Neohelicon XXXI (2004) 1, 61–67 MONICA SPIRIDON PARIS, « TERRE D’ASILE »: EXILE, NOSTALGIA AND RECOLLECTION Over the last two centuries for the young Romanian intellectuals seeking a Western edu- cation, cultural accomplishment, or political asylum France and its capital city became both a Mecca and a hospitable land. The Romanian fascination with Paris took many dif- ferent forms. Under the circumstances the continuity between Bucharest, the Romanian “Little Paris,” and the French capital was almost seamless. The very first wave of exiles arrived in Paris in the aftermath of the 1848 revolutions. Between the two world wars the integration of displaced Romanians into the French cultural milieus – sometimes through mixed marriages – encouraged inter-artistic cross-fertilizations. The writers, painters, sculptors, frequently associated with the historical avant-garde, left for Paris to produce literature in an adopted language and scenery. A later group, the post-war asylum-seeking wave of Romanian intellectuals, formed an anticommunist Diaspora. They clustered around the Romanian department of Radio Free Europe and managed to radicalize and to coagulate the Romanian community. For them Paris represented a political and a cultural alternative to totalitarianism, an option for intellectual survival. Starting with the Paris of the 1848 generation – to a great extent a political and cultural fic- tion, dominated by the myth of the Great Revolution – for the successive waves of Roma- nian intellectual exiles the hospitable French land was only the starting point of a long process of imaginative construction, constantly built and re-built, in slightly different ver- sions and turned into a topographical non-lieu. Throughout the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries the interminable debates con- cerning national identity focused repeatedly on the cultural heritage of the Roman Empire and the Romance origins of the Romanian language. The membership of the national idiom in the club of Romance languages was viewed as an irrefutable proof of a western European connection and allegiance. Eventually, for the majority of Romanians, Romance came to mean French; and modern France came to be regarded in Romania as the most dignified heir of the late Roman Empire, not only economi- cally and politically, but also culturally. As a consequence, France and its capital city became a Mecca for the young Romanian intellectuals seeking a Western European education. The fascination with Paris and French models, as well as the effort to trans- Monica Spiridon, 22, Bitolia St. P.O. 63, 011 677 Bucharest, Romania. E-mail: [email protected] 0324–4652/2004/$20.00 Akadémiai Kiadó © Akadémiai Kiadó Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht 62 MONICA SPIRIDON plant French culture to Bucharest and Romanian culture to Paris, took many different forms over the two last centuries. My article will explore the various “Parises” that Romanians discovered or reinvented in the course of their modernization. To begin with, there was the real Paris, where the Romanian intellectuals, seeking higher education and professional training, traveled on the eve of the 1848 revolu- tions. For several reasons early Romanian Francophilia was an elitist, anti-Russian, and political option. First and the foremost, Paris was an elitist option, insofar as only the social and economic elites could afford journeys and studies in Paris at that time (see: Roman 76). The Romanian youth enrolled in universities, kept abreast of political life, were regularly seen in literary salons, and even built family alliances – Edgar Quinet’s sec- ond wife was Romanian. French-Romanian relations often took an unmediated, per- sonalized, and even affectionate form. Thus C. A. Rosetti and Ion C. Bratianu urged Edgar Quinet in a letter published by the Courrier Français: “Help France remember that we are her sons and that we have fought for her in the streets. Add to this that ev- erything we did, we did following her example.” The French orientation had to be essentially anti-Russian because after the Treaty of Andrianople Romania had been placed under the dual oversight of Turkey and Rus- sia. The influence of Russia at the time was more aggressive, and its power was on the rise. At about the same time France was animated by Marquis de Custine’s revelations about Russia and passed through an anti-Russian romanticism that opposed the reli- giousness and communitarian spirit of Russia. Consequently for the Romanians France was an alternative to the encroaching political and cultural power of Russia. On a political level the French Revolution of 1848 was perceived in Bucharest as the starting point of a mythical process that claimed to build an imaginary France, a Jerusalem of liberty and eternal revolution. While lecturing at the College de France, Jules Michelet himself chose “revolution” as the defining feature of French identity, the very name of France (see: Roman 76–79). Paris, the capital city of this mythical realm, also seemed to be “such stuff as dreams are made of.” Paris emerged as an atemporal icon of western culture and mentality. From all points of view, France and Paris were overrated as ideal models. Culturally the Romanian travelers of the period tried to assimilate and adjust the romantic Herderian ideas that were fashionable in Paris during those days. The basic elements included a revival of the vernacular and of the oral culture, a focus on na- tional history, a local exoticism, and the rural tradition. Later writers like Mihai Eminescu viewed this period somewhat more critically, detecting a certain naiveté in the ideological discourse of the 1848 generation that placed the French radical revolu- tionary rhetoric in inappropriate contexts. After the defeat of the Revolutions of 1848 a number of liberal “westernizers” were forced into exile from the Romanian principalities, and the majority went to Paris. Among the exiles there were important writers and political leaders such as C. A. Rosetti, Ion C. Bratianu, Vasile Alecsandri, A. Russo, Mihail Kogalniceanu, Cezar Bolliac, Ion Ghica, and Ioan Heliade Radulescu..