Valeriu Anania, the Writer
Lucian Vasile BÂGIU
Universitatea « 1 Decembrie 1918 » din Alba Iulia
The chapter dedicated to the analysis and interpretation of Valeriu Anania’s prose
approaches distinctly the two volumes signed by the author, challenging a hermeneutical
interpretation which uses the instruments of contemporary exegesis but maintaining a fundamental
relation to the fundamental Christian text or with theology as a whole, in relation to which the
writer constructs elaborated and erudite allegories. Finally yet importantly, we suggest the reading
of the two volumes as an artistic dimension of certain autobiographical elements in a subtle parable
of the writer’s own destiny.
The chapter dedicated to the analysis of Valeriu Anania’s dramaturgy resorts to, as much as
possible, the sometimes critical evaluation of the bibliographical sources which the author can be
related or related to. Here we have the most documented and structured section of our study, fully
motivated by the fact that the writer Valeriu Anania was first acknowledged as playwright, and his
plays relies on the artistic valuation of some essential myths of our national culture. Each of the
five plays is analysed separately. The conclusion wants to depict the categories of mythical thinking
in “the pentalogy of the Romanian myth”.
Valeriu Anania’s literary work, laborious and constantly elaborated for half a century,
proves to be only a preamble of the masterpiece, the translation of the Bible, a definite
accomplishment of his cultural destiny. The work on the artistic word finds its peak in the supreme
effort to depict the authentic expression which word gives to the Logos, through this the author
tasting the divine spirit ontologically. The self-expression of the author through the artistic word is
elevated and metamorphosed in God’s expression, through the holy word, and thus achieving an
inner self-elevation.
1. Prose
The novel Străinii din Kipukua (The Strangers of Kipukua) (1979) can be analysed
rigorously, thoroughly, rather exhaustively, in four sections that are aiming to decipher one of the
complex aspects imposed by the novel: Elements of Narratology, The Fantastic, The Allegoric, The
Identity of the Character.
The double meaning, both literal and figurative is indicated in the novel explicitly, and thus,
we receive certain references in order to place the text in the genre of intended allegory. The
Strangers of Kipukua is a great metaphor of the narrator’s death, the figurative meaning being
repeatedly declared in the text. Purgatory of the hero’s soul, Hawaii seems to be an anti-camera
where he stops so that his eschatological destination should be decided, and in which he might go
through a soteriological process. The attitude towards the significance of resurrection is, just like
the fantastic, and narratology, ambiguous. The uncertainty regarding the status of the resurrection
and of the resurrected will represent the last level of the allegory. The significance given by Valeriu
Anania to this allegory seems uncertain itself, contradictory, ambiguous. The author sets the
meaning of the resurrection polemically, its nature and status being in a way foreign for the profane
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mortal and rather incomprehensible for a rational analysis. This is why, even the author’s first
approach of the unusual phenomenon is that of denial and rejection of its miraculous nature. The
ontological status of the actants is that of resurrected to die, their long expectation in a diffuse
uncertainty being explained through the unconscious but inherent resting for the revealing of the
Final Judgement. In this vision, the island is rather an inner landscape, previously known and even
independent in its direst perception as fragment of reality. The island is thus an archaic, archetypal
form, rather an imaginary shape of the mind than a fragment of the contingent reality. It is an
allegory in itself or, at least, a symbolic element of a greater allegory. The novel uses all the devices
and techniques of the literary genre of apocalypse: the artistic ambiguity, the fantastic, the
hyperbole.
The entire story of the novel is built around an essential question: “Who am I? (…) that
never-ending question and without an answer, which started by belonging to one individual and
ended by belonging to everybody.”1 Living the nostalgia of the primordial irreversibly lost, and also
the chimera of recovering it in the present, the characters of the novel will find a primordial,
mythical identity, which they will strive to revive by reiterating the hypostases and events of
Hawaiian mythology, a factual moolelo. It is worth considering the case in which they discover
their authentic archetype, and thus, will be given the identity redemption and the ontological peace.
If all philosophy of name is reduced to a simple pseudonymity, to a substitution of proper names, as
the relation nomen-cognomen seems to be constructed in the novel, then, the identity of the
protagonists will never get a significant ontological essence, but will linger towards a shallow
mystification or self-delusion. Longing to be someone special, the protagonists sense constantly the
fact that they risk to become nobody. Paradoxically, through the formula “I is another” ”2, Rimbaud
şi Julia Kristeva theorize the destiny of the foreigners in Kipukua of the Romanian writer: estranged
and aware of their own estrangement, they strive not to become themselves but another, who no
longer really represents them, and thus, they tear themselves, they consume themselves in neurosis
and in a lack of existential authenticity.
In the volume of short-stories and novelettes Amintirile peregrinului apter (The Memories of
an Apterous Peregrine) (1990) the relationship nuances between the narrator, an apterous peregrine
and history is a suggestion of the relation the actant has with diachrony, and implicitly, with
temporality: similarly to the anonymous narrator from the previous novel (and similarly to some
protagonists of the author’s dramaturgy), the apterous peregrine shows himself to be atemporal, his
incursion into temporality, in phenomenology, being of an existence foreign to the specificity of his
entity. Ultimately, the narrator is a fragment of the absolute ontical, of an ultimate trans-human
entity, descended into contingency in order to redeem humanity through some realities suspended in
darkness. By writing his own memoirs, the peregrine understands the nature of his own uncertain
and darkened nature for centuries, until the moment of creation. Thus, literature, through the
creative process of elaboration becomes an authority that ensures more than the therapeutics of the
creating individual, even his own soteriology. Hence, the hermeneutic approach draws near the
revealing of the complex nature of the protagonist, of the absolute identity of the apterous
peregrine: the author projects himself into the inside of the memories of the apterous peregrine,
giving the narrator the status of a wandering angel on earth. Thus, the apterous peregrine
recommends himself as the supreme expression of the sublimation of personal solitude, elevated to
angelic doubling.
Thus, we propose a possible speculative interpretation, sustained with arguments, in which
the apterous angel, reduced to a semi-human status, aspires, unconsciously and subliminally to
achieve a paradoxical nature and identity, not a previous angelic one, but one just as necessary for
Valeriu Anania, Opera literară, Străinii din Kipukua, novel. Foreword by Aurel Sasu. Chronology: Ştefan Iloaie, ClujNapoca. Editura Limes, 2003, pp. 59-60.
2
Julia Kristeva, Străini pentru noi înşine, in „Secolul 21”, Alteritate, edited by Uniunea Scriitorilor din România and
Fundaţia Culturală Secolul 21, 1-7/2002, 442-448, p. 278.
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the completion of the ontological experience i.e. the human one. The apterous peregrine struggle, all
along the diegesis, not to become an angel again, but to acquire humanness. Valeriu Annaia’s
apterous peregrine is in a transitory stage, an extremely tense one and still unclear, i.e. that of
sharing “the life of embodied spirit”, of getting access to the initiating completing experience of
“corporal limit”. This road, which started long ago, even in illo tempore, and which comes from the
generative matrix of the ontical primordiality, from the absolutely primordial monad, is a road of
the ontological and metaphysical experience of the angel, who is meant to know the status of
humanness, the “humanising”, so that he should draw near divinity authentically and completely.
2. Dramaturgy
The dramatic poem Mioriţa (1966) does not represent a schematically simplistic rewriting of
the theme, motifs and conflict of the archetypal ballad, but, on the contrary, approaches aspects of
several variants, and introduces into the diegesis, in an original manner, at least one new element,
i.e. the eros, which is actually given the supreme actantial role, surmounting the thanatos and
fatality, decisive entities in the aesthetical configuration of the drama as well. The magic pagan preChristian elements used by the author are relevant, as well as those specific for Christianity, in
order to identify to what extent the author relates associatively (or dissociatively) to the background
of pre-historical mystery specific to the ballad, as well as to what extent Valeriu Anania, a writer of
Orthodox theology education, understands to render the elements specific to Christianity to the
product, thus shaping a new vision of the data of the myth.
In Valeriu Anania’s vision, the Romanian people has an ethnical psychological specificity
towards existence and this can be explained as the coexistence of two great elements of the
paradigm: death and love. Death and love are inherent to life to the same extent: death as an
inevitable and natural moment to be accepted as such, and love, without which life would be a nonsense, is a short stop between two graves, but due to which life becomes more significant than
death, it transcends it. This is exactly why the overlapping of the two valences of existence through
the construction of the allegory death-wedding at factual level ought not to be interpreted as tragic
fatalism but rather as apollinic serenity: the shepherd Moldan does not accept death with a
pessimistically terrifying passivity but with understanding and optimism, as he accomplishes
himself through love, thus consuming his given time. Through this, in conformity with Mircea
Eliade’s opinion, Valeriu Anania gives a new meaning to the “philosophy” of the myth, in
accordance with the significance conferred to it by the “cosmic Christianity”: the shepherd in
Miorita is able to cancel the apparently irreversible consequences of a tragic event, rendering to it
positive values, more difficult to shape. The answer given to fate, which seems hostile and tragic, is,
for the protagonist of the cultured poem, love.
In the dramatic poem Meşterul Manole “Master Manole” (1968), Valeriu Anania shows an
interest in explaining the process of creation. Dumitru Micu’s courageous statement seems to
exhaust the subject of the play: “The main theme (…) seems to be taken from a treaty of general
aesthetics: art starts from reality and, by transfiguring it into a new reality organised according to
the laws of beauty, cancels the pattern.”3 In the dramatic poem, the real pattern which needs
cancelling is the woman and implicitly, the eros, while the concretising art is represented by the
building of the church, as well as by the painting of icons. As for the role (function) of the beauty,
this is related to fatality or meaning of the disintegration of life which is to accomplish itself
through aesthetics, into highly superior valences: ”When nature shapes masterly beauty/The shape
itself will fade into its own bloom.”4Valeriu Anania’s creator does not limit himself to simply
acquire the cultural, artistic experience of Western Renaissance Europe, but retains an aesthetic
theory which will become the main idea of the poem. The painter Safirin, while accompanied by his
Dumitru Micu, Meşterul Manole, quoted in Valeriu Anania, Greul pământului, o pentalogie a mitului românesc, I,
Bucureşti. Editura Eminescu, 1982, p. 233.
4
Valeriu Anania, Meşterul Manole, in Valeriu Anania, Greul pământului, quoted edition, pp. 264-265.
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complementary doubling, will assimilate the essence of the legend according to which the Italian
artist fell in love not with the human model who had inspired him initially, but with his own
creation, Mona Lisa, due to an ineffable fact: the smile, an expression not of reality, but of a reality
aesthetically transfigured through “his masterly gift”.
Paradoxically or not, with Valeriu Anania, the protagonist Manole is situated closer to the
strict data of the creator than to the creating man (characteristic to Blaga), however thus not
estranging from the mythical status. What distinguishes fundamentally Valeriu Anania’s dramatic
poem from Lucian Blaga’s drama is exactly the softening of the protesting gestures of the master,
the lack of any kind of resistance to the solution of sacrifice, which he determines and imposes to
his fellows, not the unconsciousness during the sacrifice but the extreme lucidity, the almost
inhuman over-solicitation of the creating lust, to which he surrenders constantly, through the
sacrifice of both his wife and baby. All these considerations do nothing but bring Manole closer to
the condition of the mythical hero. The “dehumanisation” performed by Valeriu Anania on his
protagonist projects him completely into the mitem of creation. The myth, the ballad, Blaga’s drama
offered an open ending, “limiting” to present and express the process of creation. By surmounting
the limit, through the explanation of the process of creation, Anania’s poem becomes limitative. For
lack any kind of rhetorical interrogations, and through the author’s acquisition of the performance
of an aesthetic theory assumed by the whole universe of the drama, Valeriu Anania’s poem
becomes a closed artistic self-sufficient cosmoid, and thus, authentically orbiting in the proximity of
the masterpiece.
In the dramatic poem Du-te vreme, vino vreme! (Come, Time! Go Away, Time!) (1969),
Valeriu Anania proves high ingenuity in his modality of configuring his diegetic universe. The idea
is that if Făt-Frumos has already had access to the world of fairy-tales and if this is specific to him,
then his descending into this world is a veritable mistake, a useless action, lacking natural reasons,
and apriorically meant to a lamentable failure, the inadaptability of the world of fiction to the
“factual” one being a fundamental characteristic of narratology, the two of them excluding each
other, as they have different ontological and axiological natures. We can deduce from these that
Făt-Frumos is meant from the very beginning not to be able to integrate himself into this world,
where he will find his existence useless, his only chance being that of returning to the world he has
come from. His destiny seems thus irreversible shaped from the very beginning of the story in the
dramatic poem. Făt-Frumos is a tragic hero because his aim is the accomplishment of man’s
perennial aspiration to perfection, an illusory delusion to which he wants to giver concrete shape.
The tragedy of the hero derives especially from the fact that he seems to know, he is aware of the
ingrate role he has to perform in the history of the dramatic poem, he assumes his destiny. He thus
accepts his status, understanding that, though unlikely to be victorious, his illusory fight for youth
without aging and life without dying in this land is necessary to maintain, sustain and perpetuate the
existential philosophy of the myth of the fairy-tale. This is, by accepting the convention of such an
exegetic approach, the culminating point of the exceptional success of Valeriu Anania’s dramatic
poem: the interference of the diegesis of autonomous texts: intertextuality.
In 1976 Constantin Noica said that it had not been good for man’s thinking and heart to
conceive the Being as something unchangeable and everlasting and that it would be wiser to
consider the being as continuous development, as it was seen in the Romanian vision: becoming
into being. 5 Noica said that not having in mind Anania’s dramatic poem, but his words have an
inner tacit consensus which apriorically probes essential affinities with “the Romanian
philosophical expression.” The playwright gives an artistic shape exactly to the essence of Noica’s
philosophical thinking: the attempt to imagine his broadness as fixed into a frame, which expresses
rather an absence through its perfection “is not good” for man. A sphere without flaws, thus eternal,
Constantin Noica, Un înţeles românesc al fiinţei, „Steaua”, year XXVII (1976), November, no. 11, p. 50, in
Constantin Noica, Istoricitate şi eternitate. Repere pentru o istorie a culturii româneşti. Foreword, bibliography and
coordinated volume by Mircea Handoca, Capricorn, 1989, p. 47.
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will remain distant and foreign, ultimately inexistent, for the dynamic and eternally regenerative
though its own characteristic of ruling within duration. Being does not mean stagnation, but a
continuous process, development, inexhaustible becoming, even in disintegration, necessary so that
it lately turns into regeneration. The dramatic poem offers artistic shapes to the entire philosophical
complex suggested by the fairy-tale and extended by Noica. The unchangeable and the everlasting,
seen through the image and representation of Făt-Frumos and of the youth without aging and the
life without dying “are not good”. They determine anomalies of the being, updated through an
illustration of the grotesque levelled to fundamental aesthetic category. The being as still in
development i.e. what the unnatural perfection of the protagonist is trying desperately to obtain, is a
permanent inner presence of the story in the poem, impossible to suppress. Ultimately, the
becoming into being shapes as major theme of the poem, through the main character, Juma’ de Om
(a name that could be translated as Half a Man), who performs in the story both before FătFrumos’s appearance and disappearance. Thus, we are suggested once more that “the ever-lasting
and the changeable”, the un-Time understood as a-temporality represent transitory and illusory
episodes of an eternal turning of the being into being in time.
In Steaua zimbrului (The Star of the Bison) (1971) we notice the extremely hazardous
ambition to explain both the modality of the configuration of a myth (read of the legend)
reconfiguration of the data of the historical fact and the reasonable mechanisms which determined
the demythologising of another fairy-tale and its introduction into the extreme data (delimited and
limitative) of the historical fact. To integrate both the rational and the irrational into a historical
reality in a dramatic poem, in spite of the many inclinations towards myth, and especially to
challenge the artistic expression of two totally opposed processes, birth and the suppression of “the
germinal metaphor”, represents an excessive task, the author betraying himself with his own
instruments.
In the play Greul pământului (The Sprite of the Earth) (1982), the myth of the earth is the
setting for the heroes of the story. The author had manifested his belief that the Romanian people is
innerly and mainly a carrier (and an expression) of a myth of the earth, even if an explicit
documentary proof does not exist in folkloric literature. Mistica pământului (The Mystique of the
Earth)6an article previous to the drama, is the expression of the writer’s belief regarding the
existence of this phenomenon in the Romanian popular culture up to even suggesting the chthonic
as natural psycho-analytical feature of local ethnicity. What Valeriu Anania performs in The Sprite
of the Earth is the expression of his imagination regarding what could have been atemporal, or
could imponderably be the essence and shape of this mystique of the earth. Even more than in the
case of “heraldic legend” from The Star of the Bison (1971) we witness the cultured creation of a
pretended popular mythology, the playwright even overpassing the previous attempts, so specific to
his dramaturgy, to explain “the germinal metaphor of the myth”. This is a risky bet, won only
partially, but more convincing than the previous historical drama.
But Valeriu Anania proves his creative subtlety by contaminating the myth of the earth
(with an immediate expression in the stories of the sprites of the earth) with the integration in the
data of monadism, of virtuality, constantly suggested through the idea of the fecund germination of
“the seeds”. The Sprites of the earth are not purely empty stillness in the reiteration of an atemporal,
ahistorical in-human ritual, but …seeds. The maintenance of formula within pure generalities (as it
happens when an answer is given regarding what will remain after the last Stâlpnic dies “remains
the seed which will have no ripening but the thought that everything can ripen again ”shows the
wide aesthetics of the text. The Wallachians’ existence within history becomes continual in the
ineffable dimension of imponderability, as they are naturally unable to disappear as existentiality as
long as the idea of an eternally possible being is maintained. It is not necessary that the entity
manifest itself concretely, palpably, as long as the possibility of this manifestation is acknowledged.
Valeriu Anania, Mistica pământului, in „Credinţa”, Detroit, 4/1969, in Valeriu Anania, De dincolo de ape. Pagini de
jurnal şi alte texte. Volume coordinated by Ioan-Nicu Turcan, Cluj-Napoca. Editura Dacia, 2000, pp. 45-47.
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It is as if, by not giving up the paradigm of the myth, the entity were living within the historical
facts through the means of idea – an artistic expression of the Plato’s Ideas, of Leibniz’s monad, of
Blaga’s Great Tear. Ionita feels this fulfilment in the inextricable link with the ancient earth, from
which the Wallachians cannot part ontologically.
In “the pentalogy of the Romanian myth” Valeriu Anania expresses mainly the conception
of the consecrated spirit as dimension, through which the hero – or even the entire community
represented by the protagonist – can have access to the unlimited absolute. However, if we take into
consideration the fact that all the five events presented by the playwright are mythical, the space
configured as such and authorised by the pentalogy is discovered as sacred by the receptor. The
entire Romanian land is sacred for the Romanians, totally. The sanctification and consecration of
the Romanian land does not represent, however, the single feature specific for the pentalogy, as the
reversed event is also surprised i.e. the desanctification, “the secularisation of the Romanian land”
from the mythical data and the entrance into the historical data. It would be more appropriate to
notice that the author places himself at the interference of the making it sacred and depriving it of
sacredness of the Romanian land, by making it sacred through the presentation of the modality in
which the myth was born, and by making it sacred it through the revealing of the
demythologisation.. Generally, Valeriu Anania starts from the vision of the closed space, in which
the actions of imagination are suppressed, nevertheless, having the illusion of the journey full of
obstacles. But the vision converges towards the expression of the closed space, in which man’s
imagination rushes towards a indefinite search, which can end into nothingness, in case of ignoring
of time (Fat-Frumos), into death (Moldan), into artistic creation (Manole) or into initiator of politics
(Dragos, Bogdan) or even into myth (Ionita).
In Valeriu Anania’s pentalogy, the inner aim of the dramatic text can be that of beginning the
expression of a continuous, perpetual future. Nevertheless, the mythical time is a time of
repeatability, ritually oriented towards the springs of spiritual creation, which gives man the
possibility, the proper background to really re-live the conquests of the past in its genuine purity.7.
The possible perpetual future claims to have its origins in the archetypal pattern of primordiality, of
illo tempore, and this is why, formally, the dramas of the author turn back obsessively to the origins
of the myth up to the possibility of singling the myth of the eternal return (and, subsidiarily, of the
nostalgia of primordiality) as integrating matrix of the entire pentalogy (and even of his entire
work). The playwright aims to express the mythical time complementarily and simultaneously with
the historical time. Valeriu Anania underlines the side of the historical time, up to the formal
cancellation of the mythical one, the internal history in his dramas being carefully correlated with
the documentary attestation of factual history (for illustration, the time in Master Manole is not
mythical as with Lucian Blaga, but strictly delimited by Neagoe Basarab’s ruling; the time of the
Moldavian settlings is simply anchored in historicity …). It is not a mere happening that the
dramatic poem that concentrates almost exclusively on the status of the mythical time is the most
accomplished one. Go Away Time, Come Time!, as aesthetic expression of atemporality (or, more
proper, of non-temporality) is an inner pleading, through subtext suggestions, for the strict
delimitation of the historical time from the mythical one. All the other four dramas show an
inconsequence of the author in choosing one of the two temporal dimensions, out of the ambition of
expressing the possibility of the coexistence of both.
3. The translation of the Holy Bible
The limits imposed by the present study makes us expose here Bartolomeu Valeriu Anania’s
working approach in only one of the books of the Holy Bible translated by him. The selected
example can offer only a sample of the great work.
Mircea Eliade, Traite d’histoire de religions, Paris, 1970, pp. 326-343, in Romulus Vulcănescu, Mitologie română,
Bucureşti. Editura Academiei, 1987, p. 19.
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Through the translation of the Song of All Songs we understand the translator’s polyphonic
spirit. Valeriu Anania does not hesitate to express his poetical spirit abundantly, totally
reconfiguring the structure of the Verse 3 of Chapter 1:
1914: „La mirosul mirurilor tale vom alerga. Băgatu-m’a împăratul în cămara sa, bucurane-vom, şi ne vom veseli de tine, iubi-vom ţâţele tale mai mult decât vinul, dreptatea te-a iubit pe
tine. To the smell of thy blessed ointment shall we run. The emperor hath taken me into his
chamber, and we shall merry, we shall be joyful in thee, we shall love thy breasts more than wine,
righteousness loved you.”8.
1936: „Răpeşte-mă, ia-mă cu tine! Hai să fugim! – Regele m-a dus în cămările sale: ne vom
veseli şi ne vom bucura de tine. Îţi vom preamări dragostea mai mult decât vinul. Cine te iubeşte,
după dreptate te iubeşte! Take me with thee! Let us elope! – The king hath taken me into his
chambers; we shall be merry and we shall enjoy thee. We shall cherish thy love more than wine.
Who loves thee, loves thee right!”9.
Ioan Alexandru, 1977: „4. Trage-mă după tine, să ne grăbim! / Regele m-a introdus în
cămara sa / Vom sărbători şi ne vom bucura în tine / Vom lăuda iubirea ta mai mult decât vinul. /
Pe drept eşti iubit.” Draw me after thee, let us hurry! /The King hath put me into his room/ We shall
celebrate and we shall rejoice in thee/ We shall praise thy love more than wine. Thou are loved
rightly.10.
2001: „Ţinându-ne de paşii tăi / vom alerga s’avem în răsuflare / mireasma mirurilor tale. /
Mă duse regele’n cămara lui; / ne-om bucura, ne’om veseli de tine; / mai aprig decât vinul îţi vom
iubi alintul; / pe drept o fac cei ce te iubesc.” Following thy steps,/ we shall run to feel thy
fragrance in our senses/ The king hath taken me into his chamber;/ we shall be merry and rejoice in
thee./We shall love thy caress more than wine/ Those who love thee, are so right to do it.11.
The freedom of translation is to be noticed especially in the first three lines, the poeticism
being extremely shyly rendered in all the other three previous versions, those which followed the
Septuagint losing even the phonetic-stylistic effect of the syntagma “the smell of thy ointments” so
lyrically rendered by Valeriu Anania through the even more refined “the fragrance of thy
ointments”, and very intuitively introducing “Following thy steps“ which suggests a following into
and not only to the direction indicated by the lover (an intimate significance if we consider the
mystical and allegorical dimension of the text). It is certain that we are proposed an undoubtedly
valuable plus of the poetic expression, as compared to the prosaic “we shall run”, “take me with
you, let us run away” or even the difficult to accept “draw me”. As for the “love of the breasts” of
the chosen one, Valeriu Anania draws attention that it is about an incorrect lecture of the Hebrew
Text, noticed not only by Paul Claudel, but also by the following translators of the Romanian
versions, in comparison to whose “worship of love”, “praise of love”, Valeriu Anania prefers the
more delicate “love of caress”, in order to refer to, as we presume, the paternalist protecting
Biblia adică Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a Legii Vechi şi a Celei Nouă, published in the days of His Majesty Carol King
Of Romania in the 49th year of his ruling. Edition of the Holy Synod, Bucureşti, Tipografia Cărţilor Bisericeşti, 60.Strada Principatelor Unite-60., 1914, p. 817.
9
Edition Biblia sau Sfânta Scriptură, published under the supervision of His Holiness Teoctist, The Patriarch of the
OPrthodox Romanian Church, with the agreement of the Holy Synod, Societatea Biblică Interconfesională din
România, 1992, p. 673.
10
Cântarea Cântărilor. Introductory study by Zoe Dumitrescu-Buşulenga. Translation from Hebrew, notes and
commentaries by Ioan Alexandru. Bucureşti. Editura Ştiinţifică şi enciclopedică, 1977, p. 31.
11
Biblia sau Sfânta Scriptură, Jubilee Edition of the Holy Synod. Published with the blessing and with a preface of His
Holiness Teoctist, the Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church, Version translated after Septuagint, written and
annotated by BARTOLOMEU VALERIU ANANIA , the Archbishop of Cluj, The Publishing House Institutul Biblic şi
de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe Române. 2001, p. 872.
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perspective of the divinity/church towards its creature/believers. The temptation of poetisation is
however performed upon a text lyrical par excellence.
Bartolomeu Valeriu Anania’s entire work is a direct expression of his vision upon the pure
interference between the profane and the sacred, the former being understood as a “pathological
state” of the latter. The author’s approach and discourse has been constantly oriented towards “the
falling of the masks”, through which the sacred manifests in the profane. This attitude towards the
exposal of mystery hides a trap: one might consider that the approach itself of revealing the profane
as means of manifestation and existence of the sacred will certainly lead to a paradoxical
desanctification. Rudolf Otto drew attention on the fact that the mysterium deprived of tremendum
can be seen only as mirum or mirable, and the attempt to reveal the enigma of the mirum will
always “… have the effect of softening and weakening religion itself. It is not religion that comes
from them but the reasoning of religion, and this often ends into so rigid a theory, with so plausible
interpretations that the mystery is simply left aside. The systemised myth, as well as the scholastic
construction, is a levelling of the fundamental religious fact, which it dulls till it is completely
destroyed.”12 This is a danger in the proximity of which Valeriu Anania’s work often floats, thus,
paradoxically situating itself at the other end of Blaga’s aesthetics, of increasing the mystery met on
the way. Faithful to his vision, according to which the profane is a form of manifestation of the
sacred, the author consequently considers it proper to show that mystery is a “natural” phenomenon
for both of the instances. Through Valeriu Anania’s attempt to acquire or at least draw mystery
closer in his works, it is exactly this invasion of the profane into the sacred, as the author himself
seems to suggest in the subtext, the work of art is exactly a way to hide the sacred behind the
profane. A rather transparent parallelism can be drawn between the revelation of the Logos in the
word of the Scriptures and the survival of mysterium tremendum in the work of art.
Rudolf Otto, Sacrul. Despre elementul iraţional din ideea divinului şi despre relaţia lui cu iraţionalul. Romanian
translation by Milea, Cluj-Napoca. Editura Dacia, 1996, p. 35.
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