"Zalmoxis", by Lucian Blaga: A Pagan Mystery about a Dacian God

Lucian Bagiu, Doris Plantus & Paraschiva Negru, Sweden - U.S.A. - Romania, ID CLEaR2016-305;       “Zalmoxis, A Pagan Mystery” (1921) is a dramatic poem which expresses a variety of concepts over the spiritual foundation of the Dacians. The destiny of the prophet Zalmoxis would have been to sacrifice himself for his entire people, as a kind of scapegoat over whom he concentrates the sins of the community, sacrificed by people in order to be forgiven and saved by gods. Once they have accomplished the killing of the prophet Zalmoxis, killing even his statue, the Dacians earn the revelation of the myth of the Blind One. In Lucian Blaga’s debut play he does not reconfigure the cult of Zalmoxis in his historical markings, but rather creates a space in which the creative imagination of the poet begets his own myth. Between the chthonic and the uranic, it is possible that Zalmoxis could have lost contact with his kind. Starting from an existential dimension so specific and familiar of his people, namely the chthonic, Zalmoxis will have estranged himself to Dacians through his overstay in a cave, where his attempt to embrace a new dimension - the uranic - seemed too much to those below, prisoners of their own spiritual limitations. However, the myth is born spontaneously after the disappearance of the prophet, the intuition and consciousness of the Dacians suggesting a revelation. Sacrificing his messenger, the Blind One guaranteed his being in the horizon of immortality.

Key words: Apollonian Dionysian opposition, Dacians, Orpheus, The Blind One, Zalmoxis.