Vintilă Horia. Exil și călătorii

Published in 1960, in France, the novel God Was Born in Exile (Dieu est né en exil) confirmed the talent of its author, Romanian born Vintilă Horia, and also the originality of a writer who had to leave his native country after the World War and use a foreign language (in fact, more than one: except from French, he also wrote in Spanish and Italian). It is obvious, then, that the general issue of exile, Horia’s main preoccupation within his entire literary work, also reflects his own tragic situation and stands for the difficult choices the author had to make during his lifetime. Often compared to Mircea Eliade, Eugen Ionescu or Emil Cioran, his contemporaries, Horia is another important representative of Romanian exile, even if his circumstances were less favorable as far as the reception of his work is concerned. In God Was Born in Exile, the Latin poet Ovid’s journey to Tomis mirrors Horia’s uprooting, but at the same time expresses a symbolic initiation – both of the protagonist and the author: during his eight years of exile, Ovid discovers not only the fundaments of Christian faith, but also the way to liberate himself from all the personal sorrows (and his youthful vain desires) and to firmly believe in his own literary art.