BRUKENTHALIA

Romanian Cultural History Review Supplement of Brukenthal. Acta Musei

No. 4 2014

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BRUKENTHALIA

Romanian Cultural History Review Supplement of Burkenthal. Acta Musei

Revistă Română de Istorie Culturală

Supliment al Revistei Brukenthal. Acta Musei

Advisory Board

Francis CLAUDON, Professor, ‘Val de Marne’ University of Paris, France Dennis DELETANT, Professor, ‘Georgetown’ University of Washington D. C. Hans-Christian MANER, Professor, ‘Johannes Gutenberg’ University of Mainz

Pascal ORY, President of Association pour le Développment de l’Histoire Culturelle (ADHC) Professor, 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University of Pars

Zoe PETRE, Professor emeritus, University of Bucharest Alexandru-Florin PLATON, Professor, ‘Alexandru-Ioan Cuza’ University, Iaşi

David D. SMITH, Professor, University of Aberdeen Tony WALTER, Professor, University of Bath, Great Britain

Editor-in-chief

Adrian Sabin LUCA, Professor, ‘Lucian Blaga’ University, Sibiu

General Manager of Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu

Senior Editor

Mihaela GRANCEA, Professor, Faculty of Socio-Human Sciences, ‘Lucian Blaga’ University, Sibiu

Editors

Anca FILIPOVICI, PhD, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca

Ecaterina LUNG, Professor, Faculty of History, University of Bucharest Andi MIHALACHE, Researcher, ‘Alexandru D. Xenopol’ Institute for History, Iaşi

Olga GRĂDINARU, PhDc, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca Alexandru SONOC, PhD, Curator, Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu Radu TEUCEANU, PhD, Curator, Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu

Editorial assistant

Anca FILIPOVICI, PhD, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca

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BRUKENTHAL NATIONAL MUSEUM * MUZEUL NA ŢIONALBRUKENTHAL

BRUKENTHALIA

Romanian Cultural History Review Supplement of Brukenthal. Acta Musei

No. 4

EDITURA MUZEULUI NAŢIONAL BRUKENTHAL Sibiu/Hermannstadt 2014

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Editorial Policies and Instructions to Contributors

The review Brukenthalia receives contributions under the form of unpublished research papers, review papers written in English. The field of interest is Cultural History. The editors alone are responsible for every final decision on publication of manuscripts. The editors may suggest changes in the manuscript. Such changes are not to be made without consultation with the author(s).

Manuscripts will be accepted on the understanding that their content is original and that they have

not been previously published in a different form or language. Articles will be edited according to Brukenthalia style guide in matters of punctuation,

capitalization and the like. The accuracy of the translation is the author‘s responsibility. The authors should ensure that the paper as ready for publication. Page proofs will be supplied, but only errors in typesetting may be corrected at this stage.

All correspondence regarding contributions and books for review should be sent to the editors:

e-mail: mihaela_grancea2004@yahoo.com ISSN 2285 - 9497 ISSN-L 2285 - 9489

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Table of contents

A. STUDIES. MISCELLANEA Mircea-Sever Roman Considerations on the Sumerian Hieratic City-State 9 Mihai Dragnea The Thraco-Dacian Origin of the Paparuda/Dodola Rain-Making Ritual 18 Robert Miric ă The figure of the angel Temeluch in the apocryphal writings The Apocalypse of Paul and The Revelation of Pseudo-John. A comparative study

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Vlad Sofronie The Title Fight between the Two Christian Empires in the Age of Crusades 34 Ligia Boldea Pictures of the Serfs in Medieval Documents from Banat (14th and 15th Centuries) 42 Mihaela Grancea Truth in Fiction versus Fiction in Truth. Historical Novel and Romanian Folk Creation on the Tragedy of the Brancoveanu Family

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Iacob Marza A Proposal for a Comparative Research. Two Gymnasium Libraries in Transylvania of the Enlightenment Period

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Andi Mihalache Laocoon’s Prints. The Meaning Of Plaster Casts Of Antique Sculptures From A History Of Art Perspective

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Roxana- Mihaela Coman Romanian travelers to the East between the quest for the exotic and diplomatic mission 92 Georgeta Fodor Woman as a Nation’s Symbol: The Romanian Case 101 Silviu Cristian Rad The Bible – Generator of Russian Literature in the Modern Era (F. M. Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov)

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Elena Andreea Boia-Trif The Gypsy in the Transylvanian Romanian Mentality. 19th Century 116 Diana Crăciun The Image of the 19th Century Worker in Wladyslaw Reymont's Literature 125 Irena Avsenik Nabergoj Cultural History and Literary Representations of Jews in Slovenia 137 Gabriela Glăvan Eerie Beauty: Premature Death in 19th Century Postmortem Photography 155 Mihaela Haşu Bălan From Seppuku to Hikikomori. Suicidal Patterns in the 20th and 21st Centuries Japanese Literary Imaginary

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Loredana-Mihaiela Surdu The European Idea Reflected by the Post-communist Romanian Intellectual Elite in Dilemma 169 Adriana Cupcea Turks' Image in the Romanian History Textbooks, in the Post-Communist Period 175 Mariam Chinchrauli Georgian musical art in the context of European and non-European musical culture (The Case of Globalization in Georgia)

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Maria-Nicoleta Ciocian The Dialogue between the Contemporary Writer and the Bible 190 Dumitru L ăcătuşu Convenient Truths: Representations of the Communist Illegalists in the Romanian Historiography in Post-Communism

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B. STUDIES. CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES OF WAR Dana Percec The Happy Few, the Band of Brothers and the Two World Wars 205 Valeria Sorostineanu Dilemmatic Loyalties. A Case Study: the Church District of Sibiu before the Great Unification 214 Carmen Ţâgşorean Life on the Frontline and the Horrors of WWI as Seen by the Romanian Newspapers of Transylvania: Libertatea, Deşteptarea and Românul (1914-1918)

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Radu Teuceanu Paul Eder’s Memories from the Bukovinian War (1915-1916) 236 Andreea Dăncilă Ineoan ‘... And the wind used to keep me company.’ The Notes of Archpriest Cândea during the Refuge in Moldova, 1918

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Alexandru –Ilie Munteanu World War I narratives in Ion Agârbiceanu´s literary writings 250 Olga Grădinaru The Germans, the Whites, the Reds and Other Enemies in M. Bulgakov’s The White Guard 255 Daniel Gicu The Great War Seen through the Eyes of Romanian Peasants 265 Laura Coltofean Death as a Political Instrument. Introducing the ‘Bolshevik’ and ‘Hungarian Death’ as Death of Otherness

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Cristiana Budac Divergent Accounts of War German Expressionist Painting and British Official Photography 290

C. REVIEWS Lucian Boia Balchik, between Lieux de’Histoire and Lieux de Mémoire (Anca Filipovici) 301 Adriana Babeţi The Amazons. A Story (Gabriela Glăvan) 303 Oana Bodea About a Historical Behavior (Laura Stanciu) 305 Michel Pastoureau Black. The Hero of a History (Gabriela Petică) 310 Ruth B. Bottigheimer Fairy Tales: Between Literary and Oral Tradition (Daniel Gicu) 313

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World War I narratives in Ion Agârbiceanu’s literar y writings

Alexandru-Ilie MUNTEANU

Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu, Romania E-mail: alexandru_munteanu21@yahoo.com

Motto: ‘ ... oh, what distances does war put between people!’ (Agârbiceanu 1988, 321)

Abstract: This paper tries to offer a brief descriptive and hopefully different perspective on World War I, the one constructed in and by Romanian literature, more exactly by the literary writings of an author who was considered by many of his time, including by the historian Nicolae Iorga, as ‘a great sculptor’ of Romanian identity and Romanian feeling. The author´s writings, although literary and fictional, are useful for the cultural historian as historical documents, containing cultural products of their time, such as mentalities, stereotypes, language, and so on. His writings concerning World War I are constructed in two directions, both sharing a common feature: the drama. On the one hand, the author´s focus turns to collective drama and on the other hand to individual drama.

Keywords: World War I, Ion Agârbiceanu, community, individual, destabilization, drama

Introduction

There are two main events that can shake an archaic or even a traditional community: the arrival of a stranger and the outbreak of war. The first disrupts the community through a complex set of different behavioural habits, beginning with the fact that he does not know the local rules or customs, and ending with unacceptable things in the eyes of the host community, such as drawing the local girls (Agârbiceanu 1968, 100). But if the stranger is capable of bringing some disorder to individuals inside the host community, war annihilates almost all existing rules and often dislocates the entire community. By far the most representative literary work of Ion Agârbiceanu concerning the war is the novel Vremuri şi oameni (Times and people), written in Sibiu in 1942. Although written during World War II, the novel is not about this war, but about the previous, the Great War. Other works that share this main theme are: Darul lui Moş Viron / The gift of the old Viron (1919), Pentru pace / For peace (1922), Dura lex (1921), Părinţi / Parents (1922), Singurătate / Loneliness (1922) and others. All of them written, as one can see, in the years that followed. ‘Everyone sensed that big doings are on the

way’ (1)

(1) Agârbiceanu, 1988, 13

‘The commune was a large one – a beautiful village of stone houses covered with tiles – near the south-eastern border of Transylvania, with streets paved with river stones, with oil lamps on the streets, with nearly three hundred children attending the local school. It was a border village, militarized in the 18th century, and it remained as such until the disbandment of the regiments in the second half of the following century. At the north end of the street was the school, a massive square building with four large classrooms, the principal´s house, an official quarter made up of three rooms and annexes. It was built in the same period as the military barracks (…) Better paid and more regularly too than those teaching in confessional schools, only the best teachers had the chance to work here (…) The head of the train station, a blue-eyed small, fat man, with shaved hair, and a blonde moustache was sitting in his office (…) The locals said that he was Hungarian, but he seemed to be German, the kind living in the province Banat, who have adopted the Hungarian language since three decades (…). The first sergeant – strajameşterul - as they called him - was Svoboda, who was a Catholic Slovak, and who did not hide that. But he was now a pure Hungarian. He said that he ate Hungarian bread and breathed Hungarian air, and that all the inhabitants of the country would someday have to become Hungarian as well. (…) Weber, the postman, was a hoary-haired woman, tall, bony, and slender, with a wrinkled

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face, and with yellowish cat eyes (…). A widow, she praised herself as being of noble descent, that is why she had kept her family’s name (…). Onodi, a Szekler of average height, with his mouth always cursing. He was a storekeeper and a servant, and was always cursing in his language, shouting at people, and keeping the children off the lines with whatever methods’ (Agârbiceanu 1988, 3, 48-49). This is how the village in which the main characters of the novel Times and people presented itself just before the big news arrived. A most representative Transylvanian settlement with at least three cultures co-habiting it. But unlike most rural settlements in Transylvania, this village being a little more developed it had got a more diversified élite, also on the Romanian part; these were the school principal, Ion Giurca, who embodied anti-Hungarian nationalism, a teacher, Mr. Stoica, a doctor, Mr. Preda, and a priest, Vasile Scurtu, actually the main character of the novel. Among them, as the author tells us, were a relatively large number of literate people who regularly read the newspapers: ‘All the intellectuals in the commune had a subscription to the newspaper Românul (The Romanian, a.t.). The physician had, besides this, a subscription to the newspaper Gazeta Transilvaniei (Transylvanian Gazette, a.t.). But there were also other weekly newspapers. The priest, the doctor, and the school principal had subscriptions to Luceafărul (The morning star, a.t.), another newspaper’ (Agârbiceanu 1988, 15-17, 23, 26, 54, 57-59).

The people living there were fully abreast of politics in the Empire, aspect that will bring some of them into jail. Mr. Giurca, the school principal, argued that Aurel C. Popovici´s federalization project was: ‘a form in which every nation remained reduced to its own force and numbers, as components of the state. But this kind of project, if it were to succeed, will mean the destruction of the national ideal of Romanians, Slovaks, Croats and Serbs, who knows for how long (Agârbiceanu 1988, 57-58). International relations, however, were taking somewhat dubious turns. Among others, the Russian Tsar´s visit to Romania gave birth to rumors about ‘The Country’ (Romania, a.n.) signing a treaty with the Entente, ‘otherwise, why would the Tsar visit Romania and what meant the recent fortification of the border with Romania ?’, were questions on everybody´s lips (Agârbiceanu 1988, 13).

‘And then came Princip´s revolver…’ (2) ‘It happened on Sunday, June 28, at

10:30, in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. The big manoeuvres organized that year in the presence of the Imperial Heir, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, had just ended. (…) It was an official program, planned to the smallest of details. When the convoy was passing through a crowded street, a young man, an apprentice in a printing house, as it was established after, threw a bomb towards the car in which the Archduke and his wife were travelling. His name was Nedelco Cabrinovici. The bomb fell behind the target, but it damaged another car, badly injuring those inside. The Heir´s car followed its way to the town hall, where a reception was due to be held. The mayor, a certain Ciucici, as white as a ghost, began to welcome the guests. Wait, Mr. Mayor, the Archduke interrupted him irritated – I come here and you welcome me with bombs. That is it! One cannot feel safe in this city! Now you can proceed! The entire procession ended in five minutes. The suite insisted there will be no more of the visiting program. That they would better head directly to the villa. But the Archduke would not hear of that. When the car was passing through a street full of people, from the pavement a young man drew his revolver and shot several times. The first bullets hit the Heir, the next wounded his wife, who was trying to protect him with her body. Both badly wounded, they were carried to their villa. They died quickly. The assassin was Gavriil Princip, 19 years of age, expelled from several schools. He and Cabrinovici came from Serbia, where they actually lived. In their pockets was found a newspaper from Belgrade, the last issue. A special issue: the Serbs were commemorating the 1389 battle of Kossovopolje. (…) When the Emperor heard the news, he said in sorrow: My faith does not spare me at all! (…) And he was right. Rudolf, the first heir to the throne of Francis Joseph, was found shot, in mysterious circumstances, to this day not known. His wife, the Empress, was assassinated in Switzerland by an anarchist. And now, the second Heir, Francis Ferdinand, together with his wife. Too much for a human heart’ (Agârbiceanu 1988, 54-56).

This was the event that started the dramatic shift in the community´s daily life. As soon as the local authorities were informed about the assassination, they took an emergency stance and from the actual declaration of war onward, things will never be the same in the village. The gendarmes were mobilized in the

(2) Agârbiceanu 1988, 58.

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event of an uprising (Agârbiceanu 1988, 49). It was the first sign of change, that they (the gendarmes) were brought closer to the locals and especially to the intellectuals. The border with Romania was closed, and international train routes were cancelled. ‘Censorship of the press was issued and only some news was allowed. (…) At the town hall was an announcement where it was stated that anyone who spread disinformation would be severely punished’ (Agârbiceanu 1988, 63, 68, 84, 104, 121, 183, 215-218). This is how the imperial authorities, the embodiment of the profane time, made their way in a quite isolated, timeless rural multicultural community.

‘The village took a different look’

‘The village took a different look. After the initial calm came a nervous agitation in most houses and on the streets. Some were in a hurry finishing their tasks. Relatives were visiting those who were about to leave. Wives were walking chaotically from here to there (...)’ (Agârbiceanu 1988, 78). People began to realize that things will never be the same and that the social fabric of the community is falling apart under the weight of the extraordinary situation. A general fear in the community was that many young girls will remain unmarried because many boys and men will end up dead, fighting in the war. And in traditional mentality an unmarried woman is not favoured by God and is bound to be somewhat excluded from the rest of the community. The new reality imposed by war destabilized the community, not just by dislocations, but also by the lack of a minimal authority, because of the fact that people did not know ‘whom the village belonged to’ (Agârbiceanu 1988, 307). War came with a new, unknown order, ‘the order of chaos’, described latter on in the war by Preda, in a letter to the priest Scurtu: ‘Sometimes it seems that in the world there are such formidable forces unleashed, so uncontrollable, that humankind is nothing more than a snowflake that floats, blown in every direction. (…), even Romania is no more that a snowflake (Agârbiceanu 1988, 460). But, as father Scurtu observed, cities also suffered from the new order and social hierarchies began to disappear: ‘ (…) the most delicate ladies were eating happily beans, talking and laughing with their neighbours. One would never have believed that ladies would ever eat that kind of food and with no complaints. Look, he said to himself, the war has just begun and

already social differences are disappearing’ (Agârbiceanu 1988, 536).

The same idea of social hierarchies been changed and, in some ways, cancelled, is shown in the next lines. The state of war made the imperial authorities introduce a sort of ‘black lists’ with all intellectuals in certain communities. Because of this, the school principal, Mr. Giurcă, will be arrested. On the other hand, the priest became an unknown person. From his position as leader of the community to a nobody, obliged to remain in the village while other were either arrested, or taken to the battle front: ‘Cold and fear began to take over his soul. (…) And suddenly he felt alone’ (Agârbiceanu 1988, 85-88).

‘…a vague yet strong fear began to grip his

heart’ (3) Every community is made up of individuals. Let us focus on the individual that had to deal with the shock of the new order imposed by war. Ionică, Laura´s future husband, felt a chill down his spine when he was reading the ´Emperor´s manifest towards the nations of the Monarchy; in the night between July 30 and 31, the war against Serbia had begun, and on August 1 the general mobilization has been announced.

Laura and Ionică had wedding plans, but the outbreak of the war turned their world upside down. The author grasps very well the individual drama, the intense living of Ionică between the announcement of general mobilization and his actual departure. Ionică began to search through his high school belongings (4); a kind of ritual re-enactment of his live just before his potential death sentence: ‘Then, returning to reality, he felt a heavy desolation around him, and then a vague yet strong fear began to grip his heart. Where was he going, he said to himself? What will await him in the future? And the only thing he could foresee was desolation, a heavy solitude, in which he fell like in a deep well. (…) They will all remain here: the parents, Laura, the doctor and his wife, the village, his native home. He, on the other hand, will leave all of this behind. But where will he end up?’ (Agârbiceanu 1988, 62, 66-74)

(3) Agârbiceanu 1988, 71. (4) In this scene, the author gives an almost eschatological dimension to priesthood, because he mentiones the fact that Ionică was supposed to become a priest. And if he were to become one, he would not have been obliged to go to war.

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But the drama of war was not reserved only for those who actually fought in the trenches, but also for those left behind; families, mothers, fathers, grandparents would go crazy over their loss or thought of losing their child.

A mother from a Transylvanian village: ‘sold her calf and her two piglets, her hay that she still had; she threw away her grain reserves, sending them, five bags in total, to the mill. The next day she went to the city, she bought some dishes, some pair of shoes. (…) She started to give away everything she had: clothing, dishes; each object had a precise destination, so after the funeral everybody could come and take everything’. One might ask why. The author tells us, because: ‘She wanted to join her Dumitru, to look after him in the afterlife, as she did in this life. (…) She closed her eyes and dozed off. Strange images appeared, in a chaotic whirlpool. She woke up again. (…) She was getting dizzier and dizzier, although she was sited. (…) She thought: Maybe I am dying and I am heading towards the afterlife (…)’. (Agârbiceanu 1968, 367-369). She was not dying, she woke up ravaged by a powerful hunger (she had not eaten for three days, a.n.), and started looking for food. She found a bag of rye and went walking with it to the mill. But on the way, as if possessed by spirits, she stopped and said to herself: ‘But do I really want to live any longer? And every few steps she: ‘stopped again and again, determined to throw away the bag and go back home’. (Agârbiceanu 1968, 369).

A tormented mother, like many others all because of war, was an old woman from the short story For peace. Written in 1922, this short story briefly recounts the last days of the life of a sick mother. She had her boy on the war front (or dead, she did not know a thing about her child) and was in a consuming inheritance related quarrel with her relatives. Broken and full of disbelief, she surrendered to negative thoughts and ultimately to death: ‘If there would have been peace in the world, my beloved Dumitru wouldn´t be rotting in the grave’ (Agârbiceanu 1968, 370-376).

A schoolteacher, Marin Murăşan, has also fought in World War I, in Italy. After the end of the war, he comes back to his home village and restarts his life doing the same thing, teaching at the local school. But not quite as before the Great War. The villagers were talking about his odd behaviour, as they saw him regularly going to the wood. ‘The peasants from Valea-Rea (The Bad Valley, a.t.) cared much about their schoolteacher, for five years, before

the outbreak of the war, he taught their children, and established a choir like no other around’, but ‘now, they felt sorry for him because after the war he went slightly mad.’ (Agârbiceanu 1968, 383-386).

Tears were a daily reality in the small village. On the one hand, there were the people mourning their teacher, their spiritual leader (5) and on the other hand the teacher himself, who was still working in the local school, who was also crying, but for a different reason. Every time he held a lesson he would begin to cry. Rumours were afloat, but the pupils did not tell anybody about the reason for which their teacher was crying. This riddle was solved when a group of local authorities searched his house. They found many letters, where there were written the following lines: ‘People shake their heads, when they see me always following you. But how could I become bored of your beauties? I can see that you are different, happy, I can feel your happiness and your new life! I would hold you in my arms like I would hold a child, for ages. Your plains, your forests, your waters, all are telling me about your boundless joy, my country! You are not dead soil, nor just wind, or water; you are a soul that trembles in the happiness of freedom’ (Agârbiceanu 1968, 383-391). Indeed, the main character was in love with the ‘national ideal’ that has finally come to be.

And for war to be even worse, the author brings out an image of the stranger, the Jew who lived in Romanian cities and who would not properly welcome a Romanian priest, a war refugee, in this case, Mr. Scurtu, who had just arrived in the city of Roman. He settled in a house belonging to: ‘a Jewish family, where the masters of the house, two fat Jewish women, wearing dresses, welcomed them in an aggressive manner, and at the beginning they would not even allow them in the house (Agârbiceanu 1988, 431-432). The author´s suggestions concerning Jews were clear, and so would have been his message towards the Romanian reader of those days: the Jew is a bad person, who almost did not welcome at all a Romanian priest (not just any person!), and in his own country. In Oişteanu’s famous book about Jews in Romanian mentalities and culture one can find situations following the exact negative stereotypes described by Agârbiceanu (Oişteanu 2001).

(5) After the priest, the techer was second in rank in rural traditional Romanian communities.

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Always moralising Finally, the long exile of the priest´s

family has ended just two days before Christmas. Romania has won the war, at least from a territorial point of view. But gains of Romania had a terrible price, people who had to go through awful things, departures from the beloved ones, and the social illness of madness, that took over millions of people, including Mr. Giurcă who was like a ‘shipwreck’, as his wife, Nastasia, once said (Agârbiceanu 1988, 601, 662, 694, 715, 721). Could Mr. Giurcă´s condition be a metaphor for Romania, judging by the fact that the author is constantly comparing 19th century and early 20th century Romania with interwar Romania? It is hard to say. The novel Times and people, and not only, represent, however, a foray into the privacy of the individual, of that of the family, and of Romanian rural communities, all of them witnesses of the Great War.

References

Books: Agârbiceanu 1968

Agârbiceanu, Ion, Două iubiri, Bucureşti, Editura pentru Literatură, 1968.

Agârbiceanu 1988

Agârbiceanu, Ion, Opere vol. 13, Bucureşti, Minerva, 1988.

Oişteanu 2001

Oişteanu, Andrei, Imaginea evreului în cultura română, Bucureşti, Humanitas, 2001.