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 I must admit I didn't quite understand in the beginning why, shortly after 1989, the Western mass-media has so hastily labeled us as suffering from a deep identity crisis. I was downright indignant: after having sadistically experimented Communism on us for half

Chapter 3Romania's Psychological and Historical Voids If it were true that the Romanian's spiritual disposition does not surpass the one evinced in the past and that the future is not going to uncover any hidden sides to the Romanian soul, then any attempt to

Chapter IIROMANIANISM AND AUTOCHTHONISMexcerpts Continuing the clash of ideas of the previous decades, the 1930s too witnessed a confrontation on the evolution formula of the Romanian make-up. Two directions were pitted against each other. One favorable to the maintenance

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

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.

Toward the end of the Middle Ages, the Romanians, until then living in their traditional peasant autonomies, which stand for an entire, complete political order with archaic roots, arrived, after the abolition of anarchy, at their boundaries and, on one side, because of

Conductor Constantin Silvestri's first contact with the music of the Occidental world represented a shock because the entire classical and modern music deeply imprinted on the consciousness of the public was utterly shaken by a new, contemporary, vital spark of the

The Romanian realm has given great creating spirits to the world, in all fields of activity: philosophers, historians, sociologists, scientists that made epoch-making discoveries, inventors, writers (poets, prose writers, and dramatists), brilliant musicians, painters, and

Far from his country, across the ocean, in 1957, while he conducted Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in New York, conductor Ionel Perlea had a heart attack. He had the courage and most of all the strength to go on conducting until he finished the Ode to Joy, after which he

Enescu:Dear Georgescu,This is what I got from professor Hajak (Targu Mures). He plays well and it would be a good policy to have him play one of the concertos he proposed with the Philharmonic. I did not mean to bother you with this matter, but he insists, as you can see.

Director of the George Enescu Philharmonic in Bucharest At a certain point, the evolution of Romanian culture goes through a moment when, owing to strong personalities, the distance separating it from the level attained by the universal culture is suddenly annulled, and