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The Russians, the Masons, the Marshal and other Crossroads of Romanian Historiography by Mihai Dimitrie Sturdza is one of the most important books about Romanian modern and contemporary historiography, because it is based on documents to which no other Romanian historian had access, including the telegrams of the ambassador of France in Romania addressed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of France during the years after the end of WWII. With validation supplied by several reliable sources, the Romanian history of the last 200 years is set in a new perspective, changing the image which even important historians had about King Michael I, about the Germans and the Russians during WWI, about some aspects of the history of Bucovina during the Austrian domination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The builders imagine through their sensitive responses a generic humanity. They are masons by spiritual vocation, actually emissaries of the anonymous crowd. Manole's journeymen stay for the dramatic swing between the ideal and egotism, which precedes the collective creation of a miracle, if committed in the name of humanity. The third mason, while explaining the work of art, metamorphoses it from an aesthetic to a religious asset. The sixth mason is the most outlined of all builders for he carries out a separate part that is to constantly gainsay Manole, to incite to insubordination and rebellion. The eighth mason is fully aware of the outstanding artistic accomplishment of all builders, their edifice about to become a cultural and even political symbol of the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mira is the perfect purity where the demonic of the master mason has no access. The craftsman's wife is the embodiment of innocence, the heavenly depiction of mankind as opposed to demonic Manole. "Serenity" and "light" are words that repeatedly occur in her monologue thus suggesting the plenitudine of being she is about to conceive when she would be raising into the light her perfect precious, the church. Gaman is the embodiment and the expression of the dark, ancient faith of the earth's powers. The very appearance of the character in the story of the play seems to be part of a different logic, the fabulosity, the heresy, "fairy-tale like figure". He utters the words dissonantly and links the sentences into texts that have seemingly no logic for he professes a magic ritual, usually unconsciously, while falling into a trance, ecstatically, mediated by sleeping commonly. Through this ritual he enables the connection with another world, that of the powers of the earth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]