“A shadow crossed the tail of his eye”: The Reception of Virginia Woolf in Romania: Heritage Transformed

Orlando becomes a woman in Constantinople, attempting to escape the unwanted affections of Archduke Harry disguised as Archduchess Harriet Griselda of Finster-Aarhorn and Scand-op-Boom. The character of the Archduke was inspired by Henry George Charles Lascelles, 6th Earl of Harewood, one of Vita Sackville-west’s early suitors. However, in Orlando, Archduchess Harriet, lust personified, is Romanian. Echoes of Romania are faint in Virginia Woolf’s fiction, essays, and diaries, much more so than references to other Eastern European and Balkan cultures, such as Greece or Russia. On the other hand, Woolf’s influence on Romanian literature, although very strong today, has been hardly studied. In this essay, I discuss the reception of Virginia Woolf in Romania during the interwar period, by looking at reviews and critical works published about Woolf’s works. I do this in order to delineate possible connections between Woolf and Romanian writers who were her contemporaries. Although it has been traditionally thought that cultural and literary connections were stronger between Romania and France or Romania and Germany, my research of periodicals and translations from this period shows that Woolf’s works were read and often discussed by Romanian critics and readers, and that her influence was much stronger than previously thought. Especially when considering the modernist experimental novel, several reviews published in Romania at this time show that Romanian critics recognized and were influenced by the originality and value of Woolf’s modernist experiment.