20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

The centre and the margins of Europe... 877active, convincing. (‟I had become a Venetian in Moldavia or I had beenborn a Moldavian in Venice”)Symbolic characters and their guidesIn these European spaces of Centre and of Margins Vintilă Horia bringsin these superior characters in existential crisis.Such as example is the poet Ovid exiled in the year 8 a.Ch. fromthe paradise of Rome by king August at Tomis. The exile is equivalentto a descent in Hell and the eight chapters of the novel (actually, a sortof imaginary diary of Ovid), entitled The first year, The second year etc.are also steps towards Truth and epiphany, ascent and settling to the newcivilisation impregnated by the religion of Jesus.Thus, the Wallahian prince Radu Negru, fictional character descendantfrom the Bassarabian founders, interrogative character, predisposed moreto feelings, thinking and imagination than to warlike action, resigns himselfand assumes his destiny to carry on the wars against the Turkish, warswhich were constantly lost by The Old Voivode, his father. The prince ofthe woods alias The Knight of Resignation takes the opposite way thanOvid did, from the Margins (Wallahia, the country of forests) towards theCentre (Venice) in order to ask for help to the powerful European fortifiedcity in his fight against Turkey- which came then to e head: the Venicesiege.Other examples are Stefan Diaconu, Toma Singuran and Boetius, whowere presented above.Then there is Matteo Muriano from Vintilă Horia’s last novel, which waswritten in Romanian language after fifty years of writing in other languagesand of his beginning as a novelist in Bucharest. Matteo Muriano takes toothe way from the Centre towards the Margins as Ovid or Della Porta- RaduNegru’s advisor and true support of the Wallahian cause. In the end he willbecome devoted to the oriental Latinity’s values as them too (Moldawiaduring the golden age in the 16 th century) where he suggested himself tolive as ‟a young doctor proud by his humanistic culture”. He had come toStephan’s country, to His Serenissime Excellency, as he taught me to callhim, in order to take care of the deep wound of the venerable Voivode’sankle (‟which is nothing but a true icon (…) of the inner wound, becauseHis soul is an open wound as the one from his ankle”). He had come toSuceava in a moment of inner crisis, of death of gods when everything toldhim nothing, when the truth of literature and arts, of the platonic philosophyand humanism were not enough, when the drama of knowledge comes to