20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

The centre and the margins of Europe... 875boyard Duma, the cousin of the voivode (who reconstitutes the heroic andwarlike dimension of the voivode), to Maria from Harlau (one of Stephan’ssecret lover whose stories create the erotic nucleus of the book). Daniilthe Anchorite also ‟a setting sun as Stephan who became soul beforedying” is not only the Wise Man but a well-read too, a humanist fromthe East, admired for his knowledge of Venetian humanism. The Anchoriteoften confesses (especially in the discussions with the humanist doctor)his origins from Origen’s philosophy (‟I say as Origen that…”) – that ishow many of the character’s meditations start) and his affinity with Plato’sphilosophy – who as a matter of fact is painted on the south wall of theVoronet Monastery next to Pythagoras and Socrates at his suggestion.Matteo Muriano thinks that the three silhouettes with crowns on theirheads were part of the genealogical tree of Jesus Christ. The anchoriteDaniil, who although blind sees angels (‟I know from Origen that thenumber of angels grows all at once with the dimension of a nation, thatfor instance if all of us who speak Romanian were an unique body (…)the angels would crowd in our sky”), so Daniil the Anchorite is also alarge spirit, an European one, not constrained by dogma; so, when MatteoMuriano considers becoming an Orthodox, he replies: ‟What for? (…).The great mysteries of Christianity are the same in Ram and Bizant, andthe key of our belief is the very same: Jesus’s death on the cross and HisResurrection”.Back to the representation of the civilisations from the symbolicstructure of Vintilă Horia’s novels let’s say that they have an interestingdialect: from polarity (in the first two novels from the trilogy of exile)towards complementarity in Further than the North.Thus, in the novel God was born in exile, the author builds twoantagonistic spaces: The Centre and The Margins of Europe, meaningRome and Tomis, the Roman Empire and the Getae’s country. In thenovel The Knight of Resignation, the polarity of civilisations is given byVenice and Wallahia. The novel Persecute Boetius which reconstitutesthe drama of exceptional Romanian intellectuals exiled in Baragan (thephysicist Stefan Diaconu and the Romanian teacher Toms Singuran) in thecommunist totalitarian regime is the only novel which does not recomposean ideal geography, securing, marked by the sacred dimension. The spaceof evil is dominant and it represents the Romanian plain with its forcedresidences, the communist jail, the primitive hut- as forced residence, thejail from Ravenna conquered by Ostrogoths: ‟A long autumn night, misery,foolishness and death had fallen over the Country with Arrows – commentsthe novelist referring to Romania, adding: The Country with Arrows hatremained without arrows in its legendary quiver”.