France and Romania came through an unusual and fairly recent process to become one another's gateways into strange and attractive worlds. Romanians saw France in the late 18th and 19th centuries as the height of all culture, travelling frequently to Paris and sending children to study there. Romania's Francophilia and rapid adoption of the French language made it an accessible form of the Turkish and Oriental world that fascinated France. Greek governors first introduced French literature and ideals to Romanians, through the schools that promoted Greek intellectual ideas.

After the 1989 overthrow of the Ceausescu regime, the French newspapers and TV stations reporting from location in Bucharest, never failed to note in wonder how many of the Romanians spoke French, as if it were their second language. The new prime minister was able to state his reformist policies on Antenne 2's most popular news show, and to angrily discard, a la bolshevique, but in fluent French, clear evidence of wrong doing. Even the neocommunist president of Romania managed to mumble some French vocables to greet Roland Dumas, the first Western foreign minister to visit the Ceausescu-free country. But the greatest wonder of all were the Romanian writers, all of whom could entertain reporters, politicians, and any other interested public in French. The response from France came in the form of books for the badly damaged university library, and cases of champagne for the Romanian writers to drink on the 1990 New Year's Eve.

This simili-ubiquity of French makes it hard now to remember how recent this `love affair' is. Two hundred years ago, few people living in the Romanian Principalities (Romania itself did not exist as an entity until 1861, and did not gain independence until 1877) bad ever heard of France, and if they had, they did not imagine having anything in common with it. The Romanian Principalities, i.e., Wallachia and Moldavia (Transylvania did not belong to Romania until 1919) were, geographically and not only, much closer to Greece, Russia and Turkey, than they were to "Europe", from which they felt cultural outsiders. Europe responded in kind, ignoring the very name of these remote East European provinces. The rare instances when Romanian scholars were summoned to Europe occurred in connection with their capacity of experts in Turkish affairs. Dimitrie Cantemir (1673-1723), an erudite from Moldavia, and shortly Prince of that country, mostly known for his History of the Ottoman Empire, was elected to the Berlin

Academy in 1714 and commissioned by the same academy to write Descriptio Moldaviae, which is the first country study on one of the Romanian principalities and remained of interest only to a handful of academics. Cantemir's work on the Ottoman Empire had a far larger audience, and caught Abbe Prevost's attention: he published fragments in his magazine Le Pour et le contre, but he did worry about the accessibility of so unusual and un-European an author.(1)

It was only during the second half of the eighteenth century that this mutual indifference began to change. The Romanian principalities were then governed by a string of Greek princes from the Phanar district of Istanbul, appointed by the Sultan. The cultural development they promoted was of Byzantine and Greek influence--Greek schools, Greek books, even a Greek Academy; integration in Europe was the last thing on their mind. Romanians did not go to France; France came to them through Greek translations, as Greek intellectuals were growing ever more admiring of France's culture and of her political and military exploits.(2) One can imagine a Romanian boyar, lying on his sofa, dressed in his oriental pantaloons and caftan, drawing puffs of cool smoke from a hookah, while reading Voltaire and Condillac in Greek! (It may be added that the very act of reading was quite a change for these boyars.) But the trend slowly gained momentum; the Phanariots, and a selected number of boyars employed French secretaries and had their children learn French, thus offering shelter to various adventurers and rescapes from the guillotine, with lives and personalities, that seemed to be taken straight from the novels they brought along. Bizarrerie apart, they were the first to write in France about this terra incognita.(3) French books began to appear in the homes of the most respectable boyars: around 1800 the bishop of Ramnic (Wallachia) even made the unusual gesture of ordering the Encyclopedie for his private library. In addition, the Russian officers who, during the numerous military occupations of the Principalities, mingled with the local high-society, encouraged the adoption of French-like customs and manners.

All these mediated contacts increased France's prestige and effected a peculiar result: the Romanian elite sought cultural recognition in France, while the political recognition had come from Moscow and Istanbul. As early as 1742 Constantin Mavrocordat was surely aware of who his masters were and where to go to validate his political claims--that place was Istanbul. But he chose Mercure de France as the publisher of his never--implemented Constitution, in order to validate his claims of being an enlightened ruler. In 1801, Alexandru Moruzzi, hospodar of Moldavia, published in Spectateur du Nord a story based on a jeux de mots, believing that this was an appropriate introduction into the French elite. His modest literary efforts prompted the editor to declare: "Pendant que la France devenait barbare, il y avait des pays barbares qui devenaient francais."(4) The Romanians were indeed in the process of changing their status, and they wanted nothing less than to become French. In 1806 Mme. Reinhardt, wife of the French consul in Iasi, wrote that "the ladies in lasi do not wear the national costume any more, but try to copy the French fashion,"(5) They also sent their sons to study in Paris and had French and piano lessons taught to their daughters. Thirty years after Mme. Reinhardt, a Frenchman noted that Romanian students in Iasi used to skip Russian classes, although Russian was mandatory, and crowded instead into the optional French classes.(6) (The same remarks could be made in the 1950's and the early 1960's, when Russian had again become mandatory, as an example that history repeats itself.) The new generation, called "filfizons", "bonjourists",(7) ridiculed the Oriental and Greek features of the Romanian society, and took upon themselves to radically change the Romanian principalities into modem European states, with France as their model. Hence, they proceeded to catch up with Europe, though mindful of the awkwardness of the process. "Europe is watching us", a feeling that never really withered, was first forinulated in that period--and was common to all East European countries at that time. What was unusual was the kind of blood relationship that the Romanians believed to have discovered between themselves and the French.

Increased contacts with Transylvanian Romanians had a considerable influence in this respect. Transylvanian intellectuals did not come under the French spell; they were mostly educated in Budapest, Vienna and Rome, where they had found historical and linguistic evidence uncovering the Latin origins of the Romanian people and language. In their thinking, this noble origin, and not imitation, would provide the Romanians with the tools of political emancipation and open the way to European integration. They actually had little sympathy for the frantic waves of Francophilia raging in the Principalities. One Transylvanian scholar sorrowfully noted the absence of Romanian books in the private libraries of Moldavia and Wallachia, as nobody read or spoke Romanian.(8) By the late 1820s French had already become the language of the intellectual elite. The offspring of those boyars who used to read French authors in Greek translations, now were reading French authors in the original, and any other authors in French translation.

The Transylvanian influence substantiated the Romanian claims for a special relationship with France, basing them on something deeper and less alterable than sheer admiration: if they had the same roots and ancestry as the French did, then they were not mere imitators of a great culture, but its younger, unfortunate sibling--not late comers to the European family, but France's lost and finally recovered sister. Moreover, France could not desert them without betraying herself. Such prestigious cultural kinship would also legitimize claims of a political integration in Europe. Pompiliu Eliade, an early observer and actually a contemporary of this phenomenon wrote: "Love is the main feature of the French influence in Romania. Other nations would call France `Grande Nation', admiring its military, political and literary successes; Romanians would exclaim: `Notre soeur ainee, la France!'"(9)

In 1830 there were about twenty Romanian students in Paris, to be followed by a steady flow of enthusiastic Francophiles, all of them belonging to the upper crust of Romanian society. Influenced by the Romantic rhetoric of patrie, nation, peuple, they began speaking Romanian and encouraging home--grown literary enterprises in Romanian. Translating just anything only because it was written in French was hardly a laudable or useful endeavor, they said; Romanian writers should make an effort and write in Romanian. Many authors from this group of Paris students had indeed quit writing in French and started writing in Romanian, laying the foundation of modem Romanian literature out of a sense of noblesse oblige. But for every piece produced in the 1830-1850 period there was a French model; besides, Pompiliu Eliade maintained that translation from French into Romanian had taught Romanian writers the discipline and grammatical accuracy needed to properly raise the status of an idiom from patois to literary language.(10) The student association formed in Paris in 1845, cautiously named Societe des etudiants roumains ("Romanian Students' Society" )--with Lamartine as honorary president--stated that its members must speak Romanian on the premises and resist the temptation of using the more familiar French. They spent their time in literary cafes like Cafe Procope and Cafe Corneille, read poetry and political pamphlets, pursued, more or less energetically, degrees in law or medicine, but above aU they were the most faithful audience of the famous College de France. In a couple of years their academic pursuits had become the disguise for ambitious political projects. The College de France was then dominated by the charismatic trio Jules Michelet, Edgar Quinet, and Adam Mickiewicz. Impassioned speeches on the awakening of nations and the revival of French virtues, complete with emotional appeals to humanity, freedom and heroism, bad a powerful effect on an audience looking for some elevated distraction from the colorless character of the July Monarchy; as J. Campbell wrote, "... men wept with emotion at the inspired message, women sometimes fainted, and after the lectures crowds of admirers would gather around the great men."(10) Among the many ethnic groups relishing every word uttered by the professors raised to the rank of prophets at the College, the Romanians were especially sensitive to this display of romantic nationalism, the more so that it was linked to direct action coming from France. The philosophy of the College de France had it that Europe's nations would awaken and bloom when the true French spirit would be regenerated, that is, a Romantic version of the France of 1789. This awakening by osmosis could not please the young Romanian students more: since the Romanian nation was so closely related to the French nation, it followed that Romanians were in the best position to achieve emancipation via France's revival and to return where they belonged--under France's umbrella. The small, but resourceful group of Romanians in Paris displayed an impressive amount of persuasion, cajolery, and even funds to raise the French intellectuals' awareness of their little sister of the East. When Dumitru Bratianu wrote a passionate letter to Michelet to inform him about how much his nation owed to the great apostle of national revival, he only omitted to mention which nation he was thinking of and, as be signed D. Bratiano, Michelet assumed be was Italian, so to Italy went the praise of Michelet's following lecture.(12) Romanians had quite a few such bruising experiences, but this did not deter them. By 1847, Michelet and Edgar Quinet had already written some pieces about Romanians.(13) In addition, Paul Bataillard and other less known authors had maintained a steady influx of materials about the Romanian principalities in the French literary press. The theme of all this writing was one and the same, bordering on the stereotype that Romanians were a people with a mission: a Latin island in an ocean of Slavs and other barbarians, they were a shield of European, i.e., French, civilization in the East, keeping alive the torch of Latinity in the face of many perils, etc. Also, arguments favoring a political and administrative union between Wallachia and Moldavia surfaced in those materials for the first time, and continued to appear in the French press until the event actually took place. France was urged to support democracy against despotism, although no specifics were laid down. Meanwhile the Principalities' own sovereign, the sultan, expressed his disapproval of the annoying literary zeal exhibited by the young boyars, the authorities in Moldavia and Wallachia kept complaining about the ideas the youths brought from Paris, and, of course, both the Russian and French consuls tended to be displeased and regarded as troublesome the enthusiastic literary gatherings in Paris. In 1846 Guizot had fired, as a potential troublemaker, his consul Adolphe Billecoq, a champion of greater autonomy for the principalities, which, in the latter's opinion, could represent a French mark in the East. Such views pleased the "Romanian Students' Society" in Paris, but were way ahead of the politicians whose pragmatism was adamantly unaltered by Romantic visionarism; although vaguely sympathetic to the dreams of the Romanians, the French government had no desire to antagonize Russia over its sphere of influence. Therefore, the little sister-big sister link functioned in the literary sphere only; politically, the Romanian principalities were nothing more than bargaining chips in the balance of power. The 1848 revolution provided an example of the gulf between literary pretensions and political reality. The February Revolution in Paris was cheered by the Romanians; they all described the revolution as "beautiful", and saw it as the signal for their own revolution, just as they had imagined it at the College de France. With Michelet and Quinet reinstated at the College, the Romanians' new image of torch-bearers of Latinity in the East was gaining in respectability, and was slowly crossing over into the political circles. On February 4, 1848, Buchez, the new mayor of Paris, made a speech at the Hotel de Ville where he talked about Romanians as the vanguard of Europe in the East.(14) This was music to the ears of the young "bonjourists", who immediately afterwards set out for Bucharest and Iasi to turn these beautiful words into action. In inspired prose, the Romanian revolutionaries acknowledged their spiritual debt to France and her prophetic historians, Michelet and Edgar Quinet. But the situation on the ground was quite different from the idealistic image conceived in Paris: Moldavia and Wallachia were still under Ottoman suzerainty and Russian protectorate, in sharp contrast with their new prestigious cultural status. Even the most radical revolutionary leaders had to consider obtaining some sort of consent from at least one of their "protectors", aware of the risk of an invasion unleashed by their excessive bragging about their intentions of independence and unity. The revolutionary efforts of 1848 achieved little: the Ottoman administration was in no mood to lessen its grip over the Romanian provinces, the Russian empire was reluctant to shrink its sphere of influence, and no European government was willing to stand up to either empire. The French consul himself was worried about the turbulent youths "educated in our schools",(15) whose actions did not fail to upset both the Sultan and the Tzar, thus requiring an intense effort of diplomatic appeasement on the part of the French diplomats. However, the simple fact that something had happened in those provinces, following a French example, brought them one step closer to Europe and away from Byzance.

Indeed, cultural synchronism seemed to be the way to political emancipation, not the other way round. Eventually, the Romanian Principalities did unite into a single country called Romania (1861) and did break free from Turkey and Russia (1877). Shortly after the union of Moldavia and Wallachia (achieved through grudging negotiations with the great powers of the day), and after some efforts of modernizing the country had been undertaken, once more the Romanian elite headed for Paris, to ask Napoleon III to recommend them a West European nobleman worthy of occupying their new country's throne, making clear their intention to find a European prince who could elevate the country to a state of European civilization. Cultural synchronism under way, the time for political synchronism had come. The man recommended by Napoleon III was Kart von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, under whose leadership Romania became independent, and subsequently declared itself a kingdom, with the Prince of Hohenzollern, now named Carol, as the first Romanian king. Romania had made it to the antechamber of Europe. It had remained just as little known as it was before, but its image as an island of Latinity and civilization in the East became the standard image. In 1880 Romania had been invited to the Jeux de la latinite, presided over by Jean Mistral; the Romanian poet Vasile Alecsandri won the prize with a poem titled "Ginta latina" (Tne Latin Family).

Thus politicians, historians and poets alike seemed to agree with the most cherished Romanian self-representation as members of the Latin race. Still, Romania's appeal combined Balkan nonchalance and Oriental mystery with Latin quality, all topped with the elegant and sophisticated lifestyle of the Westernized aristocracy. French remained, and it would remain until the end of World War II, the language of the upper class and the educated, the language of the salons, of polite conversation and correspondence, of shadowy intrigues and intimate diary entries. And there was still no place like Paris: the journey to Paris, and some schooling in France could not be missing from any person's higher education. The Romanian middle- and high-societies tried to mold themselves upon French social patterns, sometimes with hilarious effects. Bucharest had done enough to earn the nickname of the "Paris of the East". However, Paris itself was the city where the rich and famous of Romanian upper society owned hotels, offered elegant soirees, kept alive some of the most fashionable salons, and, in general, mixed with the social, literary and political high-society. In addition, Romanians were not only in the audience, but also at the lecterns of the College de France and the Sorbonne. One could say that the Romanians had come a long way indeed.

As for literary representation, it seemed that Romanians at one point would succeed the Turks in the casting of exotic characters in French literature, but, aside from some comical characters like the sexually over-achieving hospodar in Appolinaire's Cent mille verges, this did not really happen. Romanians did better: stretching to the limit the concept of synchronism, they wrote French literature themselves. Although Romanian literature evolved along an independent path after the first clumsy French imitations at the beginning of the nineteenth century, a number of Romanians became French writers; they did so without renouncing their Romanian identity. Oddly enough, writing in French could occur naturally in this country placed "at the gates of the Orient" and headed by a German king, even when Romanian literature itself was at its finest, i.e., around 1900: Panait Istrati, Anna de Noailes, Marthe Bibesco, Helene Vacaresco, Benjamin Fondane, Ilarie Voronca, Tristan Tzara, and, later on, Eugene Ionesco and Emile Cioran, to mention only the most famous names. Their works however, presented to the French public a world closer to the Orient and Byzance than to Western Europe: violent passions and a loud, colorful, yet unexpectedly moving Balkanic milieu, in Panait Istrati; a combination of Oriental mystery and ancestral Latin dignity in Marthe Bibesco; the wisdom of Romanian folklore in Helene Vacaresco; a skillfully refined, yet irresistible sensuality in Anna de Noailles. Later a great number of Romanians joined and, in some cases reinvented the surrealist and the absurd movements (Voronca, Fondane, Gherasim Luca, Tristan Tzara, the painter Victor Brauner for the surrealist movement; Eugene Ionesco for the absurd theater). One may speculate that their ambivalent cultural identity suited them for such experiments in surrealism. Emile Cioran does not fit in any category, but an underlying current of dark Balkanism can be detected in his philosophical stances. Professor Iorga's most famous lessons dealt chiefly with the Ottoman Empire and the legacy of Byzance. The Romanians may have spoken French like the French, but their appeal lay precisely in being so different from the French. Just as the Orient-Express was designed as a quintessential Western vehicle that allowed its passengers to visit strange and unfamiliar landscapes without giving up familiar routines, so the impeccable French used by Romanians served as a gateway to the strange and unfamiliar. As one observer candidly put it, the Romanians in France were appreciated for being des etrangers au si pur francais,(16) and not at al some sort of missing siblings. However, the period between the wars was the last time Romanians could still fancy themselves as even poor relations, and hope for protection and guidance from the beloved big sister. The fall of France in 1940 sent a chill and dark premonitions: "For Bucharest the fall of France was the fall of civilisation. France was an ideal for all those who struggled against their peasant origins. All culture, art and fashion, liberal opinion and concepts of freedom were believed to come from France. With France lost, there would be no stay or force against savagery. Except for a handful of natural fascists, no one really believed in the New Order. The truth was evident even to those who had invested in Germany: the victory of Nazi Germany would be the victory of darkness. Cut off from Western Europe, Romania would be open to persecution, bigotry, cruelty, superstition and tyranny. There was no one to save her now."(17)

All of the above did indeed happen in Romania, but the deeply seeded Francophilia never died. If Romanians had ceased to await their salvation from France, they never ceased, in times of distress, to find solace in the French spirit. As Princess Marthe Bibesco said, when facing wave after wave of misfortune: "L'important c'est d'ecrire un bon livre francais."(18) Or at least to read one.

NOTES

1. Alexandru Dutu, Romanian Humanists and European Culture. A Contribution to Comparative Cultural History, Bucharest: Editura Academiei, 1974, p. 150. 2. See Nicolae Iorga, A History of Roumania: Land, People, Civilization, New York: AMS Press, 1970, pp. 179-199. 3. J. L. Carra's Histoire de la Moldavie et de la Wallachie, Avec une dissertation sur l'etat actuel de ces provinces, Paris, 1778; Comte d'Hautrive's Journal d'un voyage de Constantinople a Jassy dans l'hiver, Paris, 1785, and La Moldavie en 1785, Paris, 1785; 1. C. Raichevich's Osservazioni sulla Valacchia e Moldavia, Naples, 1788. 4. Pompiliu Eliade, De L'Influence francaise sur l'esprit public en Roumanie, Paris: Ernest Leroux Librairie-editeur, 1898, p. 274. 5. As quoted in bf Michel Louyot, Roumanie, Paris: Seuil, 1973, p. 66. 6. Ibidem, p. 67. 7. "Filfizon" was a corrupted form of the famous line of the Carmagnole: "Vive le son du canon"; "bonjourist" came of course from "bon jour" and emphasized these young people's habit of using French in everyday conversation. See Neagu Diuvara, Le pays roumain entre Orient et Occident: Les Principautes danubiennes au debut du XIXe siecle, Paris: Publications Orientalistes de France, 1989, p. 317. 8. John C. Campbell French Influence and the Rise of Roumanian Nationalism, New York: Arno Press & The New York Times, 1971, p. 84. 9. P. Eliade, op. cit., p. 352. 10. Ibid., p. 353. 11. J. C. Campbell, op. cit., p. 129 12. Ibid., p. 132. 13. Jules Michelet, Principautes danubiens; Edgar Quinet, Les Roumains. 14. J. C. Campbell, op. cit., p. 154. 15. Ibid., p. 179. 16. Robert de Saint-Jean, as quoted in Ghislain de Diesbach, La Princesse Bibesco 1886-1973, Paris: Librairie Academique Perrin, p. 311. 17. Olivia Manning, The Great Fortune, London: Heinemann, 1960, p. 272. 18. Entry from Marthe Bibesco's diary, as quoted by G. de Diesbach, op. cit., p. 383.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1994 University of Colorado at Boulder