The establishment of Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum (ACLU, 1877–1888) in Kolozsvár/Klausenburg/Cluj marked a pivotal moment in the history of comparative literature, coinciding with two transformative 19th-century developments: the technological advancements that revolutionized travel and communication, and the inter-imperial negotiations that politically deflated the emancipatory nationalist movements of 1848 in Europe. These infrastructural and political shifts deeply influenced the journal’s theoretical and philological foundations. ACLU embodied the cosmopolitan ideals of Goethe’s Weltliteratur while envisioning a “science of the future” (Zukunftswissenschaft) grounded in polyglotism. This study explores the formative years of comparative literature through the lens of transnational mobility, focusing on the journal’s main editor, Hugo Meltzl de Lomnitz (1846–1908), and one of its key contributors, Dora d’Istria (1828–1888), both born on the territory of modern-day Romania.

It has been shown that exile, migration, or mobility more broadly are decisive in shaping comparative thought in the 20th century (Said 1983, Apter 2003). Meltzl and d’Istria’s cases are symptomatic of this trend, but their mobilities were distinct in their academic and upper-class nature. By situating their work within the broader materialist contexts of the 19th century, this study examines how their movements shaped the comparative methods and ideological stances of the proto-comparatist discipline. This research contributes to recent historiography (López 2009, Parvulescu and Boatca 2020, Nicholls 2024) that has highlighted the tension between ACLU’s internationalist ethos and the practical solutions proposed by its authors.

The presentation is divided into two parts. The first examines the mobilities of Meltzl and d’Istria within a Europe reshaped by the failure of the 1848 nationalist movements and the political reconciliations that followed. Meltzl’s academic peregrinations to Leipzig and Heidelberg (Horst 2005, 2006), alongside his travels across Europe and North Africa, shaped his vision of a post-imperial, Goethean Weltliteratur. D’Istria’s aristocratic background and movements between Russia, Switzerland, Italy, and Greece informed her efforts to “deprovincialize” Eastern Europe. The second part connects the timeline of their mobilities to the evolution of their thought. Meltzl’s project evolved from radical anti-nationalism to a more pragmatic, contextually nationalist stance, reflecting his position between the periphery of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Medved 2018) and the German academic centers. Similarly, d’Istria’s writings reveal a dual commitment to Western modernization and the preservation of Balkan nationalisms (d’Alessandri 2011). This presentation shows that, while their efforts reflected ACLU’s program of protecting linguistic identities, their projects were paradoxically embedded within imperialist frameworks.

The literary historiography of Romanian diaspora writers has largely been shaped by qualitative approaches that emphasize exceptional figures—dissidents, canonical intellectuals, and internationally renowned authors such as E. M. Cioran, Mircea Eliade, and Eugène Ionesco. While studies such as those by Iovănel (2017) have analyzed the mechanisms of world literary consecration through case studies, there is little to no research into broader patterns of literary migration, particularly regarding the ideological networks of Romanian writers abroad. This article seeks to address this gap by identifying and analyzing the ideological structures of the Romanian literary diaspora using raw biographical data from “The General Dictionary of Romanian Literature.”

Employing a quantitative approach, this study aims to map the ideological affiliations of Romanian diaspora writers based on their publication networks, institutional connections, and patterns of reception. Following recent debates on the political and material conditions of literary border-crossing (Tihanov, 2012; 2021; Lachenicht & Heinsohn, 2009), we move away from the romanticized view of diaspora as inherently cosmopolitan and examine the ways in which migration reinforced distinct ideological positions. Our analysis also advances the hypothesis that the Romanian literary diaspora of the 20th century formed three major ideological networks: (1) left-wing avant-garde networks, (2) right-wing fascist networks, and (3) anti-communist “intellectual” networks (Cornis-Pope & Neubauer, 2006). These ideological formations intersect with broader trends in transnational literary and political history, including the interplay between Romanian fascist intellectuals and the European radical right (Bejan, 2019), as well as post-communist attempts to rehabilitate nationalist and right-wing figures (Neubauer, 2009).

By quantitatively assessing patterns of emigration, publication, affiliation, and circulation of Romanian diasporic writers and their works, this article contributes to the study of world literature as an interconnected system of power relations rather than an assemblage of singular, exceptional authors. To this end, we also draw on recent scholarship on the transnational dimensions of political ideologies (Bauerkämper & Rossoliński-Liebe, 2017; Stone & Chamedes, 2018; van Dongen, Roulin & Scott-Smith, 2014) and artistic movements (Harding & Rouse, 2010).

Ultimately, this research seeks to identify the underlying macro structures of Romanian diasporic literature—those systemic relationships that have been overlooked due to prevailing narratives of dissidence and cultural exceptionalism. In doing so, it offers a new perspective on the ideological complexities of Romanian literary migration and its place within world literature.

In the landmark study The World Republic of Letters (1999, translated into English in 2004), Pascale Casanova claims that for writers coming from small literatures, the only way to gain international visibility is to move to Paris and adopt a “de-nationalized” form of writing. Nearly a decade later, Mads Rosendahl Thomsen sheds new light on transnational literature by exploring its politics and proposing a taxonomy. According to Thomsen (2008), transnational literature encompasses both migrant modernists and contemporary writers, the latter of whom can be divided into three sub-categories: postcolonials, political exiles and voluntary migrants. However, neither of these accounts fully captures Romanian transnational literature from the last century. As I will argue, the more globalized the world becomes, the less transnational Romanian literature appears to be. Broadly, four waves of mobility define Romanian transnational literature (Terian 2015). According to Terian, the first wave is represented by the avant-gardists, among whom the Romanian-born Jewish writers Tristan Tzara and Gherasim Luca. The second wave includes the members of the Young Generation of 1920s–1930s: the right-wingers Emil Cioran and Mircea Eliade, and the anti-fascist Eugène Ionesco. The third wave is trauma literature, represented by the works of the Holocaust survivors and communist dissidents, such as Paul Celan, Norman Manea, and Herta Müller. However, whereas Terian identifies the literary comparatists as the fourth wave, my taxonomy includes instead the economic migrants. After 2000, several writers—including Radu Pavel Gheo and Adrian Schiop—moved abroad in search of work and documented their experience in literary works. As I will show, all four waves generate a transnational literature, but there is a striking difference between them. Whereas the first three waves presupposed the international recognition of the writers and their works, the writers from the fourth wave have gained mostly national recognition. This pattern suggests the existence of two forms of transnationalism: an outward transnationalism in the interwar and Cold War period and—quite paradoxically—an inward transnationalism in the era of globalization. Outward transnationalism may or may not be based on the fictional representation of displacement, mobility, exile. Yet, the outcome is that regardless of the topics they tackled, these authors—who not only lived in the West but wrote in a major language—achieved international recognition. On the opposite side, by documenting their working experience in the West, economic migrants did not write from the standpoint of the elite and not in a major language. This is why, despite their mobility, which makes them, in fact, transnational writers, their works have remained confined within the limits of Romanian literature.

My paper focuses on the relations between the Romanian and Moldovan literary systems, by giving particular attention to traveling writers. By traveling writers, I have in mind contemporary Moldovan authors who choose to (and succeed in) publishing their works in Romania. Most often than not, they also opt for residing in Romania, while maintaining close relations with their homeland and insistently revisiting it in their (auto)fictional work. To characterize this type of in-betweenness I find appropriate the concept of double diaspora, which in fact describes a situation common to Moldovan people at large. In the wake of USSR’s disintegration, Moldova switched from its colonial status as part of the Soviet Union to a national path, while strengthening relations with Romania. The Moldovan’s migration to Romania, started in the 1990s, took a new form in 2009, two years after Romania’s accession to EU, when the Romanian government boosted the process of according citizenship to Moldovan people, whether they continued to live in Moldova or migrated to the EU. Migrants often reinforce their national identity in the host country, and this is exactly what traveling writers I refer to did in their literature. While Moldova’s post-1991 national path is a dominant theme in contemporary local literature, my argument is that authors publishing in Romania treat the national element differently to their peers residing in Moldova. Building on (auto)fictional novels by Alexandru Vakulovski, Tatiana Țîbuleac, Dinu Guțu and, particularly, Sașa Zare, a queer-feminist author, I maintain that these male and female writers display intersectional characters, marked by their gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and social position, as well as by Moldova’s subordinate geopolitical position, when discussing new Moldovan national identities. National identity is thus integrated in this intersectional process of building a fictional self, while gender and sexual identity, as well as gendered and sexualized language, are used to describe regional uneven power relations. Drawing on Zare’s queer positioning, I conclude that queering the national is a two-end strategy: on the one hand, it draws attention to subalternity and violence; on the other, it functions as a ‘worlding’ device, since it furthers self-affirmative and inclusive literary works, which go beyond the national theme and invite in diverse characters and readers.

论文考察民国时期东南亚华文报刊中的新诗，指出东南亚新诗不仅丰富了汉诗内涵，更是文化融合与创新精神的体现。东南亚汉诗创作者在移植汉诗传统的同时，孕育出具有热带风情与家国情怀的新声。东南亚新诗既批判社会现实，抒发个人情感，又细腻描绘地方景观，明确表达文化认同，且在艺术表现上与中国大陆新诗同步发展，紧密相连。同时，东南亚华文诗歌在创作实践中展现出地域性转化与自主创新的特点，反映了该地区华人复杂而丰富的情感世界和身份认同。民国时期东南亚新诗研究不仅有助于挖掘边缘声音，更是探讨全球化语境下文化互动与身份认同问题的重要视角。