Elena Niculiță-Voronca, Zaharia Voronca și nu doar ei, în câteva micronarațiuni labirintice (I)

Abstract

Divided into two distinct sequences, the present study aims in a first instance to recover two representative figures of Bukovina from the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century: the quasi-unknown Elena Niculiță-Voronca and Zaharia Voronca. Through this recovery, which addresses both the biographical and the moral-ideational plan, the author intends to restore the atmosphere of the moment, putting in the foreground the relationship between Romanians and Ukrainians and the Romanians’ vision of the Austrian policies, reconstituting facts and identifying the dominant ideas of the time. However, the reconstitution of the two figures and their defining ideas is not possible without calling into question all sorts of relevant contexts. The first part of the study questions the case of the “Arboroasa” trial and the hypothesis that Zaharia Voronca was involved in a genuine conspiratorial action. It reconstitutes the figure of Zaharia Voronca during the trial and the possible reasons for the marriage with Elena Niculiță-Voronca and launches explanations for some surprising hypotheses. In the author’s opinion, Elena Niculiță-Voronca and Zaharia Voronca are united by several ideas that justify the events that the author reconstructs through their writings and the way in which they imagine each other in their own writings. Beyond all this, is it possible that there was a rift between Zaharia Voronca and Constantin Morariu, prison fellows during the trial of “Arboroasa”? And if there are arguments for such a rupture, how could it be explained? On the other hand, was there a visible metamorphosis over time of Zacharias Voroncaʾs personality? Wasn’t this rupture due precisely to some changes in Zacharias Voroncaʾs options? Trying to answer such questions, the author analyses a sequence from the diary of Elena Niculiță-Voronca, i. e. the record of her first trip to Vienna, in 1904, but also the way Elena Niculiță-Voronca appears in the texts written by Zaharia Voronca. The fact is that the two were united by the desire to reawaken in the villages where the Romanians considered themselves Ukrainians the consciousness of the Romanian identity. The first part ends with the reference to the Ruthenianization of Bukovina, a book from 1904, which will analysed in the second sequence of the study.