Sibiu project of almost 1.5 million Euro for promoting Romanian literature worldwide

For the first time, Romanian literature will have a history spoken to foreigners, in English, all within a thousand page book which is about to be written by a few Romanian researchers, coordinated by professor Andrei Terian-Dan from the "Lucian Blaga" University in central Sibiu, who managed to win a 1.45 million Euro grant from the European Council for Research, after a competition, known as the "Nobel for European Grants". The University of Sibiu, where Andrei Terian-Dan is Deputy Rector, is the first university in Romania to implement such a European research project. "The project will last for five years. It will probably begin sometime in the middle of the next year, and I hope that by the end of 2026 we will have a history of the Romanian literature, in English, of approximately 1,000 pages, in one or two volumes, that will be published by a prestigious Western publisher. We do not have a history especially conceived for the foreign public and written in a free regime, namely to not be a simple book of propaganda ideology", Andrei Terian-Dan declared for AGERPRES. The new history of Romanian literature to be written for the whole world will have a modern and realistic approach. "We will be working with a more extended concept of literature, in the sense that we will include fiction and traditional creative writing, poetry, prose, theatre and criticism, but we will also have various interferences or connections between the literary speech and other types of speech, from the religious speech, to politics, journalistic, up to the scientific and especially in the contemporary period, interferences with other types of representation, namely film, music and so on", Andrei Terian-Dan explained. The researcher from Sibiu believes that the Romanian literature means so much more than what we were taught in school. "Sometimes Romanian literature was identified with ethnicity, other times with language, during the communist period with territory, namely everyone who lived in Romania were Romanians and only them, in the contemporary period we are speaking of a more supple notion, due to the fact that we have such a rich Diaspora", Andrei Terian-Dan specified. This history written by Romanians, for Romanians, but as a business card for foreigners, will shed a whole new light on the writers. According to him, this work, financed at 1.45 million Euro by the European Council for Research does not mean that the researcher Andrei Terian-Dan, the Deputy Rector of the "Lucian Blaga" University of Sibiu, will cash in over a million Euro. The team that will write the book will be formed of 15-20 researchers, helped by collaborators from the country, as well as from abroad. Appreciated not only in Romania, but also abroad, Prof. Andrei Terian-Dan, a noted literary critic, fell in love with history and hated literature in primary school. The language and literature high school professor, Sergiu Godina, convinced him that his way in life will be the study and promotion of our literature. With a PhD coordinated by professor and critic Nicolae Manolescu, Andrei Terian-Dan began the faculty in Bucharest, after which he finished it in Sibiu, where he was offered a tenure position at the Faculty of Letters. Researcher Andrei Terian-Dan says he is pleased by what he makes and admits that, during the IX-th grade, he made his first money by selling newspapers to factories in Sibiu. At his 41 years, Andrei Terian-Dan says that his greatest challenge was to perform internationally, from home, from Romania. Andrei Terian-Dan declares that the project "A transnational history of Romanian Literature" is about what it means to be Romanian in the 21st century. "From my point of view, we no longer have a way to conceive the Romanian nation and identity without having to look upon the others and relate to them not as enemies, because if we dig a little bit in our own history we see a lot from what we thought was Romanian is actually due to others, whether they are our neighbours, or if we have distant connections with them. In fact, that is why I said transnational Romanian literature, because in a way it is also regarding the history of world literature, written from a Romanian perspective. Where does Romanian literature begin and where does it end? Somehow, it begins in China, if you wish, with Nicolae Milescu Spataru and ends in Hawaii, where some of our avant-garde poets ended up", Andrei Terian-Dan highlights. "We don't need to be concerned more about the Romanian literature that foreigners are stealing from us, but rather that Romanians no longer are reading it." Researcher Andrei Terian-Dan recommends for literature and especially for reading of the works of contemporary authors.AGERPRES(RO - author: Isabela Paulescu editor: Marius Frătilă EN - author: Catalin Cristian Trandafir, editor: Maria Voican)