FIGURI MATRICIALE ALE SPIRITUALITĂŢII NAŢIONALE ÎN ESEISTICA ROMÂNEASCĂ INTERBELICĂ - DAN BOTTA
Archetypal Patterns of National Spirituality in the Interwar Romanian Essay Writing – Dan Botta

Summary/Abstract: Between the Two World Wars, different representatives of the young generation adopted their own cultural position regarding the debates around concepts considered as being fundamental for the identity definition of the Romanians. Dan Botta (1907-1958) was a member of ‘Criterion’ and, together with Mihail Sebastian, Constantin Noica, Petru Comarnescu and Ion Cantacuzino, situated himself amongst the scholars who were preoccupied with the fulfillment of the new spirituality, reconsidering the values of the Romanian culture from a European perspective and emphasizing the neoclassical cultural ideal. Dan Botta related the results of the adjustments with the line of traditions and researched the meaning of the various strata that history formed in the Romanian spirit. Following great philologists (Philippide, Densusianu), he claimed the whole patrimony of Thracia for the essence of Romanian spirit. Seeking the remains of the Thracian genius in the Greek mythology and tragedy, or in the Eleusinian Mysteries, he connected them to what seemed to him to be essential in folk Romanian poetry. He thus established numerous analogies and discovered a configuration of cardinal virtues which marked, as a seal, the primordial creation specific for a great spiritual strength. The characteristics of the Romanian spirit and, implicitly the archetypal patterns specific for the national spirituality (the Thracian idea, the Roman idea and the Byzantine idea), as well as the constitutive principles of the European spirit are central themes for meditation in his conferences, articles and essays. Amongst those, Frumosul românesc (The Romanian Beauty), Unduire şi moarte (Wave and Death), and Europa în spirit (The Spirit of Europe) were published in the volume Limite (Limits)(1936), while Românii, poporul tradiţiei imperiale (Romanians, the Poeple of the Imperial Tradition) was published in the journal ’Dacia’ (1941).

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