Besides the categories of major and minor cultures, Cioran introduces the category of intermediary culture, innovatively modifying the dichotomy “major – minor culture.” The idea passed hardly noticed among the exegetes of Cioran’s work, although it plays a crucial role in the entire demonstrative endeavour in The Transfiguration of Romania. In the absence of this premise, the thesis of the transfiguration of Romania could be read as the utopic product of a radical thinking. In fact, the ideal proposed by Cioran is the entrance of Romania in history, the escape from the ahistorical or, changing the title of another of Cioran’s books, the ascension in time. Compared with this ideal, the departure from the minor register of the Romanian culture is only a necessary means, a relative purpose and not a purpose in itself because the stage of history grants no role to minor cultures. Only that, it is not exclusively major cultures that play on the stage of the grand history, as we could think considering the dichotomist classification, but also the intermediary cultures (e.g. Spain, Italy). Considering this linking element, this intermediary step represented by the category of the “intermediary cultures”, Romania’s leap in history can be read, better, as a “weak” transfiguration. Another idea of the article is that the publishing of The Transfiguration of Romania is, to a great extent, a reply to the theory of culture elaborated by Lucian Blaga, who, in the same year, 1936, publishes The Mioritic Space and is admitted in the Romanian Academy. This proximity (temporal, thematic and professional) between Blaga and Cioran has not drawn attention so far, although we consider that the fathoming of its implications is more clarifying than the positioning of Cioran in the line of Şcoala Ardeleană or even Ion Budai–Deleanu, as Marta Petreu does. [*]
[*] Acknowledgements: Funding was made by Human Resources Development Operational Programme, under the project “Capacity Development for Innovation and Growth Impact Postdoctoral Research Programs” POSDRU/89/1.5/S/49944
