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The article discusses the problem of “translatability / non-translatability” of Turgenev’s ethnocultural elements of his Rudin translations to Polish by M . Nowiński ( 1886), S. Kołaczkowski (1948), and J. Dmochowska (1953). It analyzes one of the dominants of Turgenev’s works related with the cultural concept of “Russia” and its component “native man.” The main tool of expressing the “Russianness” as an ethnic trait of Turgenev’s characters is their speech and anthroponyms, i.e. person’s name. The analysis of word combinations carrying the key word “Russian” (or “in Russian”) revealed that in general, Turgenev’s dominant is present.
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Considered the golden age of Romanian journalism, the interwar period was one of Marius Mircu’s most prolific stages of career. He worked for more than 80 years (as he was born in Bacău, Romania, in 1909, and died in Israel, in 2008), and published both in Romanian and Jewish periodicals, in general-audience newspapers and magazines, as well as in children’s magazines, a sphere of keen interest to him. The enthusiasm of his youth and his wish to make a difference contributed to his involvement in many projects. The reporter’s activity during the interwar period was influenced by the wide variety of topics he was fond of: news, foreign policy, social issues, criminality, leisure, children’s magazines, culture and education, travel logs in the country and abroad. Despite the restrictions imposed by Romanian fascist authorities during the Second World War, Marius Mircu managed to publish an impressive number of works, some of which were later collected and published in volumes. The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of Marius Mircu’s contributions to Romanian journalism during the interwar period.
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The interwar period has been constantly assigned a great deal of importance in the historiographies of Eastern Europe inasmuch as it has been regarded as a new era of post-transitional national states which shaped a new European order. I challenge this rigid categorization by showing how the study of Jews in the western territories of ‘Greater Romania’ during the 1930s does not highlight social novelty or political empowerment for minorities, but rather the Romanian state’s continued efforts at centralization and its attempt to accommodate the Jewish population with means devised in the pre-war period in the ‘Old Kingdom’. This involved supporting nationalist and conservative state policies, placing extensive constraints on the overall economy, and insisting on the pursuit of ‘Romanianization’, as well as putting the division of the newly integrated regions under the rule of petty administrators from Bucharest, who did not understand the cultural plurality of the region or grasp the potential of the state’s new situation. As such, I show how the Jews of Arad had to suddenly shift their loyalties after 1918, how they managed to fully integrate into the social and economic life of the Banat region and Romania of the 1920s, and how they later faced the pan-European rise of fascism and anti-Semitism with novel forms of nationalism, during the 1930s.
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The theme and historiography of Jewish communities in Romania is a topic which has been widely researched, beginning with the 19th century and, up until today, is still an ongoing inquest. Usually depicted by historians, the subject, however, lacks an architectural and urban overview of the phenomenon in terms of analyzing the relationship between Jewish constructed spaces and their developing urban context – the city / the town. These touristically attractive urban sites, although lacking the proportion of former living communities once encompassed, display, in the majority of cases, an ample built heritage (housing, synagogues, shuls, cemeteries etc.) and spatial remains of Jewish living.
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In den letzten Jahrzehnten wurde die Frage der eventuellen Teilnahme von Olaf Tryggva son an der Schlacht von Maldon mehrfach, vor allem von den britischen und skandinavischen Forschern, aufgegriffen. Anzumerken ist hier jedoch, dass diese Analysen in der Regel recht oberflächlich oder sogar marginal waren und nur als eine mehr oder weniger wichtige Ergän zung zur in einer Publikation behandelten Thematik galten. Unter den möglichen Teilnehmern an den Ereignissen vom August 991 werden neben dem künftigen Herrscher von Norwegen noch der König von Dänemark Sven Gabelbart und die sonst unbekannten Personen wie Jóstein und Guðmund genannt. Da die Anwesenheit von Sven bei Maldon von den meisten Historikern zu Recht in Frage gestellt wird, bleibt Olaf die einzige historische Figur unter den potenziellen Führern der skandinavischen Angreifer, was leider zur Folge hat, dass einige Historiker — und ihnen folgend auch die über das Mittelalter schreibenden strikt literarischen Künstler — gerade in ihm ziemlich voreilig den Oberbefehlshaber der Wikinger sehen. Der vorliegende Beitrag setzt sich deshalb zum Ziel, die verfügbaren Quellentexte (neben dem altenglischen alliterativen Gedicht, das als Schlacht von Maldon bekannt ist, gehören dazu in erster Linie verschiedene Versionen der Angelsächsischen Chronik sowie unterschiedliche historische oder sogar hagiographische Werke) zusammenzustellen und sie mit der obigen Meinung kritisch zu konfrontieren.
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The article analyzes a fragment of the 12th-century account of the miracles of Henry II, created for the purposes of promoting the cult of this Holy German Emperor. The article, therefore, discusses the narrative threads regarding the perception of the Slavic peoples by 12th-century Bamberg clergy, the collective authors of Miracula Sancti Heinrici, with particular emphasis placed upon the conception of promoting the cult of Henry II beyond the boundaries of the Reich and transplanting it to Poland. To that end, the article analyzes two excerpts from the manuscript, which document the intentions of transplanting the cult of the Holy Emperor to the territory of the Slavic lands, and Poland in particular. The first of those excerpts concerns an account of the miraculous healing of a Slavic man in Merseburg, while the second recounts a vision of Werner, the Bishop of Płock. Therefore, the article considers first and foremost the ideological meaning of the discussed examples excerpted from the source text, including the historical context of its creation.
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The aim of the following article is to present the attitudes of Jan Długosz towards the issue of crowning the representatives of foreign dynasties as kings of Poland. Thus, the article focuses on Długosz’s opinions regarding the following rulers of Poland: Wenceslaus II of Bohemia, Louis I of Hungary and Władysław II Jagiełło, who all came to Poland from the neighboring countries and who represented dynasties other than the Piast dynasty. To this end, the article presents Długosz’s opinions regarding the ascensions of foreign monarchs to the throne in the Kingdom of Poland, as well as discusses both the benefits and the disadvantages of having a foreign ruler on the throne, included in his Annales. In the last section of the article, referring to the descriptions of the monarchs’ reigns found in Długosz’s opus magnum, attempts to ascertain the influence of their foreign (ethnically, religiously or culturally) ancestry on the subject matter of Długosz’s comments.
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Before the formation of the Romanian medieval states, foreign sources called all the autochthonous inhabitants north of the Lower Danube by the term Wallachians, or by related names. As it had been founded earlier, the state entity bordered by the Southern Carpathians and the Danube should have normally kept the name Valachia /Țara Românească only for itself. Due to the fact that the term Valachia had already been extensively used left of the Danube, the Wallachian voivodeship was designated either by an alternative form or by adding a determinative to it: Ungrovlachia, Transalpinum / Transalpina, Vlachia Transalpina, Basarat / Bessarabia.For the purposes of avoiding confusions and marking its individuality, the Romanian territory east of the Oriental Carpathians, known before the fourteenth century under the name Valachia or one of its derivatives, was called Moldavia. As in Wallachia, an important part in imposing the ethnic and geopolitical terminology in the Romanian-speaking territories on the eastern slopes of the Carpathians was played by the Patriarchate in the capital of the Byzantine Empire. The chancery of the Patriarchateof Constantinople was directly involved in the organization process of the superior church hierarchies in Moldavia and imposed the designations Black Wallachia (Μαυροβλαχία), Russian Wallachia (Ρωσοβλαχία), and Moldavian Wallachia (Μολδοβλαχία).The ethnic identity of the two Romanian voivodeships was mentioned in many categories of internal and external sources. In this regard, we would like to point to the syntagmas double / the other / another Wallachia, both / the two Wallachias, etc., which were attested in a significant number of instances in medieval and Renaissance narrative and diplomatic sources. The respective syntagmas reflect the terminological duality of the Romanian voivodeships and the ethnic identity of their majoritypopulation.The awareness about the similarity of the ethnic character of the majority population in the two Romanian voivodeships is equally reflected in the choronyms designating them in Europe. Towards the end of the Middle Ages and at the beginning of the modern era, a limited circulation was enjoyed by other regional terminological varieties of Wallachia as well. Among them were the names Great Wallachia, Little Wallachia, Valachia Superior / Upper Wallachia and Valachia Inferior / Lower Wallachia.Based on their own experience and / or according to bibliographic information, many European scholars, politicians, prelates, and merchants knew that Wallachia and Moldavia were distinct state entities, without territorial and political identity. However, it was clear to them that the populations of the two voivodeships were ethnically identical beyond any doubt. The better informed authors, especially those who had settled in the regions inhabited by the Romanians or in their immediate proximity for a while, in their quality as diplomats, missionaries, members of the military, traders, etc., after having lived in direct contact to local realities, they also noticed the inhabitants’ cultural and confessional similarities. Those with a larger intellectual perspective, acquired by reading scientific treatises or as a result of their connections to renowned scholars of the time, also referred to the ancestry of all Romanians, reflected in the idea of their common descent from Roman colonists.
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The author of the paper argues the necessity of studying the daily folk dress. We have little information about it. Previous researches have given priority to the holiday dress. The author discloses the features of the daily dress as being the oldest, most conservative and most devout to a community. It is worn for a longer time and by more persons. It is more resistant, more fit for daily life, due to its cut and size. It is the dress that, during hard times, like a last bastion, continues to bear the signs of cultural identity. The researcher discusses examples of interaction between daily dress and the holiday one, regarding the formation and functioning of some elements of the folk dress.
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Наташа МИЛИЋЕВИЋ: Dragan Bogetić. Nesvrstanost kroz istoriju. Od ideje do pokreta. Beograd: Zavod za udžbenike, 2019.
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The binary division of the Universe, between the visible and the unseen one, between the human world and the world of Others (spirits, dead people), between here and there dates back to ancient times, and is based on the binary oppositions. The good places one can find in the inhabited places, but also next to them, as well as on the contact places which changed once man conquers the surrounding universe. At a macrocosmic level, there is a world in which people live, this world, our world, focusing on the inhabited space, in other words, on the hearth of each house, around which one can notice the expansion, in successive circles, of the other microspaces owned by man, prepared by him through defense practices in order to be able to move freely within them. The main elements with spatial, but especially ritual values in this first circle of the humanized world are the hearth, the stove, the oven, the chimney, the beam of the house, the table, the bed (cradle), the lintel, the window, the eaves of the house. As we move away from the house, there are other items which man consecrated and used in his own interest: the yard, the stable, the fence, the gate leading to the household entrance. Magical interest has also the borderland of the village, the borders themselves which separated peoples’ plots of land, gradually reaching the most dangerous places, such as the crossroads, the bank of the river, the bridges, the forest, the mountains, etc. Beyond these transition places which could be reached by people too as they needed to gather construction materials, to travel, but also to earn their living, and, why not, dangerous entities, representing various embodiments of the sacred world which lived in another space, known as the Otherworld. This is not necessarily a world of the dead (which we are to describe below), but a place where the Others, the anti-humans, the non-humans, the super humans lead their existence. On the other side, the Otherworld has different representations. In fairy tales there are specific topoi, sometimes according to the folk beliefs about the world of dead. We still have lots of representations of this realm of dead from archaic times, but swe can also meet some old representation contaminated with Christian elements. The paper focuses on the Otherworld, as it seen in Romanian folk beliefs, pointing ou especially the archaic representations of the final road towards the Otherworld. Mainly the data are excerpted from an old funeral song, The Song of the Dawn, interpreted by professionals at the dawn, during the wake of the deceased. The song knows several hundreds of variants in the South-West Romania, in some villages being interpreted till nowadays.
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Folk architecture, the way we know it today, is the last sequence of a long developing process (still undergoing), which aesthetically and spiritually, asserts as the sum of previous stages. The appearance of rural settlements is profoundly affected by the economic life and geographic environment, which imposed not only specific arrangement as for the shape of settlements but also certain jobs of the inhabitants. Development of houses from those with one room to those with more subsumes under the following specific categories, since their appearance to nowadays: the house with a room to live, the house with a room to live and one room, the house with one room to live and porch and larder, the house with two rooms to live each with separate access, the house with three rooms to live. Naturally, each category has variants and sub-variants, whose classification would be less useful and challenging to make. Research of traditional architecture made possible identification of its essential features and a confirmation of its value within a unitary pattern. Study of architecture holdings is a source of information for those who wish to project and build resting on the long, traditional expertise, and certain seized general aspects stand for the whole country.
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For our brethren living on the left bank of the Prut, “scoarțe” [traditional wall-carpets] are not only a dimension of the folk culture, but a true identity mark. At the beginning of spring, the Bessarabian researchers, led by Petru Vicol, the director of the National Museum of Ethnography and Natural History, had selected the oldest and most valuable “scoarțe” from the collections of the institution and crossed the Prut in order to show them to the lovers of beauty living on the other bank of the Romanian area. In the halls of the Ethnographic Museum of Moldavia from Iaşi would flow a colourful universe, full of essences, in which the aesthetic valences constitute only one of the dimensions of our folk-art masterpieces, full of deep meanings. The Bessarabian fabrics cannot and should not be isolated from those on the right bank of the Prut and, not even less, from those existing in other Romanian regions. They transmit the same ethnic peculiar message, the same apperception of the ancestral symbols, the same aesthetic and decorative content.
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This article refers to the exceptional cultural career of the grapevine, which has spread from the dawn of the Greek Antiquity until the modern era. Associated to the cult of Dionysus, the god of wine but also of pleasure and promoter of agriculture, the grapevine presents powerful forms of manifestation also in the Thracian-Dacian space, North Pontic Greek colonies as well as in the Roman Dacia, as the antique literary sources, epigraphic texts, coin issuing or various graphic representations attest.Vetero- and neotestamentary texts, which have a crucial role in our spiritual configuration, reveal the divine hypostasis of the grapevine, highlighted by folk beliefs and narrations presenting biblical themes. Relying on older documentary sources, but also on field research, the author refers to the climaxes of the viniculture calendar and brings under discussion the sequence of beliefs, rites and ritual ensembles that animate our ethnographic and folkloric landscape. Each stage included in the process of transforming vine into wine is accompanied and supported by a set of magic acts meant to insure prosperity.The article points out the positive potential of the grapevine, a plant that integrates an ample set of values; it also highlights the existence of a permanent dialogue between the religious and the traditional thinking, the exchange of values or the re-semantization.
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The paper is based on the field researches undertaken in the Lozova village, Strășeni district, between 2016-2018, as well as on the specialized literature. The author identified thus the types of households and houses, according to the existing scientific classification, the customs and beliefs pertaining to the choice of the house place and its building; the position of houses and households depending on the access routes and on the ground; household annexes and their position; the evolution of the architectural elements, their similarities in the Romanian area. The author presents the description of a traditional house, built in 1937, pointing out a building specific for this village – “bașca” [a kind of cellar], and “prispa/târnaț cu draniță și deregi” [a kind of porch with shingle and wooden posts] which is characteristic for the entire Romanian area. The researcher provides relevant arguments which prove once more the identity and the unity of the Romanian cultural area, both through the form and the name of the constitutive elements of the house.
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This Serbian comparative ethnographic study of the two different ethnic groups, the Sarakatsani and Vlachs shows the author sympathy for Balkan shepherd. The aim of this study is to fill in the gap, about the rituals and customs of two ethnic nomadic groups, of Sarakatsani and Vlachs, who differ in their origin and cultural characteristics, but they have been for the first time treated side by side by a Serbian scholar. Dragoslav Antonijevič had combined some ethnologic information harvested during the three field researching expeditions with the data from scientific literature published in various books and papers. Although this study has no given the answer to many problems that is has treated of, in fact the study has opened the door for further studies and researches.
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The article falls under the category of case studies, focusing on the way miners were seen by the people outside their guild during the totalitarian regime of the communist times. Being a paper that has as its central theme aspects from the life of miners belonging to the well- established mining communities in Romania – Valea Jiului zone, but referring also to the miners in the Bohemian coal mines, the article aims to examine data that could provide support for the workers who are often unfairly rewarded for their hard work. The case study strives to put together bits and pieces of the miners’ efforts to get coal and to justify the negative aspects judged ab iratio and ad absurdum by the uninitiated ones in the secrets of a craft that turns into destiny. The proletcultist way of judging miners turned them into heroes, as one can see in Mihail Davidoglu and Marie Majerová’s works.
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