Neagu Juvara’s Manuscript on Negra Vode

The world of handwritten documents is a separate field. If in the case of a printed book you usually have a text of a certain monotony to read, a manuscript can take you by surprise, connecting together scattered fragments as unexpected as “parasitic” thoughts in the daily processing of the mind. Viewing the manuscript, presented in the form of separate tabs, sometimes resembles, from the point of view of the intellectual process, the reading of a criminal or civil investigation. From the variety of documents and numerous handwritten corrections, the often multifaceted reality that the author testifies to emerges slowly but impressively.

In the collection of the Cabinet of Manuscripts of the National Library of Romania, there is a large manuscript, a real archive, with pages and worksheets by Neagu Juvara for the book “Thoctomerie – Negru Vodă and the premise of “demounting” of Wallachia – new interpretations”. In fact, it is a collection of 400 pages, starting from A4 format and ending with notes in between, and the text is written with a blue pen, but with a lot of corrections, cleanings, additions; the author used a red pen liberally on both the actual manuscript pages and the layout pages. He even wrote on some envelopes, which you can sometimes encounter when writing down thoughts related to the main manuscript. The effort to reconstruct the creative process of a historian has its charm, like a journey through lands with a changing landscape.

In the 2015 edition of the printed book of the Humanitas publishing house entitled “Tokomerium – Black Water. Voivode of Polish origin at the beginning of Wallachia. An answer to my critics and enemies of Negro Vode”, we find on page 240 the following statement: “Fortunately, I do not throw away the notes, notes, excerpts collected for the processing of the book, in this case Tokomeria – Negru Vode”. This is of course a reference to the manuscript we are talking about. It makes sense to go through the mess of tabs as they went into the files because we feel the excitement of discovering the details of the work and the confusion that accompanied the creation of the finished book.

The first pages are A4 manuscript pages and cuts, with numerous corrections and, interestingly, page after page of text written diagonally in blue pen, cut out in black pencil. On pages 22 and 23 of the recto notes on the table of subjects and texts to be regrouped in the work, but written in red, we find a reference to the letter to which he must reply. On pages 26-29 we find the letter in question detailing the frescoes of the Royal Church at Courtes de Arges. Tabs 34-47 are grouped together with a smaller folded pink tab that says “dictate after Tuesday 04/10”. There are A4 sheets with a lot of text written in blue pen, with numerous corrections and additions in red and, as is often the case in manuscripts, all crossed out in black or blue pencil.

The entire manuscript is like this. Leaving aside your interest in historical argumentation, you are never bored, discovering another unexpected document, and another. On the back of the envelope sent by the Romanian Institute of Culture, bibliographical references (page 48); on the back of the wedding invitation, reflections on historical research on Radu-Vode (p. 113), and on the right side, 3 letters with scientific information, as well as the telephone number of an electrician; a printed sheet in lilac ink, with very interesting information for the researched topic, from Al. Skultéty (tab 140); printed booklet with handwritten annotations by Neagu Juvara with text in French (pages 177-183) titled “12. Internationaler Kongress für genealogische und heraldische Wissenschaften. Munich 1974″; on folded A4 pages he outlined: “5.08.06 Priority Readings (BAR, etc.)”, followed by a generous list of sources (Ciocâltan, Xenopol, Iorga, etc.), and then below: “for a photocopy of the version of the Vaticanus Ioannitus” (p. 199); on pages 251-259, a printed article to Alexander Niculescu with a handwritten message from the author (“Dear Mr. Juvara, the letter will follow. Read more at Contributors.ro