Short History of Romania

Romanian culture has its own ethos, generated by the geographical and historical
framework of its evolutions. Trends belonging to distinct cultural areas and traditions
have, simultaneosly or successively, intermingled in this context. The sole Christian
Orthodox believers among the Latin peoples and the sole Latin people in the Eastern
Orthodox space, Romanian tenaciously preserved their Roman roots and tried hard to
harmonize it with their Orthodoxy, to turn their ethnic "insularity" into a fecund dialogue
with other cultures.
From the first forms of state organization down to the 18th century, Romanian culture and
civilization knew two coexisting, alternating or intermingling trends: one European and
the other Oriental. Their relation depended on the region, on the specific cultural domain
(architecture is a sphere of coexistence and confluence of both trends, while painting,
linked more closely ro religious canons, is integrated into the gret Byzantine tradition),
on epoch (in Moldavia and Wallachia the Phanariot rule was an age of maximum Oriental
influence, felt more specifically in towns, while rural civilization preserved its traditional
forms).
In 1508 Prince Radu cel Mare of Wallachia ordered monk Macarie to print a prayer book.
That was the first book printed in Slavonic on the Romanian territory. The Romanian
language was late to be adopted in written literature, the first book in Romanian being
printed in 1544. In Church and chancellery writs Slavonic resisted as late as the 17th
century.
Another feature of Romanian culture is the special relationship between folklore and
enlightened culture, determined by two factors. First, the rural character of the Romanian
communities imprinted unusual vitality to the folk culture. Second, until the 18th century,
learned culture consisted mainly of historical, juridical, moral or religious works and
developed around the courts of princes and boyars, as well as in monasteries. An
outstanding personality was Prince Dimitrie Cantemir (1673-1723), member the
Academy of Berlin, whose work on the Ottoman Empire won European fame. Folk
creations (well-known in this sense is The Ewe Lamb / Miorita, a ballad symbolic for the
Romanians' submission to fate) were both a source of inspiration for cultivated creators
and a structural model. In a political history full of rebounds, the more culturally dynamic
proved the epochs of stability when stages were stepped up or even stepped over, when
one witnessed a synchronization with contemporary European Culture. This stands true
for the years just before and after the abolishment of the Phanariot rule when, in a
favourable historical context, Romanians chose the Western way of life, mainly French
model, which they pursued steadily and at a fantastic fast pace.
Since the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century, the cultural lite of the
Romanian Principalities, had studied in Paris and French would become (and stay so until
the communist years) a genuine language of culture. The modeling role of French culture
(especially in the domain of political ideal, administration and law) was paralleled, from
the mid-19th century down to World War I, by German culture, particularly in Moldavia,
where many intellectuals studied in Berlin. In Transylvania and the Banat, the Habsburg
rule and the presence of the Transylvanian Saxons and of the Swabians in the local
communities triggered constant relationships with the German world not only at a
cultural level - the Transylvanian lite's principal educational centres were both Vienna

and Rome - but in daily life as well. The influence of the German space was felt
especially in the humanities (poetry, philosophy, logics, philology) and technical
sciences.
The period of radical changes and modernization of Romanian culture coincided with the
creation of the national state, upon the union of Moldavia and Wallachia, in 1859. The
national identity was thus defined in relation to European model. Later on, the few
decades of peace of the interwar period, after the completion of all the Romanians' union
into one state in 1918, were devoted to the synchronization with European culture. In
both processes, not devoid of polemics, of confrontations between conservatives and the
advocates of progress, the assimilation of Western culture and the capitalizations of local
tradition proved highly beneficial. The outcome was the emergence in the Romanian
literature of the greatest classicss: Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889), Ion Luca Caragiale
(1852-1012) and Ion Creanga (1837-1889). During the interwar period, the most telling
example in this sense is Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957), the innovator of word
sculpture by immersion in the primordial sources of folk creation. The interwar cultural
life was in full effervescence. The overwhelming personality of the historian Nicolae
Iorga (1871-1940) brought into European debate both the Romanian historiography and
the Romanians' history. Defining collective identity through the relationship between
traditional and West European trends was a hot subiect. The debates and polemics were
joined by outstanding names, such as Nae Ionescu (1890-1940), Mircea Vulcanescu
(1904-1952) and Lucian Blaga (1895-1961) who insisted on the traditional component,
and others, like Eugen Lovinescu (1881-1943) who militated for an European approach.
After the enthronement of communism freedom of creation was constantly restricted by
forms differing in various stages: an attempt to build up a new cultural identity on the
basis of socialist realism and lend legitimity to the new order by rejecting traditional
values (the Sovietization period); relaxation of dogmatism and ideological control in the
'60s; pressures to impose a showy nationalism during the two decades of Ceausescu's
dictatorship. The attitude of power towards the men of culture varied along the time from
purges and interdictions (masswide in the '50s) to their being lured into the trap of
priviledges.
The split between oficial and genuine culture would gape wide under the communist rule.
On the one hand, against the authorities' intentions, the outstanding works were perceived
as a realm of moral truths and the genuine men of culture formed the object of a real cult.
On the other had, the slogans disseminated nationwide through the forms of official
culture helped the widespread of simplistic views, of pseudo-truths among some ranks of
the population. The tension between these two directions is still alive and it can be
perceived at the level of society as a whole.
Another aftermath of the communist attitude towards the lites, in general, was the
creation, for the first time in Romania's history, of a real dispora including great
personalities of the scientific and cultural life: George Emil Palade, Nobel Prize winner in
biology; philosopher Stephan Lupasco; Mircea Eliade (1907-1986), the renowed historian
of religios; Eugen Ionescu (1909-1994), the playwriter of the absurd; Emil Cioran (19111996), "the greatest French-writing master of style after Pascal"; Vintila Horia (19151992), a novelist who preserved the Romanian space as a constant of his writings.
Specific to the communist rule in Romania was the permanent repudiation of the
members of the diaspora, labelled as traitors of the motherland. So, neither Mircea

Eliade, nor Eugen Ionescu or Emil Cioran, whose works would be published in this
country sporadically after 1960, could see their native land again. It was only after 1989
that the process of regaining the values of the diaspora and of reintegrating its
personalities into this country's culture could be started, a process marked in its turn by
tension and disagreement. The fall of communism in 1989 elated the cultural world, but
the embarkment on the free market economy and the rigours of the transition period faces
it with a tough experience.
On the one hand, the elimination of state political control brought about the long dreamt
freedom of creation, but along with it culture stopped to be state-subsidized and the
relationships with society are governed by the free market economy, all this hindering an
adequate cultural activity. On the other hand, culture and, first of all, Romanian literature,
have to cope with the competition of a surging wave of imported culture and with a
mutation in the population's interest towards other zones of the public discourse (the
press, television). The search for a new cultural policy seems to prevail now, beyond the
tension implied by the very problems of creation itself.