2796123852

562 TJN DEBAT : LES MENTALTTES COLLECTIVES 6

and social eonsciousness in a new direction. The fact is evident with that group which had a most unanimously imparted program, namely “the Transylvanian Scliool”.

The new culturę. which developed under the impulses of the “enligh-ters” was ever morę distinct from pcasant culture and traditional eivili-Sation; it began to exert an infhienee on the rillages mainly by means of the printed books. Romanian intellęctuals, s;muarly to German Auf-klarers, ór to philosophers in other countries, wetę in favom’ of establishing a new rational order among men as well as between man and naturę. They took city life as a model, mostly sińce bitieą developed at the end of the ISth century, as a geography book issued in 1814 in Buda madę it elear : among the big cities were quoted pluj (with 25000 inhabi-tants), Brasor, Sibiu, important for the institutions they sheltered, then laęi, where “useful Eomanian books are printed”, Bucharest (with 42 000 inhabitants). Intellecdual life heie was aiming at hew goals which in the end rendered uselesś the confessional splits as tliose between the Greek-Catholics and the Orthodo*., as fpichindeal put it in his Fables printed in 1814. Ifc is the manufaeturers, but espećially the merchants who mado thcse new aims elear; they were interested in new books and in works of art of a different genie than the traditiohal one and alśo in a cultnral style able to express their own endcarours and beliefs. The merchants read newspapers which informed them on the markets and the movement óf miireliandise, wanted their portraits on the bene-factors’ Wall in the ehurches. At borne they had tlieir eliildren learn fbieign languages and their daughters play the piano. The merchańt bought the book that could siitisfy his curiosity or he 1'atlicr wished (o behaVe likc a culture-lover. Petre Bugasleru for instahee, a merchant ih manu-faotui'e prodliets bought Tenaeliij/łl Vacares^Jeu’s gitimmar “for his own needs’\ Diaeonóviei-Loga was voieing a eomihon belief as hc wrote in the “Chemarca”' published iii 1821 i “the nation is in heed of light”. In his ópinion “the spring of thd Eomanian natibn! haS come”. For the books to he “priilted iiioney was needed. Money could only be takeil from the weiilthy, urged to gh'e them fot tlid benefit of society “or dtherwise he should rcsemble animals”, as the dńthor put it stiaightforwardly. A eliange in habits was reąuired as well. One Should read e^ery day, the anthors asserted unaniinotisly. In 1794 Dinritrib Iercovići asked passionately “pray you góód at hcart ahd wise roader ponder- and thińk what- do the other niitions say hbout hs a& they glófify ih this (jbntui¹^ throtigh learnihg and uuinferrirpted r&iding of the ilseful books nót only their otvn rdligioh but all thb reSt of their deeds”.

The eXpanSion of the book wiłnesses the birth of a new, mentality Stemming fron} the eiręles of Intellectuals, boyars interested in commerce and merchants who all aimed ai drawing flie peasants in th,e social and political stlife dircclod Against the privileged of the aneien(; rbghne. The jnołago^nsts ol the Enlightenment iose fn tliis sense against ,old beliefs which lyfused ol distorfed rational order tłjat should reign and slfggeśted neW tnetliods ijor the rural eeonomy, This’was an eflort of “raising^,)> i he peasants Wluch as with other śoeieties did not find the most proper ways bAt which (lid not cause orert resislance as elsewhere becau^e it lied upon a generał a piratign — to dg away with foreign emploitation

1