European

New Critical Studies, 1920

The programmatic article of THE NEW TREND, 1906excerpts …To start a war against foreign culture because we, in our barbarity, have taken the bad parts from it, is – an exaggerated but suggestive comparison – to do like mulattos in Liberia, were they, disgusted by

Tradition And Modernity In The 1920s (IV)

excerpts Chapter IV. What path shall we choose for our evolution? 1 The history of modern Romania has registered, periodically, a phenomenon that might seem strange at first glance. That is the discussion, every two or three decades, concerning the development of the country

The Effects Of Disappointment

At the beginning of the '20s, fascism represented the newest and the most catching political phenomenon. Nevertheless, it failed to be a roaring success everywhere and especially at the very beginning. In Romania, the obsession of being permanently synchronized with

Tradition And Modernity In The 1920s (III)

excerpts Chapter III. Reason and rationalism under accusation  2 The truth is that any objective examination of the ideological phenomenon that we are studying cannot avoid the conclusion that things were quite similar in France and Germany. By entering the territory

The Generation Of '27, Between The Holocaust And The Gulag

excerpt After the year when its first program was launched, namely Mircea Eliade's Spiritual Itinerary, the generation of '27 (or the young generation, the generation of the '30s, the generation that lived life for life's sake, the experiential and Orthodox

The Manifesto Of The White Lily, 1928

excerpts The lashes against the young generation are relentless. They have all befallen us at once, like pelts of heavy rain. The pundits charge anew and huff heavily, seconded by verbose mercenaries that bounce off like loose cannonballs of tennis. All the nuances of

A Certain Incapacity

The ultimate test for everyone – therefore for nations too – is the capacity to contemplate while suffering. The Asians, the Chinese and the Indians in particular, are definitely superior to us from this point of view. These people give so much importance to contemplation

Sleep

Heraclitus says that bards, sycophants or mystagogues behave like people asleep when they are awake, looking towards their personal world, while people who are awake only have one single world, which is common to all of them. If this quote had been seen by Constantin Noica

Proto-History Or The Middle Ages

The European nations are divided into two main groups: those which had a glorious Middle Ages period out of whose crises the Renaissance came out, and those which had a minimal, insignificant, derived one. The former created most of the civil, spiritual and cultural history

The Second Independence, 1926

There is a technique of the life of the matter and a technique of the life of the soul. One is the result of scientific findings and inventions based on precise and universally valid laws; the other is the result of long-wearing inner experiences of man with himself, with

Religion And Identity In Interwar Romania: Orthodoxism

In the two decades between the world wars the majority of Romanian intellectuals were engaged in a grand debate about what it meant to be Romanian and how national character determined social and political development. [1] The ideological commitments of the protagonists

The Children's Corner

1. The Virgin Mary with the Child, Orthodox icon, 17th century 2. Constantin Brancovan and his family 3. Ştefan Luchian (1868-1916), The Washing (see also Gallery) Romanian painters met the Child long before local art itself was born, in the modern sense of the word (the