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THE PRESENT CREATES THE PAST : THE “PHANARIOTS" IN THE ROMANIAN TEXT BOOKS DURING THE SECOND

HALF OF THE 19th CENTURY*

CRISTINA ION

1.    History asa cure: the recoveryof the national dignity after a shameful past.

2.    The strategy of the school and the nationalist cliches.

3.    The origins of the anti-Phanariot trend. Stereotypes designating the Phanariots in textbooks.

4.    The other side of the situation: nuances in the anti-Phanariot attitude.

1. In the I9th century, the Romanian society was no exception to the European nationalist trend: the national awakening and the fight for inter-national recognition gave the impression of acceleration and emphasised the feeling of retrieving a historical delay which had been deeply perceived in the intellectual environment. The appeal to history was one of the means used in order to revive the faith in the national greatness. Termslike “rebirth", “revival", history as a "resurrection factor" have now a freąuency unrea-ched before ¹. This is the epoch in which history is, at the same time, as-sumed and refused, in which the present is constantly compared to the past ². But the past is fuli of contradictions difficult to accept and to assume. There-fore, it was essential that the drawbacks should be occulted or, on the con-trary, insistently reminded in order to show that, in spite of the persecu-tions, the people kept its strength and its vital energy. The necessity of defi-ning itself unlike the Othersled to a mental construction where the “Greeks" (the “Phanariots", the “strangers") were charged with the responsibility of the prolonged decline that affected the Romanian people before the national rebirth. The “Golden Age" or the succession of “Golden Ages" was represented by some significant figures partly created by the Romanian his-toriography (Decebal and Trajan, Dragoę and Basarab, Stephen the Great,

* This study is based on the investigaticn of 20 textbcofcs, covering the pericd between 1857 and 1899.

¹ Alcxandra Zub, A serie fi a face istorie, Iaęi, 1981, p. 28 and 113.

¹ Paul Cornea, Originilt rcniantutnului rcmórtcsc, Bucureęti, 1972, p. 483.

Bev. £tudes Sud-Est Europ., XXXIII, 1—2, p. 41 — 47, Bucarest, 1995