sentences:  One of the main purposes of "Istoria literaturii române", as stated by Negoiţescu's preface to his work, was to uncover the connections between the specificity of Romanian culture ("what we Romanians are and how we stand our ground when confronting history") and the wider European or Western context.The final version was also a statement against the tenets of national communism, asserting Negoiţescu's belief that Romanian literature did not precede the birth of modern literature, and that it had developed as an "imitation of Western literature".Negoiţescu therefore acknowledged that such a project could only be brought to its completion outside Romania, in a land touched by "the dawn of liberty".