VALERIU ANANIA’S MEMORIES (I) – A MORAL DEBT TO POSTERITY
VALERIU ANANIA’S MEMORIES (I) – A MORAL DEBT TO POSTERITY

Summary/Abstract: This article aims at offering a radiography of unexpected events in Romanian history through the eyes of a writer, Valeriu Anania (1921-2011). His volume of Memories is very unusual. Valeriu Anania ‘s dream was to excel in writing poetry and theatre. He followed the religious path of becoming a monk. Later Anania became Archbishop and Metropolitan of Cluj-Napoca. His spiritual vocation was very ardent. His book, “Memorii”, is a testimony of a man who chooses to be faithful to his conscience. He chose to tell the truth about his tribulations in prisons as well as about all his choices, bad and good. Anania willed special provisions about the publication of his manuscript only after his death. This way he was not tempted to embellish the truth about him. In his high-school years, Anania fancied the extremist "green shirts" youth "brotherhood”organizations because he liked their system of recruiting (faith in God, initiation, unavailability, and promised heroism). Anania never became legionary in any form of adherence. His rejection of the extremist group started in his youth. Even then, in his youth, because of his faith in God and of his deep desire to follow the path of devotion to God, he realized that he made a mistake trusting impetuousness. As a former prisonier, Anania was to suffer a stigma all his life. He had not been a follower of what was to become the extreme right. In the light of his wise age while writing the memories, this episode becomes an anatomy of a disenchantment but also a way to understand the tensions of a turbulent epoch. Instead of a pact with the reader, Valeriu Anania commits to telling the whole truth. As a genuine connector of people, more the cenobite type of monk, Bartolomeu Anania found his vocation in organizing the cultural life and education of Orthodox monasteries in Romania and U.S.A.

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