BETWEEN FRIENDS. AN INTERWAR IDEOLOGICAL DIALOGUE
BETWEEN FRIENDS. AN INTERWAR IDEOLOGICAL DIALOGUE

Summary/Abstract: The “young generations” spread across Europe in the 1900-1930s were not only groups who shared a common intellectual platform, but also crucibles to build up new ideas and launch them into the public space. Such was the case of the Romanian “young generation”, educated under the formative influence of the University teacher Nae Ionescu. While a general horizon of significance was accepted by most of the group members, there was room for personal innovation too. This article shows how a travelling concept – to use the phrase coined by Mieke Bal (2002) – gained new dimensions in the writings of two coevals and friends, Mircea Vulcănescu and Mircea Eliade. While the former devised the term “resigned historicism” in the field of generational sociology, the latter enlarged upon it and provided it with a mystical / religious counterpart, “soteria”. Thus, a friendly dialogue mushroomed into several non-fictional and fictional fragments, resulting in the development of two twin and complementing concepts, that may be looked upon as a Romanian contribution to the interwar pan-European Existentialist vocabulary.

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