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We derive our intuilion of human morał equality from our experience of the reciprocal exchangc of signs. But the words we usc are not mctaphysical Ideas like the shadows in Plato’s cave, but means of sharing significance with a eommunity of others. And as human soeiety has expanded beyond the limits of a single community, it has been above all through our sense of national identity that we participate in the human conversation.

In the West, the model of the nation, as opposed to that of tribe or empire, was first provided by the Hebrews’ “election” by the One God whom they rcvcaled to the world. Their examp!e, universalized by Christianity, gave risc to the component nations of what has beeome the world’s most suceessful civilization.

But today the West as a whole is at a historical turning point. What valid alternatives are there to Europc’s self-destructive tendencies? This attcmpt at “originary analysis” hopes to provide a helpful perspective.

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Bardo Maria Gauly (Katholische Universitat Eichstatt-Ingolstad)

Ovidfiktionen - Der Dichter ani Schwarzen Meer

Die in der Verbannung am Schwarzen Meer entstandenen Gedichte Ovid$ mit ihren Klagen uber unwirtliches Klima, kriegerische Bedrohungen und die barbarische Umgebung ist von den Exilautoren des 20. Jahrhunderts oft ais Prototyp einer Exilliteratur verstanden worden, die von politischer Unterdriickung und der Bedrohung der eigenen Identitat handelt. Dies ist eine problematische Deutung Ovids, weil sie die fiktionalen Elemente seiner Exildichtung ignoriert. Der Bcitrag will Ovids Exilfiktionen auch dadureh erhellen, dass er sic mit einer modernen Ovidfiktion kontrastiert, einem in italienischer Sprache verfassten Roman des rumanischen Autors Marin Mincu (// diario di Ovidio), in dem sich der verbannte Dichter sukzessive der regionalen Kultur und Religion annahert. Darin wird der rómische Autor zum Archegeten der rumanischen Literatur. Es soli daher gefragt werden, inwieweit Mincu zu Recht unterstellt, Ovid verhandle in seiner Exildichtung Fragcn der kulturellcn Identitat.

Ovid’s poems composed during his exile at the Black Sea lament the inhospitable climate. threats of war and the barbarie environment; exiled authors of the 20^,h century often interpreted these complains as the prefiguration of an exile literaturę that deals with political repression and the menace to the writer's identity. Such an understanding of Ovid, however, should be seen as problcmatic, sińce it does not take into account the fictional elements of his exilic poetry. The paper

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