thy arm alone,
Ascribe we all!
When, without stratagem,
But in plain shock and even play of
battle,
Was ever known so great and little loss
On one part and on the other? Take it,
God,
For it is none but thine! (IV,3)
He doesnt forget to point out that:
Come, go we in procession to the
village.
And be it death proclaimed through our
host
To boast of this or take the praise from
God
Which is his only. (IV, 8)

References
a. Books:
Allmand, Christopher, Henry V,
Allmand
Los Angeles, University of
1993
California
Press,
English
Monarchs Series, 1993.
Ambrose, S.E, Band of Brothers,
Ambrose
New York, Simon & Schuster,
2001
2001.
Bevington,
David,
(ed.),
Bevington
Shakespeares Histories, London
2007
and
New
York,
Pearson
Longman, 2007.
Bull, Stephen, World War I
Bull 20002
Trench Warfare, vol. 1-2 Sussex,
Elite Osprey Publishing, 2002.
Churchill, Winston, The Second
Churchill
World War, Rosetta Books,
2010
kindle edition, 2010.
Cornwell, Bernard, Azincourt,
Cornwell
London, Harper Collins, 2009.
2009
Dildy, Doug, Dunkirk 1940:
Dildy 2010
Operation Dynamo, Elite Osprey
Publishing, 2010.

In fact, most of the British imperialist

discourse and self-image has relied, ever since
the 17th century, on the vague notion that God, if
not English, must have been at least Anglophile.
One of the patriotic songs the British soldiers
sang through the two world wars, accompanied
by the English population on the home front,
was Rule, Britannia!, dating from the 1740s,
when the Bourbons were regarded as the
haughty tyrants whose slaves the British would
never (never, never) be, during the naval
conflicts with France also known as the second
One Hundred Years War. Such an emphatic
desideratum was so deeply buried in the
collective consciousness that Winston Churchill,
skilled orator, could not ignore it during World
War II: We shall fight on the beaches, we shall
fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in
the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the
212

Dobson
1995

Fogg 2008

Dobson, Michael, The Making of

the National Poet: Shakespeare,
Adaptation and Authorship,
1660-1769, Oxford, Oxford
University Press, Clarendon
Paperbacks,1995.
Fogg, Nicholas, Stratford. A
Town at War, 1914-1945,
Chalford, Sutton Publishing,
2008.

Goebel, Stefan, The Great War

and Medieval Memory: War,
remembrance and Medievalism
in Britain and Germany, 19141940, New York, Cambridge
University Press, 2006.
Kendall, Tim, Poetry of the First
Kendall
World War. An Anthology,
2013
Oxford,
Oxford
University
Press, 2013.
Jackson, R., Shakespeare Films
Jackson
in
the
Making.
Vision,
2010
Production
and
Reception
Cambridge Books Online, 2010.
Maurois, Andr, Istoria Angliei,
Maurois
vol. I, Bucureti, Editura
1970
Politic, 1970.
Percec et al. Percec, Dana, Andreea erban,
Andreea Verte-Olteanu, Anglia
2010
elisabetan. Ghid de istorie
cultural, Timioara, Eurostampa,
2010.
Ridley 1988 Ridley, Jasper, The Tudor Age,
London, Guild Publishing, 1988.
Goebel
2006

b. Papers in periodical journals:

Agee, J., Review of Henry V.
Agee 1989
In: Time Magazine, 8 April
1946, Theatre Week magazine,
24 July 1989.

213

Dilemmatic Loyalties. A Case Study: the Church District of Sibiu

before the Great Unification

Valeria SOROSTINEANU
Lecturer, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania
E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract. For the Romanian nation, the church was still the most important stronghold, which
ensured an identity, a unique means of expression as a nation and as an integral part of the Dualist States
society. In the area where they lived, the Romanians were not so attracted by the model of a disobedient
nation in the way it was formed and presented by the authorities, which to some extent was a
disadvantage. During the First World War, the Church District of Sibiu went through some difficult
moments as a result of the presence of Romanian troops, after Romania had joined the war. In the period
which followed, especially in the period between September 1916 and the summer of 1918, more difficult
moments came, as a result of the attitude that the authorities had towards Romanians and especially
towards the elite of the church. The documents presented in this study underline the way in which the
priests of the mentioned Church District had understood their times. The situation was presented in
reports and documents in the church archives by Dr. archpriest Ioan Stroia, mentioning all the involved
categories of priests: from the border parishes, refugees, interned or exiled in the Western villages of
Hungary, many of them suspected of not being loyal to the Hungarian state. Dr. Ioan Stroia had a cautious
and politically correct tone in the reports, stressing the pain and sufferings of the Romanians in
Transylvania during the war. Because of a situation of uncertainty towards the believers, but also towards
themselves, the priests from the Church District of Sibiu, just as others, chose to refer to the war as a
harsh but just punishment of the divinity. Far from denying this aspect, the archpriest and other priests
present at the meetings of the Committee of the church showed the complexity of the situation in a
difficult moment, the hardships of everyday life at war, which Stefan Zweig named one of the astral
hours of humanity.
Keywords: Romanian nation, Church District of Sibiu, loyalty, First World War, Orthodox
Church
of the recalcitrant nation, as it was built by the
authorities.
As weve explained, the Orthodox
Church from the Transylvanian space has been
first of all a complex institution, which widely
overcomes her traditional spiritual role (Maior
2006, 222). The historian Liviu Maior was
convinced that, as the events went by, especially
during the First World War, of all loyalties,
which had been created by Vienna and then by
Budapest, theorized and presented as a model in
front of the nations of second rank within the
empire, they chose (and this was also the case of
the Romanian nation) the only viable one the
loyalty towards themselves. Thus, according to
the historian Liviu Maior the so-called triad of
loyalty (towards emperor, authorities and nation)
was solved through a simplification of the first
two, but that final process had been with
difficulties and syncope.
In the same way, as in the case of the
majority of those who were at war in the
summer of the year 1914, it was thought that it

Introduction
The First World War was a known
finality for the dualist Empire, but we are
interested to study it thoroughly regarding every
aspect of the complex Romanian society within
the dualist state.
The Habsburg Empire had been the one
to impose dualism, but it hadnt had the chance
to benefit from its advantages, because over time
Vienna kept fewer levers in order to remain a
fundamental structure of the empire. As it was
expected, especially for the nations from the
Hungarian part of the Empire, the only process
that followed its course, revealed in the case of
the Romanian nation, had been the one to ensure
the passing from the dynastic loyalty to the
national identity.
Regardless of the religious confession of
the Romanian nation, the Church remained the
most powerful stronghold that ensured identity,
a specific way of manifestation both on the
social and national levels, because the
Romanians hadnt been attracted by the model
214

was a short conflict that would last several

months, after which Serbia would be redressed.
The rural Romanian world from the
Transylvanian space, which represents the focal
point of our study, had received some orders to
accomplish, as it had been earlier, during other
wars of the Habsburg Empire. The Romanians
even had received laudatory words from the
generals and sometimes from the emperor
himself for their exceptional bravery.
The two Romanian Churches
Orthodox and Greek-Catholic had tried
through their speeches to impose again the
image of a spotless loyalty towards the emperor.
The sermons about war were based on examples
from the Old Testament and were characterized
by apocalyptical notes; the war remained the
only way through which society could have been
brought on the good path. Thus, for many
believers, the war became a punishment given
to men by God for their sins, a harsh, but
necessary method (Barlea 2004, 201).
The hierarchs of the mentioned churches
were also forced to consider themselves political
leaders of their believers, although it was known
that the Romanian nation had lay elite, close to
the clerical elite. Such a role had always been
ingrate and especially impossible to annul.
When Budapest had asked to demonstrate once
more their loyalty through sermons and reports
for the mobilization of the Romanian nation to
defend their homeland, there were the first
difficult moments due to the fact that all bishops
and priests couldnt convince anyone neither
administrators, nor civilians (Ibidem, 206).
Motherland had been a difficult notion
to perceive, especially speaking strictly
geographically for the majority of the Romanian
nation, formed mostly of peasants. It is certain
that the Romanian nation had become a society
that traced its loyalties during the dualist period.
Inevitably, all the functionaries or officers had
as their model the literary hero Apostol Bologa,
but in this context the peasantry was a special
case, as it represented the majority of
Romanians numerically. The peasantry had
accepted either individually or generally its fatal
fate, going to another war not due to the
inspiring image of the Austro-Hungarian
motherland, but due to the fact that the political
elite had a selective memory. The historical
events on Transylvanian ground were sufficient
for the collective mentality to learn and establish
a common denominator of the reality so that
distrust became in time a fissure that couldnt
resist any longer.

The Church District of Sibiu in Reports and

Documents of 1916-1918
What we call today a weltered history
with a triumphant end the Great Unification on
the 1st of December 1918 had been a series of
endless dark and complicated events, at the end
of which the Romanians learned that beyond this
war, there was another one of becoming aware
of the sense of the verbs to be and to realize
in order to establish the destiny of their nation
(Sorostineanu 2004, 190).
In our case, my interest was focused on
the reports and the analysis of the state of mind
of those who were involved at the Church
District of Sibiu during a short, but significant
period of time 1916-1917 for the Romanian
nation of Transylvania. Weve analysed the
reports of the sessions during spring of 1918
held by Dr. Ioan Stroia and the Committee,
respectively the Synod of the mentioned district.
We have to mention several aspects
about one of the most distinguished archpriest in
Archdiocese of Transylvania Dr. Ioan Stroia
the one who became later the first bishop of the
army in Romania. He was born in 1865 in
Fntnele, Sibiu county and he died in AlbaIulia, in 1937. He graduated the Evangelical
Secondary school in Sibiu and then Andrei
aguna in Braov, later the Theological
Institute in Sibiu (1887-1890) and studies of
pedagogy, history, geography at universities in
Jena and Budapest. He held a doctorate degree
in pedagogy obtained at Jena university in 1893;
he was functionary of the Consistory in Sibiu
(1894), professor at the Institute (1894-1901),
priest and archpriest in Slite (1901-1908) and
then in Sibiu (1908-1919). After the Great
Unification in 1918 he was inspector in Sibiu
county (1919-1922), regional director of
education in Sibiu (1922-1923), metropolitan
counsellor (1923-1925) and then bishop of army
in Alba-Iulia. He was known due to his studies
in pedagogy.
We may see the profile of a great
clerical man from all the analysed documents
and his writings on the horrors and tragic effects
of war. We tried to understand the spirit of those
involved in these documents, explaining their
behaviour under complicated circumstances
when the Romanian troops entered the war
against the dualist state. That moment marked
the new era of loyalties demanded from priests
and believers alike. Far from being a
comprehensive analysis of the attitudes at war of
the Orthodox clergy or of the phenomenology of
war, we analysed the ways in which the clergy
related to the events mentally, emotionally and
215

in other hypostases: as refugees, interned in

Western counties of Hungary, in parishes.
Another analysed aspect is the situation of the
family and the marks left by war (Stanca 1925;
Pcurariu 1986; Triteanu 1919). Taking these
aspects into account, we didnt focus on case
analyses (such are: Dr. Ioan Lupa exile,
Aurelia Gogas exile due to her sons (Octavian
Goga) choice to leave for Romania, the activity
of espionage of the priest Coman Baca etc.), but
to reveal the gradual evolution in building the
national individuality, separated from the
official loyalty.
Most of the documents and information
we got from Dr. Ioan Stroia, who was
responsible for the Church District of Sibiu. The
first segment of our analysis points out his
attitude toward difficulties during 1914-1918,
toward his superiors and his reaction toward his
neighbours. The report of 1916, dated
15.10.1917 contains the strict required data: the
Church District kept 26 parishes, the population
was 31,828 inhabitants, 353 less than in 1915,
the number of marriages (42) was smaller than
of civil unions (53), the number of births 514, of
deaths 720 (A.A. Sibiu 1917, III, 41).
There are numerous reports regarding
the fate of other priests from this Church District
and especially from parishes at the border with
Romania. Thus, from the documents sent by him
to Oradea, where the Orthodox Metropolitan
Church was in refuge, we may sense a great fear
and unrest for the future times. The military
priests were the first ones forced to leave their
parishes, as the archpriest wrote in a report at the
beginning of the year 1917: Traian Petrior from
Gusterita parish, Patriciu Curea from OcnaSibiului, Dr. Aurel Crciunescu, professor at the
seminar, Marcu Jantea from Sibiu, teacher of
religion, and others were mentioned: Nicolae
Dorca from Loamnes, Constantin Moldova from
Cristian (Ibidem 1916, III, 320; Ibidem 1917,
524).
Some of the priests who were called to
war as militaries asked for an exemption at the
Consistory in Sibiu, offering reasons for that:
Constantin Moldovan was the administrator of 3
parishes in 1917 Cristian, Poplaca and Gura
Raului; Emilian Craciun had to administer the
parish in Gura Raului and Sau, where there was
no teacher nor priest; Nicolae Fara asked for an
exemption due to his family situation a sick
wife and a baby in Armeni (Ibidem 1917, III,
524; Ibidem 1917, III, 1924). Some communities
kept asking for the return of their priests, as it
was the case of Nicolae Topolog from Turnior.
Another military priest from Gusterita Traian

Petrior returned to Sibiu, being able to help

his family of 5 children; but later he was called
again at war on the Italian front (Ibidem 1917,
III, 181).
Due to the long war, the cantors were
called at war, even though some of them were
exempted at the beginning. Only 16 cantors
were in service at 3 churches from 29, the rest of
them being replaced by old teachers or other
believers. Their situation got worse due to the
need to send more people at war in spring 1917
and more churches from the Church District of
Sibiu were in danger of being closed, as there
were neither priests nor cantors in parishes. Only
several cantors were serving in churches Ioan
Vasiu, Romul Busca and two others were
missing (Ibidem 1917, III, 181).
The next metropolitan Nicolae Balan
was a refugee in Oradea and wrote a memorial
on March, 19th, 1917, in which he was greatly
concerned
by
the
possible
negative
consequences of the lack of priests, especially in
the Southern Transylvania, which was exposed
to military operations. Even if many priests were
interned or retreated with Romanian army, the
believers couldnt been left without priests to
protect the people in the nowadays harsh
times. If the churches couldnt remain opened,
leaving thus thousands of believers with no
comforts of faith, one of the solutions
concluded the priest was to use priests
widowers or priests from bigger parishes
(Ibidem).
Other reports written by Stroia dating
from 1916 state the situation of the priests with
problems: 18 priests out of 26 parishes were
interned, refugees or with material issues: Ioan
Druhora in Boita, Nicolae Dorca in Loamnes,
Isaia Popa in Ocna-Sibiului, Alexandrescu
Vidrighinescu in Ocna-Sibiului, Emilian
Dancasiu in Rasinari, Trandafir Scorobet in
Roia, Dumitru Bunea in Sadu, Emilian Craciun
in Sadu, Nicolae Manitiu in Vurper, Ioan Roman
and Ilie Piso in Talmacel all interned; George
Simplacean in Cornatel, Ioan Stanescu in Mohu
financial issues; Maniu Lung in Rasinari,
Emilian Cioran in Rinari, Dr. Ioan Stroia in
Sibiu refugees (Ibidem 1916, III, 620).
More aspects are written in a detailed
variant of the report: in Cristian, the priest
Constantin Moldovan with the inhabitants were
forced to leave the village and when they came
back, the houses were destroyed by the army;
George Simplacean found his home destroyed,
while Nicolae Dorcas home in Loamnes was
destroyed by the army, even the windows and
the doors were taken out.
216

Isaia Popa was interned and soldiers had

lived in his home; the most difficult situation
was for Coman Bacas family after the priests
arrest. The wife had to take refuge and one son
died after trying to save something from their
goods. Dumitru Buneas house in Sadu was hit
by a grenade, while Trandafir Scorobets family
lived in utter misery. The archpriest was also
affected after his refuge to Oradea, as his house
in Gura Raului was devastated by the army and
destroyed by a grenade (Ibidem 1916, III, 620).
Another report written in 1917 by Dr.
Ioan Stroia tried to establish a hierarchy of
priests who needed an urgent financial aid. Two
of the cases were obvious: Trandafir Scorobet in
Roia with 6 children, Dumitru Bunea in Sadu
and Emil Dancasiu in Rinari all interned in
Zombor, with no accusations; and Nicolae Dorca
from Loamnas interned in Sopron (Ibidem 1917,
III, 1028).
As it may be easily observed, the
biggest problem was that of the priests forced to
leave their parishes by authorities or by military
operations, as well as of priests interned in the
Hungarian Western villages: Zombor and
Sopron, being considered potential dangerous
people for the country.
In 1916 one of the priests from Rasinari,
Emil Dancasiu, sent to Cluj to face the Military
Trial as a witness, ended up in Zombor with no
sentence. His despair is clear from his letter to
the archpriest: I have to spend my time on
streets like a dishonourable man (Ibidem 1916,
III,
600).
Another
priest
Alexandru
Vidrighinescu from Ocna-Sibiului wrote that he
was destroyed with anger and lack of material
means, not willing to receive charity. These
were new problems for the Orthodox Church to
face in harsh times.
In a memorial sent to the Consistory of
Sibiu in 1916 we learn more about the living
conditions of those being interned; the paper was
signed by priests and teachers from Alba and
Sibiu, arrested and then interned in Zombor:
Vasile Spatar, teacher and priest in Armeni, Ioan
Morariu, priest in Bogatu Roman, Savu Avram
and Savu Radu, teachers in Ocna-Sibiului and
Dionisiu Raulea, teacher in Bogatu Roman.
After the interrogations in Cluj, all of them were
sent to internment places where there were also
other Romanian peasants. Epidemics were
normality in those interments, while the daily
payment was insufficient 2 crowns/day.
Metropolitan Vasile Mangra was asked to
intervene so that they would be sent back or at
least would get financial help, as under such
dreadful and unbearable circumstances, anxiety

and lack of occupation ruins us financially and

spiritually (Ibidem 1917, III, 1028).
Another priest Nicolae Manitiu from
Sopron with his family in December 1916 felt
humiliated by the impossibility to ensure bare
necessities for his entire family and having a life
incompatible with the priests status. Ilie Piso,
priest in Talmacel was sent to Sopron on August
28th, 1916 with his family: a sick wife and two
children with no financial support; he asked the
Consistory for financial support to overcome the
sufferings provoked by this cruel war. In a
similar situation was Isaia Popa from OcnaSibiului, interned with his family in Zombor and
asking for financial support to be able to survive.
Nicolae Dorca from Loamnes was interned with
his family in August 1916 in Sopron with no
reason. He was also asking for financial support,
although he tried to take a bank loan, but
everything he had was devastated. The priest
Ioan Roman from Talmacel was among the
refugees in Banat, at Milasul Mare with his
family, being unable to return to his parish and
in financial difficulty. Coming back to Loamnes
and trying to rebuild the schools, the priests
found himself in a difficult relationship with the
mayor who requested his internment in Zombor.
The entire case was solved by the direct
intervention of the priest at the Ministry of
Internal Affairs in Budapest (Ibidem 1917, III,
1028).
While the ecclesiastic authorities from
Sibiu could intervene and mediate for clergy
members, the chances were low in case of other
citizens interned in Zombor. Joandrea family
from Sibiu was one of many cases when the
elders Petru (62), Ioan (66) and Nicolae (72)
were on the verge of death due to their
internment and lack of financial support. The
facts that one of their sons fought in Galicia,
Serbia, Montenegro and Albania in the 12th
Regiment of artillery, while another one died in
Bucovina in 1915, decorated with the Golden
medal for bravery, and Nicolae Joandrea offered
his support to the mayor of Sibiu until the arrival
of the German army didnt matter at all
(Ibidem).
Archpriests reports also described the
situation at war, when the works of the Synod of
the Church District in 1917 couldnt be held, as
well as the exams at the confessional schools.
Priests requests of financial support
were also numerous in cases when they
remained in devastated by war areas. George
Simplacean, priest in Cornatel and teacher for 3
years, wrote about those times: after the
Romanian invasion I had to take refuge and I
217

and my family became the victims of war, as

village Cornatel was evicted, being between the
lines of fire. Coming back, he saw his house
destroyed, the damage being of 800 crowns,
aspect mentioned in a document by town clerks,
specifying that the priest was of an exemplary
moral and political behaviour during the
Romanian invasion. People didnt have
animals, feed, and the artillery bombed a part of
the houses, as well as the church and the school,
so that the damage was of 800,000 crowns for a
parish of 700 souls (Ibidem 1916, III, 620).
Another priest Nicolae Secasan from
Rusciori was evicted from the village with other
inhabitants, while the men were enrolled. He left
with his wife, carrying on their back what they
could, as the carriages were used by the AustroHungarian army to transport munitions. They
buried the archive of the parish in the cellar of
the vicarage to protect it from fire. When they
came back, they noticed that everything was
devastated, while the documents of the parish
were scattered everywhere. He ended his letter,
expressing his regret of waiting almost a year for
a financial support from the state or from the
church (Ibidem 1916, III, 620; Ibidem 1917, III,
1924).
In spring 1917 12 parishes didnt have
priests and some of them were in that situation
from the beginning of the war: Boita, Talmacel,
Selimbar (Ibidem 1917, III, 161).
Valeria Dragomir, a priests wife in
Porcesti, requested financial support due to her
husband, who left for an unknown place. That
was the best way to express the difficult
situations in which were most of the priests from
the Southern part of the Empire when Romanian
soldiers forced the priests to become their
guides. The priest Toma Dragomir came back,
explaining his situation and considering that he
was a loyal citizen of the state (Ibidem 1917,
III, 395).
The archpriest sent to Consistory a
report with the support for the priests in 1916.
The money had to compensate for the war
situation, as they were not given to Orthodox
priests due to political reasons. 25 of 29 priests
received sums of 400 and 200 crowns; the total
sum was 250,000 crowns, proving the
difficulties in which were their parishes (Ibidem
1916, III, 620).
Another short report written by Dr. Ioan
Stroia highlights the complicated situation of the
priests in Poplaca, where Coman Baca and
another priest George Modran were interned in
Sibiu, being accused that they officiated the
divine service during the occupation and

preached on that occasion (Ibidem 1917, III,

84).
Stroia presented detailed reports on the
works of the Synod of the Church District of
Sibiu in 1918, when the meeting could be held
according to the schedule on the 6th/9th of April
1918. The official report was dated on the 26th of
March 1918 in an uncertain period, as the tone
and words used are politically correct (Ibidem
1918, I/136).
At the beginning of the mentioned
session dr. Ioan Stroia had manifested his grief
that at that date the war was far from being over.
The war had negative effects on him and his
activity due to the intervention of the brothers
from kingdom, who messed with our homeland
so that the consequences were fatal for them
and especially for us (Ibidem). The conflict was
complex, as it stirred many ethnic conflicts with
negative effects from all perspectives so that for
him the sad memory of it would remain in the
conscience of the people for decades and
centuries. Although the Romanian nation
should have reached the ethnic conscience and
unity, the nation ended up in sacrificing it and
the believers started denouncing each other
without being aware of how much venom they
pour in the arteries of their national body
(Ibidem).
That atmosphere of suspicion and
distrust and the absence of some members of the
Synod detained him from organizing the session
of the Synod of the Church District of Sibiu in
1917. The suspicion of authorities, especially
after the summer exams in 1917 was another
reason: I didnt want to expose myself to
suspicion due to some denunciations against me
because of some advice Id given to pupils on
the occasion of the exams (Ibidem).
The documents concerning the Church
District of Sibiu refer to: the protocol written at
the session of the protopresbiterial Synod of
Sibiu on 6th/19th of April 1918, the protocol of
the Committee on the same date, the
introduction already mentioned and the most
consistent part represented by the official report
on businesses and state of the protopresbitery of
Sibiu in 1917.
It is also important that there were 25
members and 11 absentees and among those
who were present we mention: Maniu Lungu,
Dr. Nicolae Balan, Dr. Pavel Rosca, Victor
Tordasian, Demetriu Comsa, Candid Popa, Ioan
Boiu, Emanoil Cioran, Dr. Ioan Bucur, Dr. L.
Borcia, Pantaleon Lucuta, Dr. Silviu Dragomir,
Dr. Ioan Fruma etc.

218

It is relevant to point out the archpriests

perspective, who managed to present not only
the state of the Church District demographically,
socially, economically, spiritually, but also to
point out the state of those who were members
of that association. The archpriest was pleased
that despite all the hardships the works were
restarted after the refuge to Oradea from
September 1916. On the administrative level
there were no problems, but there were many
teachers to replace due to their mobilization
(Ibidem 1918, I/136). Many priests suffered due
to their close relationship with the Romanian
army, whom they hadnt perceived as enemy
(which was the official title at that time). The
following are those who were found guilty: Ioan
Druhora, Dumitru Bunea, Isaia Popa, Alexandru
Vidrighinescu, Nicolae Dorca, Emil Dancas,
Nicolae Manitiu, Ioan Roman, Ioan Piso. All of
them were interned and the last one was sent in
another Church District as administrator in
Zarnesti (Brasov). Then it was read the list of
fired priests: Trandafir Scorobet, interned in
spring 1918 in the county of Zombor in
Hungary; George Modran; Toma Modran and
Ioan Damian freed from detention in Cluj. Dr.
Ioan Stroias comments are the following: they
were taken away by the Romanian army and
after their return detained in Cluj, as they had to
pay for their contract with the enemy for many
months (Ibidem).
There were some priests who preferred
not to return from Romania: Ioan Marin from
Rau-Sadului and chaplain from Mohu, Victor
Slavescu. Other priests were called again to
militia and some of them, among which Nicolae
Moldovan from Vestem were absolved at the
request of Consistory. There were however
serious cases mentioned by the archpriest with
no comments: priest Nicolae Vlad from
Selimbar, who was sentenced to 10 years of
prison because he greeted and served the enemy
and Coman Baca, the vicar from Poplaca who
was still in prison after he was initially
sentenced to death, because he would have been
a spy (Ibidem).
After all these losses, at the end of 1917,
the Church County of Sibiu had 1 archpriest, 23
priests, 3 priests and one chaplain in the military
service, 1 interned priest, 1 fired priest, 2 priests
in prison, 1 priest and 1 chaplain missing.
No other cases were mentioned that
would have forbidden the activity of the Synod
and Committee in parishes. On the other hand,
the state of the population was another motif
for concern. There was a report at the Church
District that mentioned the cases of those taken

by the Romanian army in its retreat; it was an

ambiguous expression, as it was known that they
left willingly. Another statistics stated the
number of those about there were no news or
official reports. The population decreased from
31,625 to 31,114 souls (Ibidem). 13% (8,463) of
the population were illiterate, including children
under 6 years and mostly women and old people.
Because of war, the courses for illiterate were
impossible to organize. The number of
marriages decreased only 47 in church and 2
civil marriages; 44 civil communions were
signalled, 3 more compared to the previous year.
There were 480 births: 254 boys and 226 girls;
48,10% were illegal, an explainable thing at war.
The birth rate reduced 2,2% compared to the
beginning of the war, while the death rate
maintained at the same level. In 1917 786 people
died: 391 men, 395 women; 16 people more than
in the previous year. Compared to the birth rate,
the death rate was bigger, representing 2% of the
population of the Church District of Sibiu. Dr.
Ioan Stroia presented a table with the evolution
of marriages, births, deaths since 1912 (Ibidem)
(Table 1).
The next important chapter to present
was the state of the churches. The church from
Bungard was severely damaged and couldnt be
used; the believers from Slimnic managed to
paint the entire church after collecting money.
The most sensitive aspect was the
schools the conflicting point between the
Church and the state for a long period of time.
The archpriest was worried of the fatal
consequences over the confessional school and
the way authorities used the war situation
against it. The first obstacle was that the school
year had started late at the end of November
in Boita and in March in other parishes, while in
some cases the schools were closed: RauSadului, Rosia, Vurpar.
The numbers support that reality: 45%
attended school, while 2379 children didnt
attend school in 1917; 579 of them attended
other schools. Dr. Stroia was convinced that
despite the sorrowful situation of the war,
parents were responsible for that situation. The
proverbial indolence of our people when it
comes to school was mentioned, as well as the
inertia of the administrative organs. The
situation of the Romanian pupils of Orthodox
religion (621, 339 less than in the previous year)
was difficult, especially due to the fact that the
didactic activity couldnt be started before the
2nd semester. The number of disciples was
reduced: from 330 to 64. Later, the priests
responsible with catechism were sent to the
219

front, became refugees or were interned by the

authorities. The final exams were established on
2nd of May and 9th of June with great difficulty
(Ibidem) (1).
Although being most important, the
exams for the graduates of the 6th grade were not
that successful; during previous years, 70-80
candidates were present, but in 1917 there were
only 30. Dr. Ioan Stroia pleaded that more
candidates would get their diploma that would
permit them to have a possible right to vote.
The teachers situation was not that
positive either. Several teachers were considered
disappeared with the enemy: Nicolae Bogdan
from Nucet, Nicolae Modran from Bungard,
Ioan Vitelar from Poplaca, Ioan Iancu from
Mohu and Moise Fratila from Rasinari. The last
ones had returned and were imprisoned in Cluj.
Those who left were suspended due to the order
of the Ministry and they didnt have the right to
teach for 5 years (Ibidem). In its patriotic zeal,
the Ministry cut the salaries of all the teachers
from those schools and parishes from where the
teacher defected to the enemy and so that the
homeland would be saved, the cultural area was
created, which was, in Stroias opinion a
cultural patriotic wall by ceasing all Romanian
confessional schools and by establishment of
state schools.
The archpriest noticed that the Ministry
didnt consult the Consistory of Sibiu and efforts
were made to transform the Romanian Orthodox
schools into state schools even in the case of the
Southern Transylvanian parishes at the border
(Ibidem). There are cases when the Romanian
Orthodox schools were transformed in state
schools due to the signature of the inspector in
the teachers room of the village.
In the Church District of Sibiu, in March
1918, from a total number of 51 workplaces of
teachers: 24 were qualified teachers, 5 were
locum tenens, 22 were not occupied and didnt
have locum tenens. The teachers of the unoccupied workplaces were: 13 at militia, 4
suspended, 3 disappeared and 1 imprisoned,
while 6 more workplaces were about to become
available. Due to a lack of qualified candidates,
the workplaces remained un-occupied: Sibiu,
Poplaca, Vurpar, Rau-Sadului and three other
workplaces in Rasinari (Ibidem).
The remuneration was realized with no
problems, aspect that makes us realize the

special efforts undertaken so that the Romanian

confessional school would be able to support the
costs (2). The 26 schools of the Church District
of Sibiu were satisfactory if we refer to
buildings and endowments, while repairs were
made only where it was necessary (Ibidem). The
budgets of the parishes for 1917 were sent to the
Consistory of Sibiu, but due to some
administrative difficulties, there was no answer
at the date of writing that report, in March 1918.
The same happened in 1916 because of the war
and of the fact that Romania entered the war,
causing many deportations of Transylvanian
priests in Sopron county of the Western
Hungary, in the camp of the Serbian prisoners at
Nezsider or in Zombor and Bechicherec mic
(former Yugoslavia) (Pacurariu 1986, 179-209).
Returning to the problem of the budgets,
there were some cases when it was impossible to
establish the budget, because the priests or the
necessary documents were missing. That was the
case of Rau-Sadului, Modu and Rosia. The
archpriest Stroia presented facts about the
fortune of the Church district in 1916, the sum
being the same as in the previous year
1,546,030 (Ibidem 1918, I/136, the Report of the
Church District of Sibiu written on the 26th of
March 1918).
Dr. Stroias report was favourably
received by the present priests, while means of
financial protection for the priests in financial
difficulty were adopted due to the war situation.
Thus, it was voted that the annual fees would be
530 crowns so that it would be possible to
support the financial situation of priests with 400
crowns. Another proposal was to raise the taxes
for schools thrice so that the priests and their
families may be helped in their difficult
situations. Concerning the archpriests salary, it
was voted an increase of 50%, the salary being
of 300 crowns. There were more discussions on
this subject, but the raise of the taxes could be
made only in Sibiu (Ibidem). Moreover, at the
end of the session of the Committee in Sibiu it
was mentioned that these fee increases may lead
to animosities and angers, which can be solved
only by higher Church organs (Ibidem).
Conclusions
Weve attempted to present the
administrative state of a Transylvanian county,
(2) The total sum of salaries was 87.028 crowns, 4853
crowns less than in 1916: from churches 35,721
crowns, from the state 37,530 crowns, from
Consistory 1,400 crowns and from other 4 sources
12,576 crowns.

( ) For example catechist Marcu Jantea was called to

war and replaced by 2 pupils from the Theological
Institute and after their return to Oradea, by priests
Ioan Boiu and Ilie Beleuta.

220

as well as some spiritual insights, using the

reports and documents of the Church District of
Sibiu since the beginning of the First World
War. During that period, nothing was clear and
certain, and the balance of power was inclined.
The overwhelming reality of war was difficult
for the archpriest so that he wrote about the year
1916 in the Report of the office of the Church
District of Sibiu: there was such a year that you
are glad that it passed and you wouldnt like to
think about it (Ibidem).
Loyalty was a subject reduced to the
Emperor, as it was clear from the Habsburg
Empire, but dualism has changed it, doubling the
notion of loyalty toward the Hungarian and
Austrian state. The Emperor Franz-Joseph had to
replace Viennas weakness when it had accepted
the dualist state, but from the military point of
view, the Emperor had survived as the only
commander. Budapest didnt excel in requiring
political loyalties from the nations that were
entrusted to her, but it tried to impose an ethnic
and national loyalty, as it had manifested toward
Vienna in 1848 and later. Decades later until the
First World War the situation got worse,
Romanians loyalty toward their motherland was
tested in the moments when Transylvanian
Romanians faced Romanian Kingdom entering
the war.
Confusion, sadness are emotional
responses obvious while reading the archpriests
of Sibiu reports, as well as letters of the interned
or imprisoned priests, refugees, especially
because most of the internments had a
preventive role with no evidence. The official
acts used a neuter tone, politically correct, but
between the lines we may sense the compassion
for those who had suffered at war. Romanians
were not preoccupied by the issue of loyalty for
their country, as long as Transylvania, Banat or
Budapest was mentioned during the dualist
period. Were there two motherlands in their
mind, were they a special case or the
reduplication was made automatically in the
case of all the nations within the Habsburg and
then Austro-Hungarian Empire?
The subject of dilemmatic loyalties is
still sensitive due to a lack of a dialogue, but it
requires a complex general context in order to
unveil the aspects of Hungarian and Romanian
loyalties in Transylvania of the First World War.
Dr. Stroias letter to the Metropolitan explains
well the spiritual state that had characterized
most Romanians during the surprising and
painful years of the war: I am a good citizen of
the Hungarian state and we were born

Romanians, thus we bear the guilt (Ibidem

1917, III, 1028).
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Barlea, Eugenia, Perspectiva
Barlea 2004
lumii rurale asupra primului
rzboi
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Perspective of the Rural World
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Maior 2006
romnii. De la loialitatea
dinastic
la
identitate
naional [Habsburgs and
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Bucureti, 2006.
Pacurariu, Mircea, Politica
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statului ungar fa de biserica
1996
romneasc din Transilvania
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Biblic de Misiune al B.O.R.,
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in
Transylvania], Sibiu, 2004.
Stanca 1925 Stanca, Sebastian, Contribuia
preoimei romne din Ardeal
la rzboiul pentru ntregirea
neamului 1916-1918 [The
Contribution of the Romanian
Priesthood of Transylvania to
the
War
for
National
Unification 1916-1918], Cluj,
1925.
Triteanu,
Lazar,
coala
Triteanu
noastr. 1850-1916. Zona
1919
cultural [Our School. 18501916. The Cultural Zone],
Sibiu, 1919.
b. Archives:
Arhiva Arhiepiscopiei Sibiu
A. A. Sibiu
[The Archive of Archdiocese
1916
221

A. A. Sibiu
1916
A. A. Sibiu
1916
A. A. Sibiu
1916
A. A. Sibiu
1916
A. A. Sibiu
1917
A. A. Sibiu
1917
A. A. Sibiu
1917
A. A. Sibiu
1917
A. A. Sibiu
1917
A. A. Sibiu
1917
A. A. Sibiu
1917
A. A. Sibiu
1918

of
Sibiu],
Fondul
Consistoriului
[The
Consistory Fund], III, 320,
1916.
Arhiva Arhiepiscopiei Sibiu,
Fondul Consistoriului, III,
400, 1916.
Arhiva Arhiepiscopiei Sibiu,
Fondul Consistoriului, III,
524, 1916.
Arhiva Arhiepiscopiei Sibiu,
Fondul Consistoriului, III,
600, 1916.
Arhiva Arhiepiscopiei Sibiu,
Fondul Consistoriului, III,
620, 1916.
Arhiva Arhiepiscopiei Sibiu,
Fondul Consistoriului, III,
41, 1917.
Arhiva Arhiepiscopiei Sibiu,
Fondul Consistoriului, III,
84, 1917.
Arhiva Arhiepiscopiei Sibiu,
Fondul Consistoriului, III,
161, 1917.
Arhiva Arhiepiscopiei Sibiu,
Fondul Consistoriului, III,
181, 1917.
Arhiva Arhiepiscopiei Sibiu,
Fondul Consistoriului, III,
395, 1917.
Arhiva Arhiepiscopiei Sibiu,
Fondul Consistoriului, III,
1028, 1917.
Arhiva Arhiepiscopiei Sibiu,
Fondul Consistoriului, III,
1924, 1917.
Arhiva Arhiepiscopiei Sibiu,
Fondul Consistoriului, I,
136, 1918.

1191

Birth
s
1213

Decease
s
760

1191

331

1207

882

1191

211

1188

888

872

913

1191

42

514

770

1191

49

480

780

7
Source: The Archive of Archdiocese of Sibiu,
The Consistory Fund 1918, I/136.

Table 1.

Marriage
s
318

41

Annex:

Year

1191
5

2
3
4
222

Life on the Frontline and the Horrors of WWI as Seen by the

Romanian Newspapers of Transylvania: Libertatea, Deteptarea and
Romnul (1914-1918)
Carmen GOREAN
Ph. D. Candidate, Babe-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca
E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract. WWI has created the favorable historical context for Romanians to accomplish
national unification. A mobilizing important role for Transylvanians was played by the press in the
province, which, against all odds, like severe censorship, draconic laws, high fines, threats and
intimidation, was still able to connect the population to the leading politicians of the time. Giving top
priority to the news reports and trying to maintain their objectivity, Libertatea [The Liberty] and Romnul
[The Romanian] made a real difference in the way the history of Romania was made in those days. By
contrast, the newspaper Deteptarea [The Awakening], a manipulating tool, carry part of the information
printed in the first two, but it is far apart in terms of the unionist stand and the patriotic fervor the other
two promote. Our intent is to present how the three periodicals of Romanian language reported on the life
of the Transylvanian soldiers in the Austro-Hungarian army and on the horrors of the carnage produced
by the war.
Keywords: WWI, Transylvania, Austro-Hungary, Romanian press, life on the front

Ortie), Romnul [The Romanian] (from Arad)

and Deteptarea [The Awakening] (from
Braov).
Romnul [The Romanian], the official
newspaper of the Romanian National Party, a
political daily with a literary page, based in
Arad, was published between Jan.1, 1911 until
Feb. 28, 1916, Oct. 26 until March 22, 1922,
1927 until 1932, and from 1935 until 1938.
Between 1916 and 1918, Romnul [The
Romanian] appeared only a few times because it
was closed down by the Hungarian authorities
(Simion et. alli. 2006, 676). The editing team
was made up of leading Romanian intellectuals
who supported the unification: Vasile Goldi,
Al. Vaida-Voevod, Teodor Mihali, Iuliu Maniu
etc. In the first issue, the editors published on the
front page an appeal To all Romanians! in
which they expressed the direction the
newspaper was about to take: to awake and
strengthen the national conscience by
enlightening the souls about the great truth that
the national rights were the absolute condition
for cultural and economic progress. The papers
manifesto specifically stated the roles of the
press and the journalists toiling this field: We
know what power the press has, especially in
times of peoples awakening, and thats why we
value both the talent and the honest souls that
nurture them. [...] The journalists of a nation

Preliminary Ideas
The Romanian press in Transylvania
went through dramatic times during WWI, not
only because of the draconic censorship
subjected to by the new martial laws, but also by
the financial hardships and the confusion and
fear created by the journalists who fled the
province for Romania (The Old Kingdom). The
outbreak of the war turned the Hungarian
government into a really oppressive one that
passed new laws concerning the press. One of
them, law XIV of 1914, in art. 1 says that it
guarantees free communication of ideas through
written means and free founding of newspapers,
just to render them null and void a few lines
down. The requirements to meet were so hard,
that in the end they were nothing but suppressed
(Theodorescu 1941, 84). Under these
circumstances, many famous journalists decided
to take refuge in the Old Kingdom, where they
managed to make their word heard in which the
loyal expression of the grievances and hopes of
subjugated Transylvania were laid (Lupa 1926,
26). During the war there were allowed two
Romanian daily newspapers compared to the
seventeen Hungarian ones (Theodorescu 1941,
128).
We have chosen three newspapers of
different political colors of the time for this
presentation: Libertatea [The Liberty] (from
223

must be, first and foremost, dedicated, in blood

and soul, to the spirit of national solidarity.
Moreover, responsible journalists of a
responsible nation must be the most valuable
and stable expression of national cohesion
(Hangiu 2008, 759-762). All contributors to the
newspaper played a key role in the Great
Unification for which they worked tirelessly.
A short review of the activity of the
newspaper Deteptarea [The Awakening] is
made by Constantin Sulic, the director between
1916-1917 an independent newspaper, (as it is
stated on the front page of each issue) founded
by Arsenie Vlaicu and Constantin Sulic in
1904, in Braov, in the middle of a true
upheaval right from the start, for the purpose of
shedding the coat of a social-economic paper
and that of a local entity and turn itself into a
political tool, embracing all the manifestations
of the political life of the entire Romanian
population of the motherland. In the first seven
years, the activity was run by the founders, and
beginning with 1912 Eugen Brote, then Arsenie
Vlaicu and after the war broke out, Prof. Nicolae
Sulic ran the paper. After relocating the
newspaper to Budapest (1916) the activity
became the responsibility of Nicolae Sulic,
while Ioan Fgrianu and Vasile Mangra
became contributors. (Deteptarea [The
Awakening] 1917, no. 27 a, 1). Vasile Mangra
had quite an interesting trajectory through these
times, as he first pleaded for the rights of the
Romanian minority in Transylvania, even as a
delegate for the Memorandum to Vienna, but
later to become a turncoat and support the
Hungarian governments policies on minorities.
Founded in 1907 in Ortie, the
newspaper Libertatea [The Liberty] changed its
profile several times, from national peoples
paper (Oct.8/21 1915 Aug.23, 1917), to
national political paper (Dec.25, 1907 Jan.
19, 1915) then to political, social and economic
paper (Dec.13/26, 1918). A biweekly, Monday
and Thursday, the newspaper Libertatea [The
Liberty] from Ortie had a wide circulation
because the editors felt a great moral
responsibility toward their readers, the
publication targeting not only an educated
audience, but especially the rural population
(Hangiu 2008, 363). Ioan Moa was director
and editor and, over time, the leadership was
held by I. Munteanu, I. V. Ioanovici, Nic.
Opriiu, t. Popp, Savu Roman, Iulius Ioanovici,
Alex. Iozon, Ioan Adam, Const. andru,
Pompiliu Albu, Cornel Muntean, Ioan Vasiu,
Ioan Moa. (Simion et. alli. 2006, 55).

Many of the materials published by

these three newspapers about life on the
frontlines of the Romanians in the Hungarian
army and the horrors of war can also be found in
many other documents, files, and memoires of
those who participated directly at this world
event, this way proving their authenticity.
Life on the Frontline
Living away from the frontlines and
lacking direct means of information visual or
audio the civilian population had two sources
of news about the war: newspapers and letters
from the front written by the soldiers there. The
picture of life on the front was complex because
it is divided between daily military routine in the
barracks and the dreadful days fighting in the
field when everybody was facing death. The
newspaper Romnul [The Romanian] took the
initiative and published some of the soldiers
letters, thus giving the readers a unique glimpse
of life in the trenches of WWI, that simply
overwhelm the imagination of any man of
common sense and humanity. These letters had
actually a therapeutic effect on the soldiers who
this way were ridding themselves of traumatic
images and repressed feelings accumulated
during military actions. The newspapers become
this way some sort of frontlines journal that
depicts the horrors of war, regardless of the
places where it was waged. These memories are
vivid proofs of the extreme limits man is forced
to reach under the pressure of killing fellow men
or being killed by the same.
Life on the front has many aspects.
Mother Nature can be a very good friend or the
worst enemy of a soldier. Geography also played
a major role in winning or losing a battle.
Exhaustion came not only from actually
fighting, but also from other activities related to
military action like digging trenches, long
marches, adapting to living in the open without a
roof above your head or putting up with cold or
heat. We suffer of cold as at night falls with
harshness. Weve begun forgetting the comfort
of civilization and became tough soldiers who
have to suffer and die (Romnul [The
Romanian] 1914, no.196, 4). A few days later,
another soldier was writing: Early in the
morning, we couldnt feel our frozen legs. Fire is
banned, as we are ready for the enemy to show
up at any time now and the fire would give us
away (Romnul [The Romanian] 1914, no. 199
a, 1).
At the beginning of the war, although
the winter was giving everybody a hard time, the
fighting went on in high gear on all fronts.
224

Heavy fighting was reported between the Central

Powers and Russia, with a praise for the first
with emphasis on their perseverance and
endurance, and who, with courage and strength
fought under circumstances hard to imagine.
Very often they had to fight in waist-high snow
and bitter cold, clinging on their weapons with
frozen hands (Libertatea [The Liberty] 1915,
no. 6, 1). In 1917, from different publications we
learn about changes in the unfolding of events
due to harsh winter conditions. The bitter cold
weather was slowing down military operations
so that due to harsh frost, military operations
have come almost entirely to a halt. On
Bukovina front, the Russian made several
penetration attempts, but all failed (Deteptarea
[The Awakening] 1917, no. 2, 3). Later on, we
find out that in spite of the bitter cold with
temperatures of -25-30 C our soldiers, against
these natural elements, have scored a few
successes in a series of military operations
(Deteptarea [The Awakening] 1917, no. 5, 4).
In spite of the harsh winter raising
serious hurdles for the Central Powers army,
(whose lines stretched over 2,000 km), the
soldiers in their trenches like a maze were at the
ready round the clock, day or night, to stave off
any enemys attempt to break through our lines.
The alert is permanent with our batteries hidden
in the woods, covered with snow or ice, ready to
open fire any moment [...] our scouts crawl at
night to the barbwire fences or the holes made
by artillery shells in the ground [...], our army
engineers dig non-stop and build carefully with
an ear to any sound that comes from under the
ground, and our troops are on patrol day and
night, through cold or snow, in the line of fire of
the enemy, to bring over ammunition, food
supplies, and mail or to carry away to shelters
our wounded (Deteptarea [The Awakening]
1917, no. 4, 3).
Even when the cold subsided, life was
hard and lowered the troops fighting spirit: The
ground was wet and sometimes we were in the
water day and night (Romnul [The Romanian]
1914, no. 272 a, 2-3). In the heat of the battle the
ground played a crucial role. In some places,
the soldiers had to go through water or mud up
to the waist on the Serbian bank... [...]
(Libertatea [The Liberty] 1914, no. 50, 4).
Another soldier said he fighting was real hell,
but we didnt chicken out, and attacked again,
driving the bastards into marsh and ditches. In
their despair, they were trying to swim, but there
was no escape from death (Romnul [The
Romanian] 1914, no. 181, 2).

Quite often, the nature is in striking

beautiful contrast with the ugliness of the
battlefield, warming up the souls of the peasantsoldiers who appreciate a beautiful summer
night (Romnul [The Romanian] 1914, no. 225,
5). During their long marches, the Transylvanian
soldiers discover and admire the beauty of the
landscape, reminding them of the dear places left
behind at home: the proud timber raising its
heads toward the skies. Anywhere we looked,
we saw different pictures: steep gorges, tall
mountains, dark woods, aromatic orchards, cool
valleys, with clear water wondering through
empty fields. Nature is beautiful... (Romnul
[The Romanian] 1914, no. 215, 2-3).
In spite of the optimistic press releases
of the Hungarian authorities, who claimed that
their army was well fed and upbeat, some
information escaped censorship and showed
exactly the opposite. Due to the harsh weather,
the troops were supposed to be properly fed in
order to be able to fight, but the real situation
was a disaster. In his war journal, Octavian C.
Tsluanu confirms this information. Even more
than that, he discloses that hunger and despair
push people to do things that in the past were
unimaginable. Soldiers havent had bread in
two days. They begged the villagers for a piece
they would pay a crown for. But the villagers
had very little for themselves and even that was
gluey and chucky. Hunger breeds special rights
and morals. An empty stomach pushes you to
steal and rob everything in your way. Or: I
didnt eat anything today. The soldiers either for
five days (Tsluanu 1915, 77-115). Another
testimony of the hard life on the frontlines is
carried by the newspaper Romnul [The
Romanian] that says soldiers had to march 50
km a day on bad roads and under enemy fire,
having just water and crackers as nourishment
(Romnul [The Romanian] 1914, no. 181, 2).
Other testimony is carried by Romnul [The
Romanian] about poor food in the army, as
soldiers received half-frozen potatoes to eat
(Romnul [The Romanian] 1914, no. 272, 2-3).
Due to the hard life as a soldier, the time
spent on the battlefield seems to expand by new
rules. Ten months of terrible suffering have
passed as ten years, through bitter cold winter,
through sleet and mud, without food, exhausted
by marches (Romnul [The Romanian] 1914,
no. 215, 2-3). Fear was a major contributor to
this state of mind, that could both paralyze or
boost energy in critical situations: The death
threat turns me wild, making my blood boil [...] I
was able to take on all the Russians [...] My eyes
were red with a rush of blood, I became rabid, I
225

was all shivering ... (Tsluanu 1915, 282).

Facing the enemy who can inflict either wounds
or death on you, in these critical moments,
everything comes down to primary instincts. I
dont know if you ever tried to reach deep down
inside you and feel the stir in there during such
moments. Did you realize that man is reduced to
a pack of instincts and how low he can stop?
With each explosion, he check himself out with
his hands, trembling in despair, he feels like
spec, a fistful of clay in a bombshell crater
(Tsluanu 1916, 141). Those primary instincts
were making some lose control and scramble for
their lives, running back in the battle. In a letter,
a soldier from Timoc acknowledged that When
I saw death coming at us from all directions, I
didnt raise my rifle in defence, but run for
salvation instead. Ahead and on sides it was you,
and behind was the river Sava with its muddy
waters. But our officers didnt allow us to scatter
because your hussars would have soaked us in
blood. Our retreat was like the one of a snake.
Glued to the ground, we were looking for every
mound and hole to cheat death. To prevent
desertion, officers were shooting those who
refuse to continue fighting (Romnul [The
Romanian] 1914, no. 190, 2-3).
War gives no breaks to anyone, not
even a lull, for your soul to recover, no thought
of mercy in their souls, as day and night, minute
by minute, the war goes on with its life-or-death
battles. Not even a heavy death toll slows down
the carnage. Our ranks are dwindling, some
others make up for the losses, the long bursts of
machine gun fire which kill tirelessly and
indiscriminately cannot slow down the battle. In
the end, no soldier who started out today will
survive, but tomorrow some others will take
their place and the terrible war looks as if it will
never end (Romnul [The Romanian] 1914, no.
250, 1). At Verdun, wave after wave of soldiers
were rushing towards the ramparts of the plateau
as if they were possessed by some deadly
madness, by an evil frenzy to commit collective
suicide (Libertatea din Ardeal [The Liberty
from Ardeal] 1916, no. 11 a, 5). In front of this
implacable killing machine only one question
remains: What is the man? Its nothing.
(Romnul [The Romanian], 1915 no. 221 b, 1-2).
This is what Aage Madelung, from the general
headquarters of the Austro-Hungarian army
wrote: When they throw themselves forward,
towards our fortifications with courage that only
despair can breed, the bullets of our rifles do
their job. They fall row after row, and finally, a
decimated row manages to get over into our
trenches, rifles in hand, like savages. Here only

brute force can win the fists of the peasant and

ironsmith, hardened by work back home. Death
is a grand lady in the trenches. Death and blood
[...] Corpses and Wounded. (Romnul [The
Romanian] 1916, no. 22 a, 6).
The scenes of the battlefield seem from
the doomsday: grenades were flying uprooting
the trees lining the road, [...] columns of smoke
rising all over the deserted fields, shrapnel was
flying around filling the skies, the roofs were
burning, cellars were full of mothers with
children crying, the wounded tended by the
medics are just a few strokes on the picture of
a gruesome spectacle going on the Western front
(Romnul [The Romanian] 1915, no. 221, 1-2.)
The articles about the battlefield and the fighting
are extremely expressive. They all describe the
chaos, the paralyzing fear, the deafening noise,
the tension. Some of these impressions shared
with the readers come from the front reporters,
others from the soldiers, but all are extremely
suggestive, revealing a true narrative talent.
Some of them say: You just found yourself
amidst a rain of flying bullets coming from all
sides, and you didnt know where to turn for
cover. Or, The bullets were flying around us as
flies in the summertime] (Romnul [The
Romanian] 1914, no. 193, 1-2); First, the shells
were flying, uprooting the trees [...] It was
crackling all over. Columns of smoke were
rising on all battlefields. (Romnul [The
Romanian] 1915, no. 221 a, 1-2); The Russian
shrapnel was blowing up in the trees dreadfully.
Only those who lived through this can imagine
the terrible noise they were making. (Romnul
[The Romanian] 1914, no. 195, a, 1-2); there
was artillery booming and then a rain of shrapnel
as if the sky had broken open and all the burning
suns fall on the earth torching it in a flood of
fire. Or, the waves of German soldiers broke
their heads against the granite wall of the French
army and their hope for victory on the French
front burst like a soap balloon (Libertatea din
Ardeal [The Liberty from Ardeal] 1916, no. 9,
3). The reader is surprised by the end of the
article about the heavy fighting in the battle of
Verdun. The clash of the forces left strong
memories to the civilian population there, who
in the floodlights of the Russian searchlights
could see the battlefield at night like in the
daylight. The landscape looked like in fairytales
(Libertatea din Ardeal [The Liberty from
Ardeal] 1916, no. 11, 5).
Even when they were on the move,
soldiers could not escape the reality of the war,
preparing them for what was in store for them
next. The battlefront noises, familiar to some,
226

new to others, were giving the clues about the

tumult of the fighting that was going on in the
distance: cannon fire in the distance was
considerable (Romnul [The Romanian] 1914,
no. 225, 5). The battles drained them of any
strength, and the horrors of death exhausted
them psychologically: The fighting had left us
exhausted, our bodies were slumped under the
burden of sufferance, our dirty faces were drawn
due to fear and tiredness, our legs kept moving
by themselves, like a machinery marching at a
drumbeat. I was leading the march sleeping, and
the soldiers behind me were doing the same
(Tsluanu 1916, 33). Life on the front had
taught them that the enemy may attack any
moment, so the tension was permanent: we
were moving ahead in silence, but full of anger,
through the tiring meadows. From time to time,
the peace was shattered by gun fire. The boys,
clamping on their rifles in anger, keep running
forward with sweaty faces. All the events of the
day, all the scenes witnessed during battles get
engraved into the soldiers memories: Late at
night, unable to sleep because of haunting
memories [...] I hear heavy sighs [...] I strike a
match and in its light I see the boys wide awake,
their eyes gazing at the ceiling, and once in a
while, an ah ah hurting the silence
(Romnul [The Romanian] 1914, no. 249 a, 1-23).
The pages of the newspapers abound in
the description of brave actions of the Romanian
soldiers. Their bravery on the Italian front is
honored in most press: it is official that the
Romanians from Ardeal have distinguished
themselves through exceptional bravery
(Deteptarea [The Awakening] 1916, no. 43 a,
4). The Detachment 45 is praised again and
again: Reports show that the Romanian troops
from Ardeal distinguished themselves again as
heroes (Deteptarea [The Awakening] 1916, no.
44, 3). The Romanian Detachments in the
Austro-Hungarian army were always assigned to
spearhead the attacks. The reporter thinks the
reason was that the Romanians were brave and
strongly motivated. Even when the temperature
dropped to -25-33 C the soldiers were sent into
battle: despite all the natural hurdles, they
engaged into action and they were successful.
But the real reason for assigning the Romanians
to lead into battle was different. Hungary
thought that the Great War was a godsend
opportunity to eliminate the leaders of opinion
among the minorities of the Empire, by sending
them straight to death on the battlefield. This
way, the entire Regiment 50 (Alba-Iulia) and
half of Regiments 43 (Caransebe) and 61

(Timioara) were killed in action (Kiriescu

1989, 396). In our opinion, this was more than a
proof for the disrespect for the Romanian
soldiers who were simply used as cannon fodder.
The Romanian peasant had never had military
skills, but through praise, they might have
gained some confidence in themselves. The
same thing happened on the Serbian front: on
the battlefield against the Serbs, half of a
Romanian battalion was able to capture an entire
Serbian battalion. (Libertatea [The Liberty]
1914, no. 53, 3). But the number of the
Romanian losses is never given, just the heroics
of the fact. The devotion of the Romanian
soldier is praised and encouraged: The
Romanian soldier, no matter where he was sent,
honored his country and his people and made it
clear that the interests of his kin in Hungary are
the same as our own countrys (Deteptarea
[The Awakening] 1917, no. 74, 1). The articles
with a manipulative spin always carry the
syntagma our homeland followed by the word
Hungary to drive the Transylvanians into
believing that Hungary was their real country,
not Romania. Probably this type of campaign
would have been more convincing if it had been
done in peacetime, accompanied by a package of
more rights for the minorities living there. Now,
this was too little, too late.
A false piece of news, fabricated to sow
dismay in the public opinion, was carried by
Deteptarea [The Awakening]. According to
this, the Transylvanian detachments engaged in
battle the Romanias proper army. Today, the
sons of our country the Empire are fighting
against their brothers of blood and language
from Romania on the front of Bukovina and
Ardeal, but with the same courage and bravery
as at the beginning of the war. Even more than
that, they fight with more energy because they
know that only by defeating the Romanian army
is the only way to save to poor people of
Romania from the slaughter of Russians
occupiers who forced them to fight against their
own will (Deteptarea [The Awakening] 1916,
no. 46 a, 1). The information is totally false, as
the high command of the Hungarian army had
issued an order to prevent exactly this type of
situation in which Romanians from Transylvania
would have to fight and kill Romanians from the
Old Kingdom of Romania (Kiriescu 1989, 397).
Romanians bravery is given as an
example also by some Hungarian and Austrian
newspapers which praise them for their sacrifice
and dedication. Praises are well deserved as
they paid with blood a high price (Romnul
[The Romanian] 1914, no. 199 b, 4).
227

It is really impressive the testimony of a

priest who, in a letter, talks about the bravery of
the contribution to the war made by Regiment 64
that fights with the most courage (Romnul
[The Romanian] 1915, no. 19, 1). In a letter to
the soldiers of Regiment 33 (Arad), Col. Franz
Wallner, acknowledges the bravery and devotion
of the Romanian soldiers: Through your heroic
acts you have won the admiration of your
superiors and forced the enemy to respect your
bravery (Romnul [The Romanian] 1915, no.
59, 1).
Mail is another rich source of
information that reveals the hardships of war.
Life on the front lines or in prison camps, the
hardships and trauma that soldiers had to put up
with are hard to describe. One way to find relief
from frustration is to talk about it. The best news
of the time was to learn that the soldiers in the
trenches were to be replaced by another
regiment: great news among soldiers that flew
from mouth to mouth along the trenches was that
in a short time they will be replaced by another
regiment (Romnul [The Romanian] 1916, no.
22 b, 1).
A born-poet, the Transylvanian peasant
told his bitter life story also in poems. Many folk
poems were published to show the world even
clearer the way the people see the current
situation and the hopes related to this war. He
fights for a better life, including the right to
speak his native language: It doesnt matter if I
fall, If we only had rights, Because those we
dont have, [...] And for those we keep fighting,
Romanian for us to learn, Just like my heart
desires (Romnul [The Romanian] 1914, no.
184 a, 4).
The French victory at Marne was
acclaimed by the entire Romanian nation who
fully understood the significance of such a turn
of events: Romanians knew that a French
victory will be a victory of all peoples who
hoped for freedom, while a victory of the others
will dash all the hopes of all peoples for a long
time to come. These feelings could not be made
public, but there were signs that the people felt
that in their souls for the French: The
subjugated Romanians only in our hearts could
be with the French, because any public display
of such feeling was met with prison or
internment (Romnul [The Romanian] 1918, no.
41, 1).

The drama of war and the soldiers suffering are

given ample space in newspapers. These are not
means of communication of statistics about the
number of casualties, wounded or prisoners.
Beyond information that might impress through
great numbers of victims, one understands the
dramatic experience of the people who went
through and lived to tell the story. War changes
lives forever. No one who stepped into the
killing fields will ever be the same again.
Newspapers dedicate generous space to casualty
statistics in time of war, including lists of
wounded soldiers, sometimes with the names of
hospitals where they were taken for treatment.
All three newspapers did a good job on this
matter (Romnul [The Romanian] 1914, no. 195
b, 3). For example, those wounded on the
Galician front and from the Przemsyl fortress
were sent to different locations, like Dobriin
hospital (200 wounded), Braov (400 wounded)
or Alba Iulia (700 wounded) (Romnul [The
Romanian] 1914, no. 59, 6). It is also specified
that the Transylvanian hospitals admitted only
those slightly wounded (Libertatea din Ardeal
[The Liberty from Ardeal] 1914, no. 45, 4-5).
News about wounded soldiers of the AustroHungarian army was made public from the first
month of the war when these started arriving to
Budapest by train. It is about hundreds of
wounded that were treated by the Red Cross on
board of these hospital trains. (Libertatea [The
Liberty] 1914, no. 41, 3). The wounded were
regularly transported by train in the entire
territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and
this demonstrates efficiency as only in two days
hospitals were able to handle 1091 wounded
from the Serbian front (Libertatea [The Liberty]
1914, no. 43, 4).
The lists of the dead and wounded were
published regularly by the Minister of War.
Until Nov. 1914, the first 28 lists were made
public. Interestingly, people could subscribe for
these lists to Leaflet of Romanian People
(Romnul [The Romanian] 1914, no. 222, 4). It
is really sad that the authorities of the time
proved to be totally insensitive to such important
issues to the people of the country who made
serious sacrifices for the war effort, but got
nothing in return, not even written information
of the wounded or the dead. Moreover, official
statistics released to the press was totally boggy.
For example, between Aug. 1, 1914 and July,
31, 1915, only 3.69 % of the wounded died in
hospitals and 12.87 % in field hospitals. These
numbers are extremely small compared to the
official tolls made after the war (Deteptarea
[The Awakening] 1917, no. 19 a, 4). By making

The Horrors of War

First and foremost, war means suffering
and trauma; pain, not only physical for those
wounded in battle, but also psychologically hurt.
228

these lists public, the newspapers were doing a

great service to the families of the wounded or
killed in action who otherwise were kept in the
dark by the lack of common sense on the part of
those in power. Still, a humane gesture was a cut
in travel expenses by train for the next of kin
trying to reach a distant medical facility where
their dear ones were held for treatment or for
burial (Deteptarea [The Awakening] 1917, no.
23, 3).
Death notices were always received with
sadness: More and more painful news comes
from the front about the loss of our fighters. For
better information of the readers, newspapers
carry lists featured in other publications
(Libertatea [The Liberty] 1914, no. 63, 5). He
died a heroic death for throne and country,
followed by the names of those who fell in battle
was the norm in the press (Deteptarea [The
Awakening] 1917, no. 20, 4). Tribute to those
who fell in battle was brought by the
newspapers, not the authorities.
In the fierce fighting all over the
battlefield every army had dead and wounded:
A bleeding body of Cosak fell at our feet, with
his eyes in tears and still rolling. Some of ours
fell behind [...] without noise or calling [...] He
was waiting for us propping a tree. Paler than
ever he stretched his arm or his leg or he showed
us his chest, gushing with red and hot blood [...]
Death was felling without mercy [...] Bullets
were flying around like in a whirlwind [...] The
rivers mirror is splashing muddy water...and on
it dead bodies are floating down the stream [....]
(Romnul [The Romanian] 1914, no. 249 b, 1-23). They leave behind fields and waters full of
blood, the desperate calling of the wounded,
destitute landscape where death reigns supreme.
There are a lot of articles in the press describing
the horrors of war, for those at home to be able
to imagine the clash of these giant forces and
their terrible consequences for mankind. The
majority of the articles are so graphic they make
the reader tremble: On a 30 km front the dead
bodies of the English were laying, all killed by
the shells, the grenades and the German
machine-gun
fire.
(Deteptarea
[The
Awakening] 1917, no. 14, 2); their bodies were
shredded by bullets (Romnul [The Romanian]
1914, no. 163, 1); Later on, while advancing,
they found piles of dead bodies in that place
(Romnul [The Romanian] 1914, no. 184 b, 1-2).
The images from the Przemysl Fortress are just
as overwhelming: Forty thousand Russians
were laying dead on the battlefield [...]
thousands of crows and ravens were flying
above the fallen heroes. Over time, these flying

hyenas became so nasty that even through a hail

of bullets they landed by the hundreds on a
corpse or a dead horse and even when a bullet
killed one of them, they didnt scare to fly away
[...] the air and the earth were shaking under the
frightening fire of the artillery. The picture was
gory [...] You saw a flash then a big boom the
shell hit the ground and 3-4 soldiers were killed,
some without legs, some without heads, all
ridden with bullets [...] Many moving scenes you
can see on the battlefield. (Romnul [The
Romanian] 1914, no. 233, 1-2). A frightening
picture is made in the mind of a reader when
going over the article on the battles between the
Belgian and German armies at Liege, where
fierce fighting took place, but, with all the
courage of the Belgians who defended
themselves bravely they had severe losses: so
many fell in this bloody and angry attack, that
piles of dead bodies around the fortress were
lying 1.5 meters high! (Libertatea [The Liberty]
1914, no. 38 a, 2). The news reports in the
German press on the battle of Liege differ
greatly from those in the French newspapers. We
notice again the desire of the Romanian paper
The Liberty to report fairly to its readers by
presenting both sides of the same story and
drawing a conclusion as realistic as possible
(Libertatea [The Liberty] 1914, no. 38 b, 2). In
The Romanian, the battle is described in these
words: Right away the hell broke loose against
them and a hail of bullets fell upon us. [...] We
also opened fire and we start moving quickly
towards the enemy [...] At five hundred feet the
artillery ceased firing. [...] At fifty feet, order on
both sides is given for hand to hand combat....
[...] Calls for help in all languages filled the air
and the battle went on fiercely [...] Stabbed by
bayonets, the Russian were begging for mercy,
and those left alive surrendered. (Romnul [The
Romanian] 1914, no. 225, 5).
A very serious matter concerns the
deliberate sacrifice of some troops on the
battlefield. We refer to some Romanian
detachments from Transylvania who came under
fire by their own army. The news came as a
shock. It is true that on the battlefield the
soldiers are supposed to obey their superiors
orders, regardless of who those may be, but you
cannot help getting horrified when you read that
an entire battalion of Romanians was wiped out
in Tirol, some shot by Italians and the others
shot in the back by Hungarians, who, instead of
firing at the enemy ahead, unleashed their
machine-gun fire against the Romanian battalion
and this was wiped out right here, on this slope,
shot from behind by their own. This was not a
229

one-time event. The same thing happened on the

Russian front, where a row of officers walked
behind the soldiers in action and used to shoot
anybody who, out of fear, was trying to run
back, avoiding the enemy. The Russians were
doing the same thing to their soldiers (Libertatea
din Ardeal [The Liberty from Ardeal] 1916, no.
22, 3).
The newspaper Deteptarea [The
Awakening] pays special attention to the
situation of the Romanian army, with its losses
closely scrutinized. This way we find out that by
Oct.12, 1916, a number of 178.829 soldiers were
wounded, killed in action or missing in action,
including 6007 officers (Deteptarea [The
Awakening] 1916 no. 46 b, 4) or the number of
Romanian soldiers captured while fighting along
the Transylvanian border is over 10,000
(Deteptarea [The Awakening] 1916, no. 55, 34).
Statistics of the dead and wounded is
incorrect in the newspaper The Awakening.
According to statistics presented between Aug.
1, 1914, and July 31, 1915, only 3.69 % of the
wounded died in hospitals, and 12.87 % in field
hospitals (Deteptarea [The Awakening] 1917,
no. 19 b, 4). The real numbers after the war
showed that 57.6 % of those under arms were
either killed in action or wounded (1). The losses
of the Romanian army during the withdrawal
from Transylvania were huge: in this case the
measurement of losses cannot be applied. Due
to these losses, the Army I and the Army II
should be considered disbanded. In the same
article they say that Romanian total losses are
well over 150,000 (Deteptarea [The
Awakening] 1916, no. 43 b, 3). According to the
Red Cross Communiqu the total number of the
soldiers killed in action was 149,688 and officers
6849 (Deteptarea [The Awakening] 1916, no.
43 c, 3).
The situation of those who had fought in
Bessarabia was no better, and due to heavy
losses. The governments of Podolia and
Bessarabia appealed to the local population to be
generous and open the doors to those seeking
food and shelter and also help to bury the dead.
Along the country roads dead, decomposing
bodies are lying [...] we make an appeal to the
population not to shut the doors in the faces of
these poor who resort to begging, but as much as
possible, to be hospitable (Deteptarea [The
Awakening] 1916, no. 70, 3).

Sometimes, in order to figure out what

the wounded were up to, the journalist visited
them in the hospital. This gives us a chance to
learn interesting details about what was going on
the front. For example, one wounded soldier
says that the Russian ammunition was actually
...humane, as it was small in calibre. From
what these soldiers say, the journalist concludes
that the war was part of their life by then and it
was no longer a big deal and it was far from
what those at home imagined about it (Romnul
[The Romanian] 1914, no. 185, 3-4). Aage
Madelung, a well-known writer and war
correspondent for Tageblatt, describes the same
stark scenery, crowded with an impressive
number of wounded who keep being admitted
into hospitals. He says they came to me on their
own. I didnt have to look for them. It is a lot
easier to read about facts and people we dont
know protecting ourselves from painful direct
perception. The situation changes when we
experience facts first hand, when we gather
impressions and emotions straight from a source.
We become close and personal. I dont
understand, Im not impressed when history tells
us about disasters of big armies with no names,
but when it mentions one name, the tragic fate of
a single man, I bleed in my heat as if we had a
common wound and a common death. This was
said about the sad fate of a soldier from
Bukovina wounded in the battle of Lemberg
who dies in the hospital of his severe injuries. It
was simple coincidence that he was being
removed from his deathbed when the writer was
there and he shook at the sight of the dead
soldier whose face was like made of wax and
the implacable course of life with his bed empty
and waiting for the next one (Romnul [The
Romanian] 1914, no. 242, 3).
In the cast-iron hospital beds soldiers of
different nationalities were finding salvation by
helping each other with the hope that this way
they would become the people they used to be,
to live and care like human beings, not as the
killing machines they were in the trenches. Some
got used to their infirmity and simply enjoyed
being alive: They were happy to have gotten out
alive from that ordeal. They had been sent to
fight each others without any reason, without
any hatred, and now, far from the front, where
they used to to cut flesh and break bones they
became again warm-hearted people. The idea is
that a human life is worth nothing when they
were in the trenches of broken hopes, of lost
love and happiness, and through the hospital
rooms with named and digaline prescribed

(1)www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWstatistics.htm
, accessed on March 15, 2014, 8,30 A.M.

230

wounded in the battle for Ivangorod fortress,

was treated like a hero by those around him,
even trying to say to him a few words in his
language (Romnul [The Romanian] 1916, no. 8,
7).
The pain of those who saw their dear
ones go down in battle is revealed to us in
messages full of compassion they wrote to
secure to the anonymous heroes a place in
history, never to be forgotten. By publishing
these messages, the newspapers of the time
meant to guarantee that place in history of the
heroes who gave their lives for the country.
Among those who perished, there was teacher
Ion Chertes from Srel, who fell in battle in
Galicia. He had been a good teacher, dedicated
to educating the young, to whom he taught the
love for God, people, and country (Romnul
[The Romanian] 1916, no. 22 c, 6.) The tombs of
the Romanians fallen on different fronts will
disappear over time, the grass weaving its cover
over the red meadows and the wind blowing
gently over them, and children will play
innocently on these mounds, losing their small
flock. In spite all this, the death of a man with
a gentle soul, a hard-working man, an idealist, a
dreamer was regretted by an entire army
company. There are many fresh mounds in
Galicia, under which nameless heroes rest, but
there is one higher close to the top, where
Horaiu Deac is resting (Romnul [The
Romanian] 1914, no. 257, 2).
The brave were not always lucky
enough to sleep their eternal sleep in privacy. In
the end of a horrifying battle that took the lives
of many, the only way to a decent burial was a
common grave. The desolate landscape at the
end of a battle was mind-boggling. A letter from
a soldier from the field of the Russian Poland
drives the message home that the nightmare was
just beginning at the end of the battle for those
who survived it: We were standing in a field
torn by grenades and shells, a field covered by
the poor dead, limbs like legs, arms, heads, and
pieces of burned human flesh. It cannot be
described. But they prove to be good Christians
once more and they burry the misfortunate who
lost their lives, 8-10 to a grave. After the burial,
to these heroes, a military gun salute was given
by both sides (Romnul [The Romanian] 1914,
no. 272, 2-3).
Unfortunately, the social status of a
fallen hero made a huge difference in the form
of the burial. A burial with military honors and
protocol, contrasting with that of a foot soldier,
was given to lt. Aurel Carp, son of the politician
P. P. Carp. At this ceremony even the

during the inspection hours (Romnul [The

Romanian] 1916, no. 9, 6-7).
Once in the hospital, the wounded had a
second chance to life. But before they were
treated, they had to endure pain, fear and despair
alone. These cases were not few or isolated: A
soldier, wounded in the morning by shrapnel,
had to wait in the torn trench all day, with other
soldiers, until help arrived (Romnul [The
Romanian] 1915, no. 221 a, 1-2). It is
impressive the letter of a soldier to his mother
who says, the place I fell in was too close to the
fire line so that the paramedics could not come
to our rescue as bullets were flying by or over
me ... [...] So, I had to lie there three days and
three nights in the dam place without any help...
[...] Like the furnaces burning I was able to see
the cannons firing in the distance, then the
boom, then the shell flying over me, and the
bullets over my head, over me, over my feet! I
was expecting to be hit at any moment; a fatal
hit, to save me from that ordeal which was worse
than death (Deteptarea [The Awakening] 1916,
no. 31, 6). Some of them were lucky to have
their friends close by to comfort them, thus
proving that in spite of all dehumanizing
situations they had been through, they were still
kind people: The bullets were raining down on
them, and the shrapnel were blowing up above
their heads. He and andru were sitting together
in the ditch, exchanging maybe the last glances.
andru was severely wounded, but Constantin
did not hesitate long, and crawling through the
dust he reached andru and started kissing him
as if they were best brothers, after which he
tender to his friends wounds as best he could
(Romnul [The Romanian] 1915, no. 235, 2-3).
Everyone was trying to save their brothers-inarms, thinking that one day it might be him in
needing help. You could see how the enemies
were carrying their gravely wounded with them
(Romnul [The Romanian] 1914, no. 167, 4).
The civilians had the opportunity to see
the horrors of war by themselves not only in the
hospitals when they visited their kin, but also in
the train stations which were full of stretchers.
From underneath the blankets you could see pale
faces and bandaged heads. Some wounded were
moaning and sighing. The dim light of the dusk
over the white linen was turning them into
coffins of human misery (Tsluanu 1916, 45).
Humane behavior was very common,
people wanting to demonstrate that, in spite of
the misery brought about by war, they still felt
deeply concerned by the fate of the fellow man,
even of different nationality. For example, a
Romanian soldier of the 50th Infantry Regiment,
231

commander-general was present, along with the

entire officers corp, and the band played the
finest tunes for the departed (Deteptarea [The
Awakening] 1916, no. 46 c, 4).
The victims of war were not only from
the military. Among these there were auxiliary
personnel who also died, like doctors and
priests. For example, dr. Aurel Stana fell in the
line of duty while tending the wounded in the
field. He had been decorated for bravery once
before. Those who knew him gave homage to
the brave doctor who helped so many soldiers.
The newspapers carried obituaries presenting
the most sincere condolences to the father of the
deceased. God Lord to comfort him
(Deteptarea [The Awakening] 1917, no. 21, 4).
The hard life on the battlefield and the
horrifying images that they witnessed turned the
brave soldiers of Transylvania into men: the
brave of yesterday now looked like old men.
With their faces drawn, bearded and in rags,
slumped on their crutches, some with their faces
wrapped in bandages, they stepped off the trains,
find their way to the hospital. When columns of
the wounded run into columns of new recruits
the contrast is even more striking: Its a painful
view [....] All songs are muted [...]Those who
come and those who go pass by each others in
silent and shy, eyes on the ground, as if two
funerals have crossed paths. (Libertatea [The
Liberty] 1915, no. 1, 5). Newspapers managed to
pass on to their readers just a glimpse of the
entire nightmare that these poor people had lived
or were about to live. To make sure that their
letters would land at their destination, soldiers
were supposed to meet certain standards of
secrecy: Censorship does not allow me to write
you more and Im not sure even this will ever
reach you. In spite of censorship, he manages to
describe a few snapshots of a cruel reality
beyond belief in peace time: Our boys were
stabbing the Russians pushing even the barrels
of their rifles into their bodies, after which they
still had the strength tfo cry out Hooray! The
soldier doesnt forget to add that the enemy, the
Russians, outnumbered them 6 to 1. He cannot
forget the piles of dead bodies after the battle
that I still see in front of my eyes. After that, a
field hospital where, depending on permission
and time, I looked for my wounded brothers-inarms, bringing them comfort with sweet talking.
[] Ill never forget when, at a field hospital, I
wept for a wounded Russian soldier, captured by
us. He, the poor guy, was a Romanian from
Bessarabia. [...] He was whining in pain because
a bullet struck him in the left ear, exited through
the nose and stopped into the cheek. He was

really sad that he was called to duty to fight

brother against brother (Romnul [The
Romanian] 1914, no. 219, 5). Facing critical
situations in quick succession, and dazzling
speed, people got used to praying for any kind of
liberation. Happy Those Wounded! (Romnul
[The Romanian] 1914, no. 194, 1-2).
Conclusions
In spite of censorship, media
manipulation,
analysis
of
private
correspondence, permanent scrutiny of the
public opinion, the articles in the press of the
time manage to drive home the horrifying
messages of reality of war, along with the willpower of the soldiers to keep their humanity. On
the other hand, we get to understand the acts of
violence committed by soldiers who in these
horrible circumstances tried to stay alive to get
home and go on with their lives. The picture can
only be complete if we also look at the hardships
those left behind had to go through to survive in
a world full of violence and madness that
mankind had to face ever since history can
remember, but managed to master the crisis
every time, maybe getting wiser not to repeat it.
References
a. Papers in periodical journals:
Deteptarea Scrisoare trist de la un rnit de
pe frontul rusesc [Sad Letter of a
[The
Awakening] Wounded on the Russian Front],
XII, July 21/3, 1916, no. 31, p. 6.
1916
Iari eroismul trupelor romne
din Ardeal [Again on the Bravery
of the Romanian Army from
Ardeal], XII, Oct.1, 1916, no. 43
a, p. 4.
Pierderile extrem de sngeroase
ale armatei romne [Extremely
High Losses of the Romanian
Army], XII, Oct.1/ 14, 1916, no.
43 b, p. 3.
O statistic strict a pierderilor
romneti [Strict Statistics of
Romanian
Losses],
XII,
Oct.1/14, 1916, no. 43 c, p. 3.
Eroismul trupelor romneti din
Ardeal pe frontul italian [The
Bravery of the Romanian Troops
from Ardeal on the Italian
Front], XII, Oct.6 (19), 1916, no.
44, p. 3.
Zorile unor zile mai bune [The
Dawn of Better Days], XII, Oct.
8/21, 1916, no. 46 a, p. 1.
232

Deteptarea
[The
Awakening]
1917

spitale, precum i pe seama celor

ce cltoresc la nmormntarea
acestora [Discount Train Tickets
for Those Who Want to Search
for Their Kin, Wounded or Sick
in Hospitals, and Also for Those
Who Travel to Funerals], XIII,
June 10, 1917, no. 23, p. 3.
n loc de rmas bun [Instead of
Good-Bye], XIII, July 21/July 8,
1917, no. 27 a, p. 1.
n pragul anului nou [New
Years Eve], XII, Jan.13, 1917,
no. 74, p. 1.

Pierderile armatei romne [The

Romanian Armys Losses], XII,
Oct.8/21, 1916, no. 46 b, p. 4.
Fiul lui PP Carp a czut pe
cmpul de lupt [The Son of P.
P. Carp], XII, Oct.8/21, 1916,
no. 46 c, p. 4.
Succesele armatelor noastre pe
frontul ardelean [The Successes
of
Our Armies on the
Transylvanian
Front],
XII,
Nov.11, 1916, no. 55, p. 3-4.
Soarta refugiailor romni n
Basarabia [The Fate of the
Romanian
Refugees
in
Bessarabia], XII, Dec. 10-22,
1916, no. 70, p. 3.
Situaia rzboiului [The War
Situation], XIII, Feb.3/Jan 21,
1917, no. 2, p. 3.
Ce fac soldaii notri pe frontul
cel lung de 2000 km? [What Are
Our Soldiers Doing on the 2,000
km Long Frontline], XIII,
Feb.10/ Jan.28, 1917, no. 4, p. 3.
Soldatul romn pe cmpul de
lupt [The Romanian Soldier on
the Battlefield], XIII, Feb.17/4,
1917, no. 5, p. 4.
Situaia rzboiului. Lupta cea
mare din apus i scopurile ei
[The War Situation. The Big
Battle in the West and Its Goals],
XIII, April 21, 1917, no. 14, p. 2.
Statistica sanitar a primului an
de rzboiu [The Sanitary
Statistics of the First Year of
War], XIII, May 26, 1917, no. 19
a, p. 4.
Statistica sanitar a primului an
de rzboiu [Sanitary Statistics of
the First Year of War], XIII, May
26, 1917, no. 19 b, p. 4.
Soldatul romn pe cmpul de
lupt [The Romanian Soldier on
the Battlefield], XIII, June 2,
1917, no. 20, p. 4.
Moartea eroic a unui medicinist
romn n a zecea ofensiv
italian [The Heroic Death of a
Romanian Medicine Man during
the Tenth Italian Offensive],
XIII, June 21, 1917, no. 21, p. 4.
Bilete de tren cu preuri reduse
pe seama celor ce doresc s
cerceteze pe rudeniilor lor, cari
sunt soldai rnii ori bolnavi n
233

Libertatea
[The
Liberty]
1914

Strat de mori de un metru i

jumtate de gros [Pile of Dead
One and a Half Meter High],
XIII, Aug.4/17, 1914, no. 38 a, p.
2.
Lttich-ul a czut Ba n-a
czut! [Lttich Has Fallen
Not Yet!], XIII, Aug.4/17,
1914, no. 38 b, p. 2.
Rnii
[Wounded],
XIII,
Aug.14/27, 1914, no. 41, p. 3.
Rnii din luptele cu srbii
[Wounded in Battles with
Serbia],
XIII,
Aug.21/Sept.3,1914, no. 43, p. 4.
Rubrica Nouti [Column:
News], XIII, Aug. 28/Sept.10,
1914, no. 45, p. 4-5.
Lupte grele n Serbia [Heavy
Fighting in Serbia], XIII,
Sept.15/28, 1914, no. 50, p. 4.
Lupta cu srbii [Fighting with
the Serbs], XIII, Sept.25/Oct.8,
1914, no. 53, p. 3.
Rubrica Nouti [Column:
News], XIII, Oct.30/ Nov.12,
1914, no. 63, p. 5.

Libertatea
[The
Liberty]
1915

Rubrica Nouti [Column:

News], XIV, New Year, 1915,
no. 1, p. 5.
n Polonia de jos, Galiia i
Carpai [In Lower Poland,
Galicia and Carpathians], XIV,
Jan.19/Feb.1, 1915, no. 6, p. 1.

Libertatea
din Ardeal
[The
Liberty
from
Ardeal]

Sub ochii kaizerului. Germanii

ncearc cu puteri uriae s
sparg frontul francez de la
Verdun, dar i sparg capul de
zidul francez [Under the Eyes of
the Kaiser, the Germans Try with

1916

Huge Forces to Break the

French Front at Verdun, but
They Break Their Heads against
the French Wall], XV, Feb,18/2,
1916, no. 9, p. 3.
Ct de grozav a fost ploaia de
foc de la Verdun [How Terrible
the Fire Rain Was in Verdun],
XV, March 3/16, 1916, no. 11 a,
p. 5.
Ct de grozav a fost ploaia de
foc de la Verdun [How Awesome
the Fire Rain at Verdun Was],
XV, March 3/16, 1916, no. 11 b,
p. 5.
Grozava poveste a unui batalion
romnesc ardelean n Tirol [The
Terrible Story of a Romanian
Battalion in Tirol], XV, May
19/June 1, 1916, no. 22, p. 3.

Romnul
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Romanian]
1914

Muli Rnii [Many Wounded],

IV, Oct.16/29, 1914, no. 59, p. 6.
Romnul, Pentru cei de acas
[The Romanian, For Those at
Home], IV, July 25, 1914, no.
163, p.1.
Situaia
de
la
grania
muntenegrean [The Situation on
the Montenegro Border], IV,
July 30-Aug.12, 1914, no. 167,
p. 4.
Rzboiul. Lupte decisive [The
War. Decisive Battles], IV,
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2.
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Situation], IV, Aug. 23/Sept.5,
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Cnd pleac poporul la rzboi
[When the People Go to War],
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Rniii. O vizit [The Wounded,
A Visit], IV, Aug.24-Sept.6,
1914, no. 185, p. 3-4.
Tr. P. N., Lupta de la Mitrovia
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I. P., Rnitul [The Wounded], IV,
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De pe cmpul de rzboi [From
the Frontline], IV, Sept. 5-18,
1914, no. 194, p. 1-2.
Marea lupt de la Lemberg [The
Great Battle of Lemberg], IV,

Sept.6-19, 1914, no. 195 a, p. 12.

Lista bolnavilor i rniilor [The
List of the Sick and Wounded],
IV, Sept. 6/19, 1914, no. 195 b,
p. 3.
I. J., De pe cmpul de rzboi
[From the Battlefield], IV,
Sept.7-20, 1914, no. 196, p. 4.
De pe cmpul de rzboi [From
the Battlefield], IV, Sept. 12-25,
1914, no. 199 a, p. 1.
Vitejie romneasc [Romanian
Bravery], IV, Sept.12-25, 1914,
no. 199 b, p. 4.
Danubian, I. B., Rnitul [The
Wounded], IV, Oct.14, 1914, no.
215, p. 2-3.
De pe cmpul de rzboi [From
the Battlefield], IV, Oct.5-18,
1914, no. 219, p. 5.
Lista soldailor romni rnii i
czui pe cmpul de rzboi [The
List of Romanian Soldiers, dead
or wounded on the Battlefield],
IV, Nov. 9/22, 1914, no. 222, p.
4.
G. C., Spre Lemberg [Towards
Lemberg], IV, Oct.12-25, 1914,
no. 225, p. 5.
Haubitz,
Costic,
Cmpul
morilor [The Deads Field], IV,
Oct.23/Nov.5, 1914, no. 233, p.
1-2.
C., De pe cmpul de rzboi
[From the Battlefield], IV, Nov,
2-15, 1914, no. 242, p. 3.
Munteanu, A. S., Icoane din
rzboi [Scenes of the War], IV,
Nov.12-25, 1914, no. 249 a, p. 13.
Munteanu, A. S., Icoane din
rzboi [War Pictures], IV,
Nov.12-25, 1914, no. 249 b, p. 13.
Paginile roii ale istoriei [The
Red Pages of History], IV,
Nov.13-26, 1914, no. 250, p. 1.
Munteanu, A. S., S-a stins un
erou: Horaiu Deac [A Hero has
Passed Away: Horatiu Deac],
IV, Nov.21, Dec 4, 1914, no.
257, p. 2.
N.I., De pe cmpul de rzboi
[From the Battlefield], IV,
Dec.14/27, 1914, no. 272, p. 2-3.

234

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1915

Ca s se tie [Let the World

Know], V, Feb. 6, 1915, no. 19,
p.1.
Wallner, Franz, Ctre eroii
regimentului nr. 33 din Arad [To
the Heroes of Regiment 33 of
Arad], V, March 14/17, 1915, no.
59, p. 1.
Kellerman, Bernhard, Btlia de
la Loos [The Battle of Loos], V,
Oct.10-23, 1915, no. 221 a, p. 12.
Kellerman, Bernhard, Fromelles,
Aubers, Posthubert, Givency sau
Loos Imaginea este aceeai
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Givency or Loos The picture is
the Same], V, Oct.10-23, 1915,
no. 221 b, p. 1-2.
Sabie, Ion, Un prieten pierdut [A
Lost Friend], V, Oct.29 Nov.11,
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Romnul
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Romanian]
1916

Bazil, Radu, nsemnri pe

rzboi. Cum se cunosc strinii
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Foreigners Meet], VI, Jan.13-20,
1916, no. 8, p. 7.
T.B., ntr-un spital [In a
Hospital], VI, Jan.14-27, 1916,
no. 9, p. 6-7.
Madelung, Aage, Prevestitoarea
furtunii [Storm Warner], VI,
Feb.11, 1916, no. 22, a, p. 6.
Amintiri din iadul de la
Dobredo [Memories from the
Hell of Dobredo], VI, Jan.
29/Feb. 11, 1916, no. 22 b, p. 1.
Pop, Gavril, Dasclul Ion [The
Teacher Ion], VI, Feb.11, 1916,
no. 22 c, p. 6.

Romnul
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1918

Clopoel, Ion, Berthelot

[Berthelot], VII, Dec.16-29,
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Hangiu
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Comunica.ro, 2008.
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Romniei, 1916-1919 [The
History of Unification of
Romania War, 1916-1919], vol.
II, Bucharest, Science and
Encyclopedia House, 1989.
Lupa, Ioan, Contribuii la
Lupa
istoria ziaristicei romneti
1926
ardelene [Contributions to The
History of Romanian Journalism
in Ardeal], Sibiu, Peoples
Printing House, 1926.
Simion,
Eugen
et.
alli.,
Simion
2006
Dicionarul
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al
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Literature],
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luni pe cmpul de rsboi. Ziarul
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unui romn, ofier n armata
austro-ungar [Three Months
on the Battlefield, Journal of
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Hungarian Army], Bucharest,
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Depository,
Stnciulescu Library, 1915.
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Tsluanu
obuzelor. Scene i icoane din
1916
rsboiu [The Bombshell Dance,
Scenes and Pictures of the War],
Bucharest, Sfetea Book Store,
1916.
Vasile
M.,
Theodorescu Theodorescu,
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1941
romni. Documentarea istoric
a
exerciiului
dreptii
romneti i maghiare pe
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naional,
social, politic, economic i
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Kiriescu
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b. Books:
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Dicionar cronologic 17902007, vol. I, 18 februarie 1790decembrie 1916 [The Romanian
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Chronological
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1916],
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235

Paul Eders Memories from the Bukovinian War (1915-1916)

Radu TEUCEANU
Museum curator, Biblioteca Muzeului Naional Brukenthal
E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract. This work is a front diary kept by a young Transylvanian Saxon intellectual who went
to war in 1915 as a volunteer within the Austro-Hungarian army. It remained unfinished because of the
authors death, and, due to its large stretch, over 200 pages, our hypothesis is that it was meant to be a
great fresco. Indeed, the war is seen in all its aspects, and the discourse is rich in information. The main
awkwardness of the authors discourse may be the too great emphasis put on describing the other officers
personalities, lives, and accomplishments, thus being a sample of a genuine elitist viewpoint.
Keywords: unfinished book, war, elitism, officers, descriptions

Paul Eders (1891-1924) unfinished

memories from World War I, published in the
form of a book entitled Kriegserinnerungen
(Memories from the war), are in the possession
of the Brukenthal Library, on the shelf mark II
6218 and the inventory number 6347. This book
was published posthumously in Sibiu in late
1928 and has got 236 pages, being divided into
eleven chapters. A nephew of Bishop Friedrich
Teutsch, Eder studied law, beginning from 1912,
and received his lawyer diploma in Cluj on
December 10, 1920. He worked for a short
period as a reporter within the statistic
department of the Transylvanian Ruling
Council, but turned to the legal profession,
working as a novice by a few lawyers.
Nevertheless, his trade did not bring him the
satisfaction expected and so went on to study
history, a vocational pursuit abruptly ended by
his untimely death from influenza.
The book is bound in thick grey paper,
which may well represent the colour of the
Austro-Hungarian uniform, the so-called
Hechtgrau, pike grey. This uniform was
introduced a few years before the war, in 1908,
as the authorities thought that this colour was
less conspicuous (Jung 2003, 16).
After having been rejected in September
1914 as unfit, at the end of the March of the
following year he was eventually accepted as a
volunteer. In the afternoon of April 10, 1915,
Eder left by train to Graz and from there to
Muraszombat (nowadays Murska Sobota, in
Slovenia). There he visited the castle of Count
Szapary, a massy beautiful square Renaissance
building with many restorations; on the west

side, a Gothic nave could be found, which was

the family chapel.
The road to Radkersburg was a delight
for the author, due to the gentle hilly landscape
and the rich fruit cultures which were in full
blossom at that time of the year. In many
gardens stood the image of Christ, before which
the uhlans also took off their caps. Radkersburg
lay between the mountains and offered a friendly
sight, having got a small market place endowed
with the emperor Franz Josephs statue. The
houses were built during the Middle Ages by
German townspeople. Atop a hill, one could still
see the fortress, at whose feet lay the oldest part
of the town, namely the seigniorial city. The
towns Spielfeld and Bad Radkersburg from
southern Steyermark have been for centuries
places of customs and border police. In Bad
Radkersburg there was no railway station, only
barracks of the Austrian army (Staudinger 2010,
101-102).
Eder spent three weeks in Muraszombat,
towards the evening being busy with learning
the use of the carabine in the room of Ralph
Jordan, another fellow officer. As for
Muraszombat itself, the pride of this town are
the Hungarian documents of the Murska Sobota
library are rich in number and valuable, in size
nearly as many as those found in
Lendava/Alslendva collection (Gncz and
Vrs 2005, 217).
After leaving Muraszombat, the author
rode to Pressburg (nowadays the Slovak capital,
Bratislava), passing through Steinamanger
(Szombathely, nowadays in Hungary), which he
describes as a clean city, where German is still
236

spoken. In Pressburg, which reminded him

much Transylvanian towns, Eder paid a visit to
the baroness Pach, in order to arrange his
quartering in an advantageous unit. It was thus a
long journey made on horseback, across what is
nowadays land belonging to no less than four
countries (Slovenia, Austria, Hungary, and
Slovakia). From Bratislava, the author went by
train to Holics (nowadays Holic, in Slovakia), a
town which he describes as being at that time a
Slovak-Jewish village, having around 1,000
inhabitants. It was there that, in time of peace,
the great hunts took place. The castle, built in
the early 18th century, originated as a frontier
fortress and, according to local tradition, was
often visited by the empress Maria Theresia. In a
square within the castle yard were the stalls,
where 2,000 to 3,000 horses could be kept. Eder
put at the hotel Winterstern (in English: the
winter star), as the houses were poor and
expensive at the same time.
The sword brandishing had to take place
every day at 11:30 AM, in the castle yard. A
lively description is made of the tactical table:
In the theoretical teaching, which took place in
the afternoon, the tactical table played the most
important role. It represented a part of the
Earths surface, a fancy landscape made of sand,
which could be changed in every moment. Blue
threads stood for rivers, red threads for roads,
moss stood for forests, and small cardboard
houses had been stuck with glue by industrious
boys. We had to be able to move within this
space and solve the tasks according to war
science and to the most recent experiences. This
method is still being used in the 21st century,
tactical decision games being rehearsed through
the use of sand tables (Holmes-Eber 2014, 294).
These chapters are valuable for the interesting
information they offer on the military
preparations behind the theatre of operations.
The mentioning of daily life of the officers is
also valuable for the reconstitution of mentalities
of the upper classes in the Austro-Hungarian
Empire.
The last day a small formal dinner took
place, where uhlans, husars, and dragoons sat,
all clad in parade attire, whereas a gypsy band
had been called to play the violins. The rider
master was presented a horse whip with a gold
handle, which he received seeming to have been
impressed by this noble gesture.
An interesting observation is that the
lite of the fighters was mounted, whereas the
Schtzendivision (the defender division) was
made up of those men whom the major did not
like.

In the authors memory had remained

the rides with the squadron alongside the Cri
river on foggy mornings. The commanders were
Erwin Bohosiewicz, who came from a Polonised
Armenian family, as was often the case in
Galizia, the author, and other two officers.
Bohosiewicz was nicknamed Kobi, after the
majors dachshund. The Polonised Armenian
families had been in Galizia since the 15th and
16th centuries and were related to the Polish
nobility, also having got social connections with
them. Bohosiewicz had been educated by the
Jesuits in Kalksburg, who had extra polished his
innate gifts. The exclusive Jesuit seminary of
Kalksburg, near Vienna, was the training
ground for the diplomatic and administrative
lite (Tate 1995, 11). He spoke Ruthenian and
Polish perfectly; he got along very well with his
men, inquired after their needs, spend much time
with them, and set the furloughs for them. He
was also a devout Catholic and received from
the cavalry captain Frauenberg a small holy
image, which he wore as an amulet.
Here the author brings his contribution
in the genealogic scope and also in the
educational and religious ones. We can see once
again that he is primarily interested in the
background of the aristocracy and high
bourgeoisie.
Another interesting personage was
Charles Pennigtown, who was the son of the
former American ambassador in Vienna and of
an Austrian countess. A heavy drinker, he was a
very good comrade, always even-tempered,
never complained about anything, and was
fearless towards the enemy. He was the
lieutenant-colonel of the machine gun unit
(Maschinengewehr-Abteilung Oberleutnant).
Yet, the most pleasant memories for
Eder were the rides through Count Merans
pheasant preserve, a well-kept wood with wide
glades. On this occasion, the author held that in
the Hungarian Pusta could be seen the most
beautiful moonshine, the most beautiful evening
skies, and the most beautiful sunsets.
The first sight of the consequences of
the war was a burnt-down house in Krsmez,
where was the Hungarian-Galizian border train
station; Eder writes that the house looked
mystical in the dim light of the station lamps.
After crossing into Galizia, the new sights were
those left behind from the previous year, a few
lines of barbed wire, and, sadly, wooden crosses
of the fallen soldiers. The authors interest in
the life and accomplishments of the lite are, as
we can see, supplemented by his sentimental
literary descriptions.
237

A quaint piece of witness was that Eder

and his camarades used to entertain themselves
by listening to the xonophone, which must be
another word, or a trademark, for the
gramophone. On festive occasions, the
champagne was served up in the silver cups
which the members of the regiment had to
donate, whereas the Theresian riders had
donated gold cups (Bei den Festlichkeiten, die
das Regiment veranstaltete, wurde der
Champagner aus den silbernen Bechern die
Theresienritter goldene getrunken) (Eder
1928, 48). The November mornings in Galizia
are described as having been spent on some
barren plains, with no woods in sight; on the
fields were numberless crow rookeries and
somewhere in the distance every now and then
could be heard one cannon roar at a time.
An interesting piece of information is
that somebody had procured a history of a
certain regiment, a rarity extant only in few
copies, in which it was stated that the point of
attraction there was the duke Pedro of Orlans,
who was the Brazilian empresss grandson.
Another person worthy of mention was Friedrich
Tinti, described by the author as a typical
Viennese baron. Among his ancestors could also
be found one of the doges of Venice. He was
large-sized, a little bent, and with big ears, so
being nicknamed der Propellerfredi. The
Venetian nobility left the city soon after 1797,
and the image of the deserted palaces, with their
curtains full of dust, appears in the 19th-century
travelogues (Galibert 1850, 552).
The crossing of the Dniester river on a bridge is
also described. Eder estimated that that bridge
was roughly 80 to 100 steps long, it sounded
under the horse kicks, and below the waters of
the river, loamy and brown, were rolling
awfully. Next, the road went on into the uplands,
where, on the barren heights, the remnants of the
farms could be seen, and a cold easterly wind
was blowing. On the plains, the advancement
was hindered by the snow, below which lay rifle
pits and trenches, so that a unit commanded by
the lieutenant Apponyi had the duty to scoop out
those trenches with shovels. Yet their task was a
heavy one, as the men were poorly dressed and
had got no mittens.
The village Zazulince, where the troops were
quartered, had suffered much from the war.
Sheds and barns had burnt down, only the walls
being left, and these ones were only scantily
covered. The rooms were moist, the horses were
freezing, and the saddles had come apart
because of the moisture. But the next day was
beautiful: the sun shone over the snow-capped

mountains, the sky was wonderfully blue, the air

was clear and pure, and because of the snow
which had covered everything, the whole
landscape seemed to be different from that of the
previous day. Opposite the position was the
village Szuparka, and the cupola of the
Orthodox church (die Kuppel der griechischen
Kirche) of that village could be seen in the clear
winter days.
On the first evening, the colonel had
named Eder and other three comrades-cadets,
which involved some advantages, such as a pay
of 300 crowns, cigarettes for officers, and wine.
The duty was an officers one. This promotion
was assigned to a young officer called Hans
Kuenburg, who formed part of the colonels
entourage. For the squadron commander a new
dug-out had been built, whereas the underlings
had to live in the dug-outs remained from the
times when the infantry had occupied this
position. All dug-outs were primitive; anyway,
the author had got in his room a good stove
made of loam.
We underline here as well the authors
juxtaposition in his memories of descriptions of
upper-class persons, valuable information about
everyday life on the front, and, again, beautiful
literary descriptions. Religious aspects of the
lands unknown to him are not overlooked as
well.
Another personage whom Eder found
important to describe was the colonel-lieutenant
baron Pereira Arnstein from the hussar regiment
1. This baron was the most elegant man that the
author had ever seen: tall, slender, with a
handsome and distinguished head, always very
well dressed. In want of any military awards, he
wore the Marianne Cross, the so-called
aristocratic Hundsmarke. In soldiers jargon, a
metal piece bearing the persons number, worn
to be recognized if he died. In Germany it was
called Hundemarke, and in Switzerland,
Grabstein (Behrens 2011, 208-209). His
grandmother Henriette Pereira was a famous
beauty at the time of the Vienna Congress at
that time, in a gallery from the city was extant a
portrait of her. Anyway, Pereira would talk only
to the superiors, rarely thanked, and as a result
was throughout unloved.
Nevertheless,
this officer was being wrongly judged, as he was
soon to prove himself to be a peaceful man, with
a keen interest in art; he himself played the
piano and would draw and paint in the open,
akin to the French Impressionists.
Together with her sister Cecilia, Fanny
Arnstein, from the wealthy Jewish Itzig family
of Berlin and herself the wife of a Jewish
238

financial, dominated salon life in Vienna

between 1780 and 1818. Their salon was
frequented by educated persons, and, according
to a young Bavarian traveller, there could be
found a pleasant and freer atmosphere than in
those of the titled aristocracy, the etiquette of
those ones being avoided. In 1818, upon her
death, her daughter Henriette, who had married
Ludwig Pereira, an adoptive son of the father,
attempted to fill her place, this time moved to
Baden, but, lacking the brilliance of the mother,
Henriette retired from social life by 1830
(Hanson 1985, 114-116 passim). As a curiosity,
in the 1960s and 1970s there lived a travel writer
called Michael Pereira, who liked to wander
across Turkey. Among others, he wrote a book
about Istanbul, called Istanbul: Aspects of A
City, published in 1968 (Stoneman 2010, 240).
The name Pereira comes from the Spanish word
pera, which means pear.
Because of the dangerous situation that
had arisen in the surrounding areas, the military
had to spend Christmas and the New Year on the
front. The Russians had attacked the Corda army
corps, which was situated in the south-west, thus
forming part of the 8th cavalry division. On an
evening spent with the inferiors, the colonel was
as good-humoured as he had never been seen.
After dinners, he smoked from a long chibouk,
and, leaned in his armchair, he would tell stories
with his cunning smile, which could sometimes
be hearty as well. He told that he had initially
wished to become a sailor, but was not admitted
at the Marineakademie because of his lack of
mathematical skills, a fact that he was keeping
on regretting. He had begun his career as a
cadet-corporal at the Traniuhlanen, having
served in Galizia, where he raised to officer in
the staff, then he had been a riding professor at
the War School (Kriegsschule). Upon this, he
had obtained the command of the Archduke
Throne Heirs regiment. He was well-read and
interested in many branches of knowledge. For
example, he had always on him Johannes
Scherrs Tragikomdie in der Weltgeschichte or
a similar thick book.
On the New Years Day, because of the cold
weather, the mass was held in the Orthodox
church, a decision that the Greek-Catholic vicar
took amiss. The sermon was long, including
many kneelings; the officers were in the choir,
and the squadron in the nave. The author
listened to Ruthenian church songs with delight,
remarking especially its long sad sounds. The
foremost value of psalmodising is that it
represents a form of prayer. [] It is also an
effective means of counter-weight and of

removing the negative elements of inner life,

[] having got a keen conscience and a wide
seizure of the meanings found in the hymns.
(Cavarnos 2005, 104).
During the following weeks, Eder had
the task of having the holes in the road filled up.
They were noticed by the colonel during his
rides or strolls about the village; that colonel
seemed to be much interested in this aspect,
even charging a few specialised reporters to
always let Eder know what went wrong. He was
also compelled to go to the telephone and
receive the usual news from Cernui. During a
duty day on the wet road, he caught a serious
cold and had to lie in bed with high fever for a
fortnight. As a pleasant surprise, after his
recovery, Eder stepped in the new dug-out,
which had been built in the meantime and had
got four rooms, a pantry, and a few others. In the
dining room, the squadron trumpeter was also
accommodated.
In February, Eder led a pleasant life in
several villages where the squadron was being
moved: nice and warm rooms, a little more
comfort, and enjoyable rides. He also invented a
mixture of cognac, hollands (Dutch juniper
brandy), and cumin brandy, which was light
yellow and had a very good taste. He visited his
acquaintance Fritz Reimer twice, who lived atop
a hill at a hours distance. Reimer had got there a
small spinet, whose sound was much alike that
of the church organ. His dug-out was lit with
wax lights, which had all, according to the
Viennese workshop fashion, red and yellow
screens. Reimer could speak for hours about
food and wanted to compose an operetta, which
he believed that would turn him into a rich man.
The previous month he had become a flagbearer, but was moved to a squadron whose
commander was a sullen and jealous man, from
time to time rude, and who was unable to make
any decision. This commander was to be,
moreover, soon discharged, also because of his
kidney suffering.
The next part of the book has a gloomier
character, as the fairly pleasant life from the first
months had ended and the hard period before the
actual warfare is ushered in. The most difficult
task for everyone was the trench digging,
especially for the older officers, who had spent
their many service years on horseback. The
dragoons were the worst in this and also in
building activities. Stepping from the trenches
built by them, one had to walk bent, so as not to
be seen by the enemy. The officers of the
Hungarian regiment of dragoons, because their
way to be much coarser, had a hard task, having
239

to check all the time their attitudes and speech in

order to avoid being ridiculous. That month the
regiment was also weather-bound at one time,
and the men were walking up to the waist in
snow. Many dug-outs had to be freed from snow
in order to enable those remained below to come
out.
In early March, Eder was ordered to ride
to the colonel established in Szukow. The
landscape remained imprinted in his memory:
the meter-high snow had been a little melted by
the southerly wind, taking a certain blue hue.
Alongside the road, in two places, lay corpses of
horses, who had died because they had been
underfed, not being able to withstand the
tribulations of the bad road. The trees which had
been touched by artillery fire had been stripped
of leaves and branches and the author wrote
about them that they looked even more ghostly
in the evening light as during the day.
On Easter Eve, an order came for an
officer each from the four squadrons, along with
four non-coms by squadron to take a position, in
order to loosen the pressure exerted on the 42th
Croatian division. A square was formed, but the
men had to ride through the woods on a
moonless night. The Croatian commander had
forced away a large oil painting, which now
hang in his room.
The move remained unnoticed by the
Russians, but, on June 4, the much-feared
summer offensive began. The regiment suffered
heavy losses, and all over the place could be
seen seriously wounded men, impossible to be
transported away, and who soon died; this was a
sorrowful sight. In Eders dug-out a grenade
exploded, turning upside down and covering
everything that was there with the dbris
resulted: only a small piece of the red and white
painted ceiling was left in sight. As a linguistic
curiosity, the bombproof dug-out was called the
heroes cellar (der Heldenkeller). A certain
lieutenant, the count Coresolati, fell in action,
together with a capable cadet, always a little
tipsy, who spoke with a Polish accent. Coresolati
had many acquaintances and relations in
Innsbruck. It seemed that the Austrian defence
was no match for the fire of the Russian 21centimetre guns. As a result, on the left side of
Eders regiment, the Russians made a
breakthrough. Their advance was also much
facilitated because of the fact that the Austrians
machine gun had been blocked with sand
because of the wind, thus getting out of work.
One of the officers close to Eder was fatally
wounded at the head, badly disfigured, and died
shortly afterwards, after a massive haemorrhage,

and also Pereira was killed. Pischinger was

catched unawares by a Russian as tall as a tree
and asked to show him to his dug-out. Because
of the fear, he felt that he could not refuse, thus
preferring a safe and painless captivity to death.
Four uhlans stormed the dug-out and shot the
Russian in Pischingers arms, thus a
tragicomical situation resulting, setting free a
traitor. Seventy Russian guns were found, and,
according to the calculations that were made
shortly afterwards, the attackers strength was
roughly double as that of the Austrians. On the
meadow situated between the headquarters and
the wood, as a result of the bombings, tall black
earth columns had formed. The men were too
numerous in the bombproof dug-outs, and again
too many, and also defenceless, in the trenches.
Finally the retreat order came, and the
men began their march. The move was
compromised at the very beginning by the
mistake of mine thrower officer, who blew up
his entire ammunition left, the result being that
the Russians retorted by firing back and there
were many men wounded on the Austrian side.
Soon afterwards, an old colonel, wholly
exhausted, sat down under a tree; Eder supposed
that he was taken prisoner. The Austrians
crossed back the river Prut, then setting the
bridge on fire. About this time, Cernui was
taken by the Russians. As Eder and his fellows
were marching across the Bukovinian
countryside, at one time a Russian air balloon
fell down in a clover field, but it represented no
danger. The men, of whom only half had
survived the disaster, eventually reached the
small Jewish town Wischnitz Eder had been
charged with leading a force in a long detour
through the woods, in great danger of being
taken prisoners. Of the over 400 uhlans, only
over 200 had survived.
During the continual retreat, the
Austrians also set the bridge over the river
Ceremu on fire; the operation took place after
the bridge was covered with pitch. The flames
were lighting the water and the mountains. The
men were all so tired, that on an evening the
veterinary doctor had to be sent on a
reconnaissance. Shortly afterwards, because of a
new order of retreat, the colonel in his turn
ordered the setting on fire a few stately peasant
houses, in spite of the attempts to make him
change his mind. The colonel thought that this
was a necessary measure, since the trenches
passed through the yards, and during the retreat
the uhlans might become exposed to the
Russians attack. It was a most afflicting sight,
as the owners were in despair, seeing their whole
240

fortune is being wiped out in only a few

minutes.
After the Austrians reached the
mountains opposite the Ceremu, in the first
night they had to sleep rough and took from the
neighbouring farmsteads blankets dyed red,
green, and blue. So that it was a comical sight in
the next morning, when everyone in the area had
under their eyes a many-coloured army, actually
moving in those blankets.
In the following days, a whole squadron
fell into captivity, including an officer called
Scheibler. In the summer of 1917, he set out
from Siberia, and, having the Polar Star as his
only guide mark, he reached Finland and from
there went to Sweden. As soon as he finally
arrived home, in January 1918 he returned to the
front and was taken prisoner by the Italian army
at the end of the war. The author was convinced
that Scheibler was one of the best officers in
World War I, from both camps.
The Romanian attack on Transylvania
found Eder ill in hospital in Sibiu and he had to
flee via Copa (Kopisch) to Vienna, by the last
fast train which came from Braov, whereas his
relatives, including the bishop Friedrich Teutsch,
also fled Sibiu and reached first Budapest, from
where they were moved to Pinczow, in southern
Poland, for greater safety. As his health had
improved, the author decided to leave for
Pinczow in his turn. Reaching Krakow, Eder put
at the Hotel de Saxe, an old one, as its name
showed, which dated from the times of the
Saxon kings of Poland. The pompous style of
serving up the customers engrossed his attention.
A dram of strong liquor was brought first, then
came several tureens with meat or fish in aspic,
from which the customer helped himself. If
someone asked for a fancy cake, the whole of
this was brought on the table (not just a slice). If
someone ordered cheese, the whole piece came,
as big as a cart wheel. A band was playing
Viennese music; this was the meeting place of
the good Polish society. Eder went to a
restaurant somewhere in the city, which had two
levels underground. It was cold and dimly lit,
and on the walls hang chromolithographs
representing palaces from Moscow and St.
Petersburg. Eder had had in mind to write a
description of Krakow, but, unfortunately, he
could no longer achieve it.
The author describes the town Pinczow
in detail. The central point was the market place,
which had a roughly rectangle form, amidst
which was a park of fir trees, and, beside it, a
fountain. The houses in this part of the town
were two-storeyed and painted in ugly, weather-

beaten colours. The owners of most shops were

all Jews. The cloister had two yards (1), and on
the white wall beneath the framework was an
old sundial, a little bleached, which had the year
1721 placed on it. At the edge of the town was
the small palace of the Marquess Wielopolski,
the high hunting master of the tsar. The main
faade was in Empire style, painted in yellow,
with a balcony; on the terrace were figures, also
weather-beaten. In the barracks yard was a
wooden Orthodox church, which the Austrians
would use as a storehouse for hay. The Austrian
major was a complex personality. Like
Bohusiewicz, he came of a Polonised Armenian
family with land estates in north-eastern Galizia.
He had a keen interest on horses, but also in
paintings, antiquities, stretching to things such
as rabbit and goose breeding. In Pinczow he had
a vegetable garden planted, for which he had
ordered seeds in various places; he was also a
passionate hunter. His background was that of a
good businessman, a usual practice of his being
the selling again of horses, for example at one
time to a Polish landowner. When he spoke, he
was very warm and described everything in a
lively way, being glad at the world and its show
so a local variant of the homo universale.
As a conclusion, the first regrettable
thing is, of course, the fact that the book is
unfinished, Paul Eder having had the time of
writing, perhaps, only about one-third of the
whole text planned. An aspect which is
characteristic for this work is the swinging
between describing the horrors of the war and
the comic happenings inevitably occurring in
everyday life. After all, is life not, in any epoch,
a mixture of good and evil? The book is very
well documented, and rich in detail, also
including a few battle maps it is true, they are
sketchy, but clear. The causes of the defeats are,
in our opinion, well analyzed, the technical part
not being left aside, as for example the case of
the machine gun brought out of work by the
sand. A favourite concern of Eder was the
description of castles and historical centres of
towns, thus fulfilling to an extent the task of a
painter or a photographer let us not forget that
he eventually became a student of history; he
was also fond of doing etymological and
genealogic research, which naturally completed
his intellectual concerns. Taking heed of all
these aspects, Kriegserinnerungen may thus well
be reckoned as being a genuine chronicle of

(1) From this point of view, the Brukenthal Palace in

Sibiu is no exception as well.

241

what was happening during the first phase of the

war on the south-eastern front.

Staudinger
2010

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Behrens, Gnther, Sechs Wochen
Behrens
hinter den feindlichen Linien,
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Norderstedt, Books on Demand,
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Cavarnos Cavarnos, Constantin, Sfntul
Munte Athos [The Holy Mountain;
2005
two lectures on Mount Athos, of
which the first deals with its
scholars, missionaries, and saints,
and the second with its music,
musicians, and hymnographers,
together with an account of a
recent visit to Athos], Bucureti,
Agapis, 2005.
Galibert, Lon, Histoire de la
Galibert
Rpublique de Venise, Paris, Furne
1850
et Compagnie, 1850.
Hanson, Alice M., Musical Life in
Hanson
Biedermeier Vienna, Cambridge,
1985
Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Jung, Peter, The Austro-Hungarian
Jung
Forces in World War I (1): 19142003
1916, Oxford, Osprey Publishing,
2003.
Stoneman Stoneman, Richard, Across the
Hellespont: A Literary Guide to
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Turkey, London, Tauris Parke
Paperbacks, 2010.
Tate 1995 Tate, Dennis, Franz Fhmann:
Innovation and Authenticity: A
Study of His Prose-Writing,
Amsterdam, Editions Rodopi,
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Gncz, Lajos, Vrs, Ott,
Gncz,
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the
Former
Vrs 2005 Hungarian
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(Vojvodina
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Hungarian
Language
Contact
Outside
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A Minority Language, Amsterdam,
John Benjamins B. V., 2005, (p.
187-240).
Holmes-Eber, Paula, Wheres the
HolmesEber 2014 So What?: Teaching Culture in
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the Flipside of Coin, Lanham
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USA),
Lexington
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Books, 2014, (p. 285-302).

Staudinger, Eduard G., Aspekte
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GrenzenGrenzziehungen. In: 25 Jahre
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(Mapping
Contemporary History, II), (p. 99108).

... And the wind used to keep me company.

The Notes of Archpriest Cndea during the Refuge in Moldova,
1918 (*)
Andreea DNCIL INEOAN
Postdoctoral Researcher at West University of Timioara, Romania
E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract. This study analyses the personal implications of the First World War using as a
historical argument the unpublished notes of the Archpriest Ioan Cndea. After he ran, in 1916, from
Transylvania, in 1918, the Archpriest is in a refugee camp in Moldova from where he writes with
admirable devotion the experiences of each day. His testimony is important in analyzing the strategies
of survival, as well as in the way in which the relation with History is configured in times of war. Not
least, this study is a plea for interpreting the Great War and the way this major event changed the
Romanian society in terms of cultural history.
Keywords: First World War, notes, Transylvanian refugees, Archpriest Ioan Cndea
Despite the admiration manifest of the editor,
Archpriest Ioan will remain a historiographically
discreet figure, without ever gaining posthumous
notoriety such as to transform him into an
interesting case study for historians.
Nevertheless, our study proposes not so
much a rediscovery of the institutional aspect
behind this man, or a glimpse of the history of
the religious life in Avrig at the turn of the
century, but rather a human recovery in times of
war. Our stake would not be possible if we had
not had as support the journal of Archpriest Ioan
Cndea from 1918, unpublished to this day. (2)
The manuscript, kept in a very small
format, begins on May 6th, 1918 with the last
entry on July 21st the same year. We know with
certainty that the diary started earlier, possibly
from the beginning of the Archpriest`s exile,
according to its suggestive subtitle continued
notes.
There is a series of factors that makes
this unique source a formidable testimony. First
of all, there is the form of the document, that of
a diary, of a simultaneous report of the history
that was taking place and not simply an exercise
that inevitably re-established the act of
remembering according to the influences that the
narrator felt around him in a frame already

The newspaper Telegraful Romn [The

Romanian Telegraph] published the following
reminder on the 28th of August, 1938: On
Monday, August 22nd the old Archpriest of
Avrig, Ioan Cndea, aged 83, passed away, after
a rich activity in the service of the church and
the nation, ministering as Archpriest for 53
years. [...] In the fall of 1916, when others fled
to Hungary, our Archpriest, secretly listening to
the voice of conscience and blood, took exile in
Moldova and Russia, from where he returned
without a passport to Avrig. A kind-hearted
man, with a brilliant and restless intelligence, an
authentic and lively character, he led a
tumultuous life and endured cruel blows of fate
in his family life, which he managed to bear
with Christian serenity and deep resignation (1).
(*) This work was supported by the strategic grant
POSDRU/159/1.5/S/140863, Project ID 140863
(2014), co-financed by the European Social
Fund within the Sectorial Operational Program
Human Resources Development 2007 2013.
(1) Apud. Telegraful romn, the 28th of August 1938,
p. 3. Luni, 22 august c[urent] a adormit n Domnul
btrnul protopop al Avrigului, Ioan Cndea n vrst
de 83 ani, dup o activitate bogat n slujba bisericii
i a neamului, pstorind ca protopop 53 ani. [...] Este
caracteristic faptul c, n toamna anului 1916 cnd
alii se refugiau spre Ungaria, protopopul nostru
ascultnd glasul tainic al contiinei i sngelui a luat
calea pribegiei n Moldova i Rusia, de unde a revenit
fr paaport n Avrigul de acum romnesc. Om de
inim, inteligen scprtoare i neastmprat, real
i vioiu, a dus o via zbuciumat i a ndurat crude

lovituri ale soartei n viaa familiar, pe care le-a

suportat cu senintate cretin i resemnare adnc.
(2) We found the diary within the Special Collections
at the Central University Library Lucian Blaga
Cluj-Napoca. After being transcribed, these notes
will be soon published in full.

243

distant from the referred moment. This journal

enables the recovery of the experience from
World War I not from the point of view of
official statistics or monumental history, but
from a human perspective, of the man whose
personal time overlapped the great time of
history. As a historical source, the journal may
be evaluated to a higher degree thanks to its
extremely striking authenticity, being different
from a memorial, subject to the mystifying
political, ideological etc. bombardment recorded
after the historical fact, inevitably altering its
structure (3).
If these confessional sources, that have
as a subject the topic of World War I
experiences, were relatively well represented by
the reports of the secular segment, the
testimonies of Archpriest Ioan come to complete
the investigation field, offering a particularly
important direction for researchers interested in
how verbalized the religious sentiment really
was in the context of World War I. Moreover,
the priest`s authorial perspective is important in
analyzing the strategies of survival, as well as in
the way in which his relation with History is
configured.
New historiographical perspectives upon
World War I insist on the personal nature of the
trauma, on overcoming the statistics and
descending within the intimacy of the
experiences generated by this conflagration
(Macleod, Purseigle 2004, 10). These arguments
further value the historical source proposed
today.
In late September 1916, once the
Romanian army had crossed the Carpathians for
a short period, many teachers and priests,
compromised in front of the Hungarian
authorities for their benevolent attitude towards
the conqueror, take refuge away from
Transylvania. The insistent telegrams that the
Minister Apponyi sends to Metropolitan
Meianu and then to his successor, Vasile
Mangra, suggest that the south of Transylvania
was considered a real danger to the security of
the region, as it was the place of an intellectual
exodus after 1916. 10 out of 13 teachers from
the Romanian high school in Braov and their
headmaster left together with the Romanian
army (Triteanu 1919). The Cultural Zone
imagined by the Hungarian authorities in this

region suggests the defector potential

permanently existing there (Galanti 1989, 186).
Among those who choose, in the autumn
of 1916, to take refuge with the Romanian army
forced to retreat from Transylvania, there is the
Archpriest Ioan Cndea of Avrig, who, at the
age of 61, goes into an assumed exile in such
troubled times. After the war takes him from
Transylvania to Russia, in May 1918, the old
priest from Ardeal is in a refugee camp in
Moldova, at Ruginoasa, where he keeps a
consistent journal of every day along the way
until the month of July of the same year.
The motivations for writing, in the case
of Archpriest Cndea, can be detectable in the
explanations of those who questioned the
fervour with which the Romanian peasants from
Transylvania agreed to leave written notes about
the shock of the World War I. At a time
perceived as traumatic, the rural world begins to
record details of a tragic existence, in order to
save itself from the terror of the present time
(Brlea 2004, 6). This attitude, of recording and
transmitting the memorable is a fundamental
historical shift (Leu, Albert 1995, 5-10).
Literary critics talk about these changes as a
result of modernity perceiving history as own
history and the man as the product of ongoing
circumstances (Vianu 2001, 18). In this
equation, any intimate entry is in fact a survival
strategy by the discipline of interiority that it
implies (Aris, Duby 1997).
When we refer to the manuscript of Ioan
Cndea we estimate that the term entries is the
most appropriate, thus avoiding its cataloguing
as a diary. These notes correspond rather to
Eugen Simion`s definitions of the genre known
as memorial, widely spread at the beginning of
the 19th century, a hybrid form between
chronicle, travel log and description in a
geographical, sociological, ethnographic sense,
enriched (in the chemical sense) with memories,
moral reflections and lyrical accents (Simion
2001, 37). However, the manuscript of the
Archpriest of Avrig is delimited from a
memorial in the fact that it avoids its finality, the
authorial intentionality.
The ritual of father Cndea faithfully
follows the same every day routine: waking up
at 5 a.m. for prayer in the garden, having
breakfast, reading newspapers, walking in the
garden, lunch, sleep, walking in the garden and
conversations with his brothers in suffering,
dinner, prayer, sleep.
The refugee stance is felt primarily as a
mutation of the social status, from that of
Archpriest of Avrig to a refugee in a camp at

(3) Elena Lamberti, Vita Fortunati 2009, 32.

Remembering always takes place in the present and
is merely a representation of the past, never the past
itself.

244

Ruginoasa, fighting for survival in an

overpopulated, hungry, sick, and resigned
Moldova. The conditions in which he is forced
to live are extreme: his hut resembles a pigsty,
the sleeping place is called the martyr bed
(under the mat he had bulrush and wormwood
against the flees), with a hospital wool pillow
wrapped in a bag of nettles, and the duvet was
his own coat, which he had since leaving Avrig.
Mealtime is always an occasion for painful
comparisons: I remember the food and my quiet
bed and poor Maria who used to cook quite well,
as she could, but now, one must eat poorly and
sleep poorly (4).
Even though he was painfully aware of
his new status it weakens me day by day to see
what I became in my old age (5), he always had
the decency to publicly display another image of
himself: after collecting rainwater to be able to
do the laundry, because he noticed many
refugees in the garden, of shame, he chose to
shed his clothes in his own hut so that people
didnt know what I had become (6).
The exceptional time of such records
obviously predisposes to a series of lamentations
of Archpriest Cndea who recorded the

our country, thinking about my family and

everything I left behind, missing them all (9).
Survival is made possible mainly by the
lack of an emotional environment that can
resonate with his dramatic existence. He often
realizes that the experiences he lived are
exceptional and he ardently wishes to get home,
so that he can tell about them: I asked good
God to help me see my family and my village
and my beloved home as soon as possible, to see
them and tell them all the things that happened
to me while I was away in exile (10). Survival
seems possible only because of his affective
memory, which he constantly exercises and
which acts as a perfect refuge in his case: I am
continuously thinking about my home and I am
still in my village and my circle.(11) This
emotional memory actually represents a kind of
censorship against the world perceived as
foreign and unfit. The plunging into the past
provides an alternative to the alienating present.
When he does not have insomnia, his night life
is always populated by the people of Avrig, by
the well known universe of his home, offering
him some psychological comfort.
However, there is a permanently
restrained affection, a shame that stops him from
opening up concerning areas related to his own
family intimacy. Moving from one register to
another suggests the serious nature of the man
who made these notes, who set some emotional
limits beyond which he cannot pass.
As time passed by and the longing
deepened, proofs of repudiated affection begin
to appear: when he receives a postcard from his
brother announcing that his daughter, Ana, and
her husband are in Avrig, the latter being
employed in the vacant priest position after the
death of father Maxim, he feels really happy and
does not hesitate to describe this state: I felt so
light with happiness that I thought I could easily
fly back home after receiving the good news
(12).
Although he is part of the ecclesiastical
elite of Sibiu, Archpriest Cndea has some
obvious rural reflexes: it is a good time for

drawbacks of his new condition on every

page: I could not sleep thinking about my
house, for I hated living in idleness and laziness,
completely unemployed and isolated from the
people I knew, away from my own kind of all
the necessary things, at the mercy and grace of
the Romanian government, broken, without
clothes and without shoes, with a doubtful heart
(7). His refugee condition is augmented by the
feeling of useless time I die of boredom without
any kind of employment; Im endlessly
wandering in abandonment, without a point and
without any order (8). Each look over the
mountains is a longing, a search for his home:
I've been looking towards our mountains and

(4) mi aduc aminte de mncarea i de patul meu

linitit i de biata Maria care mi le gtea destul de
bine, dup cum se pricepea ea acum ns, mnnci
slab, dormi slab.
(5) m slbesc din zi n zi vzndu-m ce am ajuns
eu la btrnee.
(6) ca s nu mai tie toat lumea ce am ajuns.
(7) nu am putut dormi din cauza gndurilor ctre
cas i la ai mei, cci m-am urt a tri tot n trndvie
i lene fr ocupaiune i izolat de lumea cunoscut,
izolat de ai mei de toate cele trebuincioase, trind
din mila i graia gubernului romn, rupt, fr haine
i fr nclminte i cu inima ndoit.
(8) aici pribegesc fr cpti i fr niciun rost, fr
nicio rnduial.

(9) m-am tot uitat ctre munii notri i ctre ara

noastr, cugetndu-m la ai mei i la toate ce am lsat
i oftez dup ele.
(10) am rugat pe bunul D[umne]zeu a m nvrednici
ca ct mai curnd s m pot ntlni cu ai mei n satul
i la cminul meu mult dorit i iubit s-i mai vd i s
le spun cele pite n pribegire i streini.
(11) sunt cu gndul tot pe acas, sunt tot n satul i
cercul meu.
(12) eram aa de uor de cugetam c a putea zbura
pn acas dup vestea cea bun ce am primit.

245

grass mowing, and were just sitting here

without doing anything, if it does not rain
everything will dry up and all the beasts will die,
there will be a famine all over Romania, because
in winter there was no snow, so now the land is
dry, you could light the fire right on it, I do not
know what will happen with the harvest if God
does not have pity to send rain, as some people
are now planting the corn and the one which has
already grown is dry and poor, and the oats and
wheat are poor and small as well, no promise
there either (13). The description of nature
occupies an ample space in this diary that
accurately records every change of the weather,
with a true forecast precision. Actually
resonating with his inner state, even winter is
harsher in the camp of Ruginoasa, and summer
is harder to bear in a space considered as
temporary in any case.
Trying to tame the time he still had to
spend waiting for the war to end and for the
return home, he imposes a certain discipline to
his own schedule, introducing various activities
to create rhythm in order to be able to reduce the
monotony of each day and make him feel useful.
He is aware that he lives troubled times that can
profoundly confuse the weak in faith. Therefore,
he goes to church every Sunday, trying to
comfort both himself and the people in despair.
Every day he records conscientiously detailed
notes of the spending balance, taking notes of
each detailed price and each quantity of
everything he purchased (14). Practising this
instinct is guaranteed against weaknesses,
hesitations and disruption triggered by fear,
feelings that find favourable conditions not in
those who directly face the enemy, but in those
who stay back and even in those who stay away
from the front (Caracostea 1922, 124).
Throughout the writing of these notes
there are no discrepancies between the condition

of the refugee and that of the priest. Ioan Cndea

remains first of all a priest, even as a refugee. In
an emotionally tense space, with petty passions
stemming mainly from the battle for survival,
fighting against hunger, cold, disease, the
Archpriest`s attitude is in accordance with the
Christian morality which, he believes, can save
him. Even though he can deeply feel the
injustice of others, his reaction appears rather
like a prayer: Write them down, my Lord and,
dear God, do not let us suffer for the sins of
others ... (15)
The atmosphere in the camp seems
disconcerting to him also because it cancels
hierarchy, the very axis that used to adjust the
community relations of the Archpriests old
world: Lord, oh Lord, take me away from this
colony where everyone is big and strong and
equal, peasant, archpriest, advocate, priest, etc..
This is a disgrace.(16) In these circumstances,
the entire experience announces a failure to
adapt, the refugee camp being constantly harshly
described as a nest of evils and irregularities
(17). However, he does not hesitate to assume the
position of pastor, the ordering element within
the community whenever the situation demands
it: he is the one who drafted the memoir to the
government of the country through which the
refugees demand clothes from the ministry, and
also the one who reconciles the refugees fighting
for food supplies.
Even when he tries to escape from this
damned place by participating in the church
service, he feels unfamiliar, an alien at 8:00
a.m., I went to the Holy church with father
Giurca, arriving just in time for the Apostle the
Sunday of the blind man, but father Georgian
read two gospels, but no one could understand
anything after the gospel he said the litany for
the dead and made the cantor sing the cherubic
hymn, leaving the litanies unfinished; the same
thing happened at the offering, with mistakes
and omissions. It is a shame to see how the
divine service is truncated here (18). His

(13) e un timp admirabil de fn i noi stm aici fr

niciun lucru, dac nu va mai ploua se usc tot i
pier vitele toate, va fi foamete n toat Romnia, cci
n iarn n-a fost nici zpad, aa nct acum pmntul
aa e de uscat nct poi scpra cu el, st s se
aprind de la sol..., nu tiu ce va fi cu recolta dac
nu se va ndura Dumnezeu ca s trimit ploaie, cci
ppuoiul unii abia acum l pun, iar cel rsrit e
glbenu i pipernicit ca vai de el, iar ovzul, grul
sunt de tot mizere, mici i glbui i nu promit cine
tie ce recolt.
(14) Every day he conscientiously took notes of the
spending balance, recording in detail each price and
the quantity of each purchase. (Ziemann 2007, 42):
The regular repetition of the various procedures and
actions provides a sense of behavioural certainty.

(15) Scrie-I, Doamne, cum i vezi i Doamne, pentru

pecatele altora s nu suferim noi...
(16) Doamne, Doamne, du-m din aceast colonie
unde toi sunt mari i tari i egali, ran, protopop,
advocat, preot etc. E o ruine.
(17) cuib de ruti i nereguli.
(18) la 8 ore am plecat la Sfnta biseric cu preotul
Giurca, ajungnd tocmai la Apostol dumineca
orbului, ns preotul Georgian a citit dou
evanghelii, dar nu pricepea nimeni nimica dup
evenghelie a zis ectenia pentru mori i a fcut semn
cantorului s cnte cherovicul, rmnnd cele ectenii
n balon, asemenea la daruri, pomenirile cu greeli i

246

humbleness.(22) Almost every daily entry ends

with a prayer or a reference to the divinity. It is
obvious that the strongest pillar of his survival is
his anchor in the power of God, the religious
feeling finding in his case, as well as the case of
others in the time of war, a biological reaction
(Caracostea 1922, 280). These religious beliefs
are very well articulated throughout the entries,
and represent the result of both the family in
which Ioan Cndea was raised, his father also
being a priest, and of a personal vocation which
marked his professional becoming.
When he finds out that the priest Maxim
from Avrig died, he is troubled, thinking about
the fate of the remaining community without
shepherds: it is quite sad that the other two
priests are in exile, and God knows what there
will be left of that unfortunate people (23), but
he refrains from trying to discover the purpose
of all these challenges because one cannot
grumble against the good God (24). Sometimes
he has the impression that the drama he lives is
not a personal one, but one of the entire
Romanian people condemned to stand up in this
land of sorrow.
In the refugee camp the war news are
provided by the press that arrives by train from
Iai, but also by the camp newcomers. There are
many occasions when Ioan Cndea meets people
he knew from southern Transylvania, fellow
priests, teachers or soldiers who volunteered in
the Romanian army. Although far from home, in
Moldova, a familiar world is frequently
recomposed, of those coming from the Avrig
region, among which solidarity is easily created,
thus diminishing the drama of exile.
Even though there are mentions about
him almost daily reading the press, we have little
reference as to the information that arouses his
interest. His reaction as a reader is unveiled only
on one occasion, when he confesses after
finishing a book on the life of Alexandru-Ioan
Cuza: I've been crying and weeping perhaps
also for my own alienation and I can honestly
say that I felt such longing and sorrow that I
could not even eat.(25)

conclusions: A country with unique customs

and unique people in their own way!(19) The
disorientation that made its mark on the lives of
human beings, apparently did not spare the
liturgical space either, which was deconstructing
under the pressure of war. When participating
for the first time to the holiday of May 10th at
church, the Archpriest is baffled: When I
arrived at 9, 3\4, the children from school were
coming out of the church with their teachers
holding flags, 2 cantors, 2 officers, 3 soldiers
and 5 refugees, as well as the local priest all
the procession inside the church, a poor feast
(20). In a heavy atmosphere, when the whole
camp is full of books about the end of the world,
the faith in time of war also suffers mutations
which the Archpriest amends harshly in his
pages: so are the dances of the youth during
fasting or, even worse, the refugee priests
accused of posing as prophets.
Ioan Candea`s relationship with God
never consumes tensely, the old priest never
questions the divinity because of his destiny.
After saying a special prayer together with other
priests, which was meant protect them from
drought and God listens to them, sending them
rain, the Archpriest lives a time of divine
contentment which gives him the occasion for a
series of meditations: God is good and patient,
only we, His work, have departed too far from
our maker and our benefactor. Lord, oh Lord,
have mercy on us and remember us and do not
punish us for our sins and forgive us and scold
us with kindness (21). This is the register in
which takes place the dialogue between the
Archpriest and God, Ioan Cndea finding the
power to raise psalms even in isolation: [...] I
praised God for all the things bestowed upon me
and worshipped Him in prayer and

omiteri. E pcat de D[umne]zeu cum se ciungrete

aici serviciul divin.
(19) O ar cu rnduieli unice n felul lor i oameni
asemenea unici n felul lor!
(20)cnd am ajuns la 9, 3\4 ieeau din biseric copii
de coal cu dasclii cu drapelul, 2 cantori, 2 ofieri,
3 soldai i 5 refugiai i preotul local toat suita ce
a fost la biseric, srac srbtoare.
(21) D[umne]zeu e bun i ndelung rbdtoriu, numai
noi, zidirea Lui ne-am deprtat prea tare de ziditoriul
i binefctorul nostru, cci ne-am sftoit, ne-am
abtut, toi netrebnici ne-am fcut. Doamne, Doamne,
ndur-Te i ne miluiete i ne pomenete i nu ne
pierde pre noi pentru pcatele noastre i ne iart i ne
mustr cu ndurare i mil.

(22) [...] am ludat pe D[umne]zeu pentru toate

lucrurile revrsate asupra mea i cu rugciune i
smerenie m-am nchinat.
(23) e destul de trist c noi ceilali doi preoi suntem
n pribegire, tie Dumnezeu ce o fi de acel popor
nenorocos.
(24) contra bunului Dumnezeu nu putem crti.
(25) am tot plns, poate c i din jalea ce o am pentru
nstrinarea mea i spun drept c m-a cuprins aa un
dor i o jale nct nici mnca nu am putut.

247

From June 1st, 1918 the camp begins to

be abandoned by more and more refugees
without waiting for the ratification and the
publication of the peace amnesty. Although
deeply moved by his colleagues who returned to
Transylvania we said goodbye with tears in our
eyes and we all stayed until the train left to
Transylvania via Mreti. It was a pathetic
parting full of sighs, we were coming back from
the train as if we had come from a funeral (26),
Archpriest Cndea does not venture and chooses
to return home only when it is legally safe.
Although he calls himself the prodigal son of
the Gospel he promises to endure with
resignation for the mercy of good God (27).
After all, the writing of this journal
appears as a testimony of a strong sense of
loneliness felt by the priest who is left only with
himself in this unknown place. The form in
which his text has been preserved is relevant for
the continuous interior flow without any concern
for form, the ideas flowing freely, rarely being
divided into sentences separated by a full stop,
this monologue resembling a cavalcade of ideas
and feelings, describing the inner restlessness of
the author. Based on these considerations, we
believe that the authorial intention of Ioan
Cndea does not actually exist when he writes
his thoughts, as he does not seem to operate any
kind of selection of events succeeding
throughout the day. Rich descriptions of the
ways in which they wash their clothes or remove
a tooth, the food that the refugees receive, all
these details accumulating excessively suggest
that the Archpriest records everything without
applying any scale. His obsessive desire to write
unveil the irrepressible need to fill an interval
within his existence perceived as completely
void and pointless.
Along with the living conditions,
boredom is frequently denounced in his notes as
one of the main cause of despair, I feel bored
without any occupation and any work. I slept
with concern and the wind used to keep me
company (28). Exiting order, deviating from an
established pattern, which worked until the

beginning of war, and his being condemned to

useless time makes him describe the refugee
camp as a prison. His suffering is exacerbated by
the impossibility of communicating with the
loved ones from home, all the letters sent to his
family remaining unanswered; the only news he
has come from his brother in Iai.
A frequent terror showed by father
Cndea, in fact a common motif during the
World War I, is the fear of dying and being
buried in a foreign land: I pray to God to have
mercy upon us and lead us to our home not to
die of hunger, as it might appear to happen,
tearfully asking the good Lord to have mercy,
so that I can go back home, not to have my
bones rest here ... (29)
In many pages of his notes, Ioan Cndea
translates his own drama biblically, in terms of a
divine test, like the one of Jove or the exile of
Moses. In this register, the road to Transylvania
is seen as a path to redemption the good Lord
will be gracious, and the way to Transylvania
will be opened to us (30).
However, we should hardly find any
trace of vanity or attempts at any gratuitous
heroic self-image in this war testimony. His
experience can be considered heroic only by the
readers of today, who know the end of the story,
the fact that eventually, the Archpriest safely
reaches his home in Transylvania. While
searching for the unveiled heroic perspective in
Ioan Cndeas notes, we seem to neglect the fact
that in his case, survival also has profound
heroic meanings.
References:
The unpublished notes of
Archpriest Cndea, Ms. 4362,
Special Collections at Central
University Library Lucian
Blaga, Cluj-Napoca
Aris, Duby Aris, Philippe, Georges Duby,
Istoria vieii private [The
1997
History of the Private Life],
vol.
VIII,
Bucureti,
Meridiane, 1997.
Brlea 2004 Brlea, Eugenia, Perspectiva
***

(26) ne-am luat rmas bun cu lacrimi n ochi i am

stat toi pn ce a plecat trenul cu ei ctre Ardeal,
prin Mreti. A fost o desprire jalnic i toi
oftam, rentorcndu-ne la de la tren ca cum am fi
venit de la un mort.
(27) cu resignaiune toate pn ce bunul D[umne]zeu
se va ndura.
(28) te mnnc urtul fr ocupaie i fr niciun
lucru. Am dormit tot cu grij i vntul mi inea de
urt.

(29) rog pre D[umne]zeu ca s se ndure a ne duce la

cminul nostru s nu perim aici de foame, cci
semnele se arat deja de pe acum., rugnd cu lacrimi
n ochi pe bunul Dumnezeu pentru s se ndura i a
m rentoarce la cminul meu, s nu-mi rmn
oasele pe aici...
(30) doar va da bunul Dumnezeu s se ndure i ni
se va deschide calea spre Ardeal.

248

lumii rurale asupra Primului

Rzboi Mondial [The Rural
World Perspective on the First
World War], Cluj-Napoca,
Argonaut, 2004.
Caracostea Caracostea, Dumitru, Aspectul
psihologic al rsboiului [The
1922
Psychological Aspect of War],
Bucureti, Cartea Romneasc,
1922.
Galntai, Jzsef, Hungary in
Galntai
the First World War, Budapest,
1989
Akadmiai Kiad, 1989.
Lamberti, Elena, Fortunati Vita
Lamberti,
(eds.),
Memories
and
Fortunati
Representations of War. The
2009
Case of World War I and
World War II, New York,
2009.
Leu, Albert Leu, Valeriu, Albert Carmen,
Banatul n memorialistica
1995
mrunt, Reia, 1995.
Macleod, Jenny, Purseigle
Macleod,
Pierre, Uncovered Fields:
Purseigle

2004
Simion
2001

Triteanu
1919

Vianu 2001

Ziemann
2007

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Perspectives in First World

War Studies, Boston, 2004.
Simion, Eugen, Ficiunea
jurnalului intim [The Fiction of
the Intimate Diary], Univers
Enciclopedic, 2001.
Triteanu,
Lazr,
coala
noastr 1850-1916. Zona
cultural [Our School 18501916. The Cultural Zone],
Sibiu,
Tipografia
arhidiecezan, 1919.
Vianu, Tudor, Din psihologia
i estetica literaturii subiective
[From the Psychology and
Aesthetics
of
Subjective
Literature]. In Eugen Simion,
Ficiunea jurnalului intim [The
Fiction of the Intimate Diary],
Univers Enciclopedic, 2001.
Ziemann, Benjamin, War
Experiences in Rural Germany
1914-1923, Oxford, 2007.

World War I narratives in Ion Agrbiceanus literary writings

Alexandru-Ilie MUNTEANU
Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu, Romania
E-mail: [email protected]
Motto: ... oh, what distances does war put between people!
(Agrbiceanu 1988, 321)
Abstract: This paper tries to offer a brief descriptive and hopefully different perspective on
World War I, the one constructed in and by Romanian literature, more exactly by the literary writings of
an author who was considered by many of his time, including by the historian Nicolae Iorga, as a great
sculptor of Romanian identity and Romanian feeling. The authors writings, although literary and
fictional, are useful for the cultural historian as historical documents, containing cultural products of their
time, such as mentalities, stereotypes, language, and so on. His writings concerning World War I are
constructed in two directions, both sharing a common feature: the drama. On the one hand, the authors
focus turns to collective drama and on the other hand to individual drama.
Keywords: World War I, Ion Agrbiceanu, community, individual, destabilization, drama
The commune was a large one a
beautiful village of stone houses covered with
tiles near the south-eastern border of
Transylvania, with streets paved with river
stones, with oil lamps on the streets, with nearly
three hundred children attending the local
school. It was a border village, militarized in the
18th century, and it remained as such until the
disbandment of the regiments in the second half
of the following century. At the north end of the
street was the school, a massive square building
with four large classrooms, the principals
house, an official quarter made up of three
rooms and annexes. It was built in the same
period as the military barracks () Better paid
and more regularly too than those teaching in
confessional schools, only the best teachers had
the chance to work here () The head of the
train station, a blue-eyed small, fat man, with
shaved hair, and a blonde moustache was sitting
in his office () The locals said that he was
Hungarian, but he seemed to be German, the
kind living in the province Banat, who have
adopted the Hungarian language since three
decades (). The first sergeant strajameterul
- as they called him - was Svoboda, who was a
Catholic Slovak, and who did not hide that. But
he was now a pure Hungarian. He said that he
ate Hungarian bread and breathed Hungarian air,
and that all the inhabitants of the country would
someday have to become Hungarian as well.
() Weber, the postman, was a hoary-haired
woman, tall, bony, and slender, with a wrinkled

Introduction
There are two main events that can
shake an archaic or even a traditional
community: the arrival of a stranger and the
outbreak of war. The first disrupts the
community through a complex set of different
behavioural habits, beginning with the fact that
he does not know the local rules or customs, and
ending with unacceptable things in the eyes of
the host community, such as drawing the local
girls (Agrbiceanu 1968, 100). But if the
stranger is capable of bringing some disorder to
individuals inside the host community, war
annihilates almost all existing rules and often
dislocates the entire community. By far the most
representative literary work of Ion Agrbiceanu
concerning the war is the novel Vremuri i
oameni (Times and people), written in Sibiu in
1942. Although written during World War II, the
novel is not about this war, but about the
previous, the Great War. Other works that share
this main theme are: Darul lui Mo Viron / The
gift of the old Viron (1919), Pentru pace / For
peace (1922), Dura lex (1921), Prini / Parents
(1922), Singurtate / Loneliness (1922) and
others. All of them written, as one can see, in the
years that followed.

Everyone sensed that big doings are on the

way (1)
(1) Agrbiceanu, 1988, 13

250

And then came Princips revolver (2)

It happened on Sunday, June 28, at
10:30, in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. The big
manoeuvres organized that year in the presence
of the Imperial Heir, Archduke Francis
Ferdinand, had just ended. () It was an official
program, planned to the smallest of details.
When the convoy was passing through a
crowded street, a young man, an apprentice in a
printing house, as it was established after, threw
a bomb towards the car in which the Archduke
and his wife were travelling. His name was
Nedelco Cabrinovici. The bomb fell behind the
target, but it damaged another car, badly injuring
those inside. The Heirs car followed its way to
the town hall, where a reception was due to be
held. The mayor, a certain Ciucici, as white as a
ghost, began to welcome the guests. Wait, Mr.
Mayor, the Archduke interrupted him irritated
I come here and you welcome me with bombs.
That is it! One cannot feel safe in this city! Now
you can proceed! The entire procession ended in
five minutes. The suite insisted there will be no
more of the visiting program. That they would
better head directly to the villa. But the
Archduke would not hear of that. When the car
was passing through a street full of people, from
the pavement a young man drew his revolver
and shot several times. The first bullets hit the
Heir, the next wounded his wife, who was trying
to protect him with her body. Both badly
wounded, they were carried to their villa. They
died quickly. The assassin was Gavriil Princip,
19 years of age, expelled from several schools.
He and Cabrinovici came from Serbia, where
they actually lived. In their pockets was found a
newspaper from Belgrade, the last issue. A
special issue: the Serbs were commemorating
the 1389 battle of Kossovopolje. () When the
Emperor heard the news, he said in sorrow: My
faith does not spare me at all! () And he was
right. Rudolf, the first heir to the throne of
Francis Joseph, was found shot, in mysterious
circumstances, to this day not known. His wife,
the Empress, was assassinated in Switzerland by
an anarchist. And now, the second Heir, Francis
Ferdinand, together with his wife. Too much for
a human heart (Agrbiceanu 1988, 54-56).
This was the event that started the
dramatic shift in the communitys daily life. As
soon as the local authorities were informed
about the assassination, they took an emergency
stance and from the actual declaration of war
onward, things will never be the same in the
village. The gendarmes were mobilized in the

face, and with yellowish cat eyes (). A widow,

she praised herself as being of noble descent,
that is why she had kept her familys name ().
Onodi, a Szekler of average height, with his
mouth always cursing. He was a storekeeper
and a servant, and was always cursing in his
language, shouting at people, and keeping the
children off the lines with whatever methods
(Agrbiceanu 1988, 3, 48-49).
This is how the village in which the
main characters of the novel Times and people
presented itself just before the big news arrived.
A most representative Transylvanian settlement
with at least three cultures co-habiting it. But
unlike most rural settlements in Transylvania,
this village being a little more developed it had
got a more diversified lite, also on the
Romanian part; these were the school principal,
Ion Giurca, who embodied anti-Hungarian
nationalism, a teacher, Mr. Stoica, a doctor, Mr.
Preda, and a priest, Vasile Scurtu, actually the
main character of the novel. Among them, as the
author tells us, were a relatively large number of
literate people who regularly read the
newspapers: All the intellectuals in the
commune had a subscription to the newspaper
Romnul (The Romanian, a.t.). The physician
had, besides this, a subscription to the
newspaper Gazeta Transilvaniei (Transylvanian
Gazette, a.t.). But there were also other weekly
newspapers. The priest, the doctor, and the
school principal had subscriptions to Luceafrul
(The morning star, a.t.), another newspaper
(Agrbiceanu 1988, 15-17, 23, 26, 54, 57-59).
The people living there were fully
abreast of politics in the Empire, aspect that will
bring some of them into jail. Mr. Giurca, the
school principal, argued that Aurel C. Popovicis
federalization project was: a form in which
every nation remained reduced to its own force
and numbers, as components of the state. But
this kind of project, if it were to succeed, will
mean the destruction of the national ideal of
Romanians, Slovaks, Croats and Serbs, who
knows for how long (Agrbiceanu 1988, 57-58).
International relations, however, were taking
somewhat dubious turns. Among others, the
Russian Tsars visit to Romania gave birth to
rumors about The Country (Romania, a.n.)
signing a treaty with the Entente, otherwise,
why would the Tsar visit Romania and what
meant the recent fortification of the border with
Romania ?, were questions on everybodys lips
(Agrbiceanu 1988, 13).

(2) Agrbiceanu 1988, 58.

251

event of an uprising (Agrbiceanu 1988, 49). It

was the first sign of change, that they (the
gendarmes) were brought closer to the locals and
especially to the intellectuals. The border with
Romania was closed, and international train
routes were cancelled. Censorship of the press
was issued and only some news was allowed.
() At the town hall was an announcement
where it was stated that anyone who spread
disinformation would be severely punished
(Agrbiceanu 1988, 63, 68, 84, 104, 121, 183,
215-218). This is how the imperial authorities,
the embodiment of the profane time, made their
way in a quite isolated, timeless rural
multicultural community.

already social differences are disappearing

(Agrbiceanu 1988, 536).
The same idea of social hierarchies been
changed and, in some ways, cancelled, is shown
in the next lines. The state of war made the
imperial authorities introduce a sort of black
lists with all intellectuals in certain
communities. Because of this, the school
principal, Mr. Giurc, will be arrested. On the
other hand, the priest became an unknown
person. From his position as leader of the
community to a nobody, obliged to remain in the
village while other were either arrested, or taken
to the battle front: Cold and fear began to take
over his soul. () And suddenly he felt alone
(Agrbiceanu 1988, 85-88).

The village took a different look

The village took a different look. After
the initial calm came a nervous agitation in most
houses and on the streets. Some were in a hurry
finishing their tasks. Relatives were visiting
those who were about to leave. Wives were
walking chaotically from here to there (...)
(Agrbiceanu 1988, 78).
People began to realize that things will
never be the same and that the social fabric of
the community is falling apart under the weight
of the extraordinary situation. A general fear in
the community was that many young girls will
remain unmarried because many boys and men
will end up dead, fighting in the war. And in
traditional mentality an unmarried woman is not
favoured by God and is bound to be somewhat
excluded from the rest of the community.
The new reality imposed by war
destabilized the community, not just by
dislocations, but also by the lack of a minimal
authority, because of the fact that people did not
know whom the village belonged to
(Agrbiceanu 1988, 307). War came with a new,
unknown order, the order of chaos, described
latter on in the war by Preda, in a letter to the
priest Scurtu: Sometimes it seems that in the
world there are such formidable forces
unleashed, so uncontrollable, that humankind is
nothing more than a snowflake that floats, blown
in every direction. (), even Romania is no
more that a snowflake (Agrbiceanu 1988, 460).
But, as father Scurtu observed, cities
also suffered from the new order and social
hierarchies began to disappear: () the most
delicate ladies were eating happily beans, talking
and laughing with their neighbours. One would
never have believed that ladies would ever eat
that kind of food and with no complaints. Look,
he said to himself, the war has just begun and

a vague yet strong fear began to grip his

heart (3)
Every community is made up of
individuals. Let us focus on the individual that
had to deal with the shock of the new order
imposed by war. Ionic, Lauras future husband,
felt a chill down his spine when he was reading
the Emperors manifest towards the nations of
the Monarchy; in the night between July 30 and
31, the war against Serbia had begun, and on
August 1 the general mobilization has been
announced.
Laura and Ionic had wedding plans, but
the outbreak of the war turned their world upside
down. The author grasps very well the
individual drama, the intense living of Ionic
between the announcement of general
mobilization and his actual departure. Ionic
began to search through his high school
belongings (4); a kind of ritual re-enactment of
his live just before his potential death sentence:
Then, returning to reality, he felt a heavy
desolation around him, and then a vague yet
strong fear began to grip his heart. Where was
he going, he said to himself? What will await
him in the future? And the only thing he could
foresee was desolation, a heavy solitude, in
which he fell like in a deep well. () They will
all remain here: the parents, Laura, the doctor
and his wife, the village, his native home. He, on
the other hand, will leave all of this behind. But
where will he end up? (Agrbiceanu 1988, 62,
66-74)
(3) Agrbiceanu 1988, 71.
(4) In this scene, the author gives an almost
eschatological dimension to priesthood, because he
mentiones the fact that Ionic was supposed to
become a priest. And if he were to become one, he
would not have been obliged to go to war.

252

But the drama of war was not reserved

only for those who actually fought in the
trenches, but also for those left behind; families,
mothers, fathers, grandparents would go crazy
over their loss or thought of losing their child.
A mother from a Transylvanian village:
sold her calf and her two piglets, her hay that
she still had; she threw away her grain reserves,
sending them, five bags in total, to the mill. The
next day she went to the city, she bought some
dishes, some pair of shoes. () She started to
give away everything she had: clothing, dishes;
each object had a precise destination, so after the
funeral everybody could come and take
everything. One might ask why. The author
tells us, because: She wanted to join her
Dumitru, to look after him in the afterlife, as she
did in this life. () She closed her eyes and
dozed off. Strange images appeared, in a chaotic
whirlpool. She woke up again. () She was
getting dizzier and dizzier, although she was
sited. () She thought: Maybe I am dying and I
am heading towards the afterlife ().
(Agrbiceanu 1968, 367-369). She was not
dying, she woke up ravaged by a powerful
hunger (she had not eaten for three days, a.n.),
and started looking for food. She found a bag of
rye and went walking with it to the mill. But on
the way, as if possessed by spirits, she stopped
and said to herself: But do I really want to live
any longer? And every few steps she: stopped
again and again, determined to throw away the
bag and go back home. (Agrbiceanu 1968,
369).
A tormented mother, like many others
all because of war, was an old woman from the
short story For peace. Written in 1922, this short
story briefly recounts the last days of the life of
a sick mother. She had her boy on the war front
(or dead, she did not know a thing about her
child) and was in a consuming inheritance
related quarrel with her relatives. Broken and
full of disbelief, she surrendered to negative
thoughts and ultimately to death: If there would
have been peace in the world, my beloved
Dumitru wouldnt be rotting in the grave
(Agrbiceanu 1968, 370-376).
A schoolteacher, Marin Muran, has
also fought in World War I, in Italy. After the
end of the war, he comes back to his home
village and restarts his life doing the same thing,
teaching at the local school. But not quite as
before the Great War. The villagers were talking
about his odd behaviour, as they saw him
regularly going to the wood. The peasants from
Valea-Rea (The Bad Valley, a.t.) cared much
about their schoolteacher, for five years, before

the outbreak of the war, he taught their children,

and established a choir like no other around, but
now, they felt sorry for him because after the
war he went slightly mad. (Agrbiceanu 1968,
383-386).
Tears were a daily reality in the small
village. On the one hand, there were the people
mourning their teacher, their spiritual leader (5)
and on the other hand the teacher himself, who
was still working in the local school, who was
also crying, but for a different reason. Every
time he held a lesson he would begin to cry.
Rumours were afloat, but the pupils did not tell
anybody about the reason for which their teacher
was crying. This riddle was solved when a group
of local authorities searched his house. They
found many letters, where there were written the
following lines: People shake their heads, when
they see me always following you. But how
could I become bored of your beauties? I can see
that you are different, happy, I can feel your
happiness and your new life! I would hold you
in my arms like I would hold a child, for ages.
Your plains, your forests, your waters, all are
telling me about your boundless joy, my
country! You are not dead soil, nor just wind, or
water; you are a soul that trembles in the
happiness of freedom (Agrbiceanu 1968, 383391). Indeed, the main character was in love
with the national ideal that has finally come to
be.
And for war to be even worse, the
author brings out an image of the stranger, the
Jew who lived in Romanian cities and who
would not properly welcome a Romanian priest,
a war refugee, in this case, Mr. Scurtu, who had
just arrived in the city of Roman. He settled in a
house belonging to: a Jewish family, where the
masters of the house, two fat Jewish women,
wearing dresses, welcomed them in an
aggressive manner, and at the beginning they
would not even allow them in the house
(Agrbiceanu 1988, 431-432). The authors
suggestions concerning Jews were clear, and so
would have been his message towards the
Romanian reader of those days: the Jew is a bad
person, who almost did not welcome at all a
Romanian priest (not just any person!), and in
his own country. In Oiteanus famous book
about Jews in Romanian mentalities and culture
one can find situations following the exact
negative stereotypes described by Agrbiceanu
(Oiteanu 2001).

(5) After the priest, the techer was second in rank in

rural traditional Romanian communities.

253

Always moralising
Finally, the long exile of the priests
family has ended just two days before
Christmas. Romania has won the war, at least
from a territorial point of view. But gains of
Romania had a terrible price, people who had to
go through awful things, departures from the
beloved ones, and the social illness of madness,
that took over millions of people, including Mr.
Giurc who was like a shipwreck, as his wife,
Nastasia, once said (Agrbiceanu 1988, 601,
662, 694, 715, 721). Could Mr. Giurcs
condition be a metaphor for Romania, judging
by the fact that the author is constantly
comparing 19th century and early 20th century
Romania with interwar Romania? It is hard to
say. The novel Times and people, and not only,
represent, however, a foray into the privacy of
the individual, of that of the family, and of
Romanian rural communities, all of them
witnesses of the Great War.
References
Books:
Agrbiceanu
1968
Agrbiceanu
1988
Oiteanu
2001

Agrbiceanu, Ion, Dou

iubiri, Bucureti, Editura
pentru Literatur, 1968.
Agrbiceanu, Ion, Opere
vol. 13, Bucureti, Minerva,
1988.
Oiteanu, Andrei, Imaginea
evreului n cultura romn,
Bucureti, Humanitas, 2001.

254

The Germans, the Whites, the Reds and Other Enemies in M.

Bulgakovs The White Guard
Olga GRDINARU
PhD Student, Babe-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Comparative Literature Department
E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract. The essay explores the representation of the First World War, the Civil War, the
Russian Revolution and the Nationalist Ukrainian movement under Petlyura on Ukrainian soil in
Bulgakovs controversial novel. The enemy is represented under various masks, in all shapes and
colours, being given the complicated historical turning point in the Ukrainian, as well as in the Russian
history. The novel depicts what the author named the beginning of the end times for many
represented social and political categories. The hypostases of the enemy, the different types of hatred,
the stability of some moral values and principles and the religious imaginary are aspects to be analyzed
in this paper. Among the oppositions of the novel we explore intelligentsia/peasantry, tsarist
Russia/revolutionary Russia, Russia/Ukraine, the city/the steppe, as well as several moral oppositions,
such as treason/loyalty, honour/dishonor. Other facts to be briefly presented are the play The Days of
the Turbins (1926) inspired by the novel and the film adaptation of the play (1976) and of the novel
(2012).
Keywords: the White Guard, Petlyura, the Turbins, World War I, Ukraine, Russian
Revolution
where Bulgakovs family had lived
(Chudakova 1988, 436).
The novel was initially written as part
of a trilogy, but the subject of the civil
Russian-Ukrainian war was controversial, so
that only part of the novel was published in
1925 in journal Rossija and entirely only in
France in 1927-1929 and in Russia in 1966.
However, it was criticized by the Soviet critics
as heroizing the class enemies, while the
Western critics blamed the author for his
loyalty toward the Soviet power. Hence, its
controversial character (Hosking 2006, 83,
183-185), especially because narrators
position is sometimes difficult to guess or
ambivalent and contradictory a style, which
was not exactly supported in times of the
blossom of the socialist realism.
The White Guard may be regarded as
a novel of contradictory perspectives on the
historical turmoil and social crisis, a novel of
oppositions, allowing the reader to enter a
complicate socio-political labyrinth with
elaborate, dangerous and sometimes fatal
details. The narrative tone lacks the didactical
character of the socialist realism novels and it
is certainly not a part of what Katherina Clark
calls master plot of the Soviet novels (Clark

Introductory Notes
The present work (1) will attempt to
unveil the complex literary representation of
the political, military and identity turmoil on
the Ukrainian soil during World War I, as it
appears in Bulgakovs novel The White Guard.
Beyond the labels of the involved party in this
anti-German, anti-Bolshevik and civil war
there are people with social, religious and
political ideas, people with different
perspectives on the destiny of the Ukrainian
land and people who hate, love and resist
under difficult unexpected and unstable
circumstances of the great and terrible year of
our Lord 1918. M. A. Bulgakovs novel
depicts and literaturise the events of the
Ukrainian and Russian inhabitants of the
recently proclaimed independent Ukrainian
land, focusing on the destiny of the Turbins in
a city, which is not difficult to guess Kiev.
The members of Bulgakovs family served as
inspiration for the representation of the Turbin
family, as critics were able to detect many
similarities up to the description of the house
(1) This essay is part of the doctoral dissertation
entitled The Representation of World War II in the
Soviet Literature and Cinematography.

255

2000). The reader looking for a clear

ideological answer may be lost in the
complicated pages of the novel, left with no
pedagogical remarks and conclusions. That
position was a dangerous one, opposing
Bulgakov to the main writers of the
revolutionary Russia: Gorky and Fadeyev and
thus to the new Soviet official method of
writing socialist realism a combination of
the style of both mentioned writers (Clark
2000, 27-45). Disregarding peasantry and
proletariat in a novel that concerned the
Russian Revolution even on Ukrainian soil
was not a simple choice for any Soviet writer,
but M. Bulgakov assumed the risk to stay true
to his heart and personal convictions so that
the novel is built on a scandalous opposition
between intelligentsia and peasantry with
some variations of the theme: the city and the
village, civilization and barbarianism.
Bulgakov remained true to his position,
writing about Russian/Soviet intelligentsia all
his life, as he considered it the most important
class within society. He continued to believe
in the special (even sacred) status of the true
literature as the centre of writers existence
(Ibidem, 282).
In his autobiography Bulgakov was
writing in 1924: Ive been writing The White
Guard for a year. I love this novel more than
my other things (Sokolov 2003). Probably the
status of a beloved novel is due to the fact
that even the name of Turbin is his
grandmothers maiden name after his mother
and his relatives and friends served as
prototypes for the characters of the novel. The
authors idea to write a trilogy, starting from
this first novel was considered uncontestable
by other Soviet writers who mentioned the
textual evidence found in the characters
development (Simonov 1973, 5). Due to
political reasons, the trilogy couldnt be
written and the ending of the novel was rewritten many times, leaving those unfinished
touches concerning the fate of some
characters. Bulgakov himself recognized the
fact that he could only write about the Russian
intelligentsia in Soviet times, although
sometimes the writings had a satirical note
(Sokolov 2003), which brought him enough
troubles
with
the
authorities.
That
preoccupation with intelligentsia also brought
along comments about his neo-bourgeois
character and anti-revolutionary works.
Nevertheless, The White Guard wasnt among

the forbidden novels (at least not after 1966),

but it wasnt included in the socialist realism
canon either. Moreover, this novel represents
an important link between the heroism
represented by L. N. Tolstoy and the heroism
of World War II literature; its controversial
character questions the very foundations of the
socialist realism and of the propagandistic type
of heroism depicted in Soviet literature on the
Russian Revolution.
The Old New Enemy
M. Bulgakov depicted tumultuous
times and troubled people at the crossroads of
huge historical importance with echo in the
new millennium. It was said (and Bulgakov
himself wrote about these events in his diary
and essays see Dobrenko 2008, XVI) that the
inhabitants of Kiev and surroundings had
experienced 14-16 coups with different
degrees of violence and bloodshed, ten of
which the writer himself experienced. The
same Ukrainian territory was torn apart by
internal and external enemies, by different
hopes and different plans for the future, by
arrivals and departures of newly installed
authority with different time periods for their
so-called ruling (from days to months).
Choosing a side or not choosing it was almost
equivalent to the same death sentence and in
that dreadful turmoil the right option would
have been not to exist. Either way, you were
facing one of the many enemies and you were,
without exception, one of the enemies, the
other and not the neighbour.
The armies that meet on the disputed
Ukrainian soil are of different origins and
natures Imperial German Army, Poles,
Whites (including parties like anticommunists, monarchist, Russian patriots),
Reds, Ukrainian nationalist Army - but they all
pursue to take over the power and to establish
their authority in the capital of the region. The
October Revolution spread its influence on the
Ukrainian region, while the nationalist
socialist movement and its army conducted by
Semyon Petlyura took over the capital, which
had been the area of other recent fights
between Germans and locals. The peaceful life
of a family from the Russian intelligentsia
crushed under the waves of the newly arrived
enemies to establish their temporary power by
another wave of abuses, murders and pogroms.
The social cataclysm had changed the lives of
the Turbins and their friends, modifying their
256

perspectives on life and challenging their

system of beliefs. As the result of the fact that
the city wasnt under the Bolshevik control
after the Brest treaty, there were also waves of
Russian militaries and intelligentsia running
away from the Bolshevik Russia.
The Russian enemies Germans
seemed to become the Ukrainians allies in a
context of great social, political and military
disaster. Hetman Skoropadsky organized
troops of officers to defend the city from the
nationalist army of Petlyura, but after the
German retreat only these volunteers were able
to protect the city. Among these volunteers we
find the Turbin brothers Alexei and Nikolka
while their home was protected by their
sister Elena and became a meeting place for
former Russian soldiers (the Whites).
Realizing the impossibility to defend the city,
Skoropadsky and the administration left with
the German army (Skoropadsky being dressed
as a wounded German officer), while Colonel
Nai-Turs remained to die as a hero fighting
against Petlyuras army and the unfortunate
ukrainization so eagerly imposed by this
socialist leader. Some leaders of volunteers
army forsook the city, while others died
heroically near their comrades, defending the
city, once again, from another enemy. After
Petlyuras victory, a great parade was
organized, but Semyon Petlyuras efforts
failed to maintain an independent socialist
Ukraine despite his treaty with Poland.
Therefore he had to abandon the city several
months later. The Bolsheviks (the Reds) enter
the city.
The main heroes Alexei and Nikolka
Turbin searched for his troop to fulfill his
duty of defending the city, not knowing about
Skoropadsky, the leader who was abandoning
the city. Nikolka witnessed the fight and death
of the great Colonel Nai-Turs, while Alexei
was wounded and saved by a woman who
became his wife. Left to their fate, the troops
of volunteers were actually neither White in
the strict political sense, nor German, neither
Bolshevik, nor nationalist, defending the city
for no actual reasons from new waves of
dilemmatic enemies. These defenders who
ended up as prisoners were no men of arms
considered class enemies by the Reds, and
dangerous suspects by the nationalist army.
As if the absurd defense of a city from
all kinds of enemies in politically questionable
times werent enough, the narrator introduces

us to another enemy of all the involved parties

the cold and the threat of frostbite. This
impersonal enemy is described as luring the
soldiers into deadly sleep. The volunteers
involved in the co-called heroic defense of the
city were afraid of freezing to death more than
of the actual enemy, regardless of its political
colour or physical strength. The severe cold
seemed to favour the echo of all types of
sounds that mirror the madness of those times
the crowd scenes are artfully represented by
what may be called an auditory chaos. The
hybrid of Russian and Ukrainian and its
colourful sound on the streets is nothing but
the mixture of social and political fears and
expectations. On the other hand, language
became a mask under which characters hid
their sympathies and/or fears, while the
situations of the usage of a certain language
may provide key information on the character
and intentions of a person (2). As the two
Slavic languages dont represent a real
linguistic barrier for the characters of the novel
and each may easily pass as the other, the
narrator exposes the heroes in various
situations so that the otherness would reveal
itself. Its not the language that is really
relevant, but rather what is spoken and how
(attitude, posture, body language). Some of the
dialogues have a satirical and hilarious touch:
This may be the last service in this
cathedral
In what language were they holding
the service, I didnt understand?
In Gods language, dear.
Its been strictly forbidden to use
Russian in church any more.
Whats that? Arent we allowed to
use own Orthodox language any more?
[...] Hey, Cossacks, stop that man!
Hes a spy! A Bolshevik spy!
This isnt Russia any longer, mister.
This is the Ukraine now (Bulgakov 1971,
Chapter 16).
For the Kievans and for the Turbins,
Petlyuras men or the Bolsheviks were the
(2) A thorough explanation on the difficulty of
translating the novel is offered by Marian Schwartz
in the English edition 2008, mentioning the
importance of Bulgakovs inclination toward
creating new onomatopoeia, as well as rendering
the linguistic differences between the characters
speeches Russian, Ukrainian or a mixture of the
two.

257

same the enemy the first ones pursuing a

socialist ukrainization, while the latters
desired to install their Russian socialist variant
on the rebelled Ukrainian territory. Both
Ukrainian and Russian national variants of
socialism are depicted in Bulgakovs novel as
destructive forces with no civilizational
prospects or valuable ideas to submit to. The
difficult circumstances of the First World War
were favourable for the proliferation of chaotic
social movements and dreadful coups. Hetman
Skoropadsky administration was opposed to
both political projects, managing to take
control over the capital under the German
occupation. As for the Whites, they were
almost harmless (although cynical) for the
Kievans, slightly disorganized if compared to
the Reds and composed of various troops in
retreat with different ideas and ideals united by
the same aim to oppose the new Russian
revolutionary rulers. It is no wonder that the
Turbins representatives of Russian
intelligentsia are inclined toward other
representatives of the same class and both
Alexei and young Nikolka consider as their
honourable duty to protect the city from the
Ukrainian (and Russian) socialist plague.
In Turbins discussions with their
friends, the questionable status of Petlyuras
project is highlighted as forced ukrainization
and the expression of elemental peasant fury
occurred, as the peasantry was manipulated by
the frustration of not being yet a nation and
being already (and again) a Russian province.
The representation of the Ukrainians may
seem pejorative, especially coming from
Russian inhabitants of the Ukrainian territory.
On the other hand, the questionable
proclamation of Ukrainian independence,
liberated from Russian tsarist state dissolution
is a subject with many subsidiary aspects
concerning the difficulty to establish the
Ukrainian borders (many Southern and Eastern
cities were entirely Russian) and to establish
unity among Russians, Jews, Ukrainians,
Poles, and Lithuanians living there. The
Ukrainians were merely reduced to rustic
bandura players, peasants easily manipulated
as military cattle and several bourgeois
representatives from the city who had recently
discovered their Ukrainian-ness, starting to
mumble broken Ukrainian words conveniently
before and during Petlyuras territorial
conquest. The Ukrainian language and people
are considered almost laughable concepts by

the majoritarian inhabitants of Kiev, namely

the representatives of Russian bourgeoisie and
intelligentsia, especially in the light of the idea
of the historical Kievan Rus (Kiev was seen as
the cradle of Russian civilization).
Bulgakovs Ukraine began where the
city ended; out of the civilization and literacy
of the city, chaotic, elementary forces
unleashed their awoken so-called national
frustrations. The steppe is depicted as a
culturally barren space, only capable of giving
birth to destruction. Dobrenko mentioned in
the Introduction of the novel that the attempt
to create a Ukrainian state was depicted by
Bulgakov as a bloody operetta (Dobrenko
2008, XXVI). The parade of Petlyura men
entering the city is described as a pitiful
pastiche of a royal parade reminding people
of poverty, deception, despair and the futile
wildness of the steppes (Dobrenko 2008,
XXVI).
The heroes of the novel are constantly
concerned with the subject of honour, loyalty,
its principles as core values in times when
values seemed to be abandoned or reversed.
Lust for power, treason or price for life are
other variations of the same theme, setting the
antagonist couple Hetman Skoropadsky and
Colonel Nai-Turs, Turbins and Talberg and
their choices facing death and defeat.
Ironically, the Russian Turbins are not
preoccupied by the idea of fleeing from the
city, being the ones to remain under various
fleeing waves of people driven by their
constant self-preservation instincts opposed to
those of lust for power. The Turbins are almost
the constant enemies for most of the unstable
self-proclaimed authorities, except for those
considered Whites (in their turn conjuncture
enemies of all the other enemies and main foes
of the Reds). Unaware of the potential danger
of the steppes, the Turbins are preoccupied
with their mothers death and mourning,
followed by fast-paced unfortunate events for
the entire city. The flight from the brutal
Revolution is described in two waves: the
flight from the Ukrainian variant of socialist
revolution conducted by Petlyura in his
attempt to revive and to unite a nation and the
flight from the Russian Revolution
accomplished by Bolsheviks (Reds) and their
tyrannical effects.
During Petlyuras months of ruling the
so-called independent Ukrainian state, another
enemy appeared the Jews who were killed
258

in ferocious pogroms by primitive savagery of

the men of the steppes. The last of Petlyuras
Cossacks withdrew and left a Jews corpse
behind them:
And the corpse was the only evidence
that Petlyura was not a myth but had really
existed. But why had he existed? Nobody can
say. Will anybody redeem the blood that he
shed? No. No one. The snow would just melt,
the green Ukrainian grass would grow again
and weave its carpet over the earth. The
gorgeous sunrises would come again. The air
would shimmer with heat above the fields and
no more traces of blood would remain. Blood
is cheap on those red fields and no one would
redeem it. No one (Bulgakov 1971, chapter
20).
The parade of Semyon Petlyuras
entrance into the city is another relevant
fragment, unveiling the depths of the human
irrational hatred. During that parade two
officers in the crowd are identified as White
officers and shot, an orator is identified as a
Bolshevik and chased by the crowd: Kill the
Bolshevik! Hes a traitor! (Bulgakov 1971,
chapter 16) Both Whites and Reds are
traitors and that status is enough to grant the
right of taking their lives but whose traitors
and what were the reasons for that label
remains untold. The simple fact of being
different, of not being one of them is enough
to being killed as terrible enemies.
Hatred and fear are the defining
feelings of the novel: hatred for the present
enemies and for those that were to come, fear
of all types of enemies. Hatred had various
faces: the nationalist (Ukrainian) manifested
against anyone not being Ukrainian; the
political/ideological (of the Bolsheviks); the
national (of the German occupiers). In most
cases hatred is feeling accumulated over years,
waiting for a face to unleash the destructive
fury. The hatred of the Bolsheviks was similar
to that of Petlyuras men both of them were
representatives of the other category,
imposing a new state and a new social order
along with chaos, tyranny, endless murders
and lack of civilization. Even among the
Russian officers hatred is different the type
that would drive a man to start a fight or the
one that would make you think about rest and
simple human life (the latter is the type of
attitude we find in Alexei Turbins case). As
for the peasants hatred, it is directed to their
masters of centuries and against the German

occupiers both terrible and deep feelings.

Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky is the embodiment
of both these hateful elements, being part of
bourgeoisie and a German ally; even his name
suggests his rapid fall (the one who falls
quickly).
The Hetmans treacherous flight from
Petlyuras advancement is represented as the
most dishonourable thing and the most hated
event from all the series of Kievan troubled
events. Headquarters staff is transformed from
comrade to enemy after the treason at the cost
of so many abandoned people facing imminent
death. Skoropadsky and his officers, Talberg
among them, were preoccupied with
successful flight from the city they pretended
to protect. Thus, there are so many hateful and
blaming expressions and sentences concerning
the headquarters staff throughout the novel:
headquarters scoundrels; the swine at
headquarters;
headquarters
no-goods;
headquarters betrayed us; those wretches at
headquarters; the criminal generals and
headquarters scoundrels deserved death. From
the vast typology of enemies, the ones that
proved to be the most dangerous ones were
wearing the masks of comrades and protectors,
ending up in sending honourable and trustful
people with values and principles to death.
The day of the military confrontation
between the inhabitants of the city and
Petlyuras army should have been the main
victorious test before the confrontation with
the much more organized Red Army. In turn,
it was the day of a disaster and the beginning
of the end for many people, as well as social
and cultural realities. The description of that
catastrophic event may be considered the
centre of the novel the definite fall of the
tsarist Russia and its values.
The religious imagery is used to
render the hatred for enemies and former
friends who became enemies during the
complicated course of events. In a dialogue
between Alexei Turbin and patient Rusakov,
the religious language dresses events and
people, offering a surprising approach:
Rusakovs disease (syphilis) is Gods will, a
punishment for his evil ways; one of his
former evil companions, Shpolansky is the
precursor of Antichrist fleeing to the
kingdom of the Antichrist (Moscow); the
Red Army is represented as the legions of
evil, led by the countenance of Satan himself
(Trotsky).
259

pugachevschina (3), while Turbins landlord

Vasilisa warned about the breakdown and
dissolution that nest in human souls. From
this perspective, the moral conflicts lie at the
ideational foundations of this novel, not the
fast-paced events of political and social nature
or the perpetual change of power. Reducing
the number of political characters, we may
dare to propose a reading of the spiritual
principles opposed to its lack, absence,
abandonment, rejection or indifference. Thus
the only enemy is the lack of core values or, in
Bulgakovs language, the steppe. The
historical events are only the canvas on which
characters blossom, unveiling their true nature
and identity; turmoil reveals the true face of
the person when theres no chance to stand
aside, indifferent or not involved.
The novel has a cyclic structure the
image of the night sky borders the barbaric
events of the City: the Hetmans treason and
Petlyuras entrance in the beginning on one
hand, Petlyuras retreat and the Bolsheviks
arrival at the end on the other hand. The stars
continuing to glow in the sky as silent
witnesses of the crude historical events on
Ukrainian land is the authors way of focusing
the attention on spiritual matters and eternal
values.

The same confusing religious and

socialist images are combined during the mass
and procession organized for Petlyuras
entrance into the capital. The comments of the
people are suggestively rendered: But
Petlyuras supposed to be a socialist, isnt he?
So why are all the priests praying for him?
Give the fathers twenty-five roubles, and
theyll say a mass for the devil himself
(Bulgakov 1971, Chapter 16).
The negative characters that turned out
to be enemies/traitors (Shervinsky, Talberg)
are endowed with malefic and infernal traits.
For example, Talberg resembles a rat with
yellow sparkles in his eyes, big white teeth
and black short moustache; in the play The
Days of the Turbins he is even directly
compared to a rat. Trotsky is represented as
Satan, the head of the evil army of Bolsheviks,
while Shpolansky is compared to Lermontovs
demon.
The main values of the Whites duty
and honour are opposed to what other
characters of various social-political colours
display treason, cowardice, bestiality and
unconcern for culture. All opposing contextual
enemies of the Whites are unaware of their
resemblance to elementary forces and certainly
of a severe moral crisis with no spiritual
guiding compass in life. On the other hand, the
organization of these contextual military
forces is the key to their political and
administrative stability: Skoropadsky fled
incapable of moral dedication to a position he
procured with a moral compromise with the
German occupants; the Whites lack the sense
of unity; Petlyuras men are a dangerous and
dreadful crowd driven by the desire of revenge
and united by a national chimera, while the
Reds are supported by the masses (or people,
as Alexei Turbin points out in the play Dni
Turbinykh) and excel in their military
organization.
Opposed
to
the
civilization
represented by the city and the Whites (as
Russian intelligentsia), the people appears as a
huge destructive force conducted by the wrong
leader(s) black sea, black river. Alexei
Turbin perceives the truth that the national
revolution is not a fight for high ideals for the
peoples happiness, but a meaningless
bloodshed, ideas shared by other (White)
characters of the novel: Karas mentioned that
Revolution
has
transformed
into

The Play The Days of the Turbins and Film

Adaptations
Due to the continuous battleship with
the censors, Bulgakov had to write several
versions of a play, inspired by the novel; only
the final third version was accepted to be
produced at the theatre. The play had a huge
success, being compared to Chekhovs
Seagull; it was staged 987 times from 1926 to
1941 (Rudnitsky 1962 in Bulgakov, 467).
Even Stalin saw the play about twenty times,
as it seemed to be his favourite. The Days of
the Turbins became the masterpiece of the
Soviet dramaturgy, while the novel, almost
unknown to the public until 1966, remained in
the shadow of the play, considered either a
prologue, or a necessary test for the writers
pen (Rudnitsky 1974, 230). The unfinished
then novel was regarded differently by various
(3) One of the mottos of the novel is a quotation
from Pushkins historical novel The Captains
Daughter, which depicts the events of Pugachevs
Rebellion (also known as the Cossack Rebellion
in 1773-1775).

260

Soviet critics: some despised its controversial

and polemic character, sensing its nonsocialist realism character, while others
considered it a great debut comparable with
the debut of Dostoevsky or Tolstoy
(Ermolinsky 1990, 25). Nevertheless, the play
had Stalins aura of favour, which was both a
dreadful and a lucky thing in those times. One
may wonder about the relationship between
the Ukrainian Holodomor (4) (the Great
Famine or the Terror Famine of 1932-1933)
and the fact that the play The Days of the
Turbins (an apologia of the unfinished,
unpublished and rejected then novel) was
Stalins favourite.
While the novel doesnt reveal the
authors political position or predilection,
offering us only glimpses of autobiographical
inspiration, the play had to state (under
censors pressure) at least Alexei Turbins
reflections on the Bolsheviks army of
peasants. The power of the people is
considered the definitive aspect in winning or
losing the battle and the people wasnt on
Turbins side. That recognized power of the
Bolsheviks residing in the people on their side
represented the significant detail of the play
that was partly responsible for its huge success
in Soviet times.
Several negative heroes of the novel
became better in the play Myshlaevsky and
Shervinsky are constructed with deeper
psychological profiles and lack the evil traits
from the first edition of the novel. The play
explores other aspects of the vivid language of
those times, being characterized by a certain
sense of Russian-Ukrainian rhythm of the
speech as a mirror of the hectic social and
political events.
The film Beg (Flight) (1970) was
inspired by novel The White Guard and other
two Bulgakovs writings Flight (5) and Black
Sea directed by Alexandra Alova and
Vladimir Naumov. The film Dni Turbinykh
(The Days of the Turbins) appeared in 1976 as
the film-adaptation of the play, which is quite
different from the novel, although inspired
from it. Directed by Vladimir Basov, the film
didnt follow the success of the play, as it was

produced in post-Stalinist times and in a

different cultural climate.
The Russian TV-series Belaya
Gvardia appeared in 2012 and was directed by
Sergei Snezhkin, but was not well received by
critics or spectators, being broadly considered
a rakish interpretation of the original text and a
sort of postmodern comedy (see Bondarenko
2012; Zaitsev 2012 in the online editions of
the Russian newspapers).
Conclusion
Although the author mentioned the
continuation of Tolstoys novel War and
Peace, his writings are different in narrators
tone, style and construction. A reader
expecting a resembling Tolstoys narrative
voice in Bulgakovs novel would be certainly
disappointed, as narrators voice seems
sometimes to be lost in some dialogues that
take control over the of the novel and
sometimes is cryptic regarding his position on
the turbulent events. However, the balance
between the war and peace is achieved,
inspired by Tolstoys great novel the life of
warriors and of members of a family of
Russian intelligentsia. The focus of the novel
is the representation of the home, life values
and principles during war times, offering
nostalgic glimpses on a social class once in
blossom.
The distinct voice and style of
Bulgakovs prose and theatre had influenced,
along with Andrei Platonov, Vladimir
Nabokov, the postwar Soviet literature,
generating new titles for the socialist realism,
such as: renewed socialist realism, socialist
realism as an opened artistic system,
socialism with a human face (Abrudan 2003,
119-123). Bulgakovs destiny and difficult
relationship with authorities and censorship
drew him to Molires personality under
similar circumstances during the state of the
Sun King of the 17th century France (Hosking
1980, 7). His play Molire was prohibited in
1936 and Molires biography written for the
series Lives of Remarkable People was
refused in 1933 due to the analogy with
Stalinist times (Brandenberger, Platt (eds.)
2006, 144-145). The refusal of adhering to the
socialist realism method and the consistent
independent literary thinking with both
Orthodox and occult imaginary (Glatzer
Rosenthal (ed.) 1997, 25) came with a price
not only for Bulgakov, but also for Pasternak,

(4) See more on the matter of Holodomor as

genocide in Bilinsky 1999, 147-156; Ellman 2007.
(5) The critics discussed the historical inspiration of
the story Flight and the similarities between it
and/or the mentioned novel/play (*** 1991, 104).

261

Akhmatova, Zamyatin, Mandelstam, Olesha,

Babel and others. However, the infamous
success of the play Dni Turbinykh has
sweetened Bulgakovs life although with a
bitter taste of Western accusal of fraternizing
with the Soviet power. Still, the authors
skepticism regarding the transformation of the
human nature and the grand project Homo
Sovieticus is to be traced in his entire works,
starting with The Heart of a Dog and The
Fatal Eggs and ending with his masterpiece
Master and Margarita (Livers 2009, 219-223).
Offering our conclusive remarks, we
may explore another aspect of the negative
critical reception of the novel by resuming it to
the incapacity of seeing beyond the political
opposed colours White/Red. In the broad
sense the White movement was made of antiBolsheviks: socialists, democrats, liberals,
conservatives and even reactionaries, but in
the strict sense they were the defenders of the
initial basic values of monarchy and
nationalism. In M. A. Bulgakovs novel, white
is part of a specific symbolism, beyond the
broad or the narrow social and political
preference. In this sense, the spiritual and
religious imagery, language and values are
relevant,
suspending
the
contextual
emergencies of politically correct details (see
the quoted scene from the mass for Semyon
Petlyuras entrance in the City). Moreover, the
depicted representatives of the so-called
White Guard are beyond their membership to
a narrow group and opposed to the cynical
White officers who fled from the city,
abandoning their troops. The white hands of
the priest talking with Alexei in Chapter 2,
Elenas blessed hands in taking care of Alexei,
Julias providential hands saving Alexeis life
are common elements that offer so many hints
on the symbolical value of the title. The
Whites as the Turbins, in the way they are
depicted in the novel, are not the Reds
enemies or if they are, then merely on matters
of principles and spiritual values. The Whites
are the protectors of a neglected and suddenly
not important social class Russian
intelligentsia and its core values like honour
and duty. The fact that protecting themselves
and the state as they knew it (Imperial/tsarist
Russia) they set themselves in opposition to
Ukrainian nationalists and Bolsheviks is a
matter of social and historical conjuncture.
Another relevant fact is that defending
themselves or the City they are incapable of

crude unjust behaviour their hands are able

to kill only in defense, not as a retaliation or as
a sign of anarchist power.
The Turbins may have feared each and
every potential enemy in those troubled times,
but they failed to see the main enemy Russia
a state with ambivalent traits and
contradictory mentality and values based on
European striving and Eastern tyranny.
Russias geographical position between
Europe and Asia may have been responsible
for this mixture (Degtiarjov 2003, 97-105),
which proved to be fatal for so many people
and territories in its vicinity. Such an identity
crisis imposing on the Ukrainian territory with
so many other identity issues has had lethal
effects on the Ukrainian people regardless of
their ethnicity. One may wonder if all these
troubled events represented in the novel of
auto-biographical nature would have exploded
without the background of the First World
War. Was it a necessary stage in the course of
events or a secondary event for the Russian
world propitious for the revolutionary path?
However, the voices of the enemies within
(class, ethnic or political enemies) and of the
external ones unite in an original novel like in
a complicated dissonant modern opera.
References
a. Books:
Abrudan 2003

Abrudan, Elena, Structuri

mitice
in
proza
contemporana [Mythical
Structure in Contemporary
Literature], Cluj-Napoca,
Casa Crii de tiin,
2003.
David,
Brandenberger Brandenberger,
Platt, Kevin F. M. (eds.),
Platt 2006
Epic Revisionism, The
University of Wisconsin
Press, 2006.
Bulgakov,
Mikhail, Belaia
Bulgakov 1989
Gvardiia,
Moskva,
Pravda, 1989.
Bulgakov 2008 Bulgakov, Mikhail, White
Guard,
translated
by
Marian
Schwartz,
introduction by Evgeny
Dobrenko,
Vintage
Classics, 2008.
Chudakova,
Marietta,
Chudakova
Zhizneopisanie Mikhaila
1988

262

Clark 2000

Ermolinsky
1990

GlatzerRosenthal 1997

Hosking 1980

Hosking 2006

Livers 2009

Rudnitsky
1974

Sokolov 2003

Sokolov 2003

*** 1991

Bulgakova
[Mikhail
Bulgakovs
Biography],
Moskva, Kniga, 1988.
Clark,
Katerina,
The
Soviet Novel: History as
Ritual. 3rd Edition, Indiana
University
Press,
Bloomington
and
Indianopolis, 2000.
Ermolinsky, Sergei, Iz
zapisok
raznykh
let:
Mikhail
Bulgakov,
Moskva, 1990.
Glatzer-Rosenthal,
Bernice (ed.), The Occult
in Russian and Soviet
Culture,
Ithaca
and
London,
Cornell
University Press, 1997.
Hosking,
Geoffrey,
Beyond Socialist Realism.
Soviet Fiction Since Ivan
Denisovich, New York,
Holmes&Meier Publishers
Inc., 1980.
Hosking, Geoffrey, Rulers
and Victims. The Russians
in the Soviet Union,
London, The Belknap
Press
of
Harvard
University Press, 2006.
Livers,
Keith
A.,
Constructing the Stalinist
Body.
Fictional
Representations
of
Corporeality
in
the
Stalinist 1930s, Lexington
Books, 2009.
Rudnitsky,
Konstantin,
Spektakli
raznykh
let
[Plays
from
Various
Years], Moskva, 1974.
Sokolov, B. V., Bulgakov.
Entsiklopedija [Bulgakov.
Encyclopedia], Algoritm,
2003.
Sokolov, B. V., Bulgakov.
Entsiklopedija [Bulgakov.
Encyclopedia], Algoritm,
2003.
Babicheva Iu. V., Kiselev,
N. N. (eds.), Tvorchestvo
Mikhaila
Bulgakova
[Mikhail
Bulgakovs
Work], Tomsk, Iz-stvo

Tomskogo
1991.

Universiteta,

b. Chapters in books:
Dobrenko,
Evgeny,
Dobrenko
Introduction.
In:
2008
Bulgakov, White Guard,
Vintage Classics, 2008.
Rudnitsky,
Konstantin,
Rudnitsky
Afterword.
In:
Bulgakov,
1962
P`esy [Plays], Moskva,
1962.
Simonov, Konstantin, O
Simonov
trjokh
romanakh
1973
Bulgakova
[On
Bulgakovs Three Novels].
In: Bulgakov, Romany
[Novels], Moskva, 1973.
c. Papers in periodical journals:
Bilinsky, Yaroslav, Was
Bilinsky 1999
the Ukrainian Famine of
1932-1933 Genocide?. In:
Journal
of
Genocide
Research 1 (2), p. 147-156.
Degtjariov, M. I., Osobyj
Degtjariov
Russkij Put` Glazami
2003
Zapadnikov: de Maistre i
Chaadaev [The Special
Russian
Path
of
Westerners: de Maistre and
Chaadayev]. In: Voprosy
Filofofii 8/2003, p. 97-105.
Ellman, Michael, Stalin
Ellman 2007
and the Soviet Famine of
1932-1933 Revisited. In:
Europe-Asia Studies 59
(4), p. 663-693.
d. Internet resources:
Bondarenko,
Vladimir,
Bondarenko
Bulgakov
i
pustota
2012
[Bulgakov
and
Emptiness]. In: Zavtra no.
11(955)/2012
on
http://www.zavtra.ru/conte
nt/view/bulgakov-ipustota/
accessed
on
16.06.2014.
Bulgakov 1971 Bulgakov, Mikhail, The
White Guard, Translation
by Michael Glenny, with
an Epilogue by Viktor
Nekrasov,
McGraw-Hill
Book Company, Great
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Zaitsev 2012

Britain,
1971
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http://www.ereading.ws/book.php?book
=131228 accessed on
15.06.2014.
Zaitsev, Valerij, Belaia
Gvardiia
Sergeja
Snezhkina i Aleksandra
Rodnianskogo: v poiskakh
utrachennogo raja [The
White Guard of Sergei
Snezhkin and Aleksandr
Rodniansky: Searching for
a Lost Paradise]. In:
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http://www.telekritika.ua/t
elekino/2012-03-14/70344
accessed on 16.06.2014.

264

The Great War Seen through the Eyes of Romanian Peasants

Daniel GICU
University of Bucharest
[email protected]

Abstract. This article is trying to analyze how the First World War was understood and
remembered by the Romanian peasants who participated in it. The article is questioning how widespread
the emotional outburst from the beginning of the war really was among the Romanian peasants, when
young men rushed to volunteer. An overview is provided then of the trench landscape from the
perspective of ordinary soldiers. The deep religiosity of the peasants affected the way they understood the
causes of the war, and the way they explained their defeats or victories. In the end, the efficiency of the
nationalistic propaganda among Romanian peasants is examined.
Keywords: First World War, trench warfare, total war, peasant writings, popular culture
The First World War came as a dreadful
surprise to those who experienced it, due to its
magnitude, unprecedented violence, and
shattering impact on Western civilization. This
article explores the continuous series of brutal
surprises and shocks that the first example of a
total war brought, a conflict not limited to
armies, but pitting entire societies against each
other in mortal struggle. We consider not the
political elites and generals but ordinary soldiers
and civilians. Among the estimated 70 million
men mobilized, of whom approximately 9
million died, there were also Romanian
peasants. Integrating cultural history, this article
is trying to analyze the way they experienced the
war, their fears, hopes and motives for fighting.
Historians who are studying the way
that Romanian peasants experienced the First
World War have several sources at their
disposal. Folk anecdotes and jokes are one of
them. Other sources are represented by the
collections of folks songs from the war,
published during the years of war or afterwards.
Published in Romania after the Great
Unification in 1918, they contained songs from
peasants from both Austria-Hungary and the Old
Kingdom. For historians, a problem arises when
they are trying to use these collections, because
of the literary interventions of the collectors and
publishers. A unique view of the peasants'
Weltanschauung is offered by the peasant
manuscripts, such as those found in the archive
of the Institute of Ethnography and Folklore
Constantin Briloiu, which were, in part,
published by Laura Jiga Iliescu (Jiga Iliescu et

al. 2005), or those published by different

researchers like Const. Briloiu and Claude
Karnoouh (Karnoouh 2014). These are the
sources on which our analysis in based. We will
compare the manuscripts with the texts
published in the collections, trying to find out
the literary interventions and to present the
peasants' experience of the war and not the one
imposed by the intellectuals.
In her catalog of Romanian folk
anecdotes and jokes, the folklorist Sabina
Cornelia Stroescu classifies 134 types
concerning the army (Stroescu 1969). 15 of
them comment on events that took place during
the Great War. Most of them have a Gypsy or a
Jew as a hero and mock his bravery, simplemindedness and foolishness. A Gypsy boasts
about cutting off a German officer's legs with
one sword stroke. Another tells how he twice
slapped in the face a German who was hiding
into the bushes and took his military cap; asked
why he did not killed him, the Gypsy answered
that the German was already dead (1). In another
anecdote, collected from Moldavia, Iig was one
of the soldiers who were guarding the frontier
during the First World War. When the battle
began, scared by the first bullets, Iig ran off and
took cover in a forest. Exhausted, hungry and
thirsty, he stops at a spring to fill his canteen. In
the water, he saw the reflection of some
Hungarian soldiers with their hands up: taking
his canteen for a French hand grenade, they
( 1)
Type 5896 iganul viteaz, collected from
Wallachia.

265

were surrendering to avoid a certain death.

When he understood what was happening, he
took his prisoners to the headquarters, where he
was promoted a sergeant and decorated for his
bravery (2). The Romanian soldiers who,
although lacked courage, boast about their
bravery, and they were also mocked in folk
anecdotes and jokes. In one of them, a platoon
leader reports to the captain that there were no
casualties in his squad. The captain was
surprised, since every other team had only 3 or 4
soldiers left. The platoon leader explained that
his squad hid in a hole and thus no one was
killed and no cartridge was used.
In other jokes and anecdotes, the Gypsy
sentinel was having a hard time remembering
the password (3), or, trying to execute the orders,
doing the things upside down (4). In a more
gruesome joke, a shell explodes in the trenches,
throwing the head of a corporal near the feet of a
Gypsy sentinel. He said to one of his
companions: How will the corporal curse
tomorrow morning, when he will discover that
his head is not in its usual place. (5) Another
type, of which 26 variants were collected from
Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania, speaks
about the hardships of life on the front: a Gypsy
soldier asked a corporal to write for him a letter
to his parents containing only the word alas,
three times; to the corporal astonishment, the
Gypsy said he didn't need to write more words,
because his parents would understand (6).
But the historian will have problems
using these folk jokes and anecdotes as a source
for finding the impressions of the Romanian
peasants who fought in the Great War. Almost
every type has variants collected long before
1914. Even those variants, which speak
specifically about experiences from the First
World War, are told according to a structure
specific to folk jokes that mock stupidity,
simplicity or foolishness. So, we turn our
attention to another category of sources: war
folk songs and letters that the peasants sent
home from the front.

In the Preface to a collection of folk

songs from the war, published in 1915, Dimitrie
Cioloca,
a
Romanian
professor
from
Caransebe, affirmed that the war gave the
Romanian peasant, a natural born poet, a new
impulse to express his soul. For those who are
fighting on the battlefield or for those who
remained home, poetry is the best way to
express their feelings (Cioloca 1915, 3). Let us
examine then what were the feelings regarding
the war that the peasants express in their songs.
In August 1914, a hysterical celebration
of the outbreak of the war took place in major
European cities. Crowds paraded in the streets
and squares with songs and flags, while young
men rushed to volunteer. Those vast cheering
crowds are described by an infantry soldier, a
peasant from a village in Banat: every villager
left his household and went to Timioara, where
they were given military uniforms and
equipment in the blink of an eye; then they went
to the railway station, accompanied by the sound
of music and that of cheering crowds of women,
who wished them good luck (7) (Cioloca 1915,
70-71). In a versified retelling of his
participation in the Great War, Paul Alexa, a
Romanian peasant from Maramure, who fought
in the Austro-Hungarian army, mentioned that in
Eger the Hungarian women gave them flowers
as they went to war (8). In other villages, the
conscription was announced by the village

( 7)
Porunca mpratului,/ La chinezul satului,/
Ne cheam cu grab mare,/ S mergem la mbrcare./
Tot satu-'i ls ccioara/ i plec la Timioara./
ugu 'ntreg din vaite-erza (zweite Ersatz-Comp. =
compania II. de completai),/ Ain-vai (eins-zwei =
unu-doi) furm mbrcai./ Goarna sun, toba bate,/
Noi mergem cale departe,/ Iar muzica ne zicea,/
Lumea mare ne privea,/ Fete mndre lcrimau/ i
noroc mult ne doreau./ Laintu (Leutnant =
sublocotenent) nostru, domn' Loichi,/ Mndru ca o
coconi,/ Fecior drept ca un stejar,/ Comanda ca-un
ghinrar., De la Dukla, told by Efta Bobo, from
Jebel, in Cioloca, 1915, 70-73, v. 5-22.
Mi Muscane ine-'i calu..., v. 1-6
(Cioloca 1915, 11)
( 8)
Muierile ce fecer?/ Cu flori pe toi nenstruar/ Cu flori mndre de jelane/ Ne-nstruar pe
ctane./ Ne-ncrcau cu flori frumoase/ C mergem
din ara noastr/ La piept cu flori de coliea/ C
mergem n Galiia/ S batem pe Rusia. (Karnoouh
2014, 44, 13a, v. 7-15)

( 2)
Type 5924 Vitejia lui Iig, collected from
Moldavia.
( 3)
Type 5904 iganul de santinel, collected
from Wallachia.
Type 5905, collected from Wallachia; type
( 4)
5906 Pe cmpul de lupt, collected from
Transylvania; type 5907 iganul sentinel, collected
from Wallachia; type 5916 Din rzboi (the hero is a
Jew), collected from Moldavia.
Type 5932 Grija iganului, collected from
( 5)
Transylvania.
( 6)
Type 5936 Vai! Vai! Vai!

266

herald (9), in the sound of drums (10) and

trumpets (11), bells and alpenhorns (12).
Yet there were also quiet leave-takings
and individuals foreboding. In most rural areas
there were worried reactions to the outbreak of
the war. The compulsory enrollment for military
service made most of the Romanian peasants (no
matter whether they were fighting for AustriaHungary or for Romania) to have a strong inner
feeling of a future misfortune, evil, or even
death (13). They were not leaving for the front in
the sound of cheering crowds, but in that of the
cries and laments of their wives and children,
neighbours and all the girls in the village (14). A
shepherd from Banat noted that, when he heard
about the order to go to war, wept for the first
time in his life (15). Many other peasants shed
tears on their way to the front, thinking about the
families they left home, whom they would
probably never see again (16). Punish him, Oh
Lord,/ He who wrote with a pen on the paper,/
My name on the enrollment list,/ Because he
wrote it with black ink,/ When I enjoyed life
most (17), are verses of a folk song well known
to Romanian soldiers who fought in the First
World War. After two years of fighting, a

Romanian peasant from Bucovina was

complaining that now they are enlisting even
teenagers of 17 years old, and then, men of 43
(18).
World War I is considered to be the first
example of Total War, a term coined during
the war itself to sum up the all-encompassing
nature of this modern industrial conflict. It
demanded total mobilization of mass armies,
economies, societies and hearts and minds of
people in the countries at war. In this sense, it
was a people's war, not one determined by
government cabinets and elites. And the
Romanian peasants who fought in it understood
that war as being very different from those
before it. A Moldavian peasant from Neam
county remembered that his father told him his
experiences from the war of 1878-78, but
thought that there has never before been a war
like that, a real World War (19). Even the term
world war was unique. Although earlier wars
had had global dimensions, the term world war
was used to signify the extraordinary reach of
this unprecedented conflict. Paul Alexa, from
Maramure, compared that war to those fought
in the ancient times by Alexander the Great (20),
whose history was widely known by the
peasants from popular chapbooks.
A tremendously important and dynamic
element of the industrial Great War was the role
of technology and its expanding destructive
potential. The character of World War I was
symbolized by the mass-produced machine gun,
an instrument of mass death.
Trench lines represented a crucial
feature of this war. Soldiers in the front lines
were exposed to the weather, as the trenches
were often wet and sometimes flooded. Mud
made it difficult to move across the landscape.
Even worse was the cold, especially on the

( 9)
Versul de la mobilizare, v. 19 (Briloiu
1944, 71).
Din eitin, v. 3-7 (Cioloca, 1915, 68).
(10)
ntr'o Smbt noaptea (Dobrot,1917, 8-9).
(11)
Mobilizarea 1916 (Cerbulescu,1924, 7).
(12)
Alt vers, v. 563-570 (Briloiu, 1944, 75-76).
(13)
La Halici (Galiia), v. 1-12 (Cioloca,1915,
32).
Foaie verde salb moale/ Plng nevestele
(14)
cu jale/ Copilaii mititei/ Strig pe prini i ei/ Cci
i las singurei/ () Foaie verde de-un macat/ Plng
amar fetele 'n sat/ C soarta le-a rnduit/ S le ia pe-al
lor iubit/ Plng ntr-una i ofteaz/ Ochiorii
lcrimeaz/ C de-acum cine tie/ De-o fi scris ca s
mai vie, Mobilizarea 1916 (Cerbulescu 1924, 7-8).
(15)
ns ntr-o zi de var,/ i pe mine m
chemar,/ M chemar de la oi/ i m duser 'n
rzboiu.../ Ct jale am simit,/ Cnd pe munte-am
cobort,/ Eu care 'n viaa toat/ Nu am plns mai nici
odat!..., Dorul ciobanului dus n rzboiu, v. 23-30
(Cioloca,1916, 53).
(16)
Trmbia cnd a sunat, collected on August
8, 1917 from corporal Lunc Vasile, a peasant from
the village Bodeti-Precista, Neam county.
(Cerbulescu 1924, 11-12)
De pe coastele Muntenegrului, v. 30-51,
collected from Ioan Daia, from Ohaba-Mutnic,
Cara-Severin county (Cioloca 1915, 15).
Bate-l doamne cu mnie/ P-l ce-o pus
(17)
pana-n hrtie/ i m-au scris la ctunie/ C-au scris cu
cerneal neagr/ Cnd mi-a fost lumea mai drag.
(Karnoouh 2014, 44, 7b, v. 1-5).

(18)
Lui Luu Liochi, v. 39-40, 56-59 (Cioloca
1916, 14-15).
(19)
Frunzu de la pru/ Mult mi spunea tatl
meu/ C'n rsboi e foarte greu/ mi spunea dar nu
credeam/ n sam nu le bgam:/ Din eaptezeci i
eapte-mi spunea/ C'a fost n Bulgaria/ O iarn
'ntreag' a trecut/ Multe rele au vzut./ Foae verde de
secar/ Ru a fost i-atunci n ar/ Dar ca-acuma
niciodat/ S se bat lumea toat., Trmbia cnd a
sunat, (Cerbulescu 1924, 11-12).
(20)
O vai ce btaie crud/ Cum n-au fost de
vreme mult/ De la Alexandru cel Mare/ N-au mai
fost aa btaie/ Alexandru cel vestit/ S-au btut aa
cumplit/ Rezbel crncen fioros/ Pe Europa s-a-ntors.
(Karnoouh 2014, 62, 26b, v. 1-8). The same verses in
Cntec pe timpul rzboiului n anul 1914 , by
Dumitru Lscoiu (Dor i jele 1915, 34).

267

Russian front. Corporal Aurel Gin recorded

how they were freezing on the Russian front, in
their summer uniform, which was no match for
the Russian cold (21). The same corporal
complained that they have no beds to sleep in;
instead, they were sleeping on the ground; they
didn't have where to wash their clothes or take a
bath; they didn't have woods to make a fire, or
anything to cook their food with (22). Hunger
and starvation were common on the front (23).
Often, the soldiers ate horse meat (24). On his
marches with the Austro-Hungarian army in
Galicia, Paul Alexa remembered that he almost
starve to death. He even learned how to ask for
bread in Polish and tried to buy it from the
Polish peasants, but they were also lacking bread
(25). Some peasants thought that the situation
was similar among the Russian soldiers, who
were thinking to surrender to the AustroHungarian army because they thought that in
Hungary they can eat white bread (26). On the
other hand, a corporal in the Romanian army,
fighting in Transylvania, addressed the enemy
soldiers: My dear brothers from Transylvania/
From Cicsereda and Odorhei/ Why won't all
surrender/ 'Cause you have nothing left to eat/
And if you will surrender/ We will take you to

Romania/ And there you'll eat white bread/

Aren't you tired of marching/ And eating oat
bread? (27)
Existence in the trenches was marked by
acute terror and horror. Gunfire traversed the
landscape. The perfect symbol of the deadlines
of the industrialized battlefield was the machine
gun. With a range of more than 900 meters it
fired 600 rounds per minute. One machine gun
could hold off masses of enemies. No wonder
that in their songs and letters, the peasants speak
of a rain of bullets (28), or of bullets which
came as the cold wind blows in the winter (29).
The war presented many novelties that,
unfortunately, later became increasingly
ordinary. These novelties included trench
warfare and new weapons. Of those, none had a
bigger impact on the Romanian peasants than
the machine gun and the recoilless artillery. New
recoilless artillery was an important advance,
which also left a mark in the peasants'
imagination: some speak about the projectiles of
the trench mortar as being birds with an iron
beak (30).
A disturbing feature of trench warfare
was the omnipresence of death. Soldiers were
often in close proximity to the remains of
bodies, decay, and infestations of rats. Bodies
resurfaced as shell churned up the soil (31).
Sometimes, the battlefield takes a cosmic
dimension: even the sun, the moon and the stars
cry when they see how much blood was shed
(Karnoouh 2014, 62, 26d, v. 1-4). Some
peasants see these dreadful events as signs of the
coming Apocalypse (32). Others think that Hell
was already here (33). Neculae Clonea, a peasant
from Fgra county, noted that the month of
May, an earthly paradise during the time of

(21)
Viers romnesc de pe pmnt rusesc, II, v.
11-36 (Gin 1917, 5-6). Others remembered the
freezing cold: Dragi copii 'a mea soie (Cernea
1940, 8-9).
(22)
Viers romnesc de pe pmnt rusesc, III, v.
1-38 (Gin 1917, 6-8).
(23)
n Carpai, v. 19-27 (Cioloca 1915, 8).
Una sut ease sprezece (Cerbulescu 1924,
18).
Alt vers din rzboi, v. 185, 194-195
(Briloiu 1944, 72-74); Alt vers frumos, v. 393
(Ibidem, 74).
(24)
Alt vers din rzboi, v. 203-209 (Briloiu,
1944, 72-74); Alt vers, v. 620-633 (Ibidem, 76);
Versul Bucovinei, v. 708 (Ibidem, 76-77); Alt vers, v.
763 (Ibidem, 76).
(25)
Prin cele pduri de brazi/ Nebui i
nemncai/ La picioare degerai./ Multe zile n-am
mncat/ Nici pe bani n-am cptat./ Prin sate dac
treceam/ Ne bgam pit ceream/ Ceream pit de
parale/ Ei rspundeau c nu are/ Ei ne vorbea
polecete/ Noi nu puteam a[-]i percepe/ i dac am
nvat/ P pit cum au chemat/ Pe la case ne-am
bgat/ Ceream la ei: dm cleba!/ Ei rspunde: cleb
nema (Karnoouh 2014, 44, 15, v. 7-22; see also 17b,
v. 10-13; 28a, v. 6-7).
(26)
Ziceau: Haidei, ne predm,/ Cci n'avem
ce s mncm./ i dac noi ne-om preda,/ Ne-om
duce 'n Ungaria/ i-alb pit om mnca,/ Cci ne-am
sturat de mers/ i de pit de ovs, Picau ruii cu
grmada..., v. 28-34 (Cioloca 1915, 23-24).

(27)
Cntec, collected from Blaga Pavel, a
peasant with primary education (Cerbulescu 1924,
16).
(28)
Una sut ease sprezece (Cerbulescu 1924,
17);
Dincolo de Stanislau, v. 29-33 (Cioloca
1915, 20).
(29)
Din Orova, v. 24-27 (Cioloca, 1915, 17).
(30)
Versuri din ctnie i de pe cmpul de lupt
1915, scrise de Neculae Clonea, din Vitea
superioar, Fgra county (Jiga Iliescu et al. 2005,
62-63).
(31)
1915, 21-22). See also Cerbulescu 1924, 21-22, 23,
25.
Spre oraul Stanislau..., v. 32-37 (Cioloca
(32)
1915, 91).
(33)
Din Galiia, v. 62-68 (Cioloca 1915, 59).

268

peace, is now Hell on Earth (34). No wonder so

many wished they had never been born (35)! And
with almost no exception, from the first years of
the war, the peasants and their families from
home were hoping that the war will end soon
(36).
Another implication of the total war
was that, because civilians were mobilized to
work for their country on the home front, they
were increasingly targets of violence as well.
Neculae Clonea noted that, on his way through
Galicia, by train and on foot, in May 1915, he
saw only burnt villages, bridges destroyed and
telegraph poles cut down by the Russians (Jiga
Iliescu et al. 2005, 59-62). The same desolated
landscape, with burnt and abandoned villages is
described in a folk song by a Romanian peasant
from Cara-Severin, who was a prisoner of war
in Serbia (37). In many of their songs, diaries and
letters written from the front, Romanian
peasants were worried that back home nobody
ploughs the fields (38).
The home fronts in all the warring
countries met privation, shortages, rationing, and
surveillance. It was part of the logic of total
war that civilians would be targets. Life for
civilians underwent profound changes and
privations. The drafting of farmers, the
requisitioning of horses and cattles (39), and
other factors led to a dislocation of agriculture in
Romania and Romanian provinces from AustriaHungary, producing food shortages.

Inflation
became
a
universal
phenomenon. In Romania and Austria-Hungary,
like in many other European countries, prices
roughly doubled during the war. Vasile Tomu
from Botoana, Suceava county, tells us how
people buried their money and jewelry (40) and
how money were made of steel, iron or paper,
which had no real value, unlike the Austrian
money (41).
The common figure of the profiteer is
much hated in the peasants' writings. The same
peasant from the North of Moldavia curses those
who overcharged orphans and widows for bred
(42). Rumors circulated on the front, tells us
Coman Grap from Poiana Mrului, a Romanian
village in the Fgra county that back home
charlatans were trying to steal from the
households where there were no men left (43).
Some curse those who, without fearing
God, were leaving their wives and seduce other
women, with more land and cattle, whose men
were on the front (44). Others fear that their
wives were cheating them with soldiers (45) or
even with Russians (46). A prisoner of war in
Siberia, Paul Alexa asked the cuckoo to go and
see if his wife dined alone or with another man
(Karnoouh 2014, 80, 31c, v. 20-27). The
behaviour of women left alone at home was of
great concern for two peasants from a village
from Turda-Arie county. And for good reasons,
since the women spent all the money they
receive from the state, because their men were
fighting on the front on drink: Green leaf of

(34)
Versuri din ctnie i de pe cmpul de lupt
1915. Neculae Clonea. Vitea superioar Comitatul
Fgraului county (Jiga Iliescu et al., 2005, 63).
(35)
i o trece, Doamne, anul..., v. 50-53
(Cioloca 1916, 92).
(36)
Eu micu-att doresc/ n ast' lume s
tresc/ S m vd odat iar/ Sntos n a me ar/ S
fie pace n lume/ i s fie toate bune!, Viers
romnesc de pe pmnt rusesc, v. 30-35 (Gin
1917, 12).
Dincolo de Stanislau, v. 69-72 (Cioloca
1915, 22).
(37)
C pe unde am trecut,/ Numai pagub-am
vzut,/ i pe unde am umblat,/ Numai pagub-am
lsat./ Satele toate au ars/ i nimica n'a rmas./ Deacolo toi au fugit/ i marva (vitele) s'a nspustit,/
Cile le-au prsit., Din prinsoare de la Srb, v. 2836. Written by Crsta Ion, from Folea, Cara-Severin
county (Cioloca 1916, 45-46).
(38)
Letter sent home by Istocescu, from
Costeti, Vlcea, in September 1916 (Jiga Iliescu et
al. 2005, 30-34). See also Karnoouh 2014, 34, 7g, v.
19-25.
Alt vers, v. 635-640; 980-981 (Briloiu
(39)
1944, 76, 79)

(40)
Ibidem, v. 982-985.
(41)
au fcut bani de ol/ De hrtie i de fier/
i pe drum die oai afla/ Zic zu c noai ridica/ C
nare nici o valoare/ Casi cunosc ori care/ Mrcu
mici de trei copici/ Cieli albastre cte cinci/ Dar
banii austrieci/ inei domne pnn veci/ C frumoi
i lcomo/ i din trnii ai folos, ibidem, v. 986-997.
(42)
Alt vers, v. 816-819 (Briloiu 1944, 77-78).
(43)
n luptele din Galiia, v. 123-129 (Cioloca
1916, 81). See also these verses written by Vasile
Tomu: Numai ne bunu i prostu/ Uit ru cum au
fostu/ C mul cariau fost tlhar/ i prdau pe
gospodari/ curvari i curvile/ Cnd auziau tunurle/ S
rugau la Du-zeu/ au uitat de gndul ru/ Tlhari de
tlhrie/ Curvari de curvrie/ C au cunoscut pcatu/
i zic c nor face altu (Briloiu 1944, 79, v. 10321043).
(44)
n luptele din Galiia, v. 130-157 (Cioloca
1916, 81-83).
(45)
i-am zis verde trei granate, by Hulu
Nstase, a peasant from Neam county (Cerbulescu
1924, 29).
Versul Bucovinei, v. 706 (Briloiu, 1944,
(46)
77). About the sane situation are also complaining the
peasants soldiers from Moldavia (Savel 1925, 20-24).

269

lemon tree,/ Since I'm on the front,/ Apart from

my wife,/ My wife and children,/ Who were left
alone,/ Green leaf of poplar / A plague set
upon the villages,/ A year and a half ago,/ Since
women spend their time,/ Only with local
mayors./ Soldiers, brothers and companions,/
What are our women doing,/ Silly as they are?/
They go to the notary for the allowance,/ That
the state pays them./ But when they see the
dressed up mayors,/ 'Cause women are foolish,/
As soon as they got the money,/ Go to the
tavern,/ Pay for beer and brandy,/ And say:/
Let's drink and sing, mayor,/ 'Till we spend all
the money. (47) The two peasants continue their
tirade against women, who, they promise, will
be punished on their return home for spending
the money that the state gave for the sustenance
of the children of those fighting on the front, on
expensive clothes, parties and drink (48). In the
end, they soften the harsh tone, apologizing to
the reader that they wrote these verses during
hard times, when they were wounded, in the
hospital in Turda (49). Other peasants from the
front shared this concern for the conduct of the
women left home, as well as for the way they
spend the money the state gave for the
sustenance of the children of those conscripted.
The gunner Nicolae Tincu even asked the
emperor to stop paying these allowances,
because the women spent the money on drink
(50). Dumitru Pop from Nsud was even more

satirical, comparing the women who were

partying and drinking with other men with frogs
in a lake (51). In his anthology from the Italian
front, Ioan Giuglea included several pages with
rebukes to the frivolous conduct of girls and
women (Giuglea 1918, 11-19).
A disconnection existed between what
was experienced at home and what was
experienced in the tranches, often driving a
wedge between men and women, civilians and
soldiers. A peasant from Fgra admonished
those from home for not thinking of the men on
the front and not writing them letters (52). The
resentment for those who stayed home was
expressed in almost all of the peasants' writings:
those who were fighting on the front were brave,
handsome, righteous, while the men who were
not conscripted were cowards, ugly, stupid and
evil (53). From a hospital in Bohemia, a
Romanian from Cmpulung (Bucovina) wrote
that those who remained home have no right to
complain about the harshness of their lives (54).
Social structures buckled under the
pressure of war. Traditional morality was under
strain. In a letter sent back home to his wife, a
peasant from Cara-Severin, remarked very
poale,/ S nu lase birturi goale./ Dac s-au dus cei
voinici,/ Beau muierile ct cinci./ Vine badea, nu mai
vie,/ Numai plat s se tie;/ Vine badea c-un picior,/
Dar s fie n ulcior. (Stanciu, p. 8) (Briloiu 1944,
20).
(51)
Voi spune despre muieri,/ Care capt ajut/
De la Statul cel avut./ Cnd banii ele primesc,/
Drgui i agonisesc,/ Se pun i se sftuiesc/ C care
cum mai triesc./ Zice una dintre ele:/ Haidei ici,
dragilor mele,/ Haidei ici n fgdu,. C-a fi ce-a da
Dumnezeu./ Atunci zice una-ndat:/ Bine zici tu,
zu, surat,/ Haidei la-un pic de vinars,/ C rbdm
destul ncaz./ i cum zic, atunci ndat,/ Intr-n
fgdu grmad,/ Se pun roat p-ing mas/ i de
mine nu le pas,/ Beau, horesc, se veselesc,/ Fiecaren glasul su,/ Gndeti c-s broatele-n tu. These
verse are cited by Briloiu, (1944, 20) from a
manuscript from the archive of the Society of
Romanian Composers: Rumnische SoldatenVolksliteratur, an anthology made in 1917 by Emil
Precup, at the order of the Austrian Ministry of War.
(52)
n luptele din Galiia, v. 108-122 (Cioloca
1916, 80-81).
(53)
Cucule nu mai cnta, told by Ghenea Ion,
Dmbovia county (Cerbulescu, 1924 13-14).
Sraca inima noastr, told by sergeant
Tache Tudor, a peasant with primary education
(Cerbulescu 1924, 23).
A noastr-i arm vestit..., v. 25-32
(Cioloca 1915, 87-88). La Rawa-Ruska, v. 1-10, 3034 (Cioloca 1916, 16-18).
Dorul bucovineanului nstrinat, v. 6-8
(54)
(Cioloca 1916, 50).

(47)
Boal rea este pe sate, v. 1-25, written by
Vasile Trnca and Ioan Popa from Ocoliul de jos,
Turda-Arie county (Cioloca 1916, 93-96).
(48)
Las' s bee vin i bere,/ Pn noi acas' vom
mere,/ i le-om lua la judecat,/ Ce-au fcut cu-a
noastr plat,/ Cu plata de la copii,/ Ce-au rmas de
noi pustii./ Cnd am plecat noi din sat,/ Domnii noti
porunc-au dat,/ Ca copiii cei orfani/ Au s capete i
bani,/ i ca din bani s triasc,/ Pn' ce vine al lor
tat./ Dar mama lor fr' de gnd,/ N'o mai ia nime la
rnd,/ cci ele n'au gnd de traiu,/ C acas n'au
mlaiu,/ C'acolo-i domnul biru,/ nschimbat i
pieptnat/ i n cizme nclat./ Frunz verde de pe
rt,/ i asta are sfrit;/ Frunz verde de tulei,/
Ascultai i voi femei:/ Copiii noti rabd de foame,/
Voi umblai ca nite doamne;/ Copiii sunt desbrcai,/
C banii-i dai pe vinars!/ Bei, femei, i v 'mbetai,/
i nu gndii la brbai;/ Trupul lor e 'ngurit,/ Voi
umblai dup mrit./ Frunz verde i una,/ Cnd
btaia s'a gta,/ Va veni i pedeapsa./ Vor vedea
femeile,/ Cari umbl ca doamnele,/ Pe la toate
crmele,/ Ce-a mai fi, Doamne, pe sate,/ Tot pri
mari i judecate,/ i femei multe ipate (alungate, de
la: a ipa = a alunga, n.n.)., Ibidem, v. 28-67.
Ibidem, v. 68-71.
(49)
(50)
mprate, mprate,/ Pune pace, nu te bate,/
C-i dai toi banii pe sate,/ La muieri cu flori pe

270

surprised that the gender roles were changing:

women were now in the fields, growing crops
and tilling the soil with the plough (55). Another
peasant, from the North of Moldavia, criticized
severely those from his village who did not
follow the traditions and customs and did not
wear the traditional clothes anymore; scolded
the women who were dressing up and neglected
taking care of the household, and those who
were lazy. In the end, he realized that the
traditional world of the village would never be
the same after the war (56).
Capture and imprisonment, with their
uncertainties, fears, and shame, were
experiences shared by many soldiers in the
Great War. An estimated 8.5 million men
became prisoners of war (about 10 percent of all
mobilized soldiers). Among them, there was a
Romanian peasant from Maramure, Paul Alexa.
He has captured in November 1914 in Galicia by
the Russian army. Being taken prisoner was not
an easy or safe experience. Killing prisoners at
the moment of capture or immediately after was
not uncommon. Ordinary prisoners of war, such
as the peasant Paul Alexa, were used as laborers.
Hunger and disease rather than deliberate
extermination, exacted a toll. On the road to
Siberia, tells us Paul Alexa, he hardly received
any food (57). There he worked and was paid by
the Russian state 15 rubles a month, money
which he gave to the Russian peasant in whose
house he was staying. For an archaic peasant
from Maramure, this was a strange culture,
very different than his own, which he barely
understood. He thought the Russians' life was
very easy: they did not have to work and had no
worry in the world (58). A good example of the
incapacity of the Romanian peasant to
comprehend a culture different than his own was
his reaction when he saw a samovar: he could
describe it other than using the familiar image of
a cow giving milk: Little leaf of silk/ May God
save you/ From their Russian cow/ She eats only
embers/ And gives bitter milk/ She has no hair,
only skin/ And gives milk as much as you want/
If you give her embers to eat/ You can milk her
all day long/ The milk is colored/ And is very
hot./ She has an udder with only one teat/ But

gives constantly milk./ She sits all day in the

house/ Almost never goes out./ Her color is
yellow/ And her horns are black/ You also have
to rub her/ Once in there days./ Of this cow I am
fed up/ Enough of her milk I drank/ Milk at
breakfast/ Milk at lunch/ Milk at dinner/ And in
the evening again./ Farewell, oh , cow/ You
gave me bone disease/ Wrinkled my skin/ And
turned my face yellow./ May God help me/ Of
your milk to get rid! (59)
After that experience in the peasant's
(mujic) house, Paul Alexa worked at a railway
station and then for a nobleman (baron). He
worked on his land until the outbreak of the
revolution, in February 1917. His briefly
description of the events that followed was very
useful for the historians, as a source to
understand how a Romanian peasant, a prisoner
of war in Russia, experienced and understood
the Russian revolutions: Things went very bad,
because the Bolsheviks (named by Alexa
bolovici) were killing the gentlemen (a term
used by the peasants in Maramure to designate
people that were living in towns; Karnoouh, 1012, n. 11), the Jews, the noblemen and peasants
who did not gave them money and everything
they wanted to take. () I was terrified by the
things the Bolsheviks did! () As long as I
stayed in Russia, for three years, I was not
allowed to drink alcohol. If they had heard that
someone had drunk alcohol, that person would
have been hanged. But after Russia made peace,
the soldiers returned home; they robbed all the
factories and stores, and gave alcohol to every
person more than 15 years old. Then we drank
enough alcohol. On December 22, 1917, the
Russians returned from the front, and most of
them turned into Bolsheviks. They were all on
horseback, horses which they took from the
peasants. The gentlemen, seeing that things are
getting worse, asked the Germans and Austrians
for help. May the Lord be praised that the
Germans and Austro-Hungarians came to the
rescue of gentlemen and peasants. (60) When
the Germans were near, Paul Alexa left for their
camp, but on his way he met the Bolsheviks.
They didn't do him anything, but only asked him
to tell the Russians that he would meet to return
home and help them to defeat the bourgeoisie.
The Central Powers occupied an
important part of Romania during the winter of
1916, and it became a German economic colony,
yielding food and oil. But some Romanian
peasants did not feel that their lives under the

(55)
Scrisoarea lui Tril Lungu, from Midan,
Cara-Severin, to his wife, Eva, v. 13-17, 21-29
(Cioloca 1916, 19-20).
(56)
Alt vers, v. 840-963 (Briloiu 1944, 78-79).
Ziua noaptea tot pe cale/ i nu cptam
(57)
mncare/ A fi mncat i pe dracu/ Numai s-l fi
prins Sracu! (Karnoouh 2014, 72, 29c, v. 7-14).
(58)
Ibidem, 94, 40b, v. 1-5.

(59)
(60)

271

Ibidem, 96, 40b, v. 6-36.

Ibidem, 106-108.

German occupation were worse than before.

Dumitru Petcu, in his autobiography,
remembered that in the winter of 1916, the
people from his village were ordered to leave.
But he stayed and his family also returned after
two or three weeks. He did not describe in grim
tones life under the German occupation,
remembering that, when he was ordered to bring
milk to the German soldiers, he drank most of it,
added water and the Germans did not realized it
(61).
In the collections of folk songs from the
Great War published in Romania after 1918,
there is a great emphasis on the bravery of the
Romanian soldiers, their patriotism and their
desire to fight and give their life for the benefit
of their nation and country. But were these the
real feelings of the peasants, or were they later
added by collectors and publishers?
Censorship was the rule of the day in the
warring powers. Opposition to the war was
harshly suppressed. Nonetheless, desires for
peace were strong enough to find expression at
many levels and in many different ways. It
echoes from almost all of the peasants' writings.
In a letter sent home from the front by a peasant
from Vlcea, God is asked to come down to
Earth and stop this carnage, in which parents
and brothers are killing each other (62).
Almost most of them told that they
hated that war and were forced to go to the front.
I was brought here by force (63), said Vasile
Tomu, and he did all those terrible things
because he was forced to. The same thoughts
had many others (64).
Tomu cursed the
Emperor, who did not want to make up and all
those who were not fed up with war: they shall

be drowned, the frog shall sing at their head

(Briloiu, 1944, 21). After the Turkish and
Bulgarian dogs had started the Balkan wars, an
even greater one had started, said a Romanian
peasant from Broteni, Suceava county, and the
main responsible were the Germans, whom he
addressed directly and asked if they were not fed
up seeing all this bloodshed (65).
We do not find many proofs of bravery
in the writings of the peasants from the
Romanian army, nor in those of the Romanian
peasants who fought for Austria-Hungary. One
of them told how the Russians fled, and then
added innocently: Other times we fled/ 'Cause
that's the war.(Briloiu, 1944, 21). Another one
confessed that when the attack started, they all
got frightened and run off, leaving all their
equipment behind (Nicoar & Netea, 1936,
325). Paul Alexa, from Maramure, told that, as
he was approaching the front, hearing the sound
of shells and machine guns, he got so frighten
that he started to shake (Karnoouh, 2014, 46,
13d, v. 1-7). A month later, when he was taken
prisoner by the Russians, he begged them not to
kill him, because he had a wife and children
(Karnoouh, 2014, 68, 28d, v. 7-15). So it seems
like folk jokes and anecdotes that mock the
soldiers bravery during the war are expressing a
reality lived by those who told them.
The examples given above and many
others seem to make the case of Nicolae Iorga,
who thought that there is not a single folk song
that does not speak about the peasants' innate
hate for the army and war. Only those folk songs
influenced by the patriotic speeches of the
officers and those written in the newspapers
during World War I present a positive image of
fighting (Iorga 1925, I). Briloiu thinks that it is
an exaggeration; even if the positive image of
the war is a literary influence, the fact that the
peasants adopted it in their song means that the
soul of the peasant these songs reflect is
different than the one before the War. There are
several examples of songs collected before
World War I, in which peasants admit they like
the army and prefer to enroll than work for a

(61)
Caiet cuprinznd viaa i aventurile pn n
prezent Dtr Gr. Petcu (Jiga Iliescu et al. 2005, 116121).
(62)
Cobor', Doamne, pe pmnt/ De vezi ct de
'nvrjbii snt,/ Vars, Doamne, mil'n ei/ i
'mblnzete-i ca pe miei!/ Nu vezi Doamne, cum se
bate/ Prini i frate cu frate? (Jiga Iliescu et al.
2005, 33). At home, his wife also wishes the war to
stop as soon as possible: De s-ar potoli odat/ Focul,
care s'a ntins/ i-attea ri a cuprins,/ de nu se mai
nlege/ Nici cretinii de o lege., Ibidem, 31.
(63)
Alt vers, v. 764-768 (Briloiu 1944, 77).
(64)
Nu s-a dus de voia lui,/ Ci din voia
craiului, Jalea prizonierului, p. 42, cit. in Briloiu
1944, 21.
i eu trist i necjit/ De porunca ce-am
primit./ N-am ce-i face, sunt silit. (Dor i jele 1915,
15).
Am mers c tot n-am ce face,/ C jandarmii
nu-mi dau pace. (Briloiu 1944, 21).

(65)
i-am zis verde 'un dudu/ Neamule nu-i
vine ru/ Cnd vezi sngele pru/ Isvornd din capul
meu?/ i-am zis verde trei smidele/ Neamule nu-i
vine jele/ Cnd vezi snge izvornd/ Din spatele meu
curgnd?/ Bat-te crucea de neam/ De tnr m'ai pus
n an/ Tinerel fr musta/ S lupt cu rania 'n
spate/ i curele ncurcate/ Peste brae, peste spate/
Tragi n mine nu gndeti/ C m'omori, ori m
rneti/ Tragi n mine nu te uii/ C'am acas doi
prini., Ct e pmntul de mare (Cerbulescu 1924,
19-20).

272

be damned and consumed by the fire of Hell (72).

The Romanian peasants who served in the
Austro-Hungarian army had similar injurious
adjectives for their enemies. A peasant from
Cara-Severin considered that the Serbian was a
tyrant, a poisonous snake (73). The Russians
were filthy beasts, worse than the heathens, may
the dog eat their heart, said a song published in a
journal in 1914 (74). In a song collected by a
member of the clergy, the Russians seem to be
devils: they drank as much vodka, rum, brandy
and wine as the amount of water in a lake (75).
But these negative stereotypes are not so
wide spread in the writings of the peasants who
have little literary influence and were modified
in a lesser degree by collector and publishers. In
the versified memories of Paul Alexa of
Maramure, we can still find an archaic vision,
in which the physical and moral qualities of the
enemy are emphasized, so that the one who
defeats him will have even greater glory: We've
heard the Russian is strong/ And of noble
lineage. (Karnoouh, 2014, 40, 9a, 13-14). And
again, later, he said that all the Russians were
good men, you could truly say they were
Christians (Karnoouh, 2014, 94, 40a, 5-8).
In most of the cases, the acts of bravery
and patriotic speeches are added to peasants'
writings by different kind of intellectuals, who
were trying to prove that bravery and patriotism
are innate qualities of Romanian peasants. From
the beginning, that was the purpose for which
most of the collection of folk songs from the war
was published after 1918. In his collection, the
captain N. Cerbulescu added to many folk songs
an example of heroic deed made by those
peasants on the battlefield. Many of them had a
heroic death after destroying, during the assault,
an enemy machine gun (Cerbulescu 1924, 26,

master. For some peasants, serving in the army

was something to be proud of (66). Others
thought that their condition will improve if they
join the army (67). One even declares that it is
not true what people say, that serving in the
army is hard: you don't have to dig the earth, cut
the grass, harvest, plough, pay taxes or buy
food; the army gives you everything and even
buys you clothes (68). Vasile Stan, sergeant in
the Romanian army, a peasant with primary
education, wrote home to his wife not to worry,
because he felt on the front almost like home,
except he lacked tobacco and missed her and the
children (69).
The
enemy
was
increasingly
dehumanized in propaganda. Images of the
enemy were sharpened into overwhelmingly
negative stereotypes (with racial overtones). In
almost all the songs collected from the peasants
who were fighting in the Romanian army the
Hungarians are considered heathens (70). One
peasant wished that all Hungarian would die of
plague (71). The Germans were also cursed by
the Romanian soldiers, who wished they would

(66)
Drag mi-a fost s fiu soldat,/ S fac armatan Brlad...,/ Sabia-ncins' i puca-n spete,/ S scot
dragostea din fete...,/ S-aud calul sforind/ i pintenii
ciripind. (Ion Creang VI, no. 11)
(67)
Dect slug i argat (la un sat)/ Mai bine la
mprat./ i m chem c sunt soldat,/ Cu chivr
(cocard) mprteasc/ i cu sabie domneasc
(Nemirovschi 1936, 90).
Dect slug la popa,/ Mai bine s bat doba,/
C doba-i mprteasc/ i popa-i capr drceasc
(Teculescu 1929, 164).
(68)
Toat lumea-mi spune mie/ C e greu n
ctnie./ Spun lumea ce o vrea,/ Ctnia tot nu-i
grea./ C nu spi, nici nu coseti,/ Numai puca o
grijeti;/ Nici nu mergi la secerat,/ Nici cu plugul la
arat;/ Nu tai pari, nuiele, spini,/ S faci garduri la
grdini;/ Nu strngi bani, s plteti dare,/ Nici s
cumperi de mncare;/ Nici ai grije nici un pic,/ Nu ai
lips de nimic./ C i hainele din spate/ i-s de ali
cumprate. (Nicolae ucu, Ciripituri de drag,
Braov, 1903, p. 98-99, cit. in Briloiu 1944, 22.
(69)
Rvaul Sergentului Vasile Stan (Cerbulescu
1924, 9).
(70)
Una sut ease sprezece, told by sergeant
major Tlpu, Neam county, a peasant with primary
education. The collector notes that, although he was
sick and was not obliged to fight on the battlefield,
this peasant preferred to die with his company in the
battle of Cireoaia, near Trgu-Ocna, Bacu county,
on July 27, 1917 (Cerbulescu 1924, 17).
Cntec, told by corporal Blaga Pavel, a
(71)
peasant with primary education (Cerbulescu 1924,
17).

(72)
Mure, Mure, ap lin, told by the soldier
Calistru Vasile, Comuna Hanganu, Neam county.
The collector notes that he was killed just when he
was reporting to his commander that the enemy had
taken the left side of the Romanian defensive lines.
(Cerbulescu 1924, 31).
(73)
S triasc ara mea!, v. 11-15, 21-26
(Cioloca 1915, 41-42).
Mi arule Nicolae.., v. 34-41, told by
(74)
Stefan Miciuru, published in Pop. No. 52, 1914,
republished in Cioloca 1915, 31.
The Russians are compared to dogs, in
Drumul spre Galiia (Dor i jele 1915, 22).
n Carpai, v. 1-18, told by Avram Popa
(75)
from Broteni, Cara-Severin county, sent by
Mitrofan Ciorei (Cioloca 1915, 7-8).

273

29) (76). On the last page of the volume, near a

song written in the literary style by sub
lieutenant Cerbulescu himself, there was an
etching representing a bayonet charge, with
soldiers dressed in Romanian uniform and in
peasant clothes. King Ferdinand and a national
hero from the Romanian history, Mihai Viteazul,
are watching the scene (77).
In the first volume of his collection of
Songs from the war, collected from the
Romanian peasants who fought for AustriaHungary, published in 1915 and suggestively
entitled Song of bravery, we find several
examples of heroic deeds. Some may be an echo
of the initial enthusiasm and victories (78). In
other words, the intervention of the collectors, a
member of the clergy, or a professor, is obvious:
the peasants battle cry is so loud that the Czar
himself could hear it and understand that he
would better retreat his troops (79); they were
fighting like devils and defeated the Serbian,
took their provisions and occupied some of their
villages (80); they quickly defeated the Serbians,
and then the Russian, and they were decorated
for their heroic deeds by a general (81).
We, brave Romanians, young and old,
says a song published in a journal in 1914,
preyed on the enemies like hawks (82). That's
because, explains another folk song from the
war, during an attack, a Romanian soldier does
not think about his village or family, but only
how to advance, so that he can later sing his acts
of bravery; he likes to make his own story, like
heroes did it in the glorious past (83). A sergeant
in the infantry tells us that in Galicia, in the heat
of the battle, his wounded companions were
crying so that they wouldn't be left to the
Russians, because the Romanians preferred to
die than to be taken prisoners; they would rather

die than let the name of their people be stained,

because anyone who was not ready to die for his
country was not worthy of calling himself a
Romanian (84).
To celebrate the inauguration of an
ethnographic museum in Sighioara, a volume
of Songs of bravery about the glorious fights on
Tisa (1919), gathered from Gh. Cernea's
collection of folklore, was published. In one of
these songs, a peasant from a village in Trnava
Mare praises the Lord for hearing his prayers
and helped the Romanians who defeat and drive
away the Hungarians from Transylvania and
formed the Great Romania (85).
Anxious because of the many
outrageous songs that circulate among boys and
girls from the countryside, as well as the cities,
due, for the most part, to the influence of bad
Jewish chapbooks, a school teacher from the
Bistria village, Mehedini county, published in
October 1919 a chapbook with truly patriotic
and folk songs (Dumitrescu-Bistria 1919, 1-2).
The models offered were, of course, literary,
including, among many others, Deteapt-te
romne (by Andrei Murean), La arme! (by St.
O. Iosif) and Hora unirii (by V. Alecsandri).
And many authors, collectors and publishers of
folk songs tried to follow those models. The
ideas that the Romanians would rather die than
surrender (present in the last stanza of the song
Deteapt-te romne) and that they are ready to
die for their king (86) (in La arme!, by St. O.
Iosif) appear in a song from a collection about
the glorious fighting on Tisa in 1919 (87). Other
examples can be found in almost any collection
of folk songs from the war published in
Romania after 1919.
(84)
Dar mai muli ziceau aa:/ Curi, frate, nu
m lsa/ Ruilor ca s m ia,/ Cci nu m pot apra./
C Romnu-aa-i la fire:/ Mai bine vrea n pmnt,/
Dect s fie robit;/ Cci moartea 'n cmp e frumoas,/
Dar robia-i ruinoas;/ 'apoi noi toi preferim/ Mai
bine ca s murim,/ Neamul s nu-'l pngrim./ Cine
nu tie s moar/ Pentru Tron i pentru ear,/ Nu-i
vrednic s se fleasc/ C-i din vi romneasc./ Ori
murim, ori triumfm,/ De asta s nu uitm!, De la
Chirow (Galiia), v. 14-31. Published in F. Or. No.
30, 1914 and republished in Cioloca 1915, 81-82.
(85)
Cntec de vitejie despre luptele glorioase
dela Tisa (1919), written by Ion Hlmu, from Fir,
Trnava Mare county. The collector notes that there
are few Romanian in this village inhabited by
Germans, but those few have a big Romanian heart
(Cntece de vitejie 19--, 2-3).
See above.
(86)
(87)
Cntec premilitar despre concentrrile din
Martie 1939, p. 1-2, in Cntece de vitejie 19--.

(76)
For other heroic deeds and deaths see
Cerbulescu 1924, 31.
(77)
Cnd trmbia sun..., written by
sublieutenant N. Cerbulescu in Piatra-Neam, on
August 15, 1916 (Cerbulescu 1924, 32).
(78)
i fug Muscalii ipnd..., v. 37-39
(Cioloca,1915, 35)
(79)
n Carpai, v. 36-51 sent by the cleric
Mitrofan Ciorei (Cioloca 1924, 8-9).
(80)
n Srbia, v. 6-27; the song was already
published in a journal in 1914 and copied from there
by Cioloca (Cioloca 1915, 12-13).
(81)
De la Dukla, v. 23-32 (Cioloca 1915, 71).
(82)
ipau ruii: Boje moi..., v. 10-13 (Cioloca
1915, 74).
Cnd n Galiia eram..., v. 14-19, 25-28,
(83)
told by Petru Muntean, collected and sent by the
cleric D. Iana (Cioloca 1915, 78)

274

In one song, corporal Blaga Pavel says

that ever since he enrolled, he hadn't slept one
night in bed, but stood up with the riffle in his
hands, so that he can always be ready to defend
his country (88). A peasant from Dmbovia
county sang that, as soon as his leg would heal,
he was ready to go back and fight so that his
country would regain her old frontiers (89). In the
same collection that contained the previous two
songs, the collector, sublieutenant Cerbulescu,
published one of his songs, in which he
promised to return and clean the waters of the
Sbrel river, contaminated by the Germans,
Hungarians, Turks and Bulgarians (90).
We know how to fight/ And defend our
country says a peasant from Moldavia, because
we are Romanians from the mountains/ And we
do not give up/ We are nephews of Trajan/ We
do not fear the enemy. (91) The Romanian
peasants fighting for Austria-Hungary also
claimed to be grandnephews of the same Roman
emperor, Trajan (92). So, the enemy should
better take care, because they were as brave as
their ancestors (93), their iron fists and courage
came from Trajan (94). Because of that
distinguished parentage, some elt they would
gain their rights and would have a glorious
future: (The Romanian) fights with justice/ He
fights for freedom./ Fights with all his strength,/
To defend his country/ That's why I'm strong,/
'Cause I know I'm from a noble lineage,/ I'm
from a distinguished lineage,/ From all mighty
Rome,/ I'm of Roman lineage,/ From the great
Trajan./ And this is why/ we will gain our
rights;/ And this baptism of fire/ Will bring us

good fortune: a glorious future/ Shiny as gold/

After the coming peace. (95)
But if we look beyond these literary
influences, we see that in the writings of the
Romanian peasant from Austria-Hungary one
can find a very different idea about patriotism
and loyalty than that promoted by the official
propaganda and by well-meaning intellectuals
after the war. Paul Alexa did not use the word
Romanian to designate an ethnic group, but
rather a social condition: for him, a Romanian
meant a peasant (Karnoouh, 2014, 10) (96). Only
if we understand the word Romanian as used to
designate a social, and not an ethnic group, can
we make sense of these verses: (The Russians)
wave the white flag,/ Run to us,/ And said:/
Don't shoot us Romanians,/ 'Cause we're
Romanians as you/, We're poor Romanians. (97)
A peasant from Cara-Severin wrote to
his wife that, on the fronts he fought, as well as
in the north and south, many of the enemies who
surrendered were spared, because they were also
Romanians (98).
All the warring powers, including
Austria-Hungary, claimed to be acting in selfdefense. So, most of the peasants claimed in
their songs that they were going to war in
righteous self-defense. A peasant from Fgra
remembered that, when the war broke out, all
the young men from his village were conscripted
and sent to fight the Russians to defend their
fatherland (99). For Paul Alexa, Russia was the

(95)
De la grania Srbiei, v. 29-49 (Cioloca
1915, 94-96).
(96)
The French anthropologist Claude Karnoouh
confirms that in Maramure, during the '70s the word
Romanian was still used with the same meaning, i.e.
peasant, like in a current expression: dressed as a
Romanian (= in peasant clothes). At a wedding in
Maramure, in 1973, he heard a woman using the
word Romanian with the same meaning in these
verses: A lady I could have been,/ But I preferred to
remain a Romanian!
Constatin Ptruceanu also uses in his song
the word Romanian with the meaning peasant,
Romnie, Romnie, s nu lai Ruii s vie...
(Ivanovici et Morariu 1916, 45-46).
(97)
n lupt cu Muscalul, v. 19-24 (Cioloca
1915, 28).
98
Scrisoarea lui Tril Lungu, v. 51-71
(Cioloca 1916, 21).
99
Versuri din ctnie i de pe cmpul de lupt
1915, by Neculae Clonea, from Vitea superioar,
Fgra county (Jiga Iliescu et al. 2005, 59).
A girl from Poiana Sibiului says the same
thing: Jele-mi-i i 'mi oare ru, by Elena Iancu
(Dobrot 1917, 18).

(88)
De cnd sunt mobilizat, told by Blaga Pavel,
a peasant with primary education (Cerbulescu 1924,
8).
(89)
Cucule nu mai cnta, told by Ghenea Ion,
Dmbovia county (Cerbulescu 1924, 13-14).
(90)
Sbrel!..., written by N. Cerbulescu, in the
trenches of Cernica Mountain, in November 1916
(Cerbulescu 1924, 27).
(91)
Trmbia cnd a sunat, told by Lunc
Vasile, from Bodeti-Precista, Neam county, a
peasant with primary education. Collected in August
30, 1917, when he was fighting on the Trotu front
line (Cerbulescu 1924, 11-12).
(92)
S triasc ara mea!, v. 59-64 (Cioloca,
1915, 43). Din Galiia, v. 10-15 (ibidem, 65). Din
Galiia, v. 10-15, told by Vasile Prvu (ibidem, 65).
Din Galiia, v. 3-12, told by Petru Muntean (Ibidem,
66).
Din Orova, v. 28-53 (Cioloca 1915, 17-18).
(93)
(94)
n lupt cu Muscalul, v. 36-39 (Cioloca
1915, 29. C brae de fer avem, v. 18-25 (Ibidem,
52).

275

one who started the war (100). On the battlefield,

the wounded soldiers old the others to continue
fighting and advancing, so that the Russians
wouldn't invade their country (101). God sent me
to foreign countries, wrote a peasant from
Cara-Severin to his wife, to serve the Empire/
And defend my country,/ From poisonous
Russians,/ Who came across the Carpathians,/
To poison,/ And kill us all (102). Corporal Aurel
Gin from Feldrum also claimed that he went
to Russia to defend his fatherland and the
Emperor, his farmland, his home, his parents,
sisters and brothers (103). That's why, said the
corporal, we had to endure the cold and the
hunger, just to make sure that the Russians
wouldn't come to our country and destroy it
(Gin 1917, 5-6).
From the above examples and many
others, it is clear that the fatherland the
Romanian peasants were fighting for is AustriaHungary. When the war began, Romanians,
Hungarians and Germans, they all gathered to
fight for their country (104). A peasant urged his
Romanian companions to have courage:
although its a small country, Hungary would
fight fearless and defeat her enemies (105). In
August 1914, a soldier wrote to his wife in
Caransebe, that he and his companions swore
they will fight so that their fatherland, AustriaHungary, would defend her enemies and obtain
new territories (106). It was the soldier's will, said
Paul Alexa from Maramure, to fight for the
Emperor/ Defend his fatherland/ Leaving his
home/ His Wife and children. (Karnoouh, 2014,
36, 8b, 1-14). Long live my fatherland, sang a
honved (107) from a village near Caransebe,

along with all the Romanian who swore loyalty

to the Emperor (108).
But the peasants' loyalty to the
fatherland should not be understood in terms of
modern nationalism. The fatherland is
symbolized by the tutorial figure of the
Emperor. Doing your duty to the country meant
keeping the oath of allegiance to the Emperor.
And the Romanian peasants from AustriaHungary made very clear in their writings that
they were fighting for the Emperor (109).
Because they were loyal to the Emperor, they
had to go and fight in Serbia (110). The words
God save the Emperor are to be found in many
of the peasants' songs (111). Using the model of
the folk funeral poetry (ver), Vasile Tomu
from Bucovina wrote at the death of the
Emperor of Austria-Hungary, Franz Joseph, in
1916, an account in verses of the biography of
his beloved ruler. Little leaf of dried wood/
Our Emperor was too good (112)/ And today he
left this world/ For that we are very sorry/ As
one's children are/ When their father dies
(Briloiu 1944, 74). From the details that he
gave in his obituary (blood was shed when Franz
Joseph took the crown, the war with Hungary,
(108)S triasc ara mea!, v. 65-87, told by
Emilian, a honved in the service of the German,
nicknamed Franz, from Valeadieni, a village near
Caransebe, Cara-Severin county (Cioloca 1915,
44).
(109)C au fost bravi lupttori,/ i viaa i-o au dat/
Pentru ar i 'mprat, Nu poi merge de mormnt,
by Elena Mni, from Poiana Sibiului (Dobrot 1917,
84).
De la Dukla, v. 50-51 (Cioloca 1915, 72).
Curge snge nchegat/ Pentru btrnu
'mprat., i fug Muscalii ipnd..., v. 63-64
(Ibidem, 36).
La Chirow (Galiia), v. 22-24 (Ibidem, 49).
Versul tunarilor de cetate, v. 13-16 (Ibidem,
53).
De lng Dunre, v. 37-54 (Ibidem, 26-27).
n foc cu Muscalul, v. 12-15, 47-53 (Ibidem,
83, 85).
Doru-mi-i i jalemi-i..., v. 82-87 (Cioloca
1916, 9).
Versul n pratului, v. 505-510 (Briloiu
1944, 75).
(110)Voinici tineri i viteji, v. 9-14 (Cioloca 1915,
75).
(111)An example in S-l rugm pe Dumnezeu,
collected by a former pupil from the elementary
school from Suceava (Ivanovici & Morariu 1916,
48).
(112)The use of the adjective good to describe the
Emperor is common in the writings of the peasants
from Austria-Hungary. See De pe coastele
Muntenegrului, v. 22-24 (Cioloca 1915, 14).

(100)Au prins dobele a bate/ Toi feciorii s se gate/

Ci au slujit la ctane/ Toi s ias de prin sate/ C sau sculat Rusia/ S ne ieie patria. (Karnoouh 2014,
12-14, 2d, v. 12-17.
(101)Din Galiia, v. 24-34 (Cioloca 1915, 67).
(102)Scrisoarea lui Tril Lungu, v. 47-56 (Cioloca
1916, 20-21).
(103)M'a dus trenu' i pe mine/ Departe n ri
strine,/ n mijlocul Rusiei/ Spre-aprarea patriei,/ Cu
Rusul s ne luptm/ ara s ni-o aprm,/ Patria i
pre 'mprat,/ C aa noi am jurat:/ Cu Rusul s ne
luptm,/ Moia s ni-o aprm/ Moia cea
strmoiasc/ i csua printeasc/ i pe ai mei dulci
prini,/ Surori, friori iubii (Gin 1917, 4).
(104)Voinici tineri i viteji, v. 24-29 (Cioloca 1915,
76).
(105)Vitejeti din Galiia, v. 38-41 (Cioloca 1915, 63).
(106)De lng Dunre, v. 9-17, 35-36 (Cioloca 1915,
25-26).
(107)The word Honvd designates the Hungarian
military units with a certain degree of autonomy in
the Austro-Hungarian army.

276

occupation of Bosnia, the assassination of the

empress, family tragedies etc.) it is likely that
Tomu used as a model a newspaper article.
Still, he saw those events from a peasants
perspective, interpreting them according to the
criteria of his own culture. For him, the Emperor
was a beloved father, who took care of his
children, gave them bread, salt, good clothes and
knew what everybody was doing; he admires the
Emperor's generosity and love for his subjects:
You gave everybody rights/ You gave us salt
and bread/ You made us all only good/ And
keep us in high esteem. For Tomu, the
Emperor was the one who guaranteed the
maintenance of order in the state: he praised the
order that the Emperor imposed in the country
(As long as you lived/ You took care of every
christian/ You know immediately/ Every time a
new baby was born/ And noted his birth in the
register/ And he was taken care of/ But now
who's going to take care of us/ In time of war?)
and deplored the turmoil that his death would
lead to (Only God almighty knows/ What will
happen to us now). When Franz Joseph died,
Vasile Tomu felt he was left without a master,
obliged to serve a new Emperor, who was a
stranger.
In another ver, Tomu said that the
entire Europe heard of the new Emperor's
victory, with the help of Christ, against the
Russians; he ended wishing long life and
happiness to the new Emperor of AustriaHungary and urged all his subjects to obey him
(113).
Although he served in a Hungarian
national military unit, with relative autonomy in
the Austro-Hungarian army (Honvd), Paul
Alexa acknowledged the Emperor as his
supreme commander (Karnoouh 2014, 20, 5e, v.
1-11). He was convinced that the Emperor was
not the one responsible for starting the war: the
heathen Serbians broke his heart when they stab
his wife (114) and when they killed Ferdinand
and his wife; the Serbian were, therefore, those
who wanted to start the war and the emperor had
nothing else to do than fight (115). His loyalty to

the Emperor was even more obvious if we

consider that he wrote his versified memories
after the war ended, in a time when AustriaHungary was no more and Maramure was a
part of Romania.
That personal relation with the Emperor
was not a characteristic only to the peasants
from Austria-Hungary, but to the subjects from
the upper classes as well. In his Memories,
Sextil Puscariu, a professor of Romanian
literature at the University of Cernui,
remembered that during the summer of 1914 he
was on the Black Sea coast to spend his
vacation, together with his family. When he
heard that the war broke out, he immediately
returned to Transylvania to keep his oath of
allegiance to the Emperor (Puscariu 1978).
Those who opposed the war would have to break
that oath of allegiance. That personal relation
with the Emperor was mocked in a folk joke
attested in Transylvania in the '30s: In the
Austro-Hungarian monarchy, a Gypsy was
conscripted. When the soldiers made the oath of
allegiance to the Emperor, the Gypsy repeated
the words together with the others, but when he
had to say that he would go through fire and
water for his Majesty, he stopped and says:
Goddammit! In the water I'll go not! (Stroescu
1969, 1699-1700).
There are few signs in the writings of
peasants of patriotism, in the modern sense of
this word, that of a national loyalty. The
Romanian peasants who were fighting for
Austria-Hungary during World War I seemed to
have not such moral dilemmas as the Romanian
intellectual Apostol Bologa, a character in Liviu
Rebreanu's novel Pdurea spzurailor [Forest
of the Hanged]. Rebreanu thought that every
Romanian who fought in the Austro-Hungarian
army had this psychological conflict, when the
loyalty to Austria-Hungary opposed to his
Romanian nation.
The irony of the ordinary Romanian folk
from Austria-Hungary speaking of patriotism, a
situation you can meet in almost all the
collection of folk songs from the war from
Transylvania, published in Romania after 1919,

(113)Vasile Tomu, Alt vers, v. 1052-1069 (Briloiu

1944, 80).
(114)Alexa is referring to the assassination of the
empress Sissi in 1898 by an Italian anarchist, whom
he mistakenly takes for a Serbian. This may be the
result of the anti-Serbian propaganda after the
assassination of archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914.
(115)Cetin mndr de brad/ ine-l Doamne pemprat/ C el n-a fost vinovat./ Trandafir cu floare-n
vrf/ Pe al nost Francisc Iosif/ De optzeci de ani
trecut/ i la btaie n-au vrut./ Srbia ar pgn/ l

mpuse la inim./ Cu cuit o spintecase/ i pe prinul

Perdinand/ Cu bombele l-au gtat/ Pe Ferdinand i
soie/ Ca s nceap btlie./ Doamne ajut-i s
ptrung/ Pizmaii s nu-i nving. (Karnoouh, 2014,
88-90, 35c, v. 1-17). We find the same idea, that the
Emperor's subjects were forced to go to war because
they were deeply offended by the assassination of
Franz Ferdinand in another song: De lng Dunre,
v. 1-8 (Cioloca 1915, 24-25).

277

families back home (120). They asked their

families back home to pray so that the ones who
fought on the front make it alive (121). Their
beloved (122), their parents or the entire family
should go to church on Sunday and pray,
together with all the priests from the village
(123), so that they would defeat their enemies
(124) or that the enemy will flee (125). Sometimes
they asked those that remained home to pray,
together with them, so that the emperors made
peace (126).
Invariably, all peasants who were
leaving for the front were praying not to be shot
and return home (127); they were praying, of
course, before the battle began (128). And they
were convinced that they won the battle because
God was on their side (129). When they
remembered the perils they been through, they
thought that were still alive only because God
protected them and thanked him for that (130).
When they were wounded, they prayed to God
so that He would heal their wounds (131). When
they were taken prisoners, they prayed to
survive the captivity and return safe home
(Karnoouh 2014, 86, 34f, v. 18-23).
Sometimes, their religiosity reminds us
of the Middle Ages: some peasants were amazed

is mocked in a joke that circulated in

Transylvania during the '30s. Two friends, Lic
and Nicolae were doing their military service in
the same company. At the theoretical
preparatory training, the sergeant asked Lic
what was the fatherland. He answered that it is
his mother. Happy with that answer, the sergeant
asked Nicolae the same question. He honestly
replied: it's Lic's mother! (Stroescu 1969,
1669).
A deep religious feeling echoes from all
types of peasants' writings: songs, letters, and
diaries. Sayings like Thank you God, God
bless you, God help you all are very often
used. Even when he blamed the deceased
Emperor for the death of so many men, Vasile
Tomu did not forget to add in the end the
Christian saying: May God forgive your sins.
As a true religious peasant, Tomu
thought that God sent this war to punish
mankind for its sins (116). Many others thought
as he did (117), inclusive peasants from the Old
Kingdom (118). Neculae Clonea from Fgra
thought that God has punished mankind for the
sin of pride (Jiga Iliescu et al. 2005, 64-65).
Some asked God what they did wrong, that He
punished them so fiercely (119).
Many of the verses written by peasants
are in fact prayers. When they were leaving,
they prayed that God would protect their

(120)Mobilizarea 1916 (Cerbulescu 1924, 7).

(121)Karnoouh, 2014, 59, 22, v. 1-6.
Alt vers, v. 1086-1091 (Briloiu 1944, 80).
Cntece de vitejie 19--, no. 1, 2.
i fug Muscalii ipnd..., v. 7-10 (Cioloca
1915, 34).
(122)Vino puic de m vezi (Cerbulescu 1924, 25).
(123)n luptele din Galiia, v. 102-105 (Cioloca 1916,
80).
(124)Versul tunarilor de cetate, v. 35-38 (Cioloca
1915, 54).
(125)Vasile Tomu, Versul de la mobilizare, v. 76-80
(Briloiu 1944, 71).
(126)Din prinsoare de la Srb, v. 59-67 (Cioloca
1916, 47). n luptele din Galiia, v. 33-36, 80-88
(Ibidem, 79-80).
(127)Karnoouh 2014, 44, 13b, v. 1-5.
De lng Dunre, v. 18-21 (Cioloca 1915,
25). S triasc ara mea!, v. 55-58 (Ibidem, 43).
Vitejeti din Galiia, v. 26-37 (Ibidem, 62-63)
(128)Trmbia cnd a sunat (Cerbulescu 1924, 11-12).
Dincolo de Stanislau, 26-27 (Cioloca 1915,
20).
(129)Lupta de la Rohatin, v. 27-30 (Cioloca 1915, 56).
Vitejeti din Galiia, v. 52-54 (ibidem, 64).
(130)Briloiu, 1944, v. 319-324, 349-356, 441-442.
Una sut ease sprezece (Cerbulescu 1924,
17-18).
Dincolo de Stanislau, v. 34-35 (Cioloca
1915, 20). De la Dukla, v. 58-66 (Ibidem, 73).
(131)Cucule nu mai cnta (Cerbulescu 1924, 13-14).

(116)C de mult am auzit/ Cum avem de rspltit.

Greelile celi fcute/ Din vremile din nainte, Alt
vers, v. 746-749 (Briloiu 1944, 77).
(117)Dumnezeu ne-a pedepsit/ Cu acest rzboi
cumplit and Pentru pcatele noastre/ S-a fcut atta
moartea (Giuglea 1918, 10).
Din Orova, v. 7-18 (Cioloca 1915, 16-17).
A peasant from form Bucovina says: i
cte aceste toate/ Sunt pentru a noastre fapte,/ Fapte
grele, de ruine,/ Cte le-am fcut pe lume, by Lazar
al lui Vasile Dragoman, from Uideti (Ivanovici &
Morariu 1916, 80).
A girl from Poiana Sibiului: Dup ale
noastre fapte,/ Dumnezeu acum ne bate., Versul
clopotelor (Dobrot 1917, 56).
...O cerescule-mprate,/ C pentru a noastre
fapte,/ Te-ai mniat cu dreptate. This time, there is
also a promise not to sin any more: Dar te rugm,
Doamne sfinte,/ S-i aduci de noi aminte...,/ S nu
pierim toi din lume,/ C-om face i fapte bune,/ Ba i
toi bine om face,/ Numa fie-n lume pace. (Nicoar
& Netea 1936, 298, 320).
(118)A peasant from Arge: Dumnezeu e mnios,/
Faa de la noi i-a-ntors./ C noi suntem pctoi:/
Dumnezeu s-a mniat,/ Mila de la noi i-a luat.
(Grai i suflet VI, p. 7).
(119)Jelania recrutului (Cioloca 1916, 43-44).
Jiga Iliescu et al. 2005, 148-151.

278

native village (138). The peasants used a reversed

version of the traditional funeral ritual in their
writings to describe their deaths on the
battlefield: every object and character from the
traditional ritual was replaced with an element
from their daily military life (139).
Even when they thought that by doing
their duty to the Emperor they could rightly ask
for more rights, the peasants invoked the divine
justice to guarantee their rights (140). Even in the
army, an institution of the modern state, it was
clear that for the peasants, the supreme moral
and legal instance was the religious one. Paul
Alexa remembered that after he was conscripted,
the first thing the major did was to remind them
not to broke their oath of allegiance to the
Emperor because, if they would do so, it would
be a sin and they would go to hell (Karnoouh
2014, 42, 11, v 7-10).
Religious texts were used ritually by the
peasants, sometimes, even if they didn't know to
read and write. Associated with the divinity or
divine things, those texts were thought to have
thaumaturgic powers. And by copying or having
with them those texts, the peasants thought they
could have access to the divine things and thus
would be protected and be kept safe from harm.
That was the case of the corporal Romulus
Aroneasa from Reti, Braov county, who

that they have to fight on Sunday or on holy

days (Karnoouh 2014, 54, 17c, v. 3-4). After a
period spent in captivity, Paul Alexa came to
work, together with others peasants from
Maramure, on the domain of a Russian
nobleman. He treated them well, gave them
food, which they hadn't had in the past days. The
next day, he gave them work to do, but they
refused to do it, because it was Sunday. He tried
to explain them that they have to work because
they have no other way: they were prisoners of
war in a foreign country. Finally, the Romanian
peasants agreed to work, but only for that time,
saying that they would never again work on
Sundays. And they never did (Karnoouh 2014,
106). If they could not fulfill the religious rituals
on Eastern (132), Christmas or New Years Eve
(133), the Romanian peasants were devastated.
The families from home were asked to
give alms for the souls of the soldiers who had
died on the battlefield (134). The deepest fear of
the Romanian peasants was that they would die
among strangers, and nobody would fulfill for
them the funeral ritual (135). The formulas of the
dirge used are those we know from Mioria,
adapted to present circumstances (136). They
lamented that there was no one to sing them the
dirge (137). A peasant rote from the Italian front
to his mother, asking her that, if for 30 days she
would not receive any letter from him, she
should fulfill the funeral rite for him in his

(138)De pe frontul italian (Cioloca 1916, 32-34).

(139)La ctan aa i dat/ S moar moarte-mpucat/
La ctan aa i scris/ S moar moarte ucis/ La
ctan aa i bun/ S moar fr lumin/ Fr lumin
de su/ Fr un om din satul su/ Dar popa cine i-a
fi?/ Gornitii i tamburii/ Clopotele-s tunurile/ De
rsun dealurile/ i n loc de dascl sfnt/
Croncneau doi corbi n vnt/ n loc de diac cu carte/
Dobaul cu doba bate/ Pcatele li-s iertate.
(Karnoouh 2014, 55, 18, v. 20-34).
n loc s trag clopotele,/ bubuiesc
tunurile,/ De rsun dealurile,/ i nu plnge
nimenea,/ Dect frunza i iarba., Foaie verde, foaie
rupt (Cernea 1940, 7).
(140)ndur-te Doamne sfinte/ Ad-i i de noi
aminte/ i sfrete acest povoi/ De ru c-a dat ntre
noi/ i s ne dai Doamne sfnt/ Dup sngele vrsat/
Dup jertfele ce-om dat/ Pentru ar pentru tine/ i
neamului nost-un bine. Here the word ar means
Maramure, and the word neam means the
Romanians, i.e. the peasants (Karnoouh 2014, 34, 7h,
v. 1-9). See also Ibidem, 32, 7f, v. 1-8.
The same idea is presented in these verses:
Haidei Romni doi cu doi,/ S ne scpm de nevoi,/
i s ne scpm ara,/ C doar' drepturi ne-or da,/ C
noi drepturi nu avem,/ i pentru ele luptm./ Luptm
pentru mprat,/ S ne dea drepturi la sat/ (...)
Doamne f-ne Tu dreptate,/ Pe dumani pe toi i
bate:/ F romnilor dreptate!... (Dor i jele 1915).

(132)Vasile Tomu, Alt vers din ziua nvierii, v. 357390 (Briloiu 1944, 74).
(133)Dragii mei de cetitori/ i sfintele srbtori/ Tot
aa le-am petrecut/ Nice una n'am inut/ Tot de lucru
am avut./ Cnd crciunul a venit/ Mare tin am avut,/
Cnd slujba era mai mare,/ Nici nu gndiam la
rugare,/ Eram cu lopata 'n mn/ i ipam la ast
tin/ Dar mncare-or mai bun/ Nici de vorb nu-i
de glum./ Apoi i pe anul nou/ Am lucrat ca i un
bou./ Dumnezeu Sfntul a dat/ Acum a nins n'a
plouat,/ Vntul mare de-aicea/ Laufgramul ni-l
astupa,/ Tot de lucru am avut/ Pn sear s'a fcut,/
Apoi sfnta Boboteaz,/ Fiind tot aici de fa/ Tot
lucrm i punem post/ Hodin nici cnd n'a fost./
Iac'a aa au fost cinstite/ Serbtorile dorite,/ Fr leac
de rugciune;/ Domnul deie iertciune;/ Cu drag noi
ne-am fi rugat/ Dar nu am apucat,/ C Rusul nu ne
d pace/ S petrecem cum ne place., Aurel Gin,
Viers romnesc de pe pmnt rusesc, v. 5-37 (Gin
1917, 8-10).
(134)Vasile Tomu, Alt vers, v. 1092-1095 (Briloiu
1944, 80).
(135)Sraca inima noastr (Cerbulescu 1924, 23).
Plumbul e blestemat (Savel 1925, 26-28).
(136)n vrful nucului (Cerbulescu 1924, 15).
(137)Briloiu,1944, v. 63-76, 100-104, 1100-1123.
Karnoouh, 2014, 42, 12, v. 1-21.

279

always had with him on the front the Letter of

Jesus Christ, a text very popular among
peasants, also known as the Legend of Sunday
(Jiga Iliescu et al. 2005, 10, 79-83).
It is crucial to acknowledge that in the
experience of contemporaries, there was a
multiplicity of wars. For instance, in the
Romanian historiography after 1919, the First
World War was seen as a purposeful event,
producing the Great Unification of the state. By
contrast, peasant memory of the Great War
focused more on senseless sacrifice. When we
find in the peasants' writings deeds of bravery
and patriotic discourses, they are the effect of
official nationalistic propaganda or they were
simply added by collectors and publishers to
prove that courage and patriotism were innate
qualities of the Romanian peasants. Romanian
historiography after 1919 has pointed out that
the enthusiasm for war was strong among the
middle class and elites, students, and in urban
centers, but in rural areas there were more sober
reactions and worried anticipation. The peasants
were not so eager to plunge into mutual
slaughter as the official propaganda presented
them to be. With an archaic and deeply religious
civilization, the Romanian peasants from
Austria-Hungary and Romanian had difficulties
in understanding that new kind of technological
war, its causes and its future effects. They could
hardly find a purpose to fight for and wished
that the war would end as soon as possible.

luptele glorioase de la Tisa

(1919) [Songs of Bravery
about the Glorious Fights
from Tisa (1919)], (Din
colecia de folklor Gh.
Cernea), s.n., 19--.
Cerbulescu 1924 Cerbulescu, N., Cntece din
rsboi culese pe front [Songs
from War Collected on
Front], Sibiu, Tip. coalei
Militare
Inf.
Principele
Carol, 1924.
Cernea, Gheorghe, Doine de
Cernea 1940
Rzboiu (1914-1919) din
regiunea Cohalmului, jud.
Trnava-Mare [Folk Lyrical
Poems about War (19141919) from Cohalm Region,
Tarnava-Mare county], culese
de..., ed. a VII-a, Tipografia
Steanului, Sibiu, 1940.
Cioloca, Dimitrie, Cntece
Cioloca 1915
din rzboi [Songs from War],
adunate de..., Vol. I Vitejeti,
Caransebe, Tiparul Tipograf.
Diecezane, 1915.
Cioloca, Dimitrie, Cntece
Cioloca 1916
din rzboi [Songs from War],
adunate de..., Vol. II Dor i
jale, Caransebe, Tiparul
Tipograf. Diecezane, 1916.
Cristea, Andreiu, Din zilele
Cristea 1918
mele. Poezii din resbel de... i
Viersul
soldatului
la
desprire
de
locurile
cunoscute i altele [From My
Days. Poems from War by...
and Line of the Soldier at His
Departure from His Known
Places and More], Braov,
1918.
Dobrot,
Eugeniu,
Dobrot 1917
Lcrmioare... Cntece de
rzboiu culese dela fetele din
Poiana Sibiului [Tears...
Songs of War Collected from
the Girls from Poiana
Sibiului], Arad, Tipografia
Concordia, 1917.
Dor i jele 1915 Dor i jele. Cntece din
rzboiu (1914-1915) [Longing
and Grief. Songs from War
(1914-1915)]. Cu o prefa de
Dr. Ioan Urban Jarnik, Editura
Tipografiei Carmen, Petre P.
Bariiu, Cluj, 1915.
Dorul. Coleciunea celor mai
Dorul 1919
19--

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282

Death as a Political Instrument

Introducing the Bolshevik and Hungarian Death as Death of
Otherness
Laura COLTOFEAN
PhD Student, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu
Brukenthal National Museum
E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract. The purpose of this paper is to examine Death from the perspective of diverse news, as
reflected in the Romanian newspapers of Sibiu during 1918-1923. This period, which spans between the
end of World War I, the Union of 1918 and the adoption of the 1923 Constitution, with the works of the
Paris Peace Conference (1919-1920) in-between, is critical, tense and troubled both externally and
internally, creating the perfect scene for an aggressive propaganda which transforms Death into a political
instrument.
Keywords: death, political instrument, Bolshevism, otherness
decadence, dissipation, hunger and humiliation,
therefore into a space of sin and death. Food was
inaccessible, the streets were covered with
corpses of people starved to death and the city
was empty and dark (Renaterea Romn,
5/1919, Agonia Petrogradului, 4). This is the
way newspapers generally presented the
consequences of Bolshevism in Russia, giving a
warning to the world about the danger it
represents.
Bolshevism was considered to be the
new social gangrene; it was compared to an
epidemic which spreads rapidly, gradually
infecting all cities and countries, no matter their
level of development, subjecting them to misery
and finally destruction (Renaterea Romn,
5/1919, Noua cangren social. Bolevism,
Spartacism, Catilinarii, 1). The news articles
used the example of prosperous, developed
countries, such as Germany, which was
confronted with a revolution that involved
socialist ideas, in order to suggest that
Bolshevism was an unstoppable world threat,
that can affect even the powerful countries:
Destruction, regress and external discredit
these are the effects of Bolshevism in the
Peoples Republic of Germany, although the
percentage of illiterate people in this country is
as low as the percentage of literate people in
Russia. There is no hope of curing this disease
that affects todays social organism, and we
continue to watch the hideous spectacle of
famine and misery that they [Bolsheviks] have
caused and amplified by their system of
persuading people (Renaterea Romn,
5/1919, Noua cangren social, 1).

The aspects presented in this paper are

based on the research of four Romanian
newspapers which appeared in Sibiu during
1918-1923 (1): Renaterea Romn, Cuvntul
Poporului, Gazeta Poporului and Lumina
Satelor. In most cases, the news articles that
were of interest for this research could be found
within columns dedicated to diverse news, such
as
tirile sptmnei [News of the week],
Cronica sptmnii [Chronicle of the week],
Informaiuni [Information] and other. Also,
these articles describe homicides, suicides,
deaths caused by accidents, epidemics, natural
disasters, as well as war and all sorts of
conflicts.
The analysed press reflects a strong antiBolshevik and anti-Hungarian discourse, which
is dominated by the idea of an elaborately
portrayed violent, unnatural death. Readers are
made to believe that Bolsheviks and Hungarians
represent an imminent threat which always
results in destruction, suffering, agony and,
finally, in a particularly violent death. Therefore,
Death becomes an attribute of alterity, of
otherness.
Starting with 1917, the newspapers
announce the fall of the capital of the Russian
Empire, Petrograd (todays Sankt Petersburg),
under Bolshevik occupation. Overthrowing the
old social order, the Bolsheviks transform the
previously glorious Petrograd into a space of
(1) In the future, the research will be completed with
the Hungarian and German newspapers that appeared
in Sibiu in the same period, as well as with other
Romanian newspapers.

283

Therefore, Bolshevism represented an

imminent threat to the existence of a newly
created and instable state such as Greater
Romania, which is the reason why, according to
the press, any mean of defending the country
from this microbe of destruction as they
called it - was justified: If Bolshevism has
caused such a disaster in more mature states,
with a more homogenous population, we cannot
even imagine its consequences in a newly
formed country, without solid foundations,
whose existence was ensured by the goodwill of
its allies who bled for the true freedom of
everyone, (), a country which had enemies
inside before even being born. This is why we
fight and will fight with our last energy against
the infection of Greater Romania with this
dangerous social gangrene, this is why we
believe that harsh measures are needed in order
to stop the importation of this microbe of
destruction (Renaterea Romn, 5/1919,
Noua cangren...,p. 1).
Moreover, newspapers offered terrifying
details concerning Bolshevik horrors and the life
of ordinary Russians: The famine in Russia
haunts with fury. Millions of people are starving
or, better said, die of starvation. Initially, it was
thought that the news about mothers killing their
children were lies, but now even the official
Bolshevik newspapers write about places where
human meat was eaten. People have long eaten
their dogs, cats as well as any living being.
There are many places where the dead were not
buried, but eaten (Lumina Satelor, 8/1922, p.
2); The saddest consequence of famine is the
great number of orphans and abandoned children
who can be seen on the streets. It is terrible to
see their haggard and pale faces. In Marxstadt
we visited an asylum with 100 beds for children;
42 children died within 24 hours, being
immediately replaced with others Together
with Nansen, we went to the Sahara district,
where the situation is worse than in Saravindov.
In the surrounding villages we saw people who
finished their provisions, and were now laying
on the ground, waiting for death to come. () In
a village, only 325 horses out of 1400 are alive,
and they will soon die. In Buzuluc we saw
terrible life conditions. Out of 35000 inhabitants,
100 die on a daily basis, therefore the city will
soon be empty. Each day we find corpses laying
on the ground. We saw a pile of 60-70 corpses
thrown at the cemetery entrance. () A
telegram sent by Nansen from Buzuluc
announced that the starving population has eaten
the cats and dogs, and started stripping corpses
that are stolen during nights from stables, where

they are placed before burial. A father took his

children to the . because he could not feed
them anymore. He was told that the children
cannot be received, because they are not
orphans. <<Well, they will be>> the father
replied, and then committed suicide (Cuvntul
Poporului 13/1922, Grozviile foametei din
Rusia, 2).
The previous quotes describe the famine
of 1921-1922 (2), which was considered to be
one of the most devastating consequences of
Bolshevism. News articles describe that corpses
were omnipresent and, in desperation, after
finishing the food supplies, Russians started
eating their animals, as well as performing acts
of cannibalism and necrophagy. In other cases,
people simply gave up and chose to wait for
Death which, in this context, becomes a rescuer,
liberating people from physical and mental
suffering.
Thus, newspapers suggest the fact that
Bolshevism leads to the humiliation, perversion,
degradation and even demonization of human
beings. Human and family relationships, along
with Christian beliefs, values and practices lose
their significance, being defeated by the
physiological needs of people, required for
survival. Therefore, the message that the press
transmits is that under Bolshevism, humans
become animals, savages.
In order to sensitize and impress the
public, the news articles very often with include
characters that bear a strong emotional load,
such as the mother and child, the orphan child,
who are placed in terrifying contexts. The image
of a mother killing her children and performing
acts of cannibalism on them, as presented in one
of the previous quotations, definitely had a
strong impact on readers, strengthening their
convictions regarding the cruelty of Bolshevism.
Religion represented one of Lenins
favourite targets, because of the place it held in
the Russians conception of state and popular
culture. Therefore, the desired new social and
political consciousness, based on the partys
ideology, could only be formed by suppressing
the Church (Carrred 'Encausse 2013, 212).
Discussing about Russias electrification, Lenin
(Curtois et al. 1999, 124) stated that electricity
will replace God. The peasants should pray to it;
in any case they will feel its effects long before
they feel any effect from on high. In 1918, the
Bolshevik government announced the separation
of Church from state and schools, the
(2)For more information, see, for example, Curtois et
al. 1999, 108-131.

284

nationalization of Church properties, and

proclaimed the freedom of conscience and
worship. This also represented the beginning of
the clergys repression and a series of
antireligious acts (Curtois et al. 1999, 124). The
press exploits and emphasizes the Bolsheviks
provocative, antireligious attitude, transforming
it into an instrument of propaganda which, of
course, was effective among a deeply Orthodox,
dogmatic
and
superstitious
Romanian
population. Therefore, Bolsheviks are presented
as insulting Christian rules, carving new idols,
erecting a statue of Judas, the traitor of God
(see Cuvntul Poporului, 7/1919, Cronica
sptmnii, 4), and even mocking the dead (see
Lumina Satelor, 24/1922, tirile sptmnei,
4).
The threat of alterity becomes more
intense when two enemies an external one,
the Bolshevik, and an internal one, the
Hungarian associate for the same purpose.
More exactly, the studied press writes about the
existence of a Hungarian-Russian conspiracy
(on the background of the newly formed
Hungarian Soviet Republic led by Bla Kun),
which had the purpose of hindering the
existence of Greater Romania, as well as
destroying the unity and spiritual purity of
Romanians: Hungary risks everything, because
it does not have much to risk and has everything
to win. They tolerate bolshevism only to infect
us and disturb our efforts to build the solid
foundations of the new building [meaning
Greater Romania], in order to mischievously
push us into the precipice and then ask
permission from Europe to temper us and reestablish order. Hungarians tolerate the presence
of Russian Bolshevik agents on their territory,
facilitating their travel to Romanian lands and
supporting every action with their own agents, in
order to prove the world that we are not civilized
enough to take care of other co-inhabiting
people (Renaterea Romn, 6/1919, De ce nu
suprim maghiarii bolevismul, 1). This
fragment reveals another important hypostasis of
the Other the conspirator (3) (Boia 2013, 65).
In this context, Hungarians and Russians were
suspected for planning and organizing attacks
which threaten the safety of Romanians and
considered to be guilty of any incident.

Lucian Leutean (2002, 60; 31) is of the

opinion that the conflicts between Romanians
and Hungarians became more intense after the
Union of 1918, especially in the areas that were
not under the control of the Romanian army yet,
where the Hungarians repressions of
Romanians seem to have been more frequent. As
a result of these conflicts, the Supreme Council
of the Paris Peace Conference established a
neutral area between the two parts, which
included important urban and communication
centres, such as Arad, Oradea and Satu Mare.
Because of to the insufficient number of allied
troops in this area, at the insistence of the French
General Headquarters, the Supreme Council
made a compromise, through which it forbid the
military occupation of the area, but allowed the
Romanian army and the population to use the
previously mentioned cities, excepting Arad, for
economic purposes. Later, this demarcation line
proved to be very similar to the RomanianHungarian frontier established at Trianon
(Leutean 2002, 61-64).
According to the press, the methods
through which Hungarians attempted to prevent
the unification of Transylvania with the
Romanian Kingdom were diverse, all having the
purpose of maintaining a permanent state of
anxiety, conflict and uncertainty, in order to
intimidate both population and authorities. The
studied newspapers, especially Renaterea
Romn, are rich in news articles that describe
the atrocities committed by the Hungarian troops
and the so called Szkely bands. These articles
very often outnumber the ones concerning
Bolsheviks, which can be explained by the fact
that the Other inside the Fortress in this case,
the Hungarians and Szkelys, causes more fears
and concerns than the Other outside the Fortress
(Boia 2010, 333), like Russians: The Hungarian
troops and bands from Arad continue to terrorize
the Romanian population. () they capture the
Romanian priests and peasants, they beat and
rob them. Those who were captured did not
return home anymore. () Wherever they go,
these bands spread Bolshevik pamphlets, in
order to poison the Romanian peasants soul.
() According to the latest news from Bihor,
the Hungarian troops have occupied the entire
area inhabited by Romanians. The villages of
Ceica, Rogos, Beiu and Vescauare in the hands
of the Szkely bands and Red Guards. The
village of Hlmaj is full of refugees from
BihorCounty. The forests are full of miserable
Romanians, chased by the Szkely bands which
organize people and children hunts (Renaterea
Romn, 15/1919, Ungurii terorizeaz Aradul

(3) For more examples, see Renaterea Romn,

18/1919, Durerile facerii, 1; Renaterea Romn,
6/1919, Apucturi boleviste. Un atentat nereuit, 1;
Renaterea Romn, 8/1919, Romnii din America
i unirea cu Ardealul, 2.

285

i Bihorul..., 1); Armed Szkely bands, led by

Hungarian officers, morally and financially
supported by the Hungarian government, attack
the Romanian villages that cannot enjoy the
protection of the Romanian army yet.
Hungarians are armed with guns, machine guns,
cannons, and bomb villages without any reason.
They rob the villages, causing damages of
thousands of crowns, as well as beat, mutilate
and barbarically kill the peaceful and innocent
Romanian population. The reason behind these
acts is a savage revenge for the Romanians
liberation, as well as the desire to spread terror
among the kind and orderly Romanian
population. The Romanians, children and men,
elder and women who have known the
Hungarians Asian fury for one thousand years,
leave their homes and wealth, and shelter in the
woods. () In iria, 10 drunken Hungarians,
armed with grenades, have beaten several young
men. () During night, they entered the house
of inspector Nicolae Popescu, with the purpose
of murdering him. As he was not at home, they
pricked one his brothers-in-law with a bayonet
and threatened with death the entire family. The
family was saved from death by a French
officer. () The Hungarians robbed the village
of Bologa (Cojocna County). The damages
reach 600.000 crowns. In the same village, the
Szkely bands dastardly killed Dumitru Baciu,
the 57 year old Teodor Petra, who was 10 times
pricked with the bayonet and 2 times shot in the
head, the wife of Ioan Barza, young Gavril
Giurgiu and others. Several others were injured
and beaten until death (Renaterea Romn,
23/1919, Atrocitile comise de maghiari..., 2).
As in the previous quotes, the news
articles describing such cases are rich in details
and exact numbers, in order increase the
reliability of the presented facts. Also, they
emphasize the aggressiveness of the Other.
Therefore, Hungarians are described as being
violent, barbaric, savage and primitive, as well
as alcoholic criminals (alcohol being a mark of
moral depravity), who organize people and
children hunts and are merciless concerning
their victims, who belong to all age and social
categories. Just as Bolsheviks, Hungarians are
presented as bringing misery, hunger and violent
death. They steal, beat, torture and kill.
Similarly, the Hungarian threat is imminent and
spreads rapidly, with a daily increasing number
of attacks.
According to the newspapers, these
barbaric acts are committed as vengeance for the
Romanians desire for freedom, emancipation,
liberation from Hungarian domination, as well

as for the union of Transylvania, previously a

Hungarian territory, with the Romanian
Kingdom. Another reason invoked for these
atrocities is the Hungarians envy of the
Romanians solidarity and outstanding moral
traits, such as integrity, moral and spiritual
purity, which were to be destroyed through
terror, poisoned with Bolshevik propaganda
materials.
One of the previous quotes contains a
particularly important syntagma Asian fury,
which explains the Hungarians violent
behaviour with their Asian origins. Analysing a
similar construction they are still the ones
who came from Mongolia in the context of
the Revolutions of 1848, Sorin Mitu (2006, 235236) observes that the Hungarians barbarism
was explained by the fact that they are
outsiders and not Europeans, as Romanians.
Back then, a nation was considered to be
European based on a certain political behaviour
which involved respect for democratic values,
human rights, freedom and equality, as well as
based on its origins. Therefore, concludes Sorin
Mitu, Hungarians were not considered real
Europeans, because of their barbaric political
attitude, seen as a result of their Asian origins.
On the other hand, Romanians considered
themselves Europeans, due to their historical
origins and the respect for the values that are
specific to the European spirit. The researched
news articles reveal the fact that the stereotypes
used for explaining Hungarians behaviour
survived.
The murder of second lieutenant George
Tomas, presented in the Renaterea Romn
newspaper (23/1919, Ucigai i profanatori de
mori...,1), is a very good example of how the
news about Hungarian atrocities were generally
constructed and distorted, in order to serve the
propagandistic purposes and have an effective
impact on the public. The first part of the article
introduces the reader in the general context of
the murder, containing essential information
about the identity of the murderers, time and
scene of the crime, as well as the way it was
produced: Second lieutenant George Tomas,
from Poeni, was leaving his village when he was
captured by the Hungarian bands that took him
to the railway station in Kissebes. Here he was
hold in the presence of Hungarian officers until
nightfall, and then he was subjected to savage
torments until he surrendered and asked to be
killed. He was shot without being allowed to
pray before dying! Then he was robbed of all his
possessions: 800 crowns, a gold watch, his boots
and leggings (Renaterea Romn, 23/1919,
286

Ucigai i profanatori de mori ..., 1). The key

idea of this introductory fragment is that the
victim was tortured until he asked to be killed.
However, the most important message is the fact
that the victim was not allowed to pray before
death, which suggests the cruelty, the antiChristian attitude of the enemy, of the Other.
The second part of the article contains
further details regarding the state in which the
corpse was found and the weapons of crime,
which allow the reader the mentally reconstruct
and even feel the torture that the victim
subjected to. Moreover, this information is
presented by the victims father, in order to
increase the verisimilitude and intensify the
drama of the situation. The anti-Christian
attitude of the Other is emphasized again the
family is not allowed to bewail, nor to bury the
young man. Also, the murder is presented as a
revenge of the Hungarian authorities for the
Union of 1918: Next day, early in the morning,
declares the victims miserable father, I found
my son nest to the railway, 20 m from the
station in Poeni. He was buried until his waist;
the upper part of his body was bended, reaching
the ground with his forehead. He was covered
with hay, dry wood and garbage. After I dug
him out, I saw, together with witnesses, that he
had 7 shots in his chest, abdomen and at least 20
bayonet stings on his entire body. It was
clearly visible that my son, who died after the
first shots, was profaned in the most barbaric
way. We were not allowed to cry and bury him
in a Christian way, being constantly threatened
with death. We went to complain to the officer
who commanded this troop of savages. He
didnt even allow us to speak, threatening us
with death and shouting as loud as he could:
<<If you still want Greater Romania, all of you
will be killed>>. Not even the hardest words
could accuse better and prove the need of the
Romanian armys presence in all the Romanian
territories (Renaterea Romn, 23/1919,
Ucigai i profanatori de mori ..., 1).
The strong anti-Bolshevik and antiHungarian discourse of the researched press
seems to follow a set pattern (especially of
violent acts), which could be well described by
concepts such as Bolshevik Death, which is
preceded by a Bolshevik danger, as well as
Hungarian Death, which is preceded by a
Hungarian danger, and is strongly connected to
the Bolshevik Death.
The Bolshevik danger and Death spread
over vast geographical areas, representing a
world threat, with thousands of victims. On the
other hand, the Hungarian danger and Death are

rather a local or, more precisely, a regional,

Central-European threat, for people such as
Romanians, Serbians, Slovaks, and other, who
gained territories after the collapse of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. Very often, the
newspapers present the joint attack of Hungarian
and Bolshevik troops on the Romanian
population. Therefore, the Hungarian Death
represents a double threat, due to the association
of two enemies an external one, the Bolshevik,
and an internal one, the Hungarian who have
the same purpose: to prevent the existence of
Greater Romania, as well to destroy the unity of
Romanians, by attacking their faith, integrity,
moral and spiritual purity.
The Bolshevik and Hungarian Death are
violent, unnatural deaths, which cannot be
included in the category of homicides, because
they are the consequences of political decisions
and games (Mims 2006, 25). The Bolshevik
Death can be immediate, when it is the result of
shooting, hanging, mutilation etc., and slow,
when it is preceded by agony, as in the case of
famine. The Hungarian Death is, in most of the
cases, immediate, being produced through the
same means as its Bolshevik equivalent.
The news articles referring to Bolshevik
and Hungarian atrocities reveal the ethnoimages (4) of Hungarians and Russians in the
eyes of Romanians. The observation, study of
alterity leads to discovering ones own identity.
Very often, the self-image, which is a mark of a
nations identity, is created through comparisons
with the image of the Other, through
emphasizing the differences from the Other. The
existence of these enemies is necessary in the
process of building the identity of a nation
(Grancea 2002, 31-32).
An ethnic image is correctly understood
if placed in the historical context that generated
it, in order to observe and analyse its ideological
function, as well as its role in the social
imaginary of the community that created and
shares it (Mitu 2006, 231). After World War I
and the Union of 1918, Romanians found
themselves in a process of defining their own
identity, in a troubled period with high
expectations, when, in order to maintain the
newly gained territories, along with finalizing
the legislative, administrative and economic
unification of the provinces, solidarity and unity
was needed. Therefore, the anti-Bolshevik and
(4)Mihaela Grancea (2002, 42) defines the ethnoimages as a corpus of stereotypes and clichs
concerning the Other, with long lasting homogenous
and static features.

287

anti-Hungarian propaganda led in the analysed

period by the press from Sibiu and, generally, by
the Romanian press, is actually a warning about
the danger that these enemies represent for the
survival and integrity of the Fortress, meaning
the newly born Greater Romania. Lucian Boia
(2010, 305) considers that the external and
internal pressure of strangers, real until a certain
point, but hyperbolized in the national
imaginary, generated the besieged Fortress
complex, which is a specific to the Romanian
mentality in the last two centuries. The history
of Romanians is seen as conflictual, as a
continuous struggle for ethnic and state survival.
Thus, the salvation of the Fortress depended on
solidarity, on the unity of Romanians against
Hungarians and Russians, who wanted to regain
their territorial losses.
Religion and superstition play a
significant role in the discourse of the analysed
press. The Other is presented as acting against
Christian values, beliefs and practices.
Therefore, the Other does not only threaten the
Fortress, but also Religion or, to be more
specific, Orthodoxy, which, for Romanians, was
a binding element, as in the case of Russian
people (Besanon 2013, 34). This aspect is of
particular importance, because Church and
Religion played an essential role in preserving
and affirming the Romanians national identity
(Sorotineanu 2005, 174).
In this context, Death is used as a
political instrument, a tool of propaganda, with a
double purpose. Firstly, in order to denigrate the
image of the Other, to amplify his negative
ethno-image, with the purpose of turning
Romanians against Hungarians and Russians.
Secondly, in order to maintain the population in
a permanent state of anxiety, uncertainty and
conflict. Thus, old clichs are perpetuated and
new ones are invented in order to create negative
ethno-images of Hungarians and Russians,
which could legitimate the decisions and actions
of the Romanian authorities and political
structures.

trecutul. Istoria ntre adevr

i ficiune [Playing with the
Past. History between Truth
and
Fiction],
Bucureti
Humanitas, 2013.
Carrre d'Encausse, Hlne,
Carrre
ruilor.
Eseu
d'Encausse Blestemul
despre asasinatul politic [The
2013
Curse of the Russians. Essay
on the Political Killing], Iai,
Polirom, 2000.
Curtois et Curtois, Stphan, Werth,
Nicholas, Pann, Jean-Louis,
al. 1999
Paczkowski,
Andrzej,
Bartosek, Karel, Margolin,
Jean-Louis, The Black Book
of Communism: Crimes,
Terror, Repression, Harvard
University Press, 1999.
Grancea, Mihaela, Cltori
Grancea
strini prin Principatele
2002
Dunrene, Transilvania i
Banat (1683-1789): Identitate
i
alteritate
[Foreign
Travellers
through
the
Danubian
Principalities,
Transylvania and Banat
(1683-1789): Identity and
Alterity],
Sibiu,
Editura
Universitii Lucian Blaga,
2002.
Leutean, Lucian, Romnia,
Leutean
Ungaria i Tratatul de la
2002
Trianon:
1918-1920
[Romania, Hungaria and
Trianon Treaty: 1918-1920],
Iai, Polirom, 2002.
Mims 2006 Mims, Cedric, Enciclopedia
morii [The Encyclopedia of
Death], Bucureti, Orizonturi,
2006.
Mitu 2006 Mitu, Sorin, Transilvania
mea. Istorii, mentaliti,
identiti [My Transylvania.
Histories,
Mentalities,
Identities], Iai, Polirom,
2006.

References
a. Books:
Besanon, Alain, Sfnta
Besanon
Rusie
[Saint
Russia],
2013
Bucureti, Humanitas, 2013.
Boia, Lucian, Istorie i mit n
Boia 2010
contiina
romneasc
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Romanian
Consciousness],
Bucureti, Humanitas, 2010.
Boia, Lucian, Jocul cu
Boia 2013

b. Chapters in books:
Valeria,
Sorotineanu Sorotineanu,
Religiozitate i atitudini n
2005
faa muririi la romnii
ortodoci din Transilvania.
Consideraii generale (18991916) [Religiosity and
Attitudes towards Dying of
the Orthodox Romanians in
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Transylvania (1899-1916)].
In:
Grancea,
Mihaela,
Reprezentri ale morii n
Transilvania secolelor XVIXX [Representations of Death
in
16th-20th
Century
Transylvania], Cluj-Napoca,
Casa Crii de tiin, 2005,
p. 174-197.
c. Newspapers:
***
Cuvntul
Poporului
[Peoples Word] (Slite):
1919-1923
***
Gazeta Poporului [Peoples
Paper] (Sibiu): 1918-1919
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Lumina Satelor [The Light of
the Villages] (Sibiu): 19221923
***
Renaterea
Romn
[Romanian Rebirth] (Sibiu):
1919-1920

289

Divergent Accounts of War: German Expressionist Painting and

British Official Photography
Cristiana BUDAC
Lecturer, Ph.D, West University of Timioara, Romania
E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract. Out of the Great War came a new generation of people who felt completely estranged
from the generation of their parents and grandparents. The gap between war propaganda and the reality of
living in the trenches was huge. Not even common language could be adequately used to describe the
horrors of war. Therefore, photography and painting remain a powerful medium when it comes to
communicate feelings and mindsets. This paper focuses on the artistic work of German Expressionist
painters Otto Dix and Max Beckmann as well as on the official war photography of Ernest Brooks. Their
different experiences on the battlefield show how art and life can be changed by patriotic fabrications
meant to hide the complete war folly.
Keywords: The Great War, Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, Ernest Brooks, painting, photography

In the summer of 1914, total war was

unimaginable. Reading the diary his mother kept
during that year, Christopher Isherwood notes
that it has the morbid fascination of a document
which records, without the dishonesty of
hindsight, the day by day approach to a
catastrophe by an utterly unsuspecting victim
(Fussell 2013, 45). As unsuspecting as his
mother were many other Europeans. Some
feared civil unrest in their own countries, as the
Irish did, others still believed in political
responsibility. And when the war broke out that
summer, the British still hoped it would be over
by Christmas. It was going to last four more
years and take more than eight million lives. By
November 1918 when Germany signed the
Armistice, World War I had cost the Central
Powers three and a half millions lives. The
Allies lost more than five million soldiers.
In his book, The Great War and
Modern Memory, American cultural historian
Paul Fussell bluntly describes the situation: In
the Great War eight million people were
destroyed because two persons, the Archduke
Francis Ferdinand and his Consort, had been
shot (Fussell 2013, 27). Romanian historian
Lucian Boia (Boia 2014) notices the apparent
unremarkable nature of the event. The Sarajevo
episode was not contrived by the Serbian
government. It was a terrorist operation.
Compared to other major crisis in Europe such
as the Balkan Wars a couple of years earlier it
did not look so bad. Even the German Emperor
favored a diplomatic solution. Yet, for the

Austro-Hungarian Empire the assassination was

an unparalleled offense. Serbia had been a
constant source of trouble for the proud
Habsburgs, stirring controversies at the borders.
Thus, it had to be taught a lesson. An empire
does not give in to small countries. The
Habsburgs were willing to start a war with
Serbia, but not a total one. At the time there had
been no precedent for a total war people could
remember, so there was no way of knowing
what it meant. Russia felt it should protect the
Slavs and the orthodox Serbs in the Balkans and
declared general mobilization. Soon afterwards
troops were mobilized in Austria. The Habsburg
order for general mobilization came only after
hearing the news from Moscow. Fearing a
possible attack on both eastern and western
fronts, Germany declared war to Russia and
France. But in order to gain access and control
over French territories Germany had to invade
Belgium. A domino effect ensued. The invasion
of Belgium triggered a response from Great
Britain who also entered the war. Then, two of
the former German allies, Italy and Romania
defected, both contemplating the possibility of
gaining Austrian territories (Romania entered
the war in 1916 for Bucovina and Transylvania).
Germany remained isolated. Blocked overseas
by the British fleet, it started a submarine war.
Fearing a submarine invasion the United States
of America entered the Great War in 1917 and
provided essential support for the Allies. In the
spring of 1918, having exhausted all its
resources and having lost an unparalleled
290

number of soldiers, Germany loses the battle to

France, Britain and the United States (Russia
being already defeated at the time). A bigger
humiliation would soon follow. The Treaty of
Versailles pointed out the culprits. Because
Austria-Hungary did no longer exist, Germany
took all the blame. Following the Versailles
sanctions it lost 13% of its territory and 10% of
its inhabitants. 132 billion gold marks were to be
paid as war debt, the German army was cut to
100.000 soldiers, its war fleet was to be
destroyed, and all colonies were lost (Boia 2014,
90).
The Great War changed the face of the
world forever. Empires disintegrated, new states
and nations emerged, borders were redesigned,
and Communism took over in Russia. Lucian
Boia believes that there was one event even
more intimately linked with World War I,
namely the rise of National-Socialism in
Germany: Without the Great War, there would
have been no place for Nazism in history (Boia
2014, 112). Having the second most powerful
economy in the world before 1914, Germany
plunged into a deep crisis in the 20s and 30s.
High unemployment rates, the humiliation of
defeat and what was perceived as an abusive
Treaty made some of the Germans sensitive to
Hitler`s delirious demagogy. If this was the only
way of restoring the economy and lost pride,
then so be it. Tony Judt also points out the cult
of violence and death to which the First World
War gave rise: What communist intellectuals
and their fascist counterparts had in common
after 1917 was a profound attraction to mortal
struggle and its beneficial social or aesthetic
outcomes. Fascist intellectuals in particular
made death at once the justification and the
attraction of war and civil violence: out of such
mayhem was to be born a better man and a
better world (Judt 2012, 102). We all know the
consequences.
This is the story of the Great War
everyone reads about. It speaks of facts and
events, causes and effects, battlefields, armies
and heroic action. This is what history books
recorded, some are more biased than others,
some are taught in school, and some elicit
controversies, not so much about facts, but about
the way facts can be interpreted. A new way of
looking at history should always be welcomed
because it enables further thinking and dialogue.
Yet, nowadays historical writing about the Great
War is based on books and accounts. It is not
firsthand experience. It cannot be. There are an
impressive number of history volumes on this
subject. For his own cultural history of the Great

War Paul Fussell draws on different books and

diaries written by former soldiers.
Australian art critic Robert Hughes also
once wrote: World War I changed the life of
words and images in art, radically and forever. It
brought our culture into the age of massproduced, industrialized death. This, at first, was
indescribable (Hughes 2009, 57). It was
indescribable because no one knew what total
war meant and everyone hoped it would not last
for long. Many people were convinced that
technology would be efficient, would spare time,
and bring rapid results. It was not the case.
Technology only helped prolong the fighting
and inflated the number of victims. Early
optimism shifted towards despair and
frustration. The war gave way to a generation of
disillusioned young men, angry at those who
initiated it without having to fight in the
trenches. A wide gap opened between the young
ones who fought and the civilians. They had an
understanding of life others could never have, or
at least this is what they thought. There was also
a huge difference between the way the war was
depicted in the press, the official war stories, and
the reality soldiers faced every day. And some of
them wanted to express this through their art.
At the turn of the century and until the
early 1920s a new artistic movement evolved
especially in Germany and northern Europe. The
cornerstone of Expressionism was the year 1905
when Die Brcke movement started in Dresden,
led by the German painter Ernst Ludwig
Kirchner. It is agreed that it ended in the Great
War aftermath, in 1920. The period of 19051920 merely defines the years when political
events and the social climate found their
appropriate artistic expression in this particular
style, writes Dietmar Elger in Expressionism. A
Revolution in German Art (Elger 2002, 8).
Initially, the term was applied to a large variety
of artists, from Edvard Munch to Czanne, the
Fauvists, Picasso, and Der Blaue Reiter. Used at
first to describe every avant-garde movement in
Europe it was later ascribed to German art.
Expressionist painters were certainly influenced
by van Gogh`s visceral, hysterical colors, by the
wild compositions of the Fauves (including
Matisse), and by the dramatic, whirling lines of
Munch. They attempted a direct communication
by jolts of color and shape, shaking the
onlooker, not appealing to his cultural sense
(Hughes 2009, 285). Like Die Brcke artists,
Expressionists reacted against traditional norms
and political structures. German artists in
particular reacted against the stiffness of the late
Habsburg dynasty. History was rapidly changing
291

before their eyes and they were part of this

process. It is no wonder some Expressionists
wanted to record it in a way or another.
Otto Dix (1891-1969) and Max
Beckmann (1884-1950) witnessed the war on
the battlefield. Dix enrolled as a machine-gunner
and fought four years in the trenches. War had
been his main artistic theme for more than a
decade. He commented: War is something so
animal-like: hunger, lice, slime, these crazy
sounds War was something horrible, but
nonetheless something powerful Under no
circumstances could I miss it! It is necessary to
see people in this unchained condition in order
to know something about man (Heller 2009). A
dry point from 1920 named War Cripples
(Kriegskrppel) shows four war veterans that
lost some of their body parts arms, an eye, and
one or both legs marching down a street. One
of them pushing a colleague in a wheelchair
wears a Wilhelm-like moustache on a severely
disfigured face: he only has one good eye left,
the other is a glass eye, and his jaw was replaced
by a metal prosthetic. From underneath his
uniform Dix reveals, as in an X-Ray, a
clockwork. His right hand and left foot work like
those of a wind-up toy, fixed with rods, bolts
and springs. He is the mechanical product of a
mechanical war. The 1924 prints series War
(Der Krieg) remind of Goya`s Los Desastres de
la Guerra. Both artists refused to paint for
propaganda use. Instead of celebrating the
bravery of armies and their leaders, they pin
down the violence, the inhumanity, the
humiliation and the despair. There are no
winners, no heroes, only suffering and
disillusion. Dix later confessed having
nightmares about the war: As a young man you
don`t notice at all that you were, after all, badly
affected. For years afterwards, at least ten years,
I kept getting these dreams, in which I had to
crawl through ruined houses, along passages I
could hardly get through(1) Stormtroops
advancing under gas (Sturmtruppe geht unter
Gas, 1924) depicts a haunting scene with five
soldiers wearing white leather gas masks
marching in a post-apocalyptic setting. Only the
masks are identifiable, not their faces, not even
the place they are in. One can guess these are
German soldiers (for only German troops had
leather gas masks) walking through a battlefield.
They look like Goya`s disciplinants (flagellants)
depicted during a religious procession (A

Procession of Flagellants, 1812-14), bare

chested and wearing white caps on their heads
and faces. To be a penitent, a repentant sinner,
allowing you to be punished and fledged to the
bone was a tremendous honor during the Holy
Week in Spain. It was a promise of personal
salvation. The same was thought about going to
war by those who stayed at home. Christopher
Isherwood fantasized about the war as a
teenager. Here is how he put it in a later novel
The Memorial: Eric saw their life together in
the training-camp, watched himself and Maurice
drilling, being taught how to fight with
bayonets, embarking on the troopship, cheering
from French trains Are we downhearted?
arriving in billets, going up along miles of
communication trenches to the front line,
waiting for the zero hour at dawn, in the rain
(Fussell 2013, 140). As he later admitted it was
not about the war itself, but about the idea of
War his entire generation shared.
While Otto Dix fought in the trenches,
Max Beckmann enrolled in the medical corps
and witnessed the war in Flanders. He came out
of it in a state of traumatic shock and became the
painter of an unrecorded, unofficial history
(Hughes 2009, 290). His paintings depict the
horrors of war, the violence, and unlike Otto Dix
who also found a satirical side to it all as in
War Cripples where men who lost their feet are
passing by a shoe shop Beckmann paints the
tragedy. The Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones
writes: What makes his paintings after the first
world war some of the most devastating visual
documents of the 20th century (better than
photographs) is that he seems to have seen, as he
did in the military hospital, beneath the skin,
inside the skull: he paints not the visible daytime
history nor the events in the newspaper, but a
night-time history, of dreams and collective
fantasies. Probably one of Beckmanns most
well-known paintings, The Night (Die Nacht,
1918-19) depicts an urban, mysterious scene of
torture, or so it seems at first sight. A woman is
bound to a post, her corset is open, her legs are
spread. A man is hanged by the neck with a
scarf, his body seated on a table, and his left
hand twisted by another man with a pipe. His
right leg and arm are elongated and inert, the left
part of his body twitches with pain. His is half
dead, half alive. There is an unusual, distorted
sense of space here. The room looks extremely
crowded, there is almost no distinction between
background and foreground, just like the spatial
compression of German Gothic altarpieces
(Hughes 2009, 290). The violence conveyed by
this motionless composition makes it even

(1) Otto Dix quoted by the official website of the

National
Gallery
of
Australia
(http://www.nga.gov.au/dix/)

292

scarier. As Jonathan Jones suggested, The Night

is a place where the fragile laws of civility and
reason are mocked by our own terrible, arbitrary
madness, where there is nothing to be hoped
for. Madness reigns inside the room, a pitch
black night sky looms outside. There is a lighted
window somewhere across the street but there is
no light of hope. Behind that window the same
story might replicate itself forever. Is it a torture
scene or a sado-masochistic one? No one can
tell.
The influence of German Gothic
religious painting can be traced in Beckmann`s
work. The Descent from the Cross (Die
Kreuzabnahme, 1917), a large oil canvas, is a
modern version of so many Crucifixions and
Calvary scenes in Western art, including
Matthias Grnewald`s Isenheim Altarpiece. A
pale and bruised Jesus is taken down from the
cross, his tortured and emaciated body stiff,
arms wide spread in the shape of a cross. The
way the light falls suggests that the whole scene
takes place on a stage, an artificial environment,
not in a real landscape, yet, like The Night, the
suffering is real, inflicted by humans. The
contrast between the artificial setting and the
real agony of its inhabitants emphasizes the
onlookers discomfort. Calvary and Crucifixion
scenes were common images during the Great
War, especially at Belgian and French
crossroads (like The Crucifix Corner on the
Ancre Valley, near Somme). According to Paul
Fussell, for minor offenses on the battlefield,
British soldiers were handed Field Punishment
No.1, that is, they were tied or strapped spreadeagled to some immobile object and left there
for some time in heavy rain or burning sun
(Fussell 2013, 146).
World War I was all about contrasts.
Distinctions like us and them, the good ones
and the bad ones (usually the Germans), feelings
of hope and despair, the war by day and the war
by night are to be found in The Great War and
Modern Memory. This is a fragment taken from
the autobiography of British fighter pilot Cecil
Lewis, Sagittarius Rising: By day the roads
were deserted; but as soon as dusk fell they were
thick with transport, guns, ammunition trains,
and troops, all moving up through Albert to take
their positions in or behind the lines.
Endlessly, night after night, it went on. Yet
when dawn came, all signs of it were gone.
There was the deserted road, the tumble-down
farmhouses, the serene and silent summer
mornings. Never do I remember a time when
night so contradicted day (Fussell 2013, 107).

Destructive activity goes on by night, just like in

Beckmann`s painting.
Prolonged trench warfare took its toll.
An obsession with what the others are doing
seemed to establish itself. Not seeing the enemy
caused further distress. The German line and
the space behind are so remote and mysterious
that actually to see any of its occupants is a
shock (Fussell 2013, 102). This haunting
presence, but seen from the other side of the
line, is depicted by Otto Dix in a 1916 pencil
drawing called A Riddled Wall (Zerschossene
Mauern). Cramped, cracked walls with holes in
them seem to bulge towards the onlooker. There
is no human presence in it, just the result of
human war enterprise. It is like hearing the
bullets and the shells, seeing the harm they have
done but not being able to tell who is firing.
Relying only on imagination, the enemy took the
form of a monstrous, freakish creature. Many
British soldiers were convinced that Germans
were totally different from them, that they were
not even human but some sort of revolting
animals. It could have been also a defense
mechanism developed in order to go on fighting.
It is probably easier to shoot another person if
you do not consider him to be human at all.
The enemy was vilified not only in the
trenches, but also at home. Every country
praised the heroism of its soldiers without
slipping a word about the hell they were going
through. The press used every opportunity to
hide the truth. George Adam, the official Paris
correspondent for the Times described British
soldiers as well-fed, warm, safe, and happy
better off, indeed, than at home (Fussell 2013,
114). The first day of the battle on the Somme
was described in the newspapers as favorable
and going well. Not a word about the fact that
British shells failed to explode and 20 000
soldiers were killed in the first 24 hours. A huge
rift opened between the official account of war
and life in or behind the lines. Soldiers grew
skeptical about anything official, civilians knew
almost nothing else. Soldiers rarely wrote the
truth to their beloved ones, and even if they did,
letters were censored by superior army officers
(Fussell 2013, 114). The magnitude of
devastation was so great that no one could have
believed it without seeing it with their own eyes.
Not only journalists reported about the
war. In 1916 the first official photographer was
sent to the Western Front to cover the story of
about two million British troops. His name was
Ernest Brooks. Soon afterward photographers
from Canada and Australia followed. Official
photography did not focus on the horrors of war,
293

but mainly on depicting scenes in between the

fighting: soldiers resting, sleeping, eating,
having tea, playing chess, moving guns,
marching, welcomed by locals or capturing
German weaponry. The National Library of
Scotland owns a big collection of war
photography and by browsing through one can
grasp the importance of official photography for
propaganda purposes. There are hundreds of
photos taken by Brooks in the archive. There is
an image depicting some soldiers, with their
heads bandaged, leaning out of the windows of a
train. The caption says Although wounded they
are happy (Fig. 1). Another one shows two
soldiers in a hospital having a chat and laughing
(Fig. 2). It is called Wounded and happy. It is
surprising to see now, a hundred years after the
Great War, how many times the word happy
occurs in these titles. Several photos are about a
favored British past-time, drinking tea: Tea
time, Tea time at a convalescent hospital, Tea
time on newly taken ground. Soldiers seem
relaxed but even so, photo titles are on the verge
of cynicism. They were made to assure British
civilians that life on the front goes on just like
back home, that their sons and husbands are well
fed, well cared for, that they have their moments
of chill out, happy to be fighting for England.
And even if they are wounded, hospitals are
clean, sunny places where they rest under
parasols in the fresh air. One particular photo
called Stacks of food etc. (Fig. 3) hints at
exactly the same idea. Huge stacks of food
boxes dwarf the men and the horses carrying
them. There seem to be enough provisions for an
army to go on fighting endlessly, because on the
right side of the photo ziggurats of boxes could,
theoretically, go on forever. Only a part of them
are seen so that this might provide some comfort
for hopeful civilians reading the newspaper and
seeing this shot. Actually, there must have been
just enough provisions to feed two million
soldiers. Scenes of destruction are also carefully
chosen. There are enemy villages and cities in
ruin, but no corpses. There are guns firing but no
one is seen falling. There is mud and rain, and
cold but from the distance one cannot spot the
wet boots and uniforms. Night shelling looks
like firework. It all seems to be hard, but kept
under control. If Ernest Brooks saw the horrors
of war he never photographed them, which is
what a war photographer should do. Although of
some artistic quality, his pictures stick to the
official narrative of war.
His is a story told to civilians and it is
not about real war but about the way it should be
perceived at home. It shows no consideration for

the men in the fire line. Reading the newspapers,

British soldiers found out about the victory on
the Somme (Fussell 2012, 362), which was
actually the slaughterous defeat they had
witnessed. They also found out about their rapid
advancement towards the Germans when in
reality the Allies advanced only 8 km in four
months. After so much propaganda, there was
going to be no way for them to describe the
truth. Four years did they live in a different
world, risking their lives in a war they did not
choose and did not start in the first place. Some
of those who started it were leading safe lives at
home perpetuating the official story about the
necessity of heroic fighting to protect big,
abstract ideas. Of course, not only British
soldiers were traumatized by the war. As seen in
a postcard sent by a German soldier from the
front (Fig. 4), German propaganda was equally
effective. A couple of cheerful soldiers are
riding bicycles with rifles on their back, heading
towards the enemy. But in Germany alone, from
1914 to 1918, 613,047 soldiers needed
psychiatric care. Considered to be a burden and
a shame for society, they were mistreated and
brutally submitted to electroshocks and hunger.
5,000 of those locked in psychiatric hospitals
were later killed by the Nazis during the
infamous eugenic program called Aktion T4. (2)
Although photography seems closer to
reality than painting, the later one is sometimes
more truthful. The emotional rendering of war
trauma as seen in Max Beckmanns work is
more authentic than the happiness displayed in
Ernest Brookss photos. Beckmann paints what
the camera cannot render, namely what is on
these soldiers mind when they are alone. He
depicts the anguish, the suffering, the
nightmares, and the despair that followed them
back home, even after the war had been over.
Brooks focuses on a flickering moment, of joy
maybe, but that moment is not enough to tell the
story of World War I. One can easily imagine
the puzzled look of some parents who, expecting
to welcome a victorious, well-fed and happy son
returning, find a totally estranged person.
References
a. Books
Boia, Lucian, Primul Rzboi
Boia 2012
(2) Facts and numbers on the subject can be found
here:
http://www.swr.de/swr2/stolpersteine/themen/veteran
en-erster-weltkrieg//id=12117604/nid=12117604/did=12497166/le6wd0/

294

Elger 2002

Fussell 2013

Hughes
2009

Judt 2012

Mondial.
Controverse,
paradoxuri, reinterpretri [The
First World War. Controversy,
Paradoxes, Reinterpretations],
Bucureti, Humanitas.
Elger, Dietmar, Expressionism.
A Revolution in German Art,
Kln, Taschen Verlag.
Fussell, Paul, The Great War
and Modern Memory, New
York, Oxford University Press
(e-book).
Hughes, Robert, The Shock of
the New. Art and the New
Century of Change, London,
Thames & Hudson.
Judt, Tony (with Timothy
Snyder), Thinking the Twentieth
Century, New York, Penguin
Press.

Dix

Dunkel

Heller 2009

Jones 2003

b. Internet resources:
Beckmann, Max, Museum of
Beckmann
Modern
Art,
(https://www.moma.org/collectio
n_ge/artist.php?artist_id=429)
Brooks, Ernest, National Library
Brooks
of
Scotland,

***

List of illustrations

Fig. 1 Ernest Brooks, Although

wounded they are happy. National Library of
Scotland [Dei rnii sunt fericii. National
Library of Scotland].
Fig. 2 Ernest Brooks, Wounded and
happy. National Library of Scotland [Rniii
sunt fericii. National Library of Scotland].
Fig. 3 Ernest Brooks, Stacks of food
etc. National Library of Scotland [Stive de
alimente. National Library of Scotland].
Fig. 4 German postcard from the front.
Franziska Dunkel [Carte potal german de pe
front.
Franziska
Dunkel].

295

(http://digital.nls.uk/first-worldwar-official-photographs)
Dix, Otto, Museum of Modern
Art,
(http://www.moma.org/collection/
artist.php?artist_id=1559)
Dunkel, Franziska, Traumatisiert
im
Ersten
Weltkrieg,
(http://www.swr.de/swr2/stolperst
eine/themen/veteranen-ersterweltkrieg//id=12117604/nid=12117604/did
=12497166/le6wd0/)
Heller, Reinhold, Grove Art
Online, Oxford University Press,
(apud.
http://www.moma.org/collection/
artist.php?artist_id=1559)
Jones, Jonathan, The Fatalist,
The Guardian (30 January 2003),
http://www.theguardian.com/arta
nddesign/2003/jan/30/artsfeatures
National Gallery of Australia,
(http://www.nga.gov.au/dix/)

Fig. 1 Ernest Brooks, Although wounded they are happy

Source: National Library of Scotland, http://digital.nls.uk/first-world-war-officialphotographs/pageturner.cfm?id=74546786

Fig. 2 Ernest Brooks, Wounded and happy

Source: National Library of Scotland, http://digital.nls.uk/first-world-war-officialphotographs/pageturner.cfm?id=74546918

296

Fig. 3 - Ernest Brooks, Stacks of food etc.

Source: National Library of Scotland, http://digital.nls.uk/first-world-war-officialphotographs/pageturner.cfm?id=74545992

Fig. 4 Postcard from the front

Source: Franziska Dunkel, http://www.swr.de/swr2/stolpersteine/themen/veteranen-erster-weltkrieg//id=12117604/nid=12117604/did=12497166/le6wd0/

297

298

C. REVIEWS

299

300

Balchik, between Lieux dHistoire and Lieux de Mmoire

Anca FILIPOVICI
PhD, Babe-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca
E-mail: [email protected]
extremely low development parameters.
Nostalgia actually targets those aspects of the
daily or cultural life, of the nightlife from
literary clubs, of the cultural activities the
interwar intellectuals and artists gravitated
around. Capa, Lido, Calea Victoriei, Sinaia or
Balchik become sources of nostalgia, while
nostalgia becomes sometimes a marketing
strategy for tourism today. In such a perspective,
nostalgia must be oriented around memory,
involving the acceptance of a past irrevocably
lost (Maier 1999, 273). Theorizing on this
concept, Svetlana Boym sees nostalgia as a
symptom of our age, a historical emotion
classified into two types: restorative nostalgia
and reflective nostalgia. If the first version tries
to rebuild the lost paradises in a nationalidentitary spirit claiming to hold the key of the
absolute truth, reflective nostalgia indicates an
awareness of the human bivalent belonging and
of the contradictions of modernity drawn on the
social memory wire (Boym 2001, XVIII).
The image of Balchik as a reflective
nostalgia appears as the meeting place for the
Romanian artistic bohemia, especially through
the journals and memoirs of those who attended
it. For them, Balchik was an intellectual-artistic
island, a place for the interaction of talents, a
land patronized by the Queen Mary herself.
Thus, Boias book represents also a page of the
Queens biography for the period of 1924-1937,
with focus on the history of the royal family
relationships, especially on those between the
Mother Queen and Carol II.
At that time, Balchik craved the status
of a pearl of the Romanian littoral. Interwar
Romania was, however, a country of contrasts.
This reality was also visible in Balchik, where
the Queens and artists houses appear near
streets with potholes, in a town without street
lightning, sewerage or running water. In the first
decades of the 20th century, the grain port tended
to the status of a tourist resort and only starting
with the 30s Balchik crossed the metamorphosis
into the urban utopia (p. 103).
Shadows of elegance and brilliance
cover a town which still represented the identity
of a periphery of the Ottoman Empire, having a

In addition to the series of challenging

essays reassessing Romania in relation to the
West and to its past and future, the most prolific
Romanian historian at this point, Lucian Boia,
also publishes in 2014 a monograph (1). Thus,
from biographies to imaginary, from essays to
mythologies, Boia leaves no category of the
historical writings unexplored. Writing this time
on Balchik and especially on the image of
Balchik, Boia sets the landmarks of a site of
memory that render in contemporary times the
idyllic myth of the glorious interwar period. As
historiography has entered its epistemological
age, with memory ineluctably engulfed by
history, the historian has become no longer a
memory-individual but, in himself, a lieu de
mmoire (Nora 1989, 18).
The reconstitution of Balchik in the
period of its belonging to the Romanian territory
(1913-1940) doesnt seem such an easy task.
Boia recreates the atmosphere of the place
through archives, press and memoires. The
reading looks less savory, both due to the
inherent stiffness of a monograph and to a not
very rich source of information. What strikes is
precisely the fact that, by empirically writing on
the history of the place, Boia contributes to its
disenchantment. Balchik, as we receive it today,
is a reflection of the nostalgia for the interwar
decades, following the series of the lost
paradises. Balchik was a paradise Romanians
enjoyed only for a few decades, while today it
only feeds the dream of the Greater Romania.
However, without promoting the theory of the
golden age of the interwar period, we stress that
for the intellectuals of those times, Romania
may have achieved its climax. To assert that the
most prolific period of the Romanian history is
the one between the two world wars would be an
overstatement if we take into account that
interwar Romania was an agrarian state with
(1) A review of Balcic: Micul paradis al Romniei
Mari [Balcic: the little paradise of the Greater
Romania] (by Lucian Boia), Bucureti, Humanitas,
2014, 224 p.

301

vaguely Romanian character. The land

flourished especially in the summer, with the
opening season for the artistic bohemia. Its not
random that Balchik is stored in memory mostly
visual, of the paintings of those who were
inspired by its sight.
Boias work captures various aspects of
this land, diachronic introduced in 20 chapters,
from the annexation of the Quadrilater, in 1913,
to the detachment of the territory, in 1940.
Without any specific propensity to the shore,
Romanians hardly get out of the womb of the
mountains or plains (p. 20). It seems only
painters see the potential of the land and are
attracted by its artistic exploration. The presence
of the artists with brushes is to be found along
the entirely monographic journey. Exotic and
sunny, Balchik failed though to become a muse
for writers. Few are those who invoke Balchik in
their writings (p. 92).
The book includes also statistical notes
revealing the reduced appurtenance of Balchik
to the Romanian identity and data on the level of
economic development of the town. The
monograph approach would have been
incomplete without the visual support. Boia
appeals to overview images of Balchik, photos
of streets and buildings, human hypostasis, and
also to the most relevant paintings signed by Ion
Thedorescu-Sion, Alexandru Satmary, Victor
Brauner or N. Tonitza.
What is left today of the Romanian
Balchik? The Queens castle, a few houses, a
recovery of the Romanian elements by the
increasing number of Romanian visitors and by
the Romanian language use, and especially some
spicy legends that surround the area. Though,
Balchik is not missing from the remembrance of
the interwar Romania, being on the border
between real history and legend. The
imagination that confers it the symbolic aura and
the historys will to keep the place alive are
those who make Balchik a genuine site of
memory. Memory is not invoked randomly. As
Pierre Nora emphasize, We speak so much of
memory because there is so little of it left (Nora
1989, 7). And because memory can not be
dissociated from the imaginary, Boia himself
gives de verdict: History, legend, who knows
where the truth is? In fact, the shifting to legend
is a good sign, a sign of vitality. Only that part
of the past susceptible to stir the imagination
remains with us (Boia 2014, 186). And so, the
end of the book reiterates the previous assertions
of the historian on the imaginary field. While
once imaginary exploring the outer space, Boia
argued: Nothing is more real, more durable,

more crucial than imaginary, this collective

dream of the humanity (Boia 2012, 224).
References
Boia 2014

Boym
2001
Maier
1999

Nora 1989

302

Boia, Lucian, Balcic: Micul

paradis al Romniei Mari
(Balcic: the little paradise of the
Greater Romania), Bucureti,
Humanitas, 2014.
Boym, Svetlana, The future of
nostalgia, New York, Basic
Books, 2001.
Maier, Charles, The End of
Longing (Notes toward a
History of Postwar German
National Longing). In: John
Brady et allii (eds.), The
Postwar Transformation of
Germany:
Democracy,
Prosperity and Nationhood,
University of Michigan Press,
199.
Nora, Pierre, Between Memory
and History: Les Lieux de
Memoire. In: Representations,
no. 26, 1989, p. 7-24.

The Amazons. A Story

Gabriela GLVAN
Lecturer PhD., Faculty of Letters, History and Theology, West University in Timioara
E-mail: [email protected]

One of the most critically acclaimed

volumes of cultural history published in 2013,
Adriana Babei`s The Amazons. A Story
(Polirom, 2013) (1) coagulates the authors
extensive work dedicated to the generous and
complex theme of the warrior female hero
reflected, throughout the ages, in literature,
history, popular culture, the arts and film. In a
massive 740 pages quasi-exhaustive exploration
of the subject, the author articulates a dense,
well-balanced story that successfully blends
academic discourse and scientific rigor with the
pleasant fluidity of a captivating narration.
Divided into eight main sections, the
book contains numerous sub-chapters that allow
the reader to map the contents of the book in an
efficient manner, while at the same time being
stimulated by their user-friendly nature and
contemporary humor. A talented writer as well,
Adriana Babei proves that solid research does
not necessarily need to be translated into vetust
formulations, therefore she prefers to create a
multi-leveled,
exciting
and
impeccably
documented meta-novel of the history of the
Amazons. The first chapter, Exhortation works
as a finely-tuned captatio benevolentiae,
familiarizing the reader with the strategies,
methodologies and aims of the volume. An older
research theme the author has explored in the
past, that of arms and letters, of the cultural
and imaginary connections between the art of
war and that of text and literature is revived and
reinterpreted, becoming the generative nucleus
of the book. The manoeuvres she details in one
of the first sub-chapters describe the initial
context in which the theme of the Amazons
became of such great interest to the author, the
particular aspects that gradually built the
framework of a major scholarly enterprise. The
second chapter, Attack, opens the gates of the

imaginary world of female power and glory, The

Amazonland, and, with the clear intention of
familiarizing the reader with the basic
vocabulary of a first strategic incursion into the
cultural perimeter of prominent heroines,
Adriana Babei recreates the onomastic,
mythological, historical and literary basis of
their unusual persistence in artistic imagination.
Onomastikon. A Burnt Breast and Other
Inventions. Daughters of the Mother, Daughters
of the Moon? Killers, but also Man Lovers.
From Amazon to Amazon.com are inviting titles
that consolidate the core structure of the books
argumentative and scientific background.
Following the Attack, an Incursion is in
order, and a historical overview of the presence
of the Amazons in Western culture begins in
early antiquity and ends in the present, with the
contemporary figures of female rock stars and
action heroines in films and videogames.
Therefore, the Ages of the Amazons provides the
reader with a vital understanding of the
omnipresence of female virility, reloaded and
recalibrated, aestheticized and deconstructed in
its millenary life-span. A Counter-Attack, a
Surrounding and an Assault mark the central
chapters of this metaphoric battle of mentalities,
histories and representations. The inextricable
mixture of Myth and Reality, as one title
reiterates, is carefully dissected for the purpose
of revealing the multiple cultural meanings
entailed by the historical accounts, literary
fictions and mythological projections concerning
the lives of Amazons. Although historians,
archaeologists and anthropologists are far from
agreeing upon the real or simply imaginary
existence of Amazons, it is doubtless that their
primary significance lies at the level of the
cultural imagination. Food rituals, love stories,
legends about their savage, barbaric nature,
gender relationships, the cult of the body, dress
codes and sexual behavior, to name just the main
levels investigated, the thematic spectrum of the
subject matter is explored with the authentic

(1) A review of Amazoanele. O poveste [The

Amazons. A Story] (by Adriana Babei), Iai, Polirom,
2013.

303

dedication of the scholar and the verbal

seduction of a genuine storyteller. From
Herodotus and Homer to Virginia Woolf and
Marcel Proust, the author invokes the grand
narratives that immortalized and refined this
feminine archetype. Yet, the strategic conquest
of this difficult domain wouldnt be complete
without a final Parade, in which the superstars
of Amazonland are invited to march in their full
splendor: Penthesilea, Camilla, Velleda,
Bradamante, Clorinda, Joan of Arc, Hauteclaire,
Madeleine de Maupin, Orlando, Albertine.
The word like the sword finds its
way to victory in one and the same way: by
starting the plot with a clear mind and military
discipline, as in war, through an exordim. It was
meant to give me courage and also the ability to
captivate (or even capture) the reader. Win
him/her on my side. What better way to do that
than by telling him/her stories? In fact, just one,
marvelous story about warrior women. Display
them one by one, as in Hesiods catalogue, with
all their brave deeds. I felt more and more that
these warriors would be my mirror and shield.
And I began writing about them with zeal and
passion. Without forgetting Barthes phrase,
surrounding me like a chain: The imaginary a
labyrinth of the jagged fortifications in which he
who speaks of himself goes astray.
Adriana Babei`s The Amazons. A Story
is first and foremost an essential guide to a
major theme, cardinal in modern and
postmodern culture. A genuine archive reuniting
probably all major references concerning the
subject, the volume assimilates a vast
bibliography published not only in Romanian,
but also English, French or Italian and, although
indirectly, makes it available to the Romanian
reader. An indispensable academic instrument
for cultural and literary researchers, The
Amazons can be an excellent source of
documentation for the general, less specialized
public as well, given its remarkable success in
balancing various discursive regimes inside an
artfully narrated story.

304

About A Historiographical Behaviour

Laura STANCIU
1 Decembrie 1918 University of Alba Iulia
Faculty of History and Philology
E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract. The present study deals with a valuable book presented from the perspective of the
comparative method applied to the Transylvanian Romanian and Slovakian Enlightenment. At the same
time, the author notices that the success of the book is the result of the integrated perspective offered by
Oana Bodea Indrie to the Romanian and Slovakian Enlightenment within the context provided by the
European Central Enlightenment.
The compatibility between the two variants of the European Central Enlightenment resides in the
fact that they did not have an anticlerical manifestation. On the contrary: the bearers of the enlightened ideas
in both cultures were mainly priests, and Josephs followers as far as their social and political convictions are
concerned. They promoted an identitary Enlightenment that developed the Pan-Latinism in Transylvania,
and the Pan-Slavism in Slovakia, seen as a reaction to the progress of Pan-Magyarism.
The book A Time of Change. The National Renaissance of the Peoples in Central Europe in
Aufklrung and Vormrz. A Comparative History pleads for a historiographical attitude and behaviour that
might contribute to a better and real understanding of the Romanian Enlightenment, and to the integration of
our modern culture into the European circuit of values.
Keywords: Enlightenment, Transylvania, Slovakia, Church, Josephinism
Even if the critics interested in the
Romanian enlightened historiography of the last
twenty years register analyses and comparative
studies
between
Romanian
enlightened
intellectuals and intellectuals belonging to other
cultures in Central Europe, and the list is not long
at all in this respect (Stanciu 2007, 195-226),
Oana Bodeas book, A Time of Change. The
National Renaissance of the Peoples in Central
Europe in Aufklrung and Vormrz. A
Comparative History is the first comparative
synthesis about this issue, declared and assumed
as such (1).
This is the reason why from the very
beginning we should mention that the
fundamental contribution of the work that
motivates the choice as well is the fact that it
places the Romanian historiography in relation of
interdependence with the Slovakian one, and
succeeds to provide a context for both in the field
of Central European historiography. The Central
European Enlightenment emerged and developed
in a social and political context specific to the

Habsburg Empire. This is the reason why it has a

peculiar and distinct evolution compared to the
Western Enlightenment (Italian, French, and
British). It practically reflected the local
conditions, the social, economic and political
relations and circumstances specific to the region.
It took various shapes, promoted different ideals,
and developed itself in various ways, according to
the different realities existing in Poland, Serbia,
Slovakia, Transylvania and Hungary. Generally
speaking, there was a common platform of the
Mittel-European Enlightenment determined and
supported by the reforms of the Court of Vienna,
which provided the text about the enlightened
ideal of emancipation, but read it according to a
certain reality, and reflected the local needs
(Porter, Teich 1998). Thus, we have common
ideas and common ideological framework as far
as the Central European Enlightenment is
concerned, but its manifestation provided
enormous cultural differences, and various
complementary formulas.
There is no doubt: every work is
influenced by a personal option and opinion. The
relation between reader and writer also requires
time, and the receiver finally gets most of the
times, a complementary image in this respect. He
or she bears the subjective nature of the reader
interested in the epoch, or in the topic as well. The
success of a book also depends upon the way in

(1) A review of Un timp al schimbrilor. Renaterea

naional a popoarelor din Europa Central in
Aufklrung i Vormrz [ A Time of Change. The
National Renaissance of the Peoples in Central Europe
in Aufklrung and Vormrz. A Comparative History]
(by Oana Bodea), Rao, 2011, 416 p.

305

which the receiver of the work perceives the topic

in the epoch. From my point of view, in order to
understand the genesis and peculiarities of
Aufklrung, it is important and even conclusive to
know its relation with the Catholic Restoration
and the Theresian and Leopoldin reforms as well.
This image, as clear as possible, is significant with
a view to helping the reader to have a perception
about the so-called incubator of the Central
Europe of nations. The forming, in the Habsburg
Empire, in 1688, of a commission led by the
Roman Catholic bishop of Gyr, Leopold von
Kollonich, had a significant contribution in this
respect. The commission had to design and
propose a Project for Hungarys reorganization
and administration. Completed in 1689, the
project about the integration of new Eastern
provinces, known as Einrichtungswerk des
Knigreichs Hungarn (The project consists in 5
chapters: Iustitiarum, Politicum, Militare,
Camerale, and Ecclesiasticum), stipulated two
significant modes of integration. The local
juridical and administrative system had to be
coupled with the Aulic one, and the retrieval of
the positions occupied by the Catholic Church had
to become possible with the unconditioned
support granted to Catholicism by Emperor
Leopold I. Catholicism had to be considered state
religion in the Empire.
Through Einrichtungswerk [], the
Reforms needed for implementation both in
historical Hungary and the provinces that formerly
belonged to Saint Stephens crown were highly
designed. They consisted in changes in the
administrative, social, juridical, military, and
economic field. Generally, this project was
considered useful for making up modern societies.
One can assert that the project about the
annexation of the Eastern provinces of the Empire
represented an advanced stage for the social and
political activity of the monarchy comparatively
similar projects from Leopolds time. The stress
on the Catholic Church is natural since the
Austrian sovran played an irrefutable leadership
role for the Counter Reform in Central Europe.
Being a fervent Catholic, Leopold I discovered
practical political valencies in the CounterReform. The Counter-Reform gave him the
possibility to modernise the Central European
state and to replace the old, medieval noble elite
with a new one, without medieval privileges and
ready to involve itself in the process for leadership
and modernization in the Austrian Empire (Gorun,
2013). During that age, the Einrichtungswerk did
not gain in popularity because of its absolutist and
national peculiarities. Since it favored the
Germans in the Monarchy, it shadowed the

Magyar interests. The categorical appeal to the

Catholic Church employed by the Imperial Court
for the situation in Transylvania, Poland and
Czech Republic, where the elite was mainly
protestant, played a double role in the hereditary
provinces: the traditional role, but also political
instrument as well.
There is no doubt that beyond favoring
the Catholicism in Transylvania, there was a
religious solidarity, but also practical interests as
well. After four years of negotiations (16971701), the accomplishment and acknowledgement
of the Union of the Romanian Church of
Transylvania with the Church of Rome, by the
central power, represented, first of all, a clear
expression of the will of the Transylvanian
Romanian national Church to gain a positive
juridical position within the constitutional context
of Transylvania (Marte, 2010). From the
Romanians point of view, this was the birth
certificate for the fight for emancipation, also
called national fight during the Vormrz, and the
entry permit in Central Europes concerns. Like
Germans, Hungarians or Ruthenians, Romanians
were integrated to that typology of mono-ethnic
and bi-confessional society specific to Central
Eastern Europe (Turczynski, 1976, 118-130, 188192, 206-210). Unfortunately, Slovakians did not
have their own national Church since they were
bi-confessional, i.e. protestant and Catholics
melted themselves in the Protestant or Magyar
Catholic Church. This is a detail or a situation
with certain consequences for the temporization of
the Slovakians national and political fight for
emancipation.
Even if we do not consider it a lack of the
book, we are convinced that the approach of the
impact of the Catholic Reform upon Aufklrung,
in general, and Josephism, in particular, would
have ensured an edifying, correct and solid
framework for the argumentation of the book in
explaining the comparison between the
Transylvanian
Romanian
and
Slovakian
Enlightenment. The understanding of the specific
characteristics of the Aufklrung in Central and
Eastern Europe as a manifestation of a peripheral
Enlightenment compared to the centre of the
rationalist and anticlerical (French and English)
Enlightenment depends precisely upon the
approach of the relation between Church and State
in the Habsburg Empire. It was the reality that
determined, in Transylvania, just like in Serbia or
Slovakia, in the 18th century, the emergence of
two phenomena with parallel development, yet
with numerous interferences: the making up of the
Romanians, Slovakians and Serbs national
movement, and the attempt of the central power
306

from Vienna to amend the medieval structures of

these anachronic provinces, from the enlightened
monarchs perspective. Mention should also be
made about the effects of Josephinism on multiple
plans, and especially about the culture efficiency
with political finality. Vienna had practiced an
integrationist policy that did not inhibit the
process of national emancipation for 150 years.
On the contrary: through what we call nowadays
cohesion funds, imperialists stimulated the
economic, social, and cultural development of
various ethnic groups and the multiple confessions
of an empire that was fascinating and powerful
thanks to its multi-confessionalism and
cosmopolitism.
By combining the tradition with the
achievements of the Romanian and Slovakian
historiography, which were seldom determined to
support each other like it is presented in the book,
the author acquired a solid structure for her work:
1. reasoning, progress and optimism in national
Enlightenment within the context provided by the
Central Europe in the 18th century; 2. incursions in
the political and cultural trends within the context
provided by the Austrian Reforms and the
national movements in Slovakia and Transylvania
until 1848; 3. a captivating comparative image
between the Slovakian and Transylvanian
Romanian intellectuals, their common formative
areas (Trnava, Buda and Pesta) with emphasis on
two characters, Ioan Bob and Alexander Rudnay;
4. the triumph of Herders revolution upon the
Romanian and Slovakian ideology in Vormrz,
underlining the impact of the linguistic revolution
on the two modern cultures. We notice the
authors endeavour to readily answer as
argumentative and shaded as possible to the
pertinent questions posed during the research. We
admire Oana Bodeas success in defining and
explaining several concepts specific to the age and
area under analysis. We underline the authors
constant wish to integrate her topic within the
European spirituality, a wish that emerged from
the need to decrease the cultural gap between the
two European regions that made, in those times,
the first steps to laicization, and to European
values, in full change as well.
Keith Hitchins wrote numerous studies
about this century concerned with the morals and
with the spirit of nation, and made research,
analyses and interpretations that demonstrated the
exact moment of performance and compatibility
of the Transylvanian Enlightenment with the
European one. Pompiliu Teodor mentioned that
Baroque, Fraufklrung (pre-Enlightenment) or
Aufklrung (Enlightenment), Romanticism or the
cultural trends, in general, are not monads, i.e.

they do not exist in pure state. We do not have

disruptions or discontinuities between them. There
are only continuities, changes, and dissolutions of
one into the other. Most of the time, we register a
slow transition with innovations that manifest
themselves gradually, from one to another, more
and more visible and strong. There co-existed in
Transylvania, just like in Slovakia of the time,
both the humanistic and baroque patterns but they
were modified by the new political and cultural
circumstances brought and imposed by the
Habsburg reforms. Thus, the interest for historical
writing, the institutional substantiation of the
ecclesiastical life, and the interest in polemic and
concerns with a view to finding out the origin and
the historical truth increased.
If the influence of the School of Gttingen
upon Petru Maior and Ion Budai-Deleanu, the
emergence of national ideas in historical discourse
and in the historiography of this territory represent
a gain of the specialty Romanian criticism (Teodor
2000; Hitchins 1987; Toth Zoltn 2000;
Cmpeanu 2000; Protase 1973; Stanciu 2003 etc.)
Oana Bodeas opinion is complementary with
Stanley Bucholz Kimballs or Radu Mrzas
(Bucholz Kimball 1973; Mrza 2008) vision, and
places us in front of a case about the fact that the
Romanian discourse of the Transylvanian School,
the Slovakian discourse of Slovensk Uen
Tovarystvo, and, later on, of the cultural society
of Tatrin were not conceived and related to some
enlightened satellite-type historical discourses
perceived as part of a peripheral culture.
Samuil Micu, Gheorghe incai, Petru
Maior, Ion BudaiDeleanu, Anton Bernolak,
Mathias Bell, Juraj Ribay, Bohuslav Tablic, Juraj
Palkovi, Jn Kollr, Pavel Jozef afrik wrote
Romanian or Slovakian historical, linguistic, and
theological discourses concerned with the Central
European intellectuals achievements or about the
entrance of the Romanian and Slovakian culture
in the European circuit of values. From the point
of view of the role played by the elite in the
region in forming the national identity in Central
and South Eastern Europe (Trencsnyi, Kopeek
2006), Oana Bodeas work completes and
improves the criticism interested in the European
Central Enlightenment. The discourse of this
enlightened and pre-romantic generation led to the
finalization of some permeable works. They
cannot
be
considered
simple
mimetic
readjustments of their conceptions and ideas
according to the European patterns existing at
their disposal. The significant contribution of this
generation in a period of time placed between
Aufklrung and Vormrz remained the fact that,
first of all, it promoted an identity spirit with a
307

well-defined aim: to integrate it to the culture of

Central Eastern Europe, and this is the peculiarity
of these movements in the modern Romanian and
Slovakian culture. This achievement came to light
especially when the inhabitants of the Central
Europe, be them Czechs, Germans, Romanians,
Hungarians, Slovakians or Bulgarians trained and
prepared themselves in order to assert their
national conscience. This phenomenon was taken
upon and even owed, to a large extent, to the
choice made by the Romanian or Slovakian
choice, between Michelets and Herders
conceptions about the state and nation as well.
Like most of the ethnic groups in the Empire, the
Slovakians and the Transylvanian Romanians who
were familiar with Leibnizs and Wolffs influence
preferred Herders mono-cultural nationalism
represented by people, that is to say a distinct
community with its own language, habits, origins
and history that stimulated the idea of nationalism
and made them partners for the national fight,
starting with the spring of 1849 (Neumann 2005,
60-63). One cannot ignore the fact that the
emergence of two paired ideologies, the PanSlavism and Pan-Latinism, made this partnership
possible between 1848 and 1918; there is no doubt
that it emerged and was nourished by anti-German
and anti-Russian ideas, in their fight with the PanMagyarism existing in Slovakia and Transylvania.
In order to understand the place and role
played by the Transylvanian and Slovakian
Enlightenment for the dynamics of MittelEuropean Enlightenment, the author had to
understand who the promoters of these ideals
were, to find out data about the intellectuals
initial stage of recruitment and selection meant to
define these forms of regional Enlightenment. In
Transylvania and Slovakia, the foundation
enjoyed the same clerical basis, and the same aims
that generated the ideology of the age, with its two
paired ideological and identity formulas: Latinism
and Pan-Slavism. I also consider that the authors
endeavor to understand the Transylvanian and
Slovakian priests positioning, as a true
intellectual clerical man as everywhere in Europe,
is appropriate, and even worthy. This elite
category was the pot out of which the
Transylvanian Romanians and Slovakians were
recruited during the modern age.
As a matter of fact, Oana Indrie Boteas
entire discourse is interesting and makes one think
about this book. It arouses curiosity for the
understanding of the Transylvanian Romanians
history in parallel and by comparison with the
Slovakian one. It is an intercession that stimulates
the problems and concepts of cultural history
specific to this region. There is no doubt that the

book is an intellectual adventure. Consciously or

not, the author of the work provides us with a
page of history lived as consciousness and freed
by the illusion of certainties and objectiveness
(Barbu 1996, 16) also because she explains and
even defines several concepts specific to the age
and relevant for the problem under research. As a
matter of fact, the title of the work convicts the
author to comparative approach, both in
documentation and at narrative level, but also as
far as the demonstration of several real
interpretative valences is concerned. The success
of Oana Bodeas work is the result of the authors
multilingual education that made the work
documentation, its drawing up and interpretation
possible. The work is also the result of a rich and
diverse Romanian, Slovakian, Magyar, German
and English bibliography deliberately and
complementarily consulted by the author in order
to deeply understand and vary the real image
about the becoming of a regional and not at all
peripheral Transylvanian Romanian and Slovakian
historiography in the 18th century.
As the author suggested at her Ph. D.
thesis defense held in Alba Iulia, on May 2012
(Bodea 2012), the fast publishing of the present
book covered a gap in the Romanian
historiography. Even if, meanwhile, an interesting
translation in Romanian of the Short History of
Slovakia (Scurt istorie a Slovaciei, Mannov
2011) also emerged, I dare say that, owing to the
present volume, the Slovakian historiography also
acquires more knowledge about the forming of its
own nation in connection with the Central
European nations in the 18th and 19th centuries. It
is a courageous comparative demarche, not very
demotic in Romanian historiography, which
deserves to be encouraged and perceived as
historiographical behaviour chiefly because,
unfortunately, the cultural area under analysis
continues to be peripheral for the Western
criticism interested in European Enlightenment.
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309

Black. The Hero of a History

Gabriela PETIC
MA Student in Medieval Studies
University of Bucharest
Email: [email protected]

In 2008, Michel Pastoureaus hero was

the black colour. It appears in his book Noir.
Histoire d'une couleur (Paris, Seuil, 2008) (1)
translated into Romanian Negru. Istoria unei
culori, at the Cartier Publishing House in 2012 -,
it follows another heros success from 2002, the
blue colour: Bleu. Histoire d'une couleur (Paris,
Seuil, 2000), and prepares the way for the green
colour: Vert. Histoire d'une couleur (Paris, Seuil,
2013).
The book begins with an introduction and
the content itself is structured in five chapters (At
the Beginning was Black, In the Devils Pallet, A
Fashionable Colour, The Birth of the World in
Black and White, All the Colours of Black (2)),
each one divided in turn into small subchapters,
accompanied by an introduction at the beginning
of their chapter. The notes, the thematically
structured bibliography, and the authors thanks
are put at the end of the book.
Pastoureau analyses in his book how the
black colour has had, along the history of its
appropriation by Western society, a route often
calm or glorious, and sometimes tumultuous, thus
oscillating between acceptance or rejection - part
or all. This is the colour of the primordial
beginning, of the darkness (biblical or scientific)
that precedes light, and will represent the earth in
the symbolism of the four elements, together with
other three colours: red standing for fire, green for
water, and white for air, from Aristotle until the
second half of the 18th century. It can also be
found in the ancient basic triad white/red/black,

playing an important role in the early Middle

Ages too, continuing its existence within the
system of the six basic colours belonging to the
central Middle Ages, when yellow, green, and
blue were added to the three primary colours.
Closely associated with whiteness, black (in great
vogue at that time) begins to be seen as a noncolour in the late 15th century and especially in the
mid-16th century. The world of black and white
prints, to which add Newton's discoveries from
1665-1666 (published in 1704, with the spectrum
of light without black and white), and social and
religious morality (especially Protestant) will
remove gradually the black colour outside the
world of colours. Black will regain its status of
colour in the late 19th century, when painters make
it the dominant of their palette.
Pastoureau traces the history of the black
colour, showing that it had been a diabolical
colour from the 11th century until the 12th century,
when heraldry took it out of the devilish palette
and won a middle position as regards frequency,
thus anticipating its revaluation in the Late Middle
Ages.
Being a monastic colour since the late 9th
century, in the early 12th century black was the
object of the polemics between the white robes
(the Cistercians) and the black ones (the
Cluniacs), representing the history of black versus
white, an antagonistic and relatively discrete
couple until that time [...], and which will assert
itself even more strongly. From that day on,
colours got a dimension they had never had
before, at least in clothing.(3)
By the late 14th century (when the wealthy
clients requirements will compel dyers to solve
the problem, no matter how expensive it would
be), it was quite difficult to paint a fabric in a true
black colour. At the end of the 13th century and in

(1) A review of Negru. Istoria unei culori [Black. The

History of a Colou] (by Michel Pastoureau ), originally
Noir. Histoire d'une couleur, Paris, 2008), translated by
Emilian Glaicu-Pun, Chiinu, Cartier, 2012, 252 p.
(2) Michel Pastoureau, Black. The History of a Color,
Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press,
2008.

(3) Michael Pastoureau, Negru. Istoria unei culori,

Chiinu, Ed. Cartier, 2012, p. 80.

310

the early 14th century, the virtuous and austere

black enters the clothing of those professional
categories with functions or responsibilities in the
service of the state, and, in the mid-14th century,
those of the long-robed people (professors or
scientists), as a hallmark of a particular status. In
the second half of the 14th century, the black
fashion was adopted by merchants and bankers, in
response to sumptuary laws in force that forbade
all those who were not part of the nobility the
wearing of the most beautiful and expensive
colours and colouring materials. At first, this
reaction occured in Italy in the clothing of dukes,
counts, and lords, then in the princely ones, then
spreading to France and England in the late 15th
century, and then in the rest of Europe, where the
entire 15th century became the great century of the
royal and princely black, whose fashion will
continue until the modern era.
Pastoureau states that the invention of
printing and the spreading of the printed book,
and the engraved and the printed image will
replace, for several centuries, the medieval
polychrome images with a world in black and
white, creating a cultural revolution of
considerable amplitude, not only in the field of
knowledge, but also of the sensibilities (4). The
chromoplastic wave at the beginning of Protestant
Reformation (in the 16th century) adds to the
current black and white imagery and will lead to
the emphasis on the opposition between the world
in black and white and world in colours itself, and
to the chromophilic Catholic reaction. This is the
time when black has a dual nature: the royal and
princely, the luxurious one, descending from the
Burgundian court, and that of humility and
temperance, coming from clerics and monks, in
search for the simplicity of the early Christian
church.
Pastoureau acknowledges that the
Protestant chromatic austerity will be extant in
Europe in the 17th century too, when black became
the absolute mourning colour. Being pulled out of
the chromatic system, black will disappear from
clothing and from the everyday life of urban
population and the upper strata of the society of
the Enlightenment (in the 18th century), but
continues to exist unabated in Venice, and at the
Spanish and Austrian courts. Its comeback in art
and literature will take place beginning with 1760,
and is fully achieved in the early 19th century,
when serious and austere black generalizes in the
men's wardrobe and will remain especially in the
regulation uniforms or clothing of those who
profess an intellectual work in the early 20th

century. The decades of the mid-19th century

brought another black colour, that of coal (until
the middle of the following century) - the main
source of energy for industry, and of misery for
cities.
Towards the end of the book, Pastoureau
notes that, in the 20th century, black and white
photography and film will prolong and exacerbate
the black and white imagery created more than
three centuries ago, and although they lost their
primacy, making place almost entirely to coloured
images towards the end of the century, they
remain a symbol of elegance, as black is living its
modernity through the work of designers, fashion
designers, and stylists.
Pastoureau's book arises interest while
reading it, thanks to the dense and interesting
information peppered throughout the course of
human history. They are the result of the study of
an enviable bibliography. A question arises,
however, in connection with the assertion of
colour film on what basis Pastoureau admits that
the Technicolor process, improved since 1915,
was able to implement the production and
marketing of films beginning with that year, but
perhaps the moral reasons are those that have
delayed this5. In this respect, the author states that
moving images were at that time considered a
frivolity, the coloured images becoming an
obscene thing that contributed to the delay of the
marketing of the colour films sometime after
World War II.
Scott Higgins** claims, during a Coursera
MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) entitled
The Language of Hollywood: Storytelling, Sound,
and Color (6), held in September-October 2013,
that the first technical solution for obtaining
natural colour films (called two-colour
Technicolor) dates from the 1920s and consists of
simultaneous recording of two images using
different filters onto the film stock: a bluish green
filter and a reddish orange one, but without
obtaining pure colours. Warner Brothers made
one of the last films in this technique in 1932.
The new technique, the three-colour
Technicolor, was completed in 1934 and added
another colour filter to the previous system, thus
obtaining natural and stable colours. The process
requires sacrifices on controlling the amount of
light, making limitations of the filming, and the
camera used is very complex, because it runs
inside three negatives recording simultaneously
three different images through three different
(5) Ibidem, p. 198.
(6)https://www.coursera.org/course/hollywood.
Accessed 17 June 2014.

(4) Ibidem, p. 130.

311

colour filters. The camera is not for sale, but

rented by the company Technicolor to studios
with all related services: a cinematographer, the
processing of the film, and the use of the Color
Advisory Service, so this company controlled
colour cinematography during this period.
Becky Sharp, in 1935, the director being
Rouben Mamoulian, was the first featured film
made using the three-colour Technicolor, and,
despite it was a box office failure, being an
experimental film considered as a cheap novelty
by the audience, it was influential and convinced
studios that it was worth trying the technical
process in studio work (7). Scott Higgins also
claims that the second film made in this
technique, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, by
Paramount Pictures (in 1936, director Henry
Hathaway), had the greatest success of
Technicolor films by then (leaving it so for a
while), was one of the highest-grossing film of
that year, and set aesthetic standards for the films
that followed.
Therefore, Scott Higginss presentation
does not reflect that hostility to animated image in
colour, during the first two decades of the
Technicolor era. As I cannot access the
bibliography Pastoureau indicated on this topic,
the question thus remains open.

References

Pastoureau
2008

Pastoureau
2012

***

* Michel Pastoureau is a historian, director of

studies at the cole pratique des hautes tudes,
associate director of studies at the cole des
Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales, Visiting
Professor at several European universities, and his
area of specialization includes the history of
colours, heraldry, animals, bestiary, and symbols,
predominantly from the Middle Ages in Western
Europe.(8)
** Scott Higgins is Associate Professor of Film
Studies at the Wesleyan University and his area of
specialization includes aesthetics, silent and
classical cinema, narrative theory, genre, and
technology. (9)

(7) Idem.
(8) Michael Pastoureau, Negru. Istoria unei culori, p.
2.
(9) https://www.coursera.org/course/hollywood.

312

Pastoureau, Michel, Black. The

History of a Color, Princeton
and
Oxford,
Princeton
University Press, 2008.
Pastoureau, Michael, Negru.
Istoria unei culori [Black. The
History of a Color], Chiinu,
Cartier, 2012.
https://www.coursera.org/cour
se/hollywood. Accessed 17
June 2014.

Fairy Tales: Between Literary and Oral Tradition

Daniel GICU
University of Bucharest
Email: [email protected]
centuries old and were transmitted through oral
tradition from one generation to another. Based
on studies published in the last twenty years,
especially those of Heinz Rlleke, Bottigheimer
shows, however, that the fairy tales from the
Grimm's collection have their origin in the
books read by young girls and ladies from
Cassel, in the late 18th c. and early 19th c.
Brought from France, these tales circulated in
Germany, written first in French and then in
German, 50 years before the brothers Grimm
would collect them, and occupied an important
place in Germans' readings since 1760.
Continuing the identification of the
origins of fairy tales, Bottigheimer reveals that
the French authors of the in the late 17th c. and
early 18th c. took their tales not from peasants or
nannies of the aristocratic children, but from the
collections of two Italian authors: Giambattista
Basile and Giovanfrancesco Straparola. French
authors such as Charles Perrault, his niece,
Marie-Jeanne Lhritier, Mlle de la Force and
Mme d'Aulnoy, adapted some tales from Basile's
collection, giving them a moralizing character,
and making them more suitable for the tastes of
the court. The birth of the fairy tales is thus
marked by two moments: the printing at the
beginning of the 17th c., in Naples, of Basile's
collection Lo Cunto de li cunti (The Tale of
Tales, 1634-1636) and of Staraparola's
collection Le Piacevoli Notti (Pleasant nights,
1551-1553) published in Venice in the mid-16th
century. Le Piacevoli Notti, structured after
Boccaccio's Decameron, contains wonder tales
in which a prince regains its lost status, inspired
by Roman and medieval epics. The novelty,
however, was the rise fairy tale, in which a
poor boy marries a princess from a faraway
land, thus gaining a fabulous fortune. The story
in Straparola's collection with this type of plot,
which, adopted by future authors, was going to
define the fairy tales genre, is Constantino
Fortunato (Le Matre-Chat ou le Chat Bott
from Perrault's collection).
A conventional history of fairy tales
would begin, says Bottigheimer, by stating that
they were created by an anonymous peasant,
thousands of years ago, and were then

The first new approach to fairy tales

history in the last two decades, this book tries to
answer questions about the origin and spread of
the fairy tale that are now so popular around the
world (1). In the traditional view, stories such as
Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Puss in Boots
are rooted in the oral tradition of the peasants,
and were recorded for posterity by the brothers
Grimm. Starting from the observation that there
is no evidence that farmers have invented
wonder tales and then transmitted them through
the oral tradition, Ruth Bottigheimer offers
proofs for the occurrence of fairy tales in an
urban environment, the Venice of the 16th
century.
Trying to differentiate the wonder tales
(fairy tales) from folk tales, which are part of the
oral tradition of the peasants, Bottigheimer
shows that not the motifs, structure or the happy
ending define fairy tales (motifs such as the
magic ring and the number three appear in
Italian novels dating from the 15th and 16th c.
and the happy ending is typical for the slushy
romance novels of the 20th c.), but the plot.
Thus, one of the defining plots for a fairy tale is
that according to which a prince/princess is
revoked, goes through a series of tests, which he
surpasses with a magic help, and marries a
princess/prince, regaining thus his original
status. The most common and popular fairy
tales, however, are the rise tales, those in
which a poor person gets, with a magic help, the
hand of a prince/ princess, inheriting thus the
kingdom and a considerable fortune.
In search of the origins of the fairy tales,
such as they were defined above, Bottigheimer's
analysis begins with the famous collection of the
Brothers Grimm, which gave a powerful
impetus to the creation of other national
collections and theories about the origin of the
fairy tales. Trying to explain the similarities
between the tales they collected and those
published in previous centuries, the brothers
Grimm have theorized that fairy tales are many
(1) A review of, Fairy Tales. A New History (by Ruth
B. Bottigheimer), Albany, New York, State
University of New York Press, 2009.

313

transmitted from one generation to another

through oral tradition. Her book demonstrates,
however, that there is a close connection
between the selling of chapbooks with fairy tales
and their spread among the folk. The history of
the printed collections of fairy tales shows that
they appeared, as a literary genre, in the mid-16th
century Venice, were developed in Naples in the
first half of the 17th c., and then again, in France,
at the end of the 17th c., from where they were
exported to Germany in the second half of the
18th c. At the end of the 18th c., fairy tales were
transmitted throughout Europe, through
chapbooks. In the 19th c., schools helped
spreading the fairy tales among city and village
children, in Western Europe, as well as in the
British, French, Italian and German colonies in
Africa, Asia and the New World (Bottigheimer
2009, 23). Fairy tales. A new history can
change the way readers and researchers are
looking at fantastic stories, thinks the book's
author. A history of fairy tales based on the
circulation of books explains the remarkable
similarities between tales told by storytellers
from very different cultural spaces. This makes
interpretations based on the assumption that
fairy tales are reflecting the structures of the
human mind among these, the most successful
are the psychoanalytic interpretations to be no
longer valid. Or so Bottigheimer thinks...
All the major points in Bottigheimer's
argumentation can be contested: that Straparola
was the founder of the fairy-tale narrative
described as a rise tale, which reflected the rise
of the mercantile and bourgeois classes; that
Straparola's tales set a model for other writers,
especially the French; that it was through print
literature that tales were disseminated and
reached the peasantry; and that Straparola lived
and worked in Venice and catered to a wide
circle of artisans who were literate.
Bottigheimer dismissed the oral
tradition as providing the source of literary fairy
tales. But as Ziolkowski had pointed out, she
ignores numerous Latin texts that have their
origins in an oral tradition (Ziolkowski 2010).
There is evidence that the Greeks and Romans
and other European, Asian and African people
were telling tales during the pre-Christian era
and early antiquity that laid the foundation for a
literary genre which gradually flowered in Paris,
not in Italy, during the 1690s. In this period, the
socio-cultural conditions were riper in Paris than
in Italy for designating certain tale types as
belonging to the genre of the fairy tale.
The accuracy and authenticity of
Bottigheimer's biographical depiction of

Straparola can be questioned. Though nothing is

known about Straparola, where he was born,
where he lived or what his professions was,
Botigheimer wrote an imaginary biography.
Moreover, there is a contradiction in
Bottigheimer's thesis wherein she claims that
new rise tales appealed to an urban and artisan
readership, but ultimately nourished Europe's
hungry folk imagination even though they were
filled with references to upper classes in the 16th
and 17th c.
The French writers of the 1690s were
not primarily influenced by Straparola, as
Bottigheimer claims; there were numerous
French oral tales and literary romances that
circulated and influenced writers such as
d'Aulnoy, Lhritier and Perrault.
Straparola plagiarized many Latin tales,
translating them into the vernacular Italian, and
imitated contemporary writers. This plagiarizing
and patchwork style followed the fashion of his
age and also the tradition of oral storytelling.
One of Bottigheimer's major arguments
throughout her book is that absence of
documentation of fairy tales (as she defines
them) is clear evidence of absence of fairy tales
in the lives of the peasantry until Straparola and
others began writing and publishing their tales.
However, other researchers like Jan Ziolkowski,
Francisco Vaz da Silva (Vaz da Silva 2010) and
Dan Ben-Amos (Ben-Amos 2010) claim there is
sufficient documentation about storytelling and
texts that indicates a long tradition of oral
wonder tales that incorporated fairy-tale motifs,
topoi, characters and patterns.
References
Ben-Amos 2010

Vaz da Silva 2010

Ziolkowski 2010

314

Ben-Amos,
Dan,
Straparola:
The
Revolution That Was Not.
In: Journal of American
Folklore 123 (2010), p.
426-446.
Vaz da Silva, Francisco,
The Invention of Fairy
Tales. In: Journal of
American Folklore 123
(2010), p. 398-425.
Ziolkowski,
Jan,
Straparola and the Fairy
Tale: Between Literary
and Oral Tradition. In:
Journal of American
Folklore 123 (2010), p.
377-397.

315