MARIA LUPAS

The study of Greek Catholics is often limited to the region of Transylvania, the birthplace of Romanian Greek Catholicism. This paper examines several instances of Romanian Greek Catholic presence in public spaces outside Transylvania, specifically in Bucharest, during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the construction of a Greek Catholic church in Bucharest, as well as the four-man delegation that presented the 1918 Union Declaration to King Ferdinand, which included Iuliu Hossu, the Greek Catholic bishop of Gherla. Hossu’s remarks at a banquet with the prime minister lent a sacred, specifically Greek Catholic aura to the celebration of the Union, which was received and welcomed as such by the prime minister. Nevertheless, only a decade later, in 1929, the same Bishop Hossu would have to energetically defend on the floor of the Romanian Parliament the project of a concordat with the Vatican. This article was published open access under a CC BY-NC-ND licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ .

ISSN: 1541-5880

In the past a book such as Martori ai fericirii: şapte vieţi de sfinţi români would have been placed in area studies, nationalities studies, Romanian studies, Catholic Church history, or some intersection of these fields. In recent times, however, what could have previously been relegated to one of the above studies and reserved for specialists has shown its potential global impact. A further reason for reviewing a book like this at Sophia University Junior College Division include the traditional liberal arts teaching goals among which are: developing an informed appreciation of other cultures and developing an informed historical perspective (Andrade 142, citing Angelo and Cross). To this one might add the benefits of showcasing “diversity [which] enriches a nation by providing all citizens with rich opportunities to experience other cultures and thus to become more fulfilled as human beings” (Banks).

Sophia University Junior College Division (SUJCD) is located in Hadano City, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, and has a relatively long-standing relationship with its host community. This research note looks at the junior college’s relationship with one part of the Hadano community, namely, the foreign residents. It focuses on two groups of foreign residents: those who came to Hadano as refugees through the Yamato Resettlement Center from what is known as Indochina (Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam) and those who came from South America, particularly Peru. It considers some of the individuals involved in the Japanese language classes and other support for foreign residents including the junior college’s In-Home Volunteer Tutoring Program.

The interwar period, which saw an increase in European imperialism, also saw intense missionary activity in Asia. Paul Claudel, who had previously been ambassador to China, served as French ambassador to Japan from 1921 to 1927. He kept up an abundant professional and personal correspondence with persons from the realms of politics, literature, and religion. It was during his time in Japan that Claudel met and began a correspondence with two French Carmelite sisters on mission in Asia. Thus, Claudel’s notable legacy in Japan has often included having a part in the foundation of the Carmelite monastery in Tokyo that was created by the monastery headed by these two sisters in Cholet, France. These sisters represent some of the lesser known, but nevertheless very active women with whom Claudel was in contact. Surprisingly, the correspondence with the sisters shows a passive Claudel in dialogue with active women. This very passivity on Claudel’s part may perhaps have saved him on this and other occasions from a hard orientalist stance.

Eugène Ionesco, one of the main creators of the theater of the absurd, which saw the light in the aftermath of the traumas of the Second World War, also published diaries at different moments of his life. This article traces how Eugène Ionesco used the diary genre to work through his own traumatic experiences. I argue that in the diaries, Ionesco shows how he worked through the memories of his father in order to arrive at a reconciliation. I also suggest that Ionesco used similar techniques to work through his relationships with his native Romania’s troubled history, with his friend Mircea Eliade, and with Romania’s young generation of the 1930s. Ionesco’s “work of memory” would also weigh in on a scholarly controversy that Ionesco, though a member of the French Academy and public intellectual in France, was silent about his own past and that of his friends who had been connected to fascist activism in Romania around World War II.

When in 1932 the young editors of a minor Bucharest newspaper, Axa, joined the fascist Legionary Movement — also known as the Iron Guard — and used the paper to attract other young intellectuals to their ranks, the young Eugène Ionesco who was writing the paper’s literary column became increasingly isolated in his literary and political views. Looking at Ionesco’s articles in the first issues of Axa, we can see that the importance of the newspaper’s editorial shift to the Legionary Movement has been greatly overlooked, as has Ionesco’s resistance to fascism and his criticism of nationalism in literature. He left the paper as its contributors radicalized their positions, but this experience likely served as one of the earliest sources of the metamorphosis staged in his play Rhinoceros. Ionesco’s journalism both exemplifies the complexities of 1930s literature in Romania and those of reading Ionesco’s fiction and non-fiction.