Dal Mediterraneo alla Tracia: spirito europeo e tradizione autoctona nella saggistica di Dan Botta

The essay tries to put into light the dynamics which characterize the essayistic approach of Dan Botta (1907 – 1958) to the problematical theme on the subject of the relationship between “European model” and “Romanian tradition” (with a particular regard, in this case, to the Thracian myth), which constitutes itself as a true leitmotiv, own to the Romanian cultural debate between the two World Wars and which extended itself on a range as wide as from philosophy to literature, from politology to the folklore studies, from engaged journalism to theology. By means of individuating the origins of some of Botta’s positions in some of the cultural and political instances of the time or by simply revealing the substantial affinities these present as a consequence to the adhesion to a certain Zeitgeist, the author intends to set straight some of the steps of the individual intellectual and human path of Dan Botta, taking the occasion to make some remarks of general interest upon the relationship between the development of the “myth of the Thraco-Dacian origins” a nd the ascent of the right wing extremism in the late period of the turbid and restless political and cultural between-wars Romania.