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Chapter IX. The Romanians' Religion and CultureIt has been said and very often repeated that the Christian church and religion saved our nation and country from destruction. This is a statement too often made and too little controlled. With as much grounds one may state

excerpts I did a great deal of field work in my life. I was on the road a lot, I slept in official rooms, good rooms (for guests), camping grounds, cheap hotels, and especially villages. I visited very different worlds, though some were neighboring. What was preserved in

Maiden Speech at the Romanian Academy, Bucharest, 1940excerpts Gentlemen of the Academy,Honorable Audience, I am elected to a newly-established institution, and I wish to preserve the academic tradition of lauding a forerunner, therefore I feel obliged to come forward with

Hurried tourists who, after visiting superficially a few Romanian towns, go back home and talk about a certain native indolence of the Romanian people, do more than an injustice – they put a real affront on the peasantry that, from the beginning to the end of the year,

It has been justly stated by foreign researchers that the melancholy of the Romanian folk doina, transposed by the brilliant George Enescu into learned creation, in the characteristic and unmistakable lyricism of the people at the curvature of the Carpathians and the mouth

excerpts Chapter IIISolitude Generally, the Romanian folk poetry shows a tendency toward an ideal and transparent world, which is full of serenity. The frequency of the optimistic motifs proves to what extent it would be good to know this surface only, but an inner disquiet

I don't know how it happened, but I have been hearing lately, in various contexts, the well-known adage of our Mioritic fatalism. The meaning was approximately the same every time: nothing is done and nothing can be done because the Romanian is a fatalist, resigned,

excerpts We have wondered many times if it is possible to find or to hypothetically build a matrix-space, or an unconscious spatial horizon, as an underlying spiritual layer for the Romanian folk culture anonymous creations. The subject is worth the risk of any and all

Chapter X. The Influence of Physical Factors. The Climate and the Geographical Position The crystalline atmosphere that envelops the Carpathian Mountains and the hills of Oltenia and Moldavia resembles perfectly the atmosphere from the mountains and hills of Florence. Wallachia's

The esthetic appreciation of the external aspect of the Romanian imposed a non-differential consideration of the two sexes. However, the image of man has usually been in the foreground. To balance things, the numerous descriptions of Romanian women must be reminded. The

Chapter XVII. On the Moldavians' Habits (excerpts) While we are trying to describe the Moldavians' habits, about which no-one, or just few foreigners hold a true image, the love we feel for our country on the one hand prompts us to praise the people among which

Foreword The few words that I put as motto at the beginning of this book can be translated like this: God must have had a hidden plan for this people that the western states rediscovered on the banks of the Danube and adopted like Pharaoh's daughter adopted Moses.