Dan Deșliu de pe aer", 1974). Starting in 1962 and particularly from 1970, he began to criticize the policies of the Romanian Communist Party, and as a result was placed under thorough surveillance by the Securitate secret police. In the 1980s, he turned toward open dissidence, repudiating his "revolutionary" past, quitting the party in 1980 and directly criticizing dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, whom he accused of behaving as if he were "the owner of Romania". In March 1989, he sent an open letter to Radio Free Europe decrying the domestic situation in his country, prompting his placement under house arrest. An excellent swimmer,
Nicolae Densușianu amateurism and Romantic nationalist discourse in the works of Romanian intellectuals of his day. In 1893, writing to geographer Simion Mehedinți, Maiorescu spoke against what he defined as "phantasmagoria" in the works of Densușianu, Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, and Alexandru Dimitrie Xenopol. Part of Densușianu's thesis was adopted by several official historians during the late years of Nicolae Ceaușescu's communist regime, serving as inspiration for a new discourse, one autarkic and nationalist in tone. Vasile Pârvan stated: "Nicolae Densusianu wrote his fantastic novel Prehistoric Dacia, full of mythology and absurd philology, which at its appearance (posthumously: 1913) aroused an admiration and