ARHIVELE OLTENIEI - Universitatea din Craiova

178Mihaela Albumanaged to change us totally. Constantin Noica very suggestively expressed thispeculiar cultural event:"Nowhere does the situation of a 'closure which can open' appear morevividly.... a historical point of view like in Romania: two massive worlds close/comprise a community in their meeting point, which, instead of being crushedby them, as it happens at the crossroads, can open towards them and especiallycan open one towards the other" 4 .Being at the meeting point between these two worlds meant a lot for theRomanians. It produced undeniable particularities in our people's identity. Thegreatest Romanian literary critic and historian, George Călinescu, concluded hismassive History of the Romanian Literature with the synthesizing chapter – “Onthe National Particularities in Romanian Literature”, where he wrote:"Historically speaking, owing to our Thracian inheritance, which isessential, we are among the oldest peoples of Europe. We are genuine Europeannatives coming from immemorial times. Our physical type is totally differentfrom that of the neighboring countries and Eastern Europe. (...) Old peoples hada pastoral civilization characterized by withdrawal into the mountains fromwhere they could watch and avoid foreign invasions, by a wind furrowed face,by keen eagle-like sight, by silence. New peoples are, on the contrary, noisy,make large gestures and have an obvious tendency towards civilization.Regression towards the village is another feature of old peoples. Therefore thetheory about our primitivism is false. We are not primitive, we are old." 5Tracing back our history it is worth mentioning that Romania wassurrounded by the interests of three great empires: Habsburg, Ottoman andRussian. Although the historical conditions were not favorable to them and theterritory of today's Romania was divided, Romanians paradoxically managed tokeep their national identity, language and religion intact. The current metaphorthat we are a Latin drop in a Slavic ocean is a telling – proof of our nationalidentity. The migratory peoples, and the close vicinity of the Slavic powerscould have brought even our language, culture and the way of understanding lifeto a "crossroads", but the way they chose was a straight, unerring one.2. Romania at the Political CrossroadsGeographically speaking, Romania is situated "at the crossroads", but inthe modern epoch it was situated especially "at the crosswinds" whichculminated in the communist dictatorship. After World War II it came under theimposed authority of communist ideology, like all the other Eastern Europeancountries, which led to a gradual dissolution of democracy until the well-knownpolitical absolutism was reached. Also, this ideology was under the sign of"socialist internationalism", and national identity was kept thanks to a certainform of resistance - through culture.4 C. Noica, op. cit., p. 10.5 G. Călinescu, Istoria literaturii române, “Minerva”, 1982, p. 974-975.