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During
the interwar period, the most telling example in this
sense is Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957), the innovator
of world sculpture by immersion in the primordial
sources of folk creation. In the interwar cultural life,
defining collective identity through the relationship
between traditional and West European trends was a hot
subject. The debates and polemics were joined by
outstanding names. Nae Ionescu (1890-1940), Mircea
Vulcanescu (1904-1952) and Lucian Blaga (1895-1961)
insisted on the traditional component, others, like
Eugen Lovinescu (1881-1943), were champions of a
European approach. The overwhelming personality of
Nicolae Iorga (1871-1940) brought into European debate
both the Romanian historiography and the Romanians
history.
During
communism, the freedom of expression was constantly
restricted in various ways: the Sovietization period was
an attempt at building up a new cultural identity on the
basis of socialist realism and lending legitimacy to the
new order by rejecting traditional values. That trend,
covering the period of the communist takeover, gave way
to a time of relative relaxation of dogmatism and of
ideological control in the 1960s. Ceausescu's
dictatorship brought new pressures to impose a shallow
and shrill kind of nationalism especially during the
1970s and 1980s. The attitude of the regime towards the
intellectuals varied along the time from purges and
interdictions (mass wide in the 1950s) to their being
lured into the trap of privileges.
There
was a chasm between the official, communist culture and
genuine culture. On the one hand, against the
authorities intentions, the outstanding works were
perceived as a realm of moral truths and the significant
representatives of genuine cultural achievement were
held in very high esteem by the public opinion. On the
other hand, the slogans disseminated nationwide through
the forms of official culture helped spread simplistic
views, pseudo-truths which were relatively successful
among some ranks of the population. The tension between
these two directions can still be perceived at the level
of society as a whole.
Another
consequence of the communist attitude towards the
elites, in general, was the creation, for the first time
in Romania's history, of a Diaspora, including great
personalities of the scientific and cultural fields:
biologist George Emil Palade, Nobel Prize winner (1974);
philosopher and logician Stephane Lupasco; Mircea Eliade
(1907-1986), the renowned historian of religions; Eugene
Ionesco (1909-1994), the playwright of the absurd; Emil
Cioran (1911-1996), the greatest French-writing master
of style after Pascal, etc. The communist rule in
Romania, unlike most of the other countries of the
Eastern bloc, permanently repudiated the Romanians who
had left their country and labeled them as traitors to
the motherland. So, neither Mircea Eliade, nor Eugene
Ionesco, nor 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 countries
culture could be started seriously, a process marked in
its turn by tension and disagreements.
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