Page:EB1911 - Volume 23.djvu/889

 first half of the 19th century in the whole current of Rumanian literature. It suited the promoters of that movement to pretend that they started a new era. But the Latin or Transylvanian movement wrought great havoc in Rumanian literature and caused the greatest confusion in the language. Only now are some authors beginning to free themselves from the evil influence.

By the end of the 17th century Rumanian had become the authorized language of the Church, and the Rumanian translation of

the Gospels (printed 1693) had become the Authorized Version. Most of the liturgical books officially adopted and revised in this period are still used for church services. Such are the Ceasoslov, revised by Bishop Kliment of Râmnicu Vâlcea (1745), the Evhologion (1764), the Katavasiar (1753). The monumental publication of the Mineiu, in 12 folio volumes, by Bishops Kesarie and Filaret of Râmnicu Vâlcea (1776-80), is equal in importance if it be not superior to the no less monumental publication of the Lives of Saints, also in 12 huge folio volumes, published under the direction and with the assistance of the metropolitan Veniamin of Moldavia. The latter was translated from the Russian, appeared in Neamtzu (1809-12), and was reprinted in Bucharest (1835-36). In beauty, richness and lucidity of language, and in dignity of style, these two books resemble the Bible of 1688.

Slavonic having entirely disappeared from the sources of literature, writers and translators turned to Greek originals and for more than a century were busy translating into Rumanian the most important works of the older Fathers of the Church. Some of these translations were printed much later; thus the Hexaemeron of Basil the Great (and of Epiphanius) translated in the middle of the 18th century, was printed at Bucharest in 1827. The Scala Coeli of Jon. Klimakus, the Treasury of St Damascenus (MS. 1747 by a certain Mihalacea), the homilies of Cyril of Alexandria, and those of Ephraem the Syrian, were printed at Neamtzu in 1818. The Panoplia of Euthymius Zygabenus (1775) and the Commentary of Theophylact were printed by Veniamin (Jassy, 1805). The homilies of Theodor Studites (MS. of 1712) were edited by Bishop Filaret and published at Râmnicu Vâlcea in 1784; a translation of Gregory of Nazianzus appeared at Bucharest in 1727. The great polemical work of Simeon of Thessalonica, the Greek original of which was published by Dositheiu (Jassy, 1683), had been translated into Rumanian long before it was printed (Bucharest, 1756). The Lafsaikon, mentioned above, was printed at Bucharest in 1754. All these translations are written in good Rumanian. One can see how a language not originally suited for abstract problems and theological dialectics was slowly but surely improved and made capable of expressing profound and subtle ideas.

In Transylvania, with the conversion to Greek-Catholicism of Bishop Athanasius in 1701, the Greek Orthodox had to place themselves down to 1850 under the protection of the Servian metropolitan of Karlovatz. No writer of any consequence arose among them. The “United” fared better, and many a gifted young Rumanian was sent to Rome and helped from Vienna to obtain a serious education and occasionally also temporal promotion. With a view probably to counteract the literary activity in Rumania, the bishops P. P. Aaron and Ioan Bobb were indefatigable in the translation of Latin writers. First and foremost a new translation of the whole Bible was undertaken by Samuel Klain. It appeared in Blazh (1793-95). It falls short of the older version of 1688; it was modernized in its language, and no doubt a careful examination would reveal differences in the translation of those passages in which the Catholic tradition differs from the Eastern. Bobb translated Thomas à Kempis's Imitatio Christi (Blazh, 1812); he wrote a Theologhie moralǎ (ibid. 1801) and adapted the Rumanian service-books to the new order of things. Popular catechisms and various histories of the Church were then written. Mention may be made of a few more moral treatises such as the Uşa pocǎinţei, “Gate of Penitence”, (Kronstadt, 1812); Oglinda omului din ǎuntru, “The Mirror of the Inner Man”; or Pilde filosofeşti, “Philosophical Saws and Maxims” (Tîrgovishtea, 1715). Of greater importance was the collection of fables with their “moral” translated and modified from the Servian of Obrenovich—Fabule moraliceşti, by Tzikindeal (Budapest, 1814). These are heavy and follow the original too literally. Tzikindeal (d. 1818) and his contemporaries in Hungary had lost contact with the Rumanian literature in Walachia and Moldavia, and the same was the case with the other writers of their school. Radovici or Dinu din Goleşti, an enlightened Walachian boyar, who was one of the first Rumanians to describe a journey in Western Europe, is also the author of a collection of maxims and parables, Adunare de pilde bisericeşti şi filosofeşti (Budapest, 1824); he left a larger collection in MS. partly edited by Zane in his Proverbele Românilor, vols. xi.-xvi.

After 1727 Rumanian was recognized as the language of the law-courts, and through the annexation of Bukovina by Austria

(1774) and of Bessarabia by Russia (1812), codes for the civil and political administration of those provinces were drawn up in Rumanian, either in accordance with the established law of the land or in consonance with the laws of Austria and Russia.

Such legal codes reflect the German or Russian original. They were, however, of importance as they served as models (to some extent) for the new legislative code compiled in Moldavia under Prince Calimach; this was originally published in Greek (1816), and afterwards translated into Rumanian with the assistance of G. Asaki (Jassy, 1833). The Walachian civil laws and local usages were collected and arranged under the direction of Prince Ypsilanti (1780) in Greek and Rumanian; and under Prince Caragea another code was published (1817), which remained in force until 1832, when the “Organic Law” changed the whole trend of legislation. One more collection, an abstract from the Greek Basilica, published by Donici (Jassy, 1814), must be mentioned, for through it the legal terminology of the modern codes was more or less fixed.

The last and probably the best writer of Rumanian history in the Phanaripte period is Neculcea. He wrote a history of Moldavia

to his own time, but for the period before 1684 his work is more or less an abstract from older writers. The original part covers the period from 1684-1743, and is to some extent an autobiography of a very adventurous life. Neculcea adds to his chronicle a collection of historical legends, many of them still found in the ballads of Moldavia. Among other historians might be mentioned N. Roset, the continuator of Neculcea. Enaki (Ianache) Cogǎlniceanu wrote a history of the period 1730-1774, and followed the example of Greek writers by introducing rhymes into it. He was also the author of some political satires and other poems on G. Ghica, M. Bogdan and Ioan Cuza. The historians of the time under pressure of political exigencies did not scruple to invent treaties between the Porte and the Rumanian principalities. A series of such spurious collections of treaties were submitted to the Powers for ratification; in them imaginary rights and privileges alleged to have been granted by the Turks were described, and the Rumanian representatives asked that after the peace negotiations of 1774 they should be sanctioned afresh. In Walachia there was not a single historian of importance in the first half of the 18th century. In the second we have the chronicle of Dionisie Eclesiarh (1764-1815), a simple-minded and uncritical writer who describes contemporary events. The ancestor of a great family of poets and writers, I. Vacarescu described the history of the Ottoman empire from the beginning to 1791, interpolating doggerel verses. Alexander Beldiman describes in a rhymed epic, Eteria (1821), the first battles between the Greeks and the Turks in Moldavia. It is a bitter satire upon the Greeks. Similar in tendency is another rhymed chronicle known under the name of Zilot (c. 1825).

Whilst a political and national revival was taking place in Moldavia and Walachia, towards the beginning of the 19th century, the Latin movement went on in Transylvania. There ethical and religious tendencies got the upper hand. Three historians had been partly educated in Rome under the protection of Prince Borgia and the influence of the Jesuit Minotto and the College of the Propaganda; they were Samuel Klain, Petru Maior and George Şincai. To Klain's initiative can be traced most of the work of the three. Unfortunately his writings, with a few exceptions, are still in MS. He is the author of the first history of the Rumanians in Dacia written according to the standards of Western science. It seems to have described the wars between the Romans and the Dacians, and to have been continued down to 1795; a history of the Rumanian Church also formed part of the book. P. Maior published an almost identical history (Budapest, 1812), and it is probable that he had made use of Klain's composition. In both the tendency is the same—to trace the modern Rumanians directly from the ancient Romans, and to prove their continuity in these countries from the time of Trajan to this day. Political and religious aims were combined in this new theory. A conflict was raging between the Hungarians and Rumanians, and history was required to furnish proofs of the greater antiquity of the Rumanians in Transylvania. George Şincai (1753-1816), who was an intimate friend of Klain and collaborated in most of his works, succeeded him as revisor at the printing office in Budapest. Şincai worked for nearly forty years at his monumental History of Rumania, which the Hungarian censor did not allow to be printed on account of its nationalist and anti-Magyar tendencies. It remained until 1853-54, when it was printed at the expense of Prince Gr. Ghica. The edition of 1886 is only a reprint, though both the original MS. and a better copy had meanwhile been discovered.

These books had no immediate influence in Walachia and Moldavia, where fiction and the drama had developed under the influence,

first, of Greek and then to an increasing extent of French, Italian and German models. It was towards the end of the 18th century that Rumanian literature began to emancipate itself, very slowly of course, and to start on a career of its own in poetry and belles lettres. Curiously enough, the first novel to be translated was the “Ethiopic History” of Bishop Heliodorus. The Odyssey and Iliad were then translated into prose, and the Arabian Nights, after undergoing an extraordinary change in Italian and modern Greek, appear in Rumanian literature at the middle of the 18th century under the name of Halima. The Glykis, a Greek printing firm in Venice, published many popular books in Rumanian which found their way into the principalities. The epic of Vincenzo Cornaro was translated into prose alternating