Quaderni della Casa Romena di Venezia XI, 2016 Memorialistica e letteratura della Grande Guerra. Parallelismi e dissonanze Atti del Convegno di studi italo-romeno Padova–Venezia, 8–9 ottobre 2015 Revisione linguistica: LUCA CEGLIA, DAN OCTAVIAN CEPRAGA, FEDERICO DONATIELLO, AURORA FIRŢA, ŞERBAN MARIN Traduzioni: FEDERICO DONATIELLO, CRISTIAN LUCA Cure tecnico-redazionali e realizzazione grafica: AURORA FIRŢA, ARUN MALTESE Copertina: ALEXANDRU DAMIAN Redazione: ALEXANDRU DAMIAN, RUDOLF DINU, AURORA FIRŢA, CRISTIAN LUCA, ŞERBAN MARIN Immagine di copertina: Telegrafista romeno nella Grande Guerra. Collezione Fototeca degli Archivi Nazionali Storici Centrali della Romania, doc. FI 8755. ISSN: 1583–9397 © 2016 Istituto Romeno di Cultura e Ricerca Umanistica di Venezia Istituto Romeno di Cultura e Ricerca Umanistica di Venezia Palazzo Correr, Campo Santa Fosca Cannaregio 2214 – 30121 Venezia (VE) Tel.: 041 5242309; fax: 041 715331 E-mail: [email protected] http://www.icr.ro/venezia/ QUADERNI DELLA CASA ROMENA DI VENEZIA XI, 2016 MEMORIALISTICA E LETTERATURA DELLA GRANDE GUERRA. PARALLELISMI E DISSONANZE Atti del Convegno di studi italo-romeno Padova–Venezia, 8–9 ottobre 2015 a cura di Dan Octavian Cepraga, Rudolf Dinu e Aurora Firţa Bucarest 2016 INDICE KEITH HITCHINS Romania’s role in the First World War 7 LORENZO RENZI Lettere di soldati della Grande Guerra in Francia, Italia e Romania 19 ANDI MIHALACHE Dal testo memorialistico al monumento pubblico: la Prima Guerra Mondiale nella prospettiva romena 39 NICOLAE CONSTANTINESCU I romeni di Transilvania nella Grande Guerra, nei documenti orali e scritti 49 TOADER NICOARĂ Gli uomini e la morte nella Grande Guerra. Atteggiamenti e comportamenti 59 GHEORGHE NEGUSTOR L’esperienza della Grande Guerra nella letteratura romena. Una prospettiva comparata fra Transilvania e Regno di Romania 71 MIHAI TEODOR NICOARĂ Sextil Puşcariu e l’esperienza della guerra sul fronte italiano 87 DOINA DERER Guerra e prigionia. Carlo Emilio Gadda e George Topîrceanu 97 OANA BOŞCA-MĂLIN Scrivere di Caporetto, scrivere a Caporetto. Carlo Emilio Gadda e Ardengo Soffici. 115 ALEXANDRA VRÂNCEANU Prospettive femminili sul Primo conflitto mondiale nella narrativa romena e italiana. Hortensia Papadat Bengescu, Matilde Serao, Ada Negri 125 6 INDICE CONSTANTIN ARDELEANU La Romania nella Grande Guerra nella letteratura memorialistica britannica 141 EMILIA DAVID La Prima conflagrazione mondiale nella corrispondenza epistolare di Tristan Tzara con scrittori futuristi antimarinettiani e con Guillaume Apollinaire 155 LAURA JIGA ILIESCU I wrote you low accents... The voice hidden in the letters from the Great War’s soldiers. Documents stored in the Archive of «Constantin Brăiloiu» Institute of Ethnography and Folklore 179 DAN OCTAVIAN CEPRAGA Scritture contadine e censori d’eccezione: le lettere versificate dei soldati romeni della Grande Guerra 187 AURORA FIRŢA Le Ore romene di Guelfo Civinini. Autunno del 1915 a Bucarest 197 ROMANIA’S ROLE IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR KEITH HITCHINS University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign I. To assess Romania’s role in the great European crisis between July 1914 and the end of 1918 we shall have to consider a wide range of questions. We may begin by examining Romania’s experiences in the international system well before 1914. It is proper to ask, then, how her relations with and attitude toward Austria- Hungary, France, Russia, and Germany influenced the decision made by Romanian leaders in 1914 to remain neutral and in 1916 to enter the war on the side of the Triple Entente. We must also identify those who made these crucial choices and examine their motives, and then measure the influence that public opinion may have had. In the end, we shall have to judge the effectiveness of Romania’s military participation in the war and weigh her contribution to the Allied victory. Most important of all, perhaps, is the question whether her participation in the war was in harmony with her development in the century preceding the July crisis. It may be useful to approach these matters from a broad historical perspective. It will enable us to see Romania’s participation in the war as a continuation of the contest between empires and ethnic nations in Southeastern Europe that had been going on since the first half of the nineteenth century. On the one side stood the well-established empires – the Austro-Hungarian, the Russian, and, at least up to the early twentieth century, the Ottoman – and on the other side were nation–states that had been asserting themselves in the course of the 19th century as an autonomous and then independent Greece, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania. The competition between the empires, which were multi– ethnic and held together by dynastic allegiances and political and social principles of earlier times, and the nation–states, which were based upon a single ethnic community and were pursuing self-fulfillment under the guise of national and liberal aspirations and thus could not help challenging the old order was, in a sense, the underlying cause of the crisis in July 1914. Such a broad historical perspective also offers us a means of understanding why Romania chose neutrality in 1914 and war in 1916. Many Romanians, historians and politicians among them, tended to think of these decisions as the culmination of a long-term process of nation building that aimed at achieving the political union of all Romanians. Some of them traced this process back to the activities of the so-called reforming boiers of Wallachia and Moldavia in the later decades of the eighteenth century, and then they follow the progress of nation Quaderni della Casa Romena di Venezia, XI, 2016, p. 7-18 8 KEITH HITCHINS building through a succession of stages beginning with the movement of Tudor Vladimirescu in 1821 and continuing with the rise of a lay intellectual elite and their revolution in 1848, then to the union of Wallachia and Moldavia in 1859, the coming of the Hohenzollern dynasty in 1866, the War of Independence in 1877– 1878 and the proclamation of the Romanian Kingdom in 1881. Constantly evolving throughout this period was political, economic, and cultural alignment with «Europe», that is, the West, down to 1914. We need to raise yet another question: How important was the situation of the Romanians in Transylvania, Bukovina, and Bessarabia in determining the decisions of Romanian political leaders about war and peace? The most crucial issue had to do with Transylvania, that is, the status of the some three million Romanians living there (and in the Banat and eastern Hungary) as of 1914. It was a highly emotional issue for important segments of Romanian public opinion. Most acute was the declared intention of the Hungarian government after the Austro- Hungarian Compromise of 1867 to transform multi–ethnic Hungary into a Magyar national state, an objective that meant in Transylvania the undermining of Romanian Orthodox and Greek Catholic church autonomy, restrictions on the functioning of their schools, and limits on the use of the Romanian language and the imposition of Hungarian in its place.1 The situation of the Romanians of Transylvania could not but affect Romania’s relations with her partners – Austria-Hungary and Germany – in the Triple Alliance, which served as the foundation of Romanian foreign policy up to the First World War.2 Romania had joined the alliance in 1883 primarily to secure the protection of Germany against Russia, and afterward those who made the alliance, King Carol I and a handful of political leaders, were understandably reluctant to disturb relations with Germany. But despite the formal alliance, relations between Romania and the other partner, Austria-Hungary, were never close. There was a lack of trust on both sides, and sometimes hostility came into the open, as in the so-called tariff war between 1886 and 1891. As the nationality problem in Transylvania, as it came to be called, assumed greater importance in bilateral relations Austro-Hungarian officials, especially in Hungary, suspected the Romanian government of stirring up Romanian national feeling in Transylvania in order to expand its influence there and bring closer a union of the province with the Old Kingdom. But such apprehensions were exaggerated. No one in authority in the Romanian government seriously thought that the breakup of Austria- 1 KEITH HITCHINS, A Nation Affirmed: The Romanian National Movement in Transylvania, 1860– 1914, Bucharest 1999, p. 183-220. 2 RUDOLF DINU, Diplomaţia Vechiului Regat 1878–1914. Studii, Bucharest 1914, p. 19-108. Romania’s role in the First World War 9 Hungary would happen in the near future.3 Yet, the issue of Transylvania would not go away. Another matter that affected the Romanian government’s ultimate decision to enter the war had to do with the emotional ties that public opinion displayed toward France. There can be little doubt that France ranked ahead of all other countries in popular esteem. This attachment may have had its beginnings in the era of the French Revolution and Napoleon. In any case, it grew more pervasive in the course of the nineteenth century. France was the preferred destination for Romanian university students throughout the century, and the Wallachian revolution of 1848 had been inspired by the revolutionary events in Paris in February 1848. French literature and culture enjoyed enormous prestige among the elite of society, and French had become a second language for the well– educated.4 But government–to–government relations almost down to 1914 were less steadfast. In international relations France had done relatively little to gain Romania’s support for the Triple Entente and showed little interest in expanding economic and financial ties with Romania.5 Yet, France remained the sentimental favorite of the majority of public opinion. It may be worth noting here how «public opinion», that is, concern for the Romanians of Transylvania and favorable sentiments about France may have affected the decisions made by Romanian leaders.6 In any case, public opinion cannot refer to the whole of the Romanian adult population.