07_Lioara Coturbas.pdf

<font size="3"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Abstract</span>: The novel The Forbidden Forest comprises the main themes in Mircea Eliade’s<br>literature, but at the same time it may be considered an attempt of re-writing the author’s past. The<br>exiled Mircea Eliade, haunted by the shadows of his former political beliefs, wants to renounce his<br>old identity and to build up a new existence outside Romania. He lends his main character, his alter<br>ego Ştefan Viziru, the key moments of his biography; one of the most significant episodes concerning<br>the concealment of his political convictions is represented by the incarceration in the legionary camp<br>in Miercurea Ciuc. If in Memoirs Mircea Eliade does not insist on this fragment of his past, he<br>chooses to reveal the ordeal he went through by means of this work of fiction, thus trying to<br>emphasize the main character’s and implicitly his own apolitical attitude. Ştefan Viziru eludes any<br>political involvement and is unfairly condemned, exactly as Mircea Eliade used to claim. If the<br>character may even be considered a victim of history, Mircea Eliade’s interest in the Legionary<br>Movement cannot be completely overlooked. Even if we disapprove of the articles written in favor or<br>the Iron Guard, in interpreting them we must take into consideration the fact that Mircea Eliade was<br>drawn to the mysticism of this Movement, whose leader advocated the spiritual revolution which can<br>be accomplished only by the new man, about whom Mircea Eliade had written on countless<br>occasions.<br><br><span style="font-weight: bold;">Key words</span>: terror of history, literary transfiguration, legionary camp.</font>

Bound East for Exile:The Case of Claude-Alexandre Bonneval alias Ahmet Pash

<P>&nbsp;</P> <P align=left><I><FONT size=1 face="Times New Roman"><FONT size=1 face="Times New Roman"><FONT size=3>Count Claude-Alexandre de Bonneval (1675-1747), turned, after conversion to Islam, </FONT><FONT size=3>Ahmet Pasha, is an exciting case of self-assumed exile with imbroglios involving the big powers of the </FONT><FONT size=3>day (Venice, Austria, Turkey, France) in the background. The politico-diplomatic and military </FONT><FONT size=3>components of these relations were far from alien to his personal life and public career. His </FONT><FONT size=3>(spurious) Memoirs do not simply raise auctorial doubts. They host material of genuine interest for </FONT><FONT size=3>the analyst of cultural identity/ies and of the imagological threads that go into their making. This </FONT><FONT size=3>paper deals with the long symbolic exile experienced by an exciting character subject to public </FONT><FONT size=3>metamorphoses. It also looks into the everyday observed by his interested eye spying customs, values, </FONT><FONT size=3>protocols and practices of the Western and Eastern cultures in which he lived.</FONT></FONT></FONT></I></P>