MIRCEA ANGHELESCU
Abstract: In the Paris Peace treaty of 1854, drafted in the aftermath of the Crimean War, the European powers decide to convene an ad°hoc assembly in the Principalities, which would determine the representation and administration of the country. After almost three decades of attempting to enter the political scene, it is now the first time that the country’s intelligentsia – the core of the national party – has an opportunity to publicize its political platform and to attempt to gain international support for it. While domestic politics were tightly controlled by the reactionary forces supported by the former protectorates of Russia and Turkey, the solution stipulated by Ion Heliade Rædulescu in the 1848 Izlaz Proclamation was to introduce the new political ideas not as a request to pass new legislation, but as a request to go back to the old system of administration that centuries of foreign rule had altered or allowed to disappear altogether. A forged old chronicle – Huru’s Chronicle – falsely dated back to the 14th century, in the early years of the Principality of Moldavia, and probably written with a different purpose in the years before the Paris Treaty, was now used to invoke the early organization of the country as an incipient democratic republic, thus legitimating a national tradition in the military and administrative areas. Thus the national platform of the 1848 revolution is once again revived with arguments derived from a past that is remodeled after the literary model of Walter Scott and Alexandre Dumas. Thus an attempt is made to legitimate a political project through a cultural construct, essentially similar to a historical novel. Similar cases exist elsewhere: Leonardo Sciascia’s novel Il consiglio d’Egitto describes such an incident in late 18th century Sicily.
Keywords: projet politique, modèle culturel, falsification littéraire, roman historique, imaginaire romantique.
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