Papers

The Roman conquest of Dacia, concluded after two separate wars in 101-102, and 105-106 AD, was recorded on Trajan’s Column, which stands 100 feet high in the complex known as the Trajan Forum in Rome [1]. Although the Romanians evolved as an indigenous people, preserving their Latin-based language and Eastern Orthodox Christianty, both brought by Roman colonists, the column would not be largely known to Romanians until the 18^th century, when the Uniate Church offered access to classical education to Orthodox clergy who were willing to unite with the Church of Rome. Until that time, what survived in oral tradition and folklore was the extent to which many peasant Romanians realized their ancestral role during the Roman conquest. More than 2,500 figures fill a carved spiral ribbon measuring 3 feet wide that winds around the outer surface to 670 feet in length (Rossi). It is a remarkable monument in its own right that depicts a commemorative record of the Emperor Trajan’s determination, and eventual success at subduing Dacian[2] tribes united under their king, Decebalus. Several historical sources, from Herodotus, to Strabo, Dio Cassius, and to a lesser extent references to Trajan’s own war diary Dacica, (with only one line of the original surviving) offer sparse, yet compelling insights into the indigenous people of the Danube basin as much in the centuries preceding the Roman conquest, when Herodotus [3] writes his now famous passage about the Thracians in his Histories, as during Trajan’s campaigns. The column, apart from possessing critical value as a military record, to say nothing of its artistic achievements serves also as a featured point of departure for this essay, because it signals the moment of confrontation between an imperial power, and an autochthonous population. Among its carved metopes [4] that illustrate military weapons, strategy, geography and accurate representations of both Roman and Dacian clothing, the friezes also show Dacian people; warriors, women, and even Dacian children. In other words, it provides a human face and gaze with its striking attention to expression and composition to both the conquerors, as well as the conquered. [5] It reveals an encounter with the other well worth studying, not only for its military information, but attitudes of Romans and Dacians .Two thousand years later, after many, many foreign invasions and many, many rulers, peasant revolts, wars, and changing geographical borders, Lucian Blaga found the hero for his play Zalmoxis, in a remote time and place; he located his inspiration in myth--myth derived of a rich folklore tradition stretching back to the autochthonous Thracians [6].

When Lucian Blaga, already an established poet undertook his first dramatic experiment in writing Zalmoxis first published in 1921, he intended to deny an exclusive Latin tradition, in favor of a Thracian origin [7]. This came in part as a result of his experiences in Vienna, where his exposure to western ideas, including those of Spengler and Nietzche inspired his return to questions of man’s relationship to nature, and the very meaning of human existence (Tanase). He would have drawn also, on the classic works of ecclesiastical scholars, like Samuil Micu Clain who first identified Daco-Roman continuity, (Hitchins). Careful not to disturb the discourse of his complex project as though mindful of the implications thinkers like De Certeau would caution against in recapturing historical moments, he offers a disclaimer. In his opening remarks of the first edition of Zalmoxis, he wrote:

more than the name of this Thracian prophet. The religion of Zalmoxis and the surrounding story woven into the actions

In “Nietzsche in Romania: the Case of Lucian Blaga”, Keith Hitchins explains Blaga’s play as:

(Zalmoxis)…a prophet of the Dacians, the ancient inhabitants of present day Romania, returns among his people after many years of isolation in the mountains. He has had a revelation and is anxious to free his people from obsolete beliefs and prepare them to accept new values. But the Wizard, representing the religious establishment, seeks to preserve allegiance to the old gods. To thwart the prophet he proclaims him a god, has a statue of him erected, and organizes a cult around the new divinity. Shocked that his people would worship before an idol bearing his likeness, Zalmoxis overturns the statue, whereupon the crowd slays him as a profaner of the gods. But they are immediately overcome by a revelation that Zalmoxis was the Word, and they are transformed spiritually (…..175).

The hero of his dramatic poem, Zalmoxis [8] returned to his people bringing certain ideas of spirituality, among which the idea of immortality was central. In his play, Blaga created a myth in order to address the pantheism he ascribed to Thracian spirituality; he did this as a means of challenging the people to recover their meaning of existence by returning to nature, and hence, to God. To this extent, Blaga used Zalmoxis as a though both he, and his obscure prophet were a hybrid cosmogonic agent; Blaga’s creative relationship with the hero of his play involved its own mystery, so that Blaga becomes an initiate as an artist, to the mysteries of which Zalmoxis is a central figure. At the same time, Zalmoxis, is reanimated in Blaga’s verse, and made by creative invocation capable of revisiting the past to minister to his people. While Zalmoxis is an historical figure of great significance to Thracian culture, deeply inculcated in oral tradition and cultural practice, the play is pure fiction. But it is a fiction rooted in the essence of myth and spirituality upon which Blaga wholeheartedly based his views as philosopher, and poet, and to some extent, historiographer. He seems to propose that by acknowledging the philosophical space of myth [9] as an agent of the location of mystery, he can then locate the myth in history. I will discuss the ways in which Blaga infuses dialogue with nature-laden metaphor as a way of making a historiographical journey to the center of myth via Nature:

this, I will argue, is the nature of his dramatic experiment—the creation of a myth, and not the making of fiction. In other words, in his creation of myth, he was to some extent reclaiming a history that was lost but recoverable, that is one rediscovered in folklore, oral tradition, and metaphor, which collectively invest in the mythic space. Within this same mythic space, Blaga’s language functions both diachronically and synchronically. He operates both as a poet and historiographer, using a single historical figure as the past, where the past is the center of not only history, but mystery, and metaphor, the tool of discovery. He was speaking as much to the idols of paganism (Roman conquest) as to the “other” (autochthonous Thracian), as well as to his contemporary Romanian audience who would have been particularly sensitive to issues of identity and language by way of the historical importance and relevancy of the 1848 Revolution. [10] By rejecting a dominant Latin origin, and claiming a Thracian ancestry, Lucian Blaga anticipated a discourse of postcolonialism well in advance of luminaries like Spivak, and Achebe, although the significance of Blaga’s applied philosophy of mythic space in the context of Zamolxe can stand comfortably alone without postcolonial props. The core of his poem, after all is to mystify a path to the center of nature. For Blaga, the essence of discovery was not in demystifying, or deconstructing the ingress to the core, but rather restoring mystery to its proper place: the interface between man and divine. There dwells his Blind One, God, who is the mystery of existence personified in nature.

I will also consider the historical relevance of pagan Roman culture to which the Dacians would have been exposed, as the pantheon of idols against which Zalmoxis desires his people to resist. Finally, I will explore the implications of Blaga’s work in a larger western discourse, that necessarily validates the need for translation studies as a way of addressing cultural elements embedded in language in order to properly approach a text. Notwithstanding the value of granting western access to Zalmoxis for its substantive and comparative attributes, the sheer exercise in reading a translation of Zalmoxis opens new dimensions in discourse on indigenous cultures, and their critical role in national identity through the common agency of metaphor.

The play is structured in three acts with the protagonist vying for the restoration of his people’s return to pantheism, while the antagonist, Magul, (a pagan priest) represents the old order of a polytheistic society. Magul is Rome. He is an emblem of the metropole with its idol-filled temples. He has seduced the Thracians with pagan ideas, and he has bewitched them with statues, incantations and charms. In Act 1, Zalmoxis is engaged in self-reflection at the mouth of a cave. In his introduction to Zalmoxis, Obscure Pagan Keth Hitchins explains the prophet’s dilemma as that of being caught between contemplation, and action (Runey). Blaga’s preference for extensive monologue and dialogue over action is an effective device in his experimental treatment of the dramatic poem because it creates a sense of mysterious place through metaphor. Metaphor, thus, is the portal into dimensions of mystery. This is immediately apparent in the opening monologue by Zalmoxis: [11]

Blaga insinuates Zalmoxis in nature, and establishes the relationship between the divine and the natural world via the word ‘communion’, giving currency to life that might be lost, but “…does not perish”. Although critics of Blaga cite superficial references to Christ, obvious in lines like “You mistook my purpose and struck at me with stones when I tried to bring you a religion from the heart of the Unknown One” (Blaga, 8) it is worth noting that Christianity arrived on the Thracian coast of the Black Sea (present day Constanza, Romania) with the arrival of Roman colonists, which included Greeks, as Hitchins writes in Cultura si Nationalitate (21). Chronologically, then, the Thracian religion would have been subjected first to Christianity, and then Roman polytheism as a colony after the Dacian Wars. Zalmoxis is returning to his people after a seven-year absence where he was driven out by Magul’s followers. Effectively, Blaga creates Zalmoxis as though returning him to his people after they have been misled by paganism of the old order, to recover them to the mystery of existence:

gather him with your eyes, you imagine him a man and invite him to your village--

Blaga decides, as G. Calinescu observes in both The Prophet’s Footsteps and Zamolxe to which he refers in his monumental work, Istoria Literaturii Romane, that :

…panteismul, sau mai bine zis, panismul se-nfaptuieste cu mijloace artitice superioare si in consonanta cu traditia noastra agrara, intr-un pastoralism in care se regasesc toate elementele bucolicei virgiliene: Pan “ovium custos”, ardenta caniculara a cimpurilor, greierii, macii adormitori, sopirlele, naiul, copacii stravechi, laptele care curge…(876).

through pastoralism in which we find all the bucolic Virgilian elements: Pan “ovium custos “, the ardent heat of the fields, the

crickets, sleep-inducing poppies, lizards, the panpipe, ancient trees, milk that runs…

Therefore Blaga filters the myth through powerful metaphor as a means of creating a space for pantheism in the rural world. It is in some ways a sequence of nested heterotopiae (Foucault), each one encapsulated within another through which the spiritual journey leads to the center of mystery. For example, when Zalmoxis retrieves a golden honeycomb from the hollow of an oak tree, he wrings it out and as the honey drips in the sand he says:

Zalmoxis is speaking to nature, yet he is in nature. His hive is full, but it is not a separate entity inside the hollow of the oak. Thus he is nested in nature, nature is nested in the hive, the hive nested in the oak, which when wrung out, drips its liquid center in the sand. The fullness of the hive, therefore, is the fullness of nature nested in man; man sucks sustenance from nature—within him—until he is full; his fullness returns the mystery to the earth.

In Tom Conley’s introduction to Michel de Certeau’s The Writing of History, he notes that today’s historians, aware as they are of the discursive impact on the way the past is molded see their language as “…one that yields partial facts as a by-product of motion. The figures of historiography encapsulate the entire design that an author makes of the past, yet by englobing the past within metaphor, historians succeed in fragmenting, isolating, dividing, but also in creating their fields of knowledge” (ix). The encapsulating of an idea in metaphor is the very action that creates the by-product, which in this case is the myth required for the reaffirmation of the Romanian identity. For example, Blaga privileges vegetation over flesh; animalism is cold and impotent until warmed by the sun, as in this passage spoken by one of the Harvesters, where he refers to the enormous grapes grown by the Hunchback:

to which the Hunchback replies, “De ce? Fiindca ei isi incalzesc la soare singele urcindu-se-n lastarii viei mele? “ (Blaga, 26). Why are you offended? Because they warm their blood in the shoots of my grapevines?” (Runey, 70).

But De Certeau’s nature-culture connection seems diametrically opposed to what Blaga is doing, since as a poet-historiographer, Blaga uses the creation of myth, nested as it were in the center of the historical prophet, not to displace or redistribute, but rather to restore (71-72). Todoran reminds us in an article appearing in Gindirea, Lucian Blaga wrote, “…publicam poemul Zamolxe, cu care intentionam sa ancorez in creatia mitica, etnica…” (65), “…I published the poem Zalmoxis with the intention of anchoring the ethnic, in the mythic creation…”. Blaga was surely mindful that Romania enjoyed unity as a kingdom for the first time only in 1881, and then as the great Romanian Kingdom in 1918, which included Transylvania and Bessarabia in the aftermath of World War I. Thus after two millennia worth of invasions by imperial forces from the Romans to the Magyars, through the Ottomans, and the Austrians, while maintaining their Latin-derived language, and Orthodox religion, Blaga’s task expanded to include what he defined in an article as: “…[scrisa] cu stingacii juvenile, si prea unilateral poate, pentru un spiritualism autohon, dar liber si creator, liber pina la barbarie” (ibid), “…[written] with juvenile clumsiness, and too unilateral perhaps, an autochthonous spiritualism, but free and creative, free all the way to barbarism.” Here Blaga reveals an aspect of the experimental nature of his dramatic poem, by indicating that he was willing to set aside popular conventions of the day, such as an implied Latinity, in order to reconcile the modern Romanian identity with its remote Thracian origins.

While Zalmoxis contemplates his ultimate remove from the solitude of his cave to the world of man where he will confront Magul, Thracian soldiers are guarding the temples against the impending insurrection of Zalmoxis’ servants, who are “…[se] sporesc de-atunci pe sub pamint ca iepurii de casa (Blaga, 11).

The soldiers too, among whom is a foreigner delivered from slavery by having given Zalmoxis’ sandals to Magul, muse on the nature of their mission to guard the idols: “…mai bine ramineai tot sclav decit sa strajuisti cu noi viclene temple vaduvite de credinta. “…you should have remained a slave instead of guarding the temple with heathens like us; and our heels grow fat on these holy stones since our faith has left us” (50). The soldiers have become a slave to an empty mission—that of guarding idols. The crisis of confrontation is everywhere, as the soldier identifies it further: “…sunt fiinte ce nu-s aievea, si totusi omul le pazeste de primejdii! De ce?—ca omul, tot el, sa aiba de la cine, in primejdie fiind, sa ceara ajutor…” (Blaga, 13), (…there are beings that are not real, yet a man keeps watch over them! Why? So that very man can beg help of them in times of danger…(Runey, 51). Here Blaga might be suggesting that men—perhaps Romans, and even Greeks for that matter, created a polytheistic religion based on a non-mysterious matrix, which is to say a non-nature environment, hence, synthetic. Gods, and most importantly through their idols were nothing more than invention—something quite apart from myth, since according to Blaga, myth must spring from the relationship between the divine, and nature. While some may argue that polytheism does the same, the deification of gods as carved statues, is non-nature, since nature has no direct effect on the idol; the idol, for Zalmoxis is a contrivance of man out of touch with mystery. Otherwise put, by making a god the object of deification through the making of a statue, god is no longer in nature. This very union of nature and the divine is reciprocal, and as such perhaps the center of existence: immortality. So Blaga increases the tension between the old religion and the new by contrasting them in the lines of one of the guards posted at the temple:

O, zei, mucegaiti de vesnicie! Nu-I nici un pumn inclestat sa darime minciuna cu stilpii de piatra? Al mortilor, poate! Iesite ingropatii de viii in pamint—si voi azvirlitii pe riuri! Eu, unul din cei ce ramin crediciosi lui Zamolxe, va chem. Din adinc:prabusiti sanctuarul! (Blaga 15),

O gods, moldy with eternity! Is there not one tight fist to smash the lie with stone columns? Maybe among the dead. Come out,

you who have been buried alive, [13] and you who have been cast upon rivers. I, one of Zalmoxis’ remaining faithful summon you forth from the deep. I am the man—ha-ha—Lay siege to the sanctuary! (Runey 54).

In scene three, Magul seeks protection and advice from the sorcerer, because he realizes the crisis of faith among the people. He also knows that Zalmoxis is nearby thus the old religion is in danger of being replaced. The Sorcerer says, “…un profet nu e nimic, dar un profet lovit—e mult (Blaga, 17), “…a prophet is nothing, but an injured prophet is much (Runey, 56). In other words, a mere prophet who has the liberty to speak his vision, is not nearly as charismatic as one who has been persecuted, or hurt. The Dacians’ last memory of Zalmoxis was when he was struck down in the orchard, therefore there are those devoted followers who remain faithful to him in that moment of persecution. Blaga reveals the kind of strategy reminiscent of colonial powers who knew the dangers of martyrs. Although it was Magul who influenced the people to reject Zalmoxis in favor of a pantheon of gods, even he realizes that paganism is losing its appeal. The Sorcerer echoes Magul’s fear:

Zeii se hranesc cu suflet omenesc. Cind se ispraveste acest nutret, cind nu mai crede nimenea in ei, s-aduna tristi si-si cheama marele sfirsit. Nu le mai poate ajuta nici meirea si nici laptele de capre (Blaga, 17-18).

The gods thrive on the soul of man. When this nutrient has been depleted, when all cease to believe in them anymore, they gather sadly and call for their own end. Neither honey nor goat’s milk can help them (Runey, 57).

Unlike the pantheism Zalmoxis preaches, paganism feeds off man’s faith, which he has invented in order to invent the idol. Unlike nature, with its vibrancy, its power to expand like animals full with milk, or honeycombs oozing honey, idols and statues are cold. Even the Hunchback’s corpses with their cold blood have the potential to find warmth in the sun-beaten roots of the grapevine. But idols and statues, invented by men do not exist in nature; they cannot drink milk or honey; they are not alive, and therefore possess no mystery.

The Sorcerer and Magul conspire to make the people deify Zalmoxis, and in so doing, deprive him of his mortality while he is still alive. Put another way, they would confound Zalmoxis’ relationship with nature and the divine by making him immortal, hence an idol, and therefore out of nature. The plan is to commemorate Zalmoxis as a god, and not a man, by carving a statue of him. In one of the most hauntingly telling lines of Blaga’s play, the Sorcerer predicts that “Oamenii divinizind pe Zamolxe ii vor uita invatatura“ (Blaga, 19), “As the people begin to worship Zalmoxis, they will soon forget his teaching (Runey, 59). Already the bacchante resurrect their cult activities to the pleasure of the crowds. According to the Sorcerer and Magul, the highest virtue (for them and the old order they stand for) is deceit. We may ask how many imperial powers were driven by such means when conquerors like Rome, Spain, France, England, Russia and America used deception to undermine the culture and religious practices of indigenous people?

The ruse begins when a Shepherd stricken with lycanthropy, seeks a charm from the Sorcerer. The Shepherd, goaded seven-years ago by Magul to drive Zalmoxis from the orchard where he was preaching, was the first man to strike the prophet with a rock to his face. Zalmoxis stared wide-eyed at the Shepherd, and asked simply “Why?” Perhaps there is a connection to be made between Christ’s question in his final hour of sacrifice “Father, why have you forsaken me?” and Zalmoxis’ similarly innocent reaction to being denied by his own people. The Shepherd—who represents the common peasant caught in the crossfire of the conqueror, and the conquered--hence overcome with his own confusion and uncertainty at having injured the prophet, Zalmoxis, in the orchard seven years ago tore open five of his sheep that night at the rising of the moon, and wept into their fleece. Since that time, at every full moon, the Shepherd becomes fireflies once the moonlight touches his eyes, before changing into a wolf:

singele ce-a curs din trupul sau. Cind sorb o picatura, ma dezmeticesc si iarasi ma fac om (Blaga, 22).

I track the young man [Zalmoxis] with big eyes, and seek the blood that runs from his body in the sand. After I sip a drop of his spilled blood, I come to my senses, and transform back into a man (Runey, 64).

Blaga might be suggesting the same sense of mystery surrounding the magical transformation of the cursed shepherd, and even the mystery of the resurrection or immortality here. The Shepherd’s condition is an emblem of his sin, the sin of having denied Zalmoxis by stoning him, sin which drives him to seek salvation and redemption by taking a sip “his of spilled blood.” Yet if we consider Blaga’s exposure to Nietzsche [14], we might detect shades of Zarathustra where Blaga quickly has the Sorcerer and the Mag conspire to take advantage of the Shepherd’s suffering state against the potential converts to Zalmoxis’ religion. They convince him that Zalmoxis was in fact a god, and as such, deserved to be deified in a statue that could be placed in its proper place in the temple. Hidden from sight, Magul’s voice speaks to the desperate Shepherd:

El n-are nici un sanctuary un chip ciolplit cum se cuvine unui zeu. Cit nimenea nu I se-nchiona, Zalmoxe e legat de lut. Primejdii va trimite-n suflete, pamintul va scrisni din stinci, iar mieii vor pieri ca struguri din vii. Ciopliti-I chip de piatra lui Zamolxe! Zeul striga, cere jerfe! (Blaga, 24).

He has no sanctuary, nothing carved in his image as would befit a god, no likeness to which the faithful may bow in worship. Zalmoxis is bound in clay. He will send dangers into your souls, and rocks will grind the earth while lambs will perish like the grapes off the vine. Carve him, therefore, a body, a body of stone for Zalmoxis! The god calls out; he asks for sacrifice (Runey, 66).

The sorcerer then gives the Shepherd wine to drink, in which the spilled blood of Zalmoxis is (supposedly) mixed. This, he tells him, will cure him of his curse. One could argue that the symbolism of Zalmoxis’ blood shares a divine reference to Christ, since the Shepherd believes in its power to heal him. In any event, Blaga reflects the consequences of forces in confrontation, such as Roman colonizers, and autochthonous disciples of Zalmoxis. At the point of convergence, things become blurred and distorted, as each opposing force believes he has power on his side.

In Act II, The Hunchback, three harvesters, three children, the Shepherd and the Bacchante represent the action through dialogue. Most interesting is the Hunchback, who perhaps stands for the disfigured Thracian identity; his form has been distorted by the invasion of foreigners. He mocks the Shepherd and Harvesters who claim they have placated Magul’s wrath, by agreeing to deify Zalmoxis, and in this fashion, perpetuate paganism. While the children suck wine from amphorae through reeds, the Harvesters warn them to hide from the Bacchante, who will surely drive them to madness with one look. In the following passage, the complexity of Blaga’s dramatic poem are evident, but in terms of this discussion, suffice to say that it speaks to Dionysian elements, harkening to the Bacchae by Euripides. Blending here the old religion (polytheism) with the new, the Bacchante (symbolizing the old ways of the Dacians) chant a distorted song of Daco-Roman elements:

The cult of Dionysus is of Thracian origin, and part of the surviving oral tradition of Thracian culture prior to Roman colonization. Blaga includes this, perhaps, as vestiges of Thracian myth, out of which pantheism emerged. It may also suggest the madness associated with religious fervor so common to pagan worship, and the kind of mysterious chaos that may be antithetical to a pantheistic journey to the center of mystery. In the book East Europe Reads Nietzsche, Hitchins suggests, “in Zamolxe, Blaga portrayed the Dacians as a Dyonisian community who had completely fused with nature and lived life recklessly. The prophet’s teachings after his return from the mountains were an attempt to lead the Dacians away from their cult of Dyonisian frenzy back to their fundamental Apollonian nature (176). By Scene 3, Zalmoxis is in his cave, and delivers one of his most eloquent passages, whose metaphor reaffirms immortality through the mystery of nature’s union with the divine. It is, for all intents and purposes, an invocation: “O frunza cade-n noapte, un veac se scurge-mine. Alta frunza cade-n noapte, alt veac trece in mine (Blaga, 33), “A leaf falls in the night, a lifetime drains in me, another leaf falls in the night, another lifetime passes in me, (Runey, 78). Blaga introduces the cosmic implications of Zalmoxis’ relationship with the universe, and all its mysteries. Hitchins identifies part of Blaga’s dynamic as exploring a “…conflict that takes place on a cosmic level, and the characters are not individuals, but represent abstract principles (Freifield, 176). The metaphorical relationship between the falling leaf and an entire lifetime draining is an example of a diachronic and synchronic moment—one that connects Zalmoxis his purpose in the natural, physical world. At this invocation, three apparitions appear to the prophet: Socrates, Christ, and Bruno Giordano—each reminding him that as a prophet, he must act, but to the same degree, he must have face consequences. It might give one pause that each of these three figures was eventually commemorated in statues; Blaga may have been contrasting the universal regard for these profound figures, to the obscurity of the Dacian prophet, or the more obvious inference, that each was betrayed. As Zalmoxis resolves to return to the world of men, Magul and the Greek Woodcarver are talking about the statue the carver has been working on. He then includes a section that in terms of the play’s context may speak to the madness associated with pagan rituals.

There is something strangely reminiscent of Herodotus’ passage about the sacrifice of the (Thracian/Dacian) messenger as part of a ritual associated with Zalmoxis. While Blaga is making a comment about the Dacian identity in terms of his posture in nature, it seems reasonable that he is also suggesting a means of creating myth. Note here that the Woodcarver is Greek, as was Herodotus. Both have observed a game or ritual that escapes their understanding, as outsiders to the Thracian culture. Mircea Eliade relates the passage in Herodotus 4.94, as the “sacrifice of the messenger”: [15]

Once in every five years they choose by lot one of their people and send him as messenger to Salmoxis[16], charged to tell of their needs; and this is their manner of sending: Three lances are held by men thereto appointed; others seize the messenger to Salmoxis by his hands and feet, and swing and hurl him aloft on to the spearpoint. If he be killed by the cast, they believe that the god regards them with favor; but if he not be killed, they blame the messenger himself, deeming him a bad man, and send another messenger in place of him whom they blame. It is while the man yet lives that they charge him with the message” (Eliade, 48, trans. A.D.Godley [slightly altered]).

Blaga may be implying the “other’s” gaze as incapable of understanding the mystery of the ritual just as Herodotus records the act. The same year in which Blaga published his play, he also wrote his famous essay on “The Revolt of Our Non-Latin Essence.” Hitchins tells us that Blaga believed that Romanians were “much more than Latins, with their clarity and rationality”. The ancestral legacy of Dacian and Slavic from the “metaphysica depths of the Romanian soul” was what disturbed the “Latin sense of symmetry and harmony.” Perhaps the passage above typifies the kind of (Dacian) meta-heritage that surfaces now and again in spite of a predominant Latin essence. He may also be commenting on the frenzied spirit of the Thracians at a time when they might have been trapped between two worlds. Blaga’s Zalmoxis, however, doesn’t seem capable of endorsing the ritual or game either way, since his monologues and dialogue are highly contemplative of unity with nature, and not wild abandon. For Blaga, Zalmoxis preached communion with nature, not chaos, and though nature had its own power and unpredictable ways, its ultimate reconciliation was in its union with the divine. The use of luxuriant metaphor seems to operate like a mystical lodestone, drawing attention always from a larger scene, to a small detail. It is beyond the scope of this paper to examine the many ways in which this is apparent, although a handy example is the scene with the soldiers guarding the temple, and Zalmoxis alone, at the entrance of a cave. Even comparing a falling leaf to an eternity functions this way; Zalmoxis’ musings are the lodestone, and though spoken in isolation, the overall effect is that he is so much reconciled to nature, that through nature, his teachings still surround his faithful.

By Act III, Zalmoxis arrives in the very orchard where he was struck down. One might recognize shades of Eden or Gethsemane, yet Blaga himself was to some extent heretical, despite having come from a tradition of Orthodox clergy, (his father and grandfather were priests). Perhaps his exposure to Nietzsche influenced his disaffection for faith in general. Like Nietzsche he did not trust religion, however Blaga seems to have been conflicted at some level. For example, Hitchins says that Blaga felt God was indifferent to man’s pleas (Freifeld, 177), and perhaps this is why he identifies God as The Blind One. Zalmoxis, created within the mystic space of Blaga’s play portrays a robust yet almost naïve prophet. He hopes that the people will be raising a temple to the Blind One the next day, when in fact Magul is planning the dedication of Zalmoxis’ statue. Thus is reveals the danger of faith, while reinforcing the mystery of the natural world. The prophet encounters Zemora, Magul’s daughter, who is the embodiment of nature.

Romania had come closest to defining once and for all her national identity in 1848, when like so many countries across Europe, revolutions were erupting. In Keith Hitchin’s The Idea of Nation, and Cultura si Nationalitate in Transilvania, he discusses in great detail the importance the Romanian language held as a agency in the right to nationhood. He also identifies the role of the Orthodox religion as a force that moved through ancient Thrace that never lost its fundamental stability among the agrarian culture of Daco-Romanians, and their descendants. What some critics call a mere reference to Christianity, Zalmoxis, I would argue is actually inherent in the mythic space Blaga creates. Zemora’s wild beauty and sensual appropriation of the grass, the sun, and the color of locusts as a celebration of nature is also a marvel of nature—something consistent with the idea of the very mystery of creation, and as such, recognition of the divine. Her comments to the Greek Woodcarver about Zalmoxis, are subtle, but equally informative:

Here Blaga seems to be suggesting the willingness of nature to embrace the divine; Zemora, a natural creature recognizes the reciprocal value of nature’s mysteries, and divine secrets. For Blaga’s audience it is a powerful combination, that borrowed from the fantastic struggles of the Romanian people over the centuries. The rural, agrarian peasant clung to folklore, myth, religion and language, while all around them boundaries changed. New invaders arrived; they remained the keepers of secrets, secrets that did not exist in the cities, but rather in the orchards and woods, and caves of the country. When Zemora tells Zalmoxis, whom she does not recognize, that Magul will dedicate the prophet’s statue in the morning, he is dumbstruck. In Act II, Scene 3, Zalmoxis enters the empty temple, sad that the many people he passes do not know him, and have forgotten his teachings. Magul, however, after mistaking him for a stranger recognizes suddenly the “troubled gaze” of those eyes. He mocks him, and says, “Ai incercat sa-l scap de zei si azi iti ai si tu un chip de piatra printer ei!”, (Blaga, 53), “You tried to wean them from statues, and yet today, you will have a stone carved in your image among them!” (Runey, 105).

As the play reaches its climax, Zalmoxis has witnessed how naive worshippers let themselves be fooled by Magul, and the ways of gods. When his statue is placed on its pedestal, and Magul inspires the crowd, Zalmoxis realizes he, in spite of himself, has become the enemy, and says addressing himself: “Esti tu—numai tu, numai tu chip de piatra-ncoronat cu nemurire si dezmierdat cu jocuri de fecioare” (Blaga, 59), “It is you—you alone, only you, a chiseled image in stone crowned with immortality, and corrupted with the dances of young maidens” (Runey, 112). In a fatal moment Zalmoxis lunges at the statue and crashes it to the ground, while the people, mistaking him as a profaner in their confusion and frenzy, kill him with chunks of the broken statue. The Hunchback quickly rushes from the crowd and bends over Zalmoxis:

The burden of translating a complex dramatic poem such as Zalmoxis, Obscure Pagan intimately parallels the kind of problematic, though intriguingly mysterious relationship between nature and the divine. It is a task that requires approaching the source language text as a natural world of culture that is manifested through folklore, tradition, history, religion, and the secrets at their separate and collective centers. The process is further complicated by “…what the exercise of power means in terms of the production of culture, of which the production of translations is a part” (Bassnett and LeFevere, 5). The features of Blaga’s play become apparent as discourse relative to theoretical challenges now that it is translated within the contemporary framework of postcolonial discourse. Once this type of excavation is made, the text, and all of its centers—some factual, some legendary, some heterotopic creations of the author, and others the mythical properties at play in and out of words—the varied contents, dense and concentrated must then be distilled and reconstituted into the target language text. The value of this kind of undertaking lies in metaphor, which opens a new dimension of discourse by allowing yet a new exploration into meaning, both denotative and connotative, both formal and dynamic. Translation as a creative art, affects, informs, illuminates and reanimates not only the source and target text languages, but the body of vast theoretical tools as well. Lefevere reminds us that “Translation is responsible to a large extent for the image of a work, a writer, a culture. Together with historiography, anthologizing and criticism it prepares works for inclusion in the canon of world literature (27). Translation Studies is a journey to the center, understanding how things are nested, and how to nest them likewise. Like Zemora, we must be willing to trade what we know, for what others know:

He stirred. I took the basket from his hand, and I propped it upon a pole over the swarm like a hat. He watched quietly. Then I smoked the bees by lighting a tinder with flint strikes—and they began to hide in the wicker covering. When I finished, I told him “Promise, eternal young woodsman!” (Runey, 95).

Zemora exchanged one of the secrets of nature, for what she valued as a one of the secrets of the divine: …and you, you will tell me about the beginning of the world, for in this you understand better than anyone…(Runey, 95).

[1] Trajan’s Column records the detailed accounts of the Dacian’s Wars, otherwise virtually lost to history since precious few fragments have survived in writing. See Lino Rossi’s Trajan’s Column and the Dacian Wars.

[2] The Thracians were an extensive tribe stretching from the north of Greece throughout the Balkans, with the Dacians occupying the Danube basin in present day Romania. They were called Getae by Greek writers, and Dacians by the Romans.

[3] This often quoted passage is reproduced in Mircea Eliade’s book Zalmoxis, the Vanishing God, on pg. 21 as “I have been told by the Greeks who dwell beside the Hellespont and Pontus that this Salmoxis was a man who was once a slave on Samos, his master being Pythagorus, son of Mnesarchus; presently, after being freed and gaining great wealth, he returned to his own country. Npw the Thracians were a meanly-living and simple-witted folk, but this Salmoxis knew Ionian usages and a fuller way of life than the Thracians; for he had consorted with the Greeks, and moreover with one of the greatest Greek teachers, Pythagorus; wherefore he made himself a hall where he entertained and feasted the chief of his countrymen, and taught them that neither he nor his guests nor any of their descendants should ever die, but that they should go to a place where they would live for ever and have all good things” (94-95; trans. A.D. Godley).

[4] These metopes comprise 155 scenes of both Dacian Wars.

[5] Lino Rossi discusses the Tropaeum Traiani in modern Adamklissi as “…the provincial counterpart to the Column in Rome…” since it too records events of the Dacian Wars “not far from the main battlefield” (41). It contributes to the body of material on the Dacian Wars, corroborated by the Column, classical texts, and coins.

[6] In the 1860’s Napolean III ordered casts of the Column’s relief, which were later photgravured by Cichorius. These plates remain the focus of renewed interest in the Trajan’s Column. For a discussion of Cichoriu’s plates, the reader is referred to Lepper and Frere’s Trajan’s Column.

[7] The title of an article which appeared in Gindirea was titled “Revolta fondului nostru nelatin” “The revolt of out non-Latin base” in which he claims as logically inherent in Romanian history in order to recognize in a latent Thracian foundation in the Romanian spirit, which is both exhuberant and vital (freely translated from Todoran, pg.65).

[8] In De Zalmoxis a Gengis Khan, Eliade discusses various classical writer’s references and interpretations of Zalmoxis’ relationship to Pythagorus, both in terms of the influence of Pythagorous’ doctrine of immortality, and the possibility of Zalmoxis actually predating Pythagorous.

[9] Blaga will write exstensively about Spatiul Mioritic , a philosophical text,later in his career.

[10] See Cultura si Nationalitate in Transilvania, and The Idea of Nation, the Romanians of Transylvania, by Keith Hitchins for critical discussions of Romanian identity, religion and language issues.

[11] See the “Translator’s Forward” in Zalmoxis, Obscure Pagan for a discussion of my decision to create an internal dialogue between Zalmoxis, and the Voice of Zalmoxis (Runey).

[12] The literal translation here ‘in all that is lost’, however, I refer the reader to Hatim and Mason’s book Discourse and the Translator where they distinguish “…formal equivalence (closest possible match of form and content between ST and TT) and dynamic equivalence (principle of equivalence of effect on reader of TT) as basic orientations, rather than as a binary choice…) (pg.7). In a Blagian sense, though the mystery of existence may be “lost” it has not perished, because it is recoverable through pantheism.

[13] Mircea Eliade refers again to Herodotus for information regarding Zalmoxis’ ritual of sequestration: “…he had an underground chamber built, in which he hid himself for three years; thinking him dead, the Getae mourned him, but he reappeared in the fourth year, thus giving startling proof that his teaching was true (pg.23).

[14] There is considerable scholarship on Blaga’s reaction to Nietzsche’s Zarathrusta, in his artistic and philosophical interpretation of Zalmoxis. See Alexandru Tanase’s Lucian Blaga, Filosoul Poet, Poetul Filosof, and , by Mircea Vaida.

[15] Mircea Eliade informs us that Strabo had different accounts of Thracian culture. See pgs. 55-61, that are hinted at in the Woodcarver’s dialogue with Magul.

[16] Herodotus’ spelling of Zalmoxis.

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