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

54 LIA BRAD cHISAcOF
Blancard 54 , he was serving in the Danube area when the tragic event took
place.
last but not least, rigas’ own life was just a few years longer than
Anastasius’ (he lived to be forty and died in 1798) and he told the story of
his life to a young man, namely perraivos 55 , while Anastasius dictated his
memoirs to a youngster.
At some point in his youth, rigas seems to have made a précis of the
above mentioned book. his version of the writing is called Η φυλλάδα του
Πάτερ Δανήιλ (Father daniel’s Popular Book) and it is a short version of
the above, dated from within the text again 1776. It displays rigas Fereos’
youth handwriting and obviously had teaching ends. Interestingly, it also
displays common features with his translations-adaptations.
John rodenbeck insists on a connection between Anastasius and
Abbé Barthelemy’s Voyages du jeune Anacharsis. Although we stick to
the connection we are substantiating, we do not run out part of his thesis,
in the sense that if we suppose the two men were connected, then rigas’
translation (in collaboration with G. Sakellarios) of the Voyage... in Greek
must have been known to hope, or even inspired by him.
Getting back to the quotation the discussion of which prompted the
present article, one thing which it enhances is the idea of research involved
in the writing. With the whole story of who inspired the character Anastasius
and his name, and keeping in mind hope’s sketches for furniture and
costumes, heavily researched in their turn, we can only reach the conclusion
that the ideal of walking in the steps of Cantemir was a result of hope’s
perusals. As he was an admirer of the ottoman empire, we cannot imagine
how much he took over from Cantemir’s Incrementa atque decrementa,
but that must have been a good source of information.
he is sure to have met Mavrogheni and almost sure not to have
witnessed his death, which he nevertheless describes. this might be
suitable for interpretation and Mavrogheni be seen as yet another case
this time of an “ottoman” traitor. In his truthful description of the turkish
empire, hope might have been interested in a representative existence, as
was Mavrogheni’s, and take his death as a good example of the firmness
which makes no mention of rigas belongs to the library of the romanian Academy
(Ms. Gr. 1464) and was published by p.p. pAnAIteSCu, Un manuscript necunoscut
al “Efemeridelor” lui Constantin Caragea Banul, Institutul de Arte Grafice «Mercur»,
Bucharest, 1924.
54 theodore BlAnCArD, op.cit., chapter xV.
55 Ch. perrAIVoS, Σύντομος βιογραφία του αοιδήμου Ρήγα Φερραίου του
Θετταλού, Athens, 1860, p. 9.