Do you notice, within the framework of your interests, or of culture in its entirety, differences that would justify the confidence in a new spirituality, with a deeper, overall significance? Nicolae Iorga I am an old incurable traditionalist who has completely lost the notion of the new. In the little literature and quasi-philosophy I have made in my life, I have never felt the necessity of breaking up with a past, which was sufficient to go through new people in order to become new again by itself. (…) All these big forms that have been going about for a while, are nothing but children's games, with big wooden letters, before learning how to read. The human soul is a whole in the midst of a nature that constantly repeats itself with its forever old things. C. Rădulescu-Motru A new spirituality? Of course it exists There even exist two. One hunted by the opportunism of the individual self, the spirituality which suits the ascension of a certain man. And the other, the spirituality brought upon by the deepening of the consciousness in humanity's life, the spiritualization which endures for eternity. With all the noise of the former, I can still notice the latter around me. (…) Let me live peacefully in the eternal spirituality! Octavian Goga I am glad for this "holy dissatisfaction" that the youth nowadays bring onto the stage. I am thankful for the nervous restlessness, for the questioning of every second, for the soul police they establish. I consider that the national idea, with all its logical attributes, should be the cornerstone of the belief and action of tomorrow. E. Lovinescu Mystical calls and orthodox exhortations seem to come from different sides of the younger generation, in which it is difficult to discern honesty (which is possible too), a spirit of imitation, or the simple budgetary aspiration: only time will tell the nature of this "new spirituality", whose expression, we can already claim, is old. (…) Three young men, after the war, do stylistic mysticism exercises in a manifesto, where their adversaries are treated as being "stupid", "silly", "more stupid than fooled" or "oxen frightened by anything new". From the juxtaposition of these texts we cannot draw any conclusion regarding the sincerity of this "spirituality", because violence cannot be a proof, but in both old and new its expression is identical and integrated in the same insufficiency of the real "spirituality". Lucian Blaga The new spirituality exists. So much so that I personally feel myself living only because of it. I exist as long as this new spirituality exists. As far as I am concerned I have tried to enrich its myth and to deepen its meaning; the transfiguration of reality in all my poems, the metaphysics of sleep from my last poems; Zamolxe's blind man, Jesus – the Earth, Luke's anonymity, Manole's sacrifice. Nichifor Crainic Spirituality means life in spirit and art in spirit, and as the consecrated and concrete form of spirituality is the Church, the new orientation means life and art through the Holy Ghost. If the elite of the younger generation will be imbued with this conviction, its way will also represent, at the same time, a regression to the contact with the soul of the people, the soul that our forefathers used to identify with religion. Radu Dragnea (…) If a new spirituality is placed under discussion, even in the form of raising problems, then it exists. (…) The content of the new spirituality is Orthodoxy. (…) But Orthodoxy is national or local only in its worldly aspect; as an embodiment of eternal divinity, it is universal. Consequently, the servants of the new spirituality are different from their predecessors, for example the samanatoristi ("sowerists"), in the new sensibility of the universe. Şerban Cioculescu What is the "new spirituality" you are talking about? Aren't you incarcerating it in the prison of thought of [the periodicals] Cuvântul, Curentul and Gândirea, where they think in parricidal manner, where thinking is against thinking? (…)Romanian spirituality remains a desideratum. In order to escape from the awful moral absenteeism which is stifling us, I suggest the dignity and autonomy of a free self, led by intellect, "the only guarantor of inner and collective freedom". Mihail Sebastian I am following, with attention and passion, the still unclear fate of the new spirituality, of which mysticism is only one side. As for me, congenitally unfit as I am for the latter attitude of the soul, I see it without living it. (…) It is difficult for me to take any position. Be that as it may, between Spirit and Word and Calends, anticipating these as two positions and two orientations (obviously going beyond literature), I incline towards the latter. Mihail Polihroniade I think it is premature to consider the new spirituality as being mystical. So far I can only see a number of personalities who declare themselves to be mystical, but no mystic whatsoever. Tiparniţa literară (The Literary Printing Works), 1st year, no. 2, November 30th 1928, pp. 42-47
by Tiparniţa literară
