ARHIVELE OLTENIEI - Universitatea din Craiova

Romanian Literature and its European Value 181country isolated by the communist regime. His novels Adio, Europa and Lupul şicatedrala (The Wolf and the Cathedral), and also his diary or hiscorrespondence 9 were various methods to express his desperation and also to say„good-bye/ adio” to the European democracy.4. Romanian Culture and EuropeWas the Romanian literature, the Romanian culture so far from Europeonly because it was isolated from many of the European values? Could itreintegrate into the European system of cultural values? These were (andsometimes still are) two principal ideas our intellectuals paid a special attention to.„Our isolation could be fatal for us”, Marino warned and he alsodenounced “the great culprit” – the communist system which “destroyed,sterilized and stopped its natural and free development”. The principal referencewas the Romanian culture, but, of course, his statement could refer to all theother divisions of social life.Even if sometimes Western values were far from the Romanian ones,and even if some of the Romanian writers wrote their books according to thecommunist dispositions, there were many others (poets, novelists, literarycritics) who contributed to maintaining our culture at the European level,cultivating European democratic values.At least two are the coordinates that can give us a general point of viewregarding the Romanian literary (cultural) phenomenon. First of all it is thetendency, the desire, the aspiration of Romanian writers or scholars to be at thesame level with the most recent tendencies in Europe, being this sometimesimitation or adaptation. Secondly, it could be represented by the Romanianwriter and scholar Adrian Marino who analyzed (in many books) our culturalsystem in comparison with the European one. Thus he insisted on the„consciousness of the equality and competition with Europe” 10 , persisting on the„the cultural exchanges in both directions” 11 . Adrian Marino without complexesunderlined that the Romanian culture is an important part of European culture.Last year, another Romanian writer, Ioana Pârvulescu, in one of herarticles from the most important literary magazine România literară, justifiedwhy she „admires” the former King Carol I. In this article she wrote that theking „helped Romania to enter in Europe and, with the same importance, helpedEurope to enter in Romania” 12 . In other words, Carol I contributed to a betterknowledge of Romania for the European people and also to a better knowledgeof the European values for the Romanians.9Ion D. Sîrbu, Traversarea cortinei. Corespondenţă cu Ion Negoiţescu, VirgilNemoianu, Mariana Şora, Timişoara, Editura de Vest, 1994.10 Adrian Marino, Carnete europene, Cluj, Dacia, 1976, P. 44.11 Idem, Politică şi cultură, Iaşi, Polirom, 1996, p. 201.12 Ioana Pârvulescu, De ce îl admir pe Carol I, România literară, nr. 35, 1 sept. 2006,p. 21.