By rbj
The President of the Romanian Academy, Ioan-Aurel Pop, urges, on the National Culture Day, to cherish the Romanian values, “as they are”, to cultivate the language “like a honeycomb”, without ostentation and accent, placing them all in European intellectual concert.
“There has been a lot of talk in recent years about European culture, through which some try to overshadow national cultures, including Romanian culture. European culture does not exist in itself, because it is not the product of a European people or a European language. European culture exists through national cultures, which express the specifics of each people, in the context of the common European heritage “, Ioan-Aurel Pop declared for Agerpres.
The President of the Academy considers that the celebration of Romanian culture on Mihai Eminescu’s birthday is not an accident, among all the Romanian spiritual creators the great poet being, “without a doubt, representative”.
“He was not declared the prototype of Romanian culture by any court or imposed by any state institution, but by life itself, by the great collective personality of the Romanian people and, therefore, he cannot be judged, admonished or taken down from pedestal by someone’s will. Eminescu expresses in his work, in nuce, the entire history of Romanian and European culture. Eminescu has classical verses such as those of Horatiu, Virgil and Ovidiu. He sings the gallant love and honor of medieval knights as once troubadours and truverii , he details the Middle Ages of Alexander the Great, from 1400, as Victor Hugo did in “Notre Dame de Paris” for the French space. But Eminescu also anticipates the world of the future, projecting, through the perception of the speed of light and the ideational universe of a world in eternal motion, the Romanian cultural and scientific creation towards the last century of the second millennium and towards the third millennium. Eminescu was born in a date (Janu ary 15, 1850) and in a certain place (in the Upper Country of Moldavia), he completed his creation with the earthly Christian age, but was touched by an angel’s wing and was destined for eternity “, stated the President of the Romanian Academy .
For Ioan-Aurel Pop, “Eminescu is European, because he expresses the essence of the Romanian spirit and is the most representative Romanian creator because he was included in the common European denominator”, from this point of view the poet being part of the series. formed – say – by Adam Mickiewicz, Petofi Sandor and Taras Sevcenko, representative of the Central-South European side of continental romanticism. ”
Legislatively confirmed by Law no. 238/2010, at the proposal of academician Eugen Simion, the National Culture Day is celebrated on January 15, when the birthday of the poet Mihai Eminescu is marked.