20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

The Reader (Lepturariul) of Aron Pumnul – a pioneering book 161matches the poet’s vision of his ancestors, expressed in the poem Epigones(Epigonii) and explained in his famous letter to Iacob Negruzzi: “If inEpigones you will notice praise for poets like Bolliac, Mureşan and Eliade,this is not for the local value of their work, but because one is genuinelymoved by that unconscious, sincere innocence displayed in their writings.We, the new ones, are aware of our predicament; we are alert to the spiritof our century and this is why we have so many reasons to be discouraged[...]. Our predecessors believed in what they wrote, in the same way asShakespeare believed in his fantasies”. 247. The Reader (Lepturariul) banned in HungaryTwo years after the publication of The Reader (Lepturariul), namelyin 1867, the famous Austro-Hungarian treaty took place. This was thebeginning of a campaign to denationalize the Romanians in Transylvania,using all sorts of methods, from prohibiting the distribution of books andreaders to police measures. Thus, on 17 March 1875, all the Transylvanianschools received a “ministerial order” from Budapest, which prohibited38 books, including 14 Romanian textbooks. The censored volumes (byauthors such as A.T. Laurian, Aron Pumnul, Ioan Micu Moldovanu, I.V.Rusu, Visarion Roman and others) were mainly books on geography, historyand Romanian literature, spreading the Romanian national ideal, which didnot suit the policymakers in Budapest. Aron Pumnul’s Reader (Lepturariul)is one of those books. The order also communicated the punitive measuresto be taken against those who did not follow the instructions: “The ImperialHungarian High Ministry stated that those teachers who use the books andthe textbooks listed above, will be punished in accordance with Article 40 ofthe 1879 Law, which shows, in Article 38, that «whoever uses a book or aneducational instrument will be punished, depending on the circumstances,with fines of up to 300 florins and up to two months of imprisonment or theloss of one’s job»” 25 . Thus, drastic police measures were taken to preventthe entrance of “subversive” books in Transylvania (the tightening ofcustoms controls, the opening of postal packages, the sending of suspiciousnewspapers and books to the Ministry of Home Affairs in Budapest, etc.).The censored books were not only banned from schools, but also frompublic and school libraries.24I.E. Torouţiu and Gh. Cardaş 1931, Studies and Literary Documents, vol. I.Junimea, Bucharest: Institute of Graphic Arts Bukovina, 312.25Flaminia Faur, Measures Taken by the Hungarian Authorities to Stop the Use ofRomanian Books in Transylvanian Schools, in Tribuna, year V, no. 19 (2075), 13 th -19 th ofMay 1993, 8.