Forme ale Liberalismului sau ale Totalitarismului în Literatură. Un model românesc interbelic?
Forms of Liberalism or Totalitarianism in Literature. A Romanian Model?

Summary/Abstract: The article insists on the Romanian flexibility to adjust to both capitalism and communism. This flexibility is reflected into literature, especially if we compare the literature produced by Romanians who lived in communism as different from those who chose to exile themselves. We have in mind the examples of Noica or Petru Comarnescu versus Cioran, Eliade, Eugene Ionesco etc. Some say communism brought in the preservation of national identity, identity which capitalism does not have an interest to protect it. Were Romanian writers inclined to support democracy or, on the contrary, authoritarianism in their papers? Lots of ideologies and policies turned this country into a more unstable actor on the international political and cultural scene. If democracy had to give the power to people, authoritarianism allocated it to the state, represented by one individual, who was to rule to the so called benefit of the people. When facing this oscillation there comes up the natural question of the individual: who is governing, me or the state? Democracy gives the right to each individual, no matter the origin, to benefit as equal as possible from private property, education, private interests. Also, the limit between democracy and authoritarianism is very easy to be passed. The article insists on how communism versus capitalism influences the literature produced by Romanian writers in exile or within the limits of communism. Also, the article starts from the papers sustaining liberalism or, on the contrary, totalitarianism, in the period between the two world wars. It insists on the literature produced by Cioran, Eliade, Noica, Ionescu, Vulcanescu. We are interested in establishing the 1930s Romanian tendency in writing as well as in real political and social life: towards liberalism or totalitarianism.

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