Vol. XXXIV, 2021
1. Alexandru Mamina, Nicolae Iorga – creșterea și descreșterea unui profetism laic, p. 3-14.
L’article présente les traits principaux de la conception politique et morale de Nicolae Iorga qui, grace à elle, il est devenu parmis les jeunnes étudiantes et intellectuels un vrai prophéte du nationalisme jusqu’aux années 1920. Il s’agissait d’une conception qui privillégia l’achevenement de l’État-nation et l’emancipation politique et culturelle de la paysannerie, en tant que structure sociale de résistance pour cet État. On présente aussi les causes sociales et culturelles qui ont déterminé, depuis les années 1930, la perte de prestige de Nicolae Iorga personelement et l’évolution du nationalisme roumain vers l’extrême-droite, surtout les difficultés d’insertion professionelle de la jeunesse et le déclin du rationalisme au profit d’une sorte d’existentialisme d’inspiration orthodoxe.
After the Anschluss of Austria and the incorporation of Sudetenland to Germany following the Munich Agreement from September 1938 and leading to the formation of a Greater Germany under Adolf Hitler, Nicolae Iorga has rightly acknowledged the whole historical drama of these events consisting in the fullfillment of the German „national principle” by the violent means of the national-socialist politics, which he had criticised since its very beginnings. Iorga finds the roots of this drama in the very foundation of the German Reich by Bismarck as „Smaller Germany” as well as in the Bismarckian politics disregarding the national aspirations of other European nations. Far from considering the Second German Empire as craddle of the German nationalism leading to the Third Reich of Adolf Hitler, Nicolae Iorga finds the former guilty of disconsideration for the national principle, opposing it nevertheless resolutely to the latter one, whose national aims were to be regarded as the first step towards the further imperialist expansion.
Although the study of popular culture was not one of his major field of interest, Nicolae Iorga published extensively on this subject, from his literary debut throughout his entire career. This article is trying to contextualise Iorga's ideas and compare them with the prevalent discourse about popular culture in Romania, in the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Although he continued the prevalent discourse, Iorga added a militant aspect to the topic of popular culture. Moreover, the great scientific value of Iorga’s writings offered an enormous authority to his definition of popular culture which is used to this day in Romanian academic circles.
4. Raluca Tomi, Școala de misionare „Regina Maria” – un „elixir de viață morală”, p. 41-59.
„The «Queen Mary» missionary school” was part of the settlements founded by Nicolae Iorga in Vălenii de Munte. The article aims to show what were the founder’s reasons in the context of the need to reform education after the Great War. Nicolae Iorga’s conception of a new teaching method addressed to young girls teachers, considered to be the promoters of „national and social harmonization” with respect to the culture and traditions of national minorities, is surprising. This article describes the teaching staff, the teacher-student relations, the subjects taught, the daily life in the Missionary School. Finally, based on the original documents, it is shown what effects the new teaching method had on the personal destiny of the missionaries, but also their involvement in shaping children and young people on school benches, in forming the „spirit of the new Romania”.
Until the middle of the 19th century, most of the urban settlements in the Romanian Principalities were larger villages, with many houses and churches, with wider and more numerous streets. Despite timid attempts at modernization by the Organic Regulations, Bucharest was far from what the Western and Central European world called a city and especially a capital. This does not mean that Romanians were disinterested or insensitive to the European model. On the contrary, modernization and Europeanization acquired a special importance, Bucharest, like Iași, being always landmarks, of quantification of modernity. Its rhythm, depth and intensity were marked by a series of events, which determined important political, economic, and social changes and influenced the collective mind. Our approach aims to highlight the aspects of urbanization with all their attributes: constructions (dwellings, institutions, places of worship) and materials used, their location, delimitation of streets, lighting and sewerage, creation of recreational spaces, existence of cultural and public health institutions, all naturally related to the demographic evolution of the capital. In this sense, we consider not only useful, but also remarkably interesting and relevant the information offered by foreign travelers, witnesses of the slow or more accelerated transformations to which Bucharest was subjected in the decades that preceded independence. Their stories give us not only the image of a city of contrasts, but especially of a changing city, engaged in an extensive process of modernization, a capital in search of identity and individuality in a world where imitation of the model was in order of the day.
6. Dan Chiță, Literatura ca istorie a modernității în Comedia umană, p. 81-116.
This study traces the main lines of the thinking behind Honoré de Balzac’s magnum opus, La Comédie humaine, which is divided into a set of principles that are neither explicit, nor guided by narrative ploys, but always inbuilt in the fabric of the literary narrative. To put it succinctly, these are: 1) the individual as a being which is able to accomplish the absolute, i.e. man as a potential angel or sometimes genius, 2) society as a field of mischievous competition and blatant search for material wealth, 3) history as incorporating both aspects or rather losing both aims in the attempt to reconcile the urge for individual freedom with the social constrains that sacrifice the freedom of the many to the benefit of a few. These three aspects will be identified as part as of a micro-historical analysis which spans across the 1789-1848 period both in France and across the European continent.