Cultura

The Romanian Death Iconography Or A Different Kind Of Assisted Death

In the field of iconography the rhetoric of the end manifested itself initially as a history of silences, the absence of the motif being possibly equally significant as its presence since, as Michel Vovelle demonstrated, images interest us as expression of a selective, oblique

The Funeral Maple

excerpts The cosmic tree, whose root, trunk and branches uphold – by dividing yet uniting – the three cosmic levels, is the same as the funeral tree, because, to the folk mentality, the cosmic tree is the only passageway to the other realm that the soul of the dead

From Tradition To Avant-Garde... And From Washington To Dumbrava Sibiului

Corneliu Bucur has been the manager of the ASTRA Museum of Traditional Folk Civilization since 1990. In 1965, he graduated the Babes Bolyai Faculty of History and Philosophy in Cluj. In 1981 he presented his doctoral thesis, with the following theme: Introduction in the

Discovering America - Projecting A Myth. Mircea Eliade's Perspective On The Birth Of A New World

We have been acquainted with the fundamental myths of Romanian spirituality in Mircea Eliade's view and read his comments on the legend of Master Manole, the legend which, according to Eliade, certifies that myth is essential to the process of artistic creation, and

Construction Rites And Legends

The essential resemblance between the legend recorded by Bandinus in 1647 and the folk legends about the Flood, collected at two and a half centuries' distance (around 1900), is conspicuous. In all these variants (but especially in the one chronicled by Bandinus) some

Master Builder Manole

Downstream on the wideArgesh River's sideNegru Voda's riding;Ten men go beside him:Masons, craftsmen fine, Masterbuilders – nine;Manoli makes ten,The greatest craftsman. Down this dale, they're boundTo erect and foundA monastery hall,A memorial. There, as

A Museum-Synthesis Of The Romanian Ethnological Patrimony

Architect The architecture of a country is, perhaps, the most accurate expression of its history, and nothing can give us a more certain insight into the past and more authentic knowledge of a civilisation. By what it has achieved throughout time, Romanian architecture

A Landmark On The European Map: The Dimitrie Gusti National Village Museum

Historian The National Village Museum in Bucharest is the kind of museum in which the traditional exhibition halls are replaced by authentic households, consisting of dwellings and their extensions, technical devices, churches and triptychs transplanted from their places

Romanians - 1943

excerpt THE ROMANIANS' SPIRITUAL LIFE The Two Myths of Romanian SpiritualityIn any culture, there is always a central myth that discovers it and that is to be found in all its major works of art. Romanians' spiritual life is dominated by two myths that express,

Editor's Note

How much does a museum represent in contemporary cultural life? Is it still a necessity today? Is the support provided to museology, or to be more precise, to acquisitions, specific research, conservation and restoration a good investment? All in all, is there any future

Do Something, Be Somebody

The experimental artist Grigorescu Ion has forged himself some time ago out of the painter Ion Grigorescu. Indeed, in Romanian it is rather unusual for an adult to put his family name before the forename. Customarily, this happens in official documents or in school registers,

Dimitrie Cuclin

COMPOSER, MUSICOLOGIST, WRITER, FOLKLORIST, INSTRUMENTALIST, ESTHETICIAN, PROFESSOR, BYZANTINOLOGIST, PHILOSOPHER Born in Galatzi (24 March 1885), he began his musical studies with his father, the composer and professor Constantin Cuclin, continued at the Bucharest Conservatoire