ARHIVELE OLTENIEI - Universitatea din Craiova

ROMANIAN LITERATURE AND ITS EUROPEAN VALUEMIHAELA ALBU1. Romania at Geographic Crossroads and its ImplicationsIts geographical location at the point where the roads from the Orientand the West meet has had for Romania many historical, linguistic, cultural andreligious implications.The history and the general evolution of Romania and its people havealways been in close connection with and even conditioned by the country’sgeographical position, by the place where our people managed to keep theirnational characteristics.Constantin Noica, a well-known Romanian philosopher, studied apolysemantic and almost untranslatable word "întru" (within) which, in hisopinion, best expresses the specific relation between physical space and identity:“…through the characteristics of its own history, our civilization was"within" a given space. It did not swarm like the Hellenic civilization giving birthto colonies on all neighboring coasts... It developed "within" the space around theCarpathians. This space was crossed by several other nations, but they onlycrossed it. We stayed here. And we stayed so comfortably within it that somemigratory peoples had to settle all around it and others had to fuse with ourbeing” 1 The same correlation between space and identity was perceived by thepriest - philosopher Dumitru Stăniloaie. Our space of "frontier" begot most of ourpeople's characteristics. That is why D. Staniloaie said: "If the Romanian peoplemoved out of this frontier space they would lose their identity" 2 .But this identity is a continuation and a paraphrase of Eminescu, ournational poet's verses:"Iar noi locului ne ţinem/ Cum am fost, aşa rămânem" ("We each do ourplace retain,/As we were, so we remain”) (Revedere/ Return) 3Therefore, geographically, Romania lies at the crossroads of the fourcardinal points, but mainly between the two worlds - the East & the West, sodifferent in economy, policy, culture and religion. Neither of these two worlds1 Constantin Noica, Sentimentul românesc al fiinţei, Bucureşti, Humanitas, 1996, p. 7.2 Dumitru Staniloaie, Reflexii despre spiritualitatea românească, Craiova, ScrisulRomanesc, 1992, P. 10.3 Mihai Eminescu, Poems (Poezii), translated by Corneliu M. Popescu, Bucureşti,Eminescu Publishing House, 1978.ARHIVELE OLTENIEI, Serie nouă, nr. 21, 2007, p. 177–182