Rereading “Danube” After Thirty Years. Bucharest in Claudio Magris’ Book

Abstract

The article marks the anniversary, in 2024, of thirty years since the publication of the Romanian translation of the famous Danube (Milan, Garzanti, 1986) by Claudio Magris, which had immediately earned him the Bagutta Prize 1987, consecrating him among the highest contemporary Italian writers. The Romanian version was released in 1994 at the Univers publishing house in Bucharest in the “Spectrum” series, with the translation of the historian Adrian Niculescu, who was exiled to Italy in the 1980s. The proposed analysis is based on the presentation of the material concerning Romania within the literary work, as a premise of the speech on the Mitteleuropa versus the Europe of the South-East. Among the four historic Romanian regions, three can be identified as the main topics of the volume: Banat, Transylvania and Wallachia (Moldova is missing, as it does not concern the Danubian journey), with the mention that Banat and Transylvania are treated in a distinct chapter entitled Nonna Anka, while the other part of the Romanian territory, Wallachia, appears in the Matoas chapter. Claudio Magris’ literary image of Bucharest manages to configure the urban identity in its peculiarities deriving from the overlap of three different layers with paradigmatic value, corresponding to the main stages of its historical development.