Letopisețul Țării Moldovei (O samă de cuvinte)

1 card

1. 01

   Neculce notes with regret that the Moldavians did not write their own history early on, and so must rely on foreign chroniclers, with all the risks of interpretation that entails.

   Letopisețul Țării Moldovei (O samă de cuvinte) · 1735

   A nation that doesn't write its own history will be told by neighbors, each in their own favor.

   Neculce, the last great Moldavian chronicler, opens his collection of tales with a methodological observation: the lack of internal sources forces the historian to borrow other people's eyes. Polish, Hungarian and Byzantine chronicles describe Moldavia from outside, with their own interests, and Neculce uses them knowing their filter distorts. That is why he writes himself, as a witness of the reigns he saw, and honestly adds tales he cannot prove. The mechanism he sets in motion is comparison between sources: where a country has no documents, it is narrated by its neighbors, and each neighbor narrates to its own advantage.

   “For the people of old, if there had been writings and histories in our country, we would have had no need of foreign histories, for with our own we would have made do.”

   Open the card →