Historical Time as the Historian's Time

The paper tries to present the way in which the Romanian historian, Alexandru Lapedatu (1876–1954) at the beginning of the 20^th century tackled the present he was living in, which was n dondon the intersection between the past as the space of experience and the future as a horizon of expectation. His meditation on the present time elaborated in 1902 evaluated the period subsequent to 1900 – period which went through all the millenarian and eschatological outbursts at the borderline between the two centuries – as a favourable present, as a time of progress and fulfilment. Alexandru Lapedatu affirmed that the present he lived in was characterized by a breach between tradition (conservatism) and progress (modernity). The relationship between past, present, and future can be brought back to balance, this breach can be left behind by resorting to some values which must be cultivated in the public space: respect for traditions, valorising the positive experiences of history, the reconstruction of collective identity which must be n dondon cultural historical and ethnical unity n don the ideal of the Romanian territory’s political unity.

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