20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

The Reader (Lepturariul) of Aron Pumnul – a pioneering book 159school matters and administrative hassles. Now my mind is finally free. Asfor your precious and meticulous book, we, meaning the School InspectionCommittee of Former Moldavia (comprising V. Alesandrescu, Mârzescu, O.Teodori, N. Culianu and myself) would have insisted that it be immediatelyintroduced in our secondary schools. But you must know, sir, that in ourschools the students don’t study the Romanian language. The Curriculumstates: “the Latin language in comparison with the Romanian language” –throughout the 7 secondary years, only 33 hours a week are assigned to thissubject, therefore students learn neither Latin, nor Romanian.” 18 .The reaction to the book in the educational, cultural and literary fields,will be very diverse, as we shall see. Thus, in an article by Al. Hurmuzachipublished in The Society’s Paper... (Foaia Societatii), The Reader(Lepturariul) was called “a true national treasure”, “a work that is unique inRomanian culture and which, even when assessed by the most competentforeigners, should be comparable to similar works published in countrieswith a much more developed literature.”The first negative reaction came, as we already anticipated, fromthe poet D. Petrino. In the popular booklet, A Few Words..., the authorhad violently attacked not only the linguistic system of the teacher fromChernotsky, but also his Reader (Lepturariul) (“Let the Rumanian goodfor-nothingperish reading it!“), accusing him, with the typical pride of awriter who is unhappy with the way he is treated in an anthology, not justfor the “crippled” transcription of the texts, but also for his subjectivity inassessing the authors.The second “condemnation” (“osandatiune”, the term belongs toCipariu) came from Titu Maiorescu. The first objection of the critic fromJunimea is that the teacher from Chernovtsy modelled his work on atextbook by a certain Mr. Mozart, which was used in Austrian secondaryschools as a reader for German literature and which contained “modelsamples of German poetry and prose”. Even if The Reader (Lepturariul)follows the structure of Mozart’s textbook (except for the “aesthetictreatises”, which are missing from The Reader), Aron Pumnul does notstate anywhere that he wants to provide literary models of Romanianpoetry and prose, as accused by Titu Maiorescu. Obviously, this is a disputebetween the intentions of Aron Pumnul and the claims of Maiorescu. Inthe chapter entitled The Concept of Literature of his Romanian LiteratureCourse, Pumnul clarified what he meant by the term scriptura/“scripture”:18Titu Maiorescu 1984, Journal of Letters, vol. V. Edition cared by GeorgetaRǎdulescu-Dulgheru and Domnica Filimon, Bucharest: Minerva Publisher, 35-36.