Miorita: An Icon of Romanian Culture

This book by words and photographs illustrates and explains the central role of the ballad Miorița in Romanian culture. By combining the insights of an American and a Romanian scholar with a vision of Romanian pastoral life developed by a leading American photographer, the reader is introduced to one of the most complicated and elusive cultural icons in European civilization. It is, however, one that continues to permeate Romanian culture and offers, to those who take the time to study it, an approach to life which will resonate closely with modern experience and understanding.

This album benefits from two introductions, one by an American specialist in Romanian studies and one by a Romanian professor of Romanian literature, providing different perspectives on the Miorița, to ensure that the reader will understand why the ballad is central to Romanian consciousness and why its message is of great seriousness and insight for humanity in general.

The photographer, Laurence Salzmann, made the photographs in 1981 while on a fellowship in Poiana Sibiului, a small village of transhumance shepherds in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania. Dr. Ernest Latham, who conceived of the exhibit as American cultural attaché in Bucharest in the 1980s, contributes an introduction which recounts his personal involvement with the Miorița, the exhibit, and the new English translation developed to caption the photographs. Alexandru Husar was a distinguished professor of Romanian literature at the University of Iași. He provides an introduction that guides the reader into the deeper meaning and importance of the Miorița.