20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

168 Radu RaisaXIV th century soldier, Machiavelli doesn’t respect all facts, because hewants to write more than a biography. He rather exhibits his educationalideal, showing the human capacity to make his own life, by reigning overthe fate and by his own virtue.The knowledge of history is necessary, because if you want to know thefuture, you must investigate the past. “It is easy, by carefully investigatingthe past, to predict, in every state, the future facts and to implement theimprovements the ancient themselves implemented or, if they didn’t dosuch reforms, to consider improvements based upon the resemblancebetween the past and present situations” 10 afirmă Machiavelli.Nicolae Mavrocordat was himself a supporter of knowing history. Hetold his son to study both history and the current state of things. At thesame time, he urged his son to always have the future in his mind. NicolaeMavrocordat knew many languages. He spoke modern and classicalGreek, Latin, Italian, French, Turkish, Arabic and Persian. As prince ofboth Moldavia and Wallachia, he also learned Romanian, as he himselftold, in a letter, to his teacher, Iacob of Argos. Reading the Histories ofthe principalities, Nicolae Mavrocordat had in mind to merge all thosefragments, as to “take further, to the day, the work of the authors, to blendtheir writing with other historical legacy, in order to give, in a good literaryform, the first complete history of Moldavia and Wallachia” 11 . This “lovefor the Histories” of the prince had both an emotional and a scientific aspect,said Nicolae Iorga. The emotional aspect was based on the prince’s wish to“clarify his actions, to develop them and to hand it over to the generationsto come”. “The scientist’s need to explain the surrounding reality was alsopresent” 12 in Mavrocordat’s actions. Creating that corpus of the principalHistories of the two Romanian countries, Nicolae Mavrocordat acted notonly for his own literary satisfaction, but also in order to fulfill a work ofculture.We can group Mavrocordat’s comments in several categories:considerations on Machiavelli’s advises and strategies, characterizations ofseveral social and political facts, grasping several resemblances between thenarrations of the Florentine Secretary and the political reality contemporarywith Mavrocordat.Machiavelli’s advice, that “the only way to reign over a free state you10Machiavelli, N. 1954, Opere, Milano-Napoli: Ricciardi, după Nina Facon1960, Studiu introductiv la Machiavelli, Principele, Bucureşti: Editura Ştiinţifică: LXI.11Iorga, N. 1901, Istoria literaturii române, vol. I, Bucureşti: Institutul de artegrafice, 62.12Ibidem, 61.