THE SUBLIME OF LIFE OUTSIDE PARLIAMENT: OCCASIONAL SPEECHES IN ROMANIA AT THE END OF THE 19TH CENTURY
THE SUBLIME OF LIFE OUTSIDE PARLIAMENT: OCCASIONAL SPEECHES IN ROMANIA AT THE END OF THE 19TH CENTURY

Summary/Abstract: The present paper aims to expand the analysis of political speeches – already assumed, within the institutional limits drawn in by Parliament, by scholars such as Paul Chilton, Paul Bayley, and Teresa E. Carbo – to the domain of extra-parliamentary life specific to Romania at the end of 19th century. By this we define the political periphery, located into the party premises, hotel conference rooms, academia, public squares, as well as its communal manifestations such as cultural circles, political clubs, professional leagues and associations, or spontaneous public gatherings in funeral or jubilee moments. The basic distinction between parliamentary and extra-parliamentary productions will be followed by a typological analysis grounded on the specificity of peripheral gatherings, whose dominant tone is surely political, yet mingled with a series of contextual tunes; the support for the present analysis is the funeral or augural speech used in highly emotional situations such as the Lascăr Catargiu’s burial or the ceremony on the erection of Alexandru Lahovary’s statue. These speeches and the places they are delivered in show that the political oratory – chiefly the extra-parliamentary oratory, maintains latently a tension against present time and facts and preserves an artistic aspiration, which grants the speaker’s personality with an institutional autonomy. Our conclusion is that extra-parliamentary speeches and peripheral politics underscore the best what they owe to art, that is, a sense of liberty.

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