„SLOBOD MI-AU FOST ȘI MIE SĂ MĂ GÂNDESC LA PATRIA MEA”. ÎNSEMNARE A CĂLĂTORIEI MELE CA PROIECT DE ȚARĂ
"I, TOO, WAS FREE TO THINK OF MY HOMELAND”: AN ACCOUNT OF MY JOURNEY AS A NATION-BUILDING PROJECT

Summary/Abstract: This article proposes an interpretative reassessment of An Account of My Journey by Dinicu Golescu, moving beyond its conventional image as naïve travel diary, picturesque in content and formally rudimentary. It aims to demonstrate that Golescu’s text constitutes one of the earliest coherent constructions of Romanian modernity: a rhetorical journal, a manual of social observation, a program of reform, a utopian novel, and a contract of civil love toward the homeland. This interpretative framework with multiple keys employed here addresses the genesis and status of the text, the discursive montage, the enunciative system shaped by affect, and the cartographies of modernity: the ordered city, the school, the theatre, the library, the museum, the hospital, the postal system, the economy, agriculture and transportation. The interpretative keys further reveal its advocacy for the Romanian language and its standardization; the rhetorical structure and philosophical fictionalization of travel; the doctrinal and utopian character of the text; its function as a moral breviary and an atlas of conduct; its dimension as an economic manual; and, ultimately, the idea that writing itself becomes an act of responsible love toward the homeland.

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