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THE ROMANIAN REFUGEES, DOBRUDJA AND PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO. MEMORY AND PROPAGANDA IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR

D. Citiriga

Abstract

A hundred years from the onset and deployment of World War I is a special occasion for an in-depth analysis of the tragedy that has been caused by it, both from the perspective of simple people and political and intellectual elites. Thus, the present text proposes an insight into what historians call microhistory, a leaning on the personal dramas of those involved, people who did not have an official position, soldiers, women, children, but also an immersion in the attitude of writers and publicists who were co-opted into official war propaganda. Bucharest being occupied by Central Powers troops caused the withdrawal of the government and of the Royal House in Iasi. At the same time, the occupation of Dobrudja between 1916 and 1918 led to an exodus of the Romanian population from this region. In this sense, the war memoirs, as well as the several Romanian publications, contemporary to the events, reproduce the everyday life of the refugees, helping us to paint a picture of their wandering. In "Romania", the Romanian Army official newspaper, authors such as the writers Mihail Sadoveanu, Corneliu Moldoveanu, or George Duma, having in mind the model of the Latin poet Publius Ovidius Naso, exiled to Tomis during the Roman Empire, were making a parallel with the destiny of the refugees in Dobrudja. Highlighting the presence of Publius Ovidius Naso at Pontus Euxinus was intended to be a historical argument for the affiliation of Dobrudja to Latin civilization, a very sensitive subject for Bulgaria's claims to the same region. How Ovidius became the subject of war propaganda for Romanians in the Great World Conflagration is an unsettled but important theme to understand the mentality of the age.

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