LE SYMPOSIUM INTERNATIONAL LE LIVRE. LA ROUMANIE. L ...

the phanariot prince nicolae petru Mavrogheni
and prince Dimitrie Cantemir
lIA BrAD ChISACoF
the present paper starts from a detail provided by an english novel of
the early 19 th century which triggers a timely re-visitation of a phanariot
reign and its historiography as well as the way it ascribed itself to the
preceding reigns of the local princes.
looking for less known or ignored aspects linked to prince and erudite
Dimitrie Cantemir we have reached a passage in a very intriguing kind of
writing. that is the three volume novel called Anastasius by thomas hope.
the passage reads:
Sometimes he (i.e. Mavrogheni) thought of imitating prince Kondemir,
and composing the history of his time himself in order to make sure of
appearing in it as he wished... 1
Before reaching the novel which provides the quotation, let us mention
that prince Cantemir, should one judge by at least one important “phanariot”
author, namely essay writer Dimitris Katartzis, was rather despised, if not
envied, by the phanariots. thus, for Katartzis Incrementa... was superfluous
for the turks and inexistent for the Greeks or the romanians2 , as it was
written in latin.
Back to Anastasius one can well wonder how reliable a historical source
the novel is and what is the real significance of the wish expressed by
Mavrogheni in the above quoted passage. We are challenged to infer from
this quotation what exactly Mavrogheni wanted to imitate from Cantemir.
1 thomas hope, Anastasius, or Memoirs of a Greek; Written at the Close of the
Eighteenth Century, 1st tome, london 1820, pp. 40-41.
2 Dimitris KAtArtzIS, Τα ευρισκόμενα, C.th. DIMArAS (ed.), Athens, 1970, p.
47.