The Song of the Bells: First World War Songs in Romanian Tradition
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The Song of the Bells: First World War Songs in Romanian Tradition1 Sabina Ispas ABSTRACT The centenary of the end of the Great War, the War of Nations, First World War, has multiple meanings, expressed concretely in European geopolitics. This event, which occupies an exceptional position in the history of the last century, has led to the appearance in folklore of an epic-lyric category with specific features, Songs of Military and War. In Romanian folk literature, there is an impressive number of such poetic texts. Along with other categories of war memories— personal histories, family histories, and the versified songs of the soldiers, they make up aunitary and rich chapter of war folklore. In the occupied areas there were requisitions of all kinds: clothes, food, animals, objects, and especially bronze objects for the manufacture of weapons. Such arequisition took place in the village of Poiana Sibiului in Transylvania in which the villagers attended afuneral-like ceremony bidding farewell to the bells in song, ‘The Song of the Bells’. KEYWORDS: song of bells, military songs, the Great War, the First World War, Transylvania ‘Collective memory’ is usually made up of memories relating to lived events, living norms and rules, personalities, recognized as such, specific spaces and landscapes, and other cultural expressions such as the system of traditional material and spiritual values, in its entirety, kept, preserved and accepted by the members of aspecific human group as an integral, representative part of the past, sometimes with aformalized structure and specialized functions. In traditional culture, to which orality and specific characteristics of the creation and transmission processes confer particular qualities, this ‘cognitive structure’ has avery special authority. This authority is easy to observe, especially in some narrative genres, prose and verse, considered markers of ethnic identity. In fact, specialists interested in ethnological research have lately been less concerned with the analysis of the relations among oral, traditional and contemporary cultures, and the mechanisms through which information is transmitted, and more so with the complex nature of the relationships established with other groups with which they have contact, in various circumstances. The end of the twentieth century and the first decades of the third millennium have brought along spectacular, sometimes unexpected changes to communication systems— relationships between collective memory and folklore creation, the daily ‘information bombing’, the impossibility to verify the information. These and many other global events all transform the human being of contemporary society into a‘folkloric individual’, less 1 An abbreviated version of this paper was published in Romanian in Magazin Istoric. OPEN ACCESS
70 STUDIA ETHNOLOGICA PRAGENSIA 1/2023 and less impacted by the ritualistic or ceremonial character of the events, thus leaving room for festivalisation of routine, and implicitly of each individual life. Collective memory is rather subjective, but it does preserve experiences common to the members of amore or less coherent group and, over time, it generates stereotyped structures, formalised units specific to various folklore genres and species, most often recognized and accepted as identity marks. Each community preserves knowledge, practices, patterns, exemplary memories in aspecific structure, experienced by each single individual based on his or her own status, formation, and personal characteristics. Aspecial relationship, evolving along avariable-length process and bearing significant long-term functions and effects, is established between collective memory and history. To clarify it, given the many issues that need to be identified and whose mechanism needs to be decoded, psychology, sociology, history, philology, political sciences, sometimes even biology and genetics, etc., expertise is needed. Active living memory of the group and individuals meets the officialised memory within collective memory. Its reconstruction is acomplex activity bearing ideological and cultural functions. Collective (historical) memory does not, in most cases, reflect an event according to the data recorded in the documents certified by historians; usually, as this type of memory, it reflects perceptions of what happened in relation to the interests, circumstances, and emotions of agroup that participated in aspecific event. This is very different with the perception of an event that has had noticeably negative, sometimes even traumatic, consequences for the persons involved. In order to understand the context, special knowledge is required for those who keep the memory of events alive. Not infrequently, collective memory with historical involvement has interacted, especially over the last two hundred years, with 1.Bell from an orthodox church. OPEN ACCESS
SAbINA ISPAS 71 the processes of state and nation formation, at least in the European area. These have generated exemplary narratives, whose circulation, oral and written— handwritten or printed— led to the emergence of models of superior value, accepted by the majority. In The Meaning of history and the Meaning of Tradition, Nikolai Berdyaev argued that the ‘human being is to the highest degree ahistorical being. The human being is in history, and history is in the human being. Human being and ‘historical’ have such aprofound and lasting primordial fusion, such aconcrete reciprocity, that their separation is impossible. Human being cannot be removed from history, it cannot be taken abstractly and we cannot separate history from human being […]. And human being cannot be examined outside the deep spiritual reality of history’2. ‘The recognition of historical tradition, legends, historical continuity is of particular significance for the identification of the “historical”’3. For historical memory, confrontations, armed conflicts, and battles, often gory, provide reference material for defining moral values, recognizing intellectual abilities, appreciating physical qualities, heroic gestures, and assessing exceptional qualities such as bravery, heroism, courage, devotion, and spirit of sacrifice. The two world conflagrations— the first and the second wars— which marked the 20th century of the previous millennium, provided numerous opportunities for choosing and presenting exceptional situations, which were endowed with the value of an exemplum and remained imprinted in the collective memory, as such. Their memory offers opportunities for celebration and commemoration equally. In 2018, various cultural events were organized in remembrance of the 100 years that had elapsed since the end of the event preserved in the collective memory under the name of The Great War or the War of the Nations, in which the Entente and the Central Powers were combatants4. We are 2 „Omul este în cel mai înalt grad oființă istorică. El se află în istorie, iar istoricul se află în om. Între om și «istoric» există ocontopire atât de profundă și trainică în primordialitatea ei, oreciprocitate atât de concretă, încât separarea lor este imposibilă. Omul nu poate fi scos din istorie, nu poate fi luat abstract și nu se poate separa istoria din om […]. Și nu se poate examina omul în afara profundei realități spirituale aistoriei’(Berdyaev, 2013, p.18). 3 „Recunoașterea tradiției istorice, alegendelor, acontinuității istorice are oînsemnătate deosebită pentru identificarea «istoricului»‘ (Ibid, p.16). 4 Casus Belli was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo. It was circumstance motivated, although in reality there were several reasons rooted in the histories of the countries involved in the conflict, in the last hundred years, spread over almost all continents. The combatants were the Entente and the Central Powers, and the conflict ended with the Entente’s victory. The following empires were broken up: Russian, German, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian. New states emerged in Central and Eastern Europe, and others became larger. On the side of the Entente: France, the British Empire, the Russian Empire (1914), alongside which the following were combatants, at different times of the conflict: Italy (1915–1918), Serbia, Romania (1916–1918), Belgium, Portugal (1916–1918), USA (1917–1918), Greece (1917), Montenegro, Japan, Albania; co-belligerents: the Czechoslovak Legions, China (1917), Thailand (1917), Brazil, etc. On the side of the Central Powers: the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire (1914), Bulgaria (1915–1918) and several co-belligerents. The spaces affected by the OPEN ACCESS
72 STUDIA ETHNOLOGICA PRAGENSIA 1/2023 interested in what events and in what form such events have been preserved in the collective memory of the people living at that time; how the specific information and experiences had been transmitted to the generations that succeeded one another over the one hundred years; how we can interpret, today, using avariety of documents— manuscripts, printed, mechanically recorded (as sound or as photographic images and films)—, official documents, etc., and, especially, sources of ‘traditional’, ‘popular culture’, (in oral or handwritten forms), preserved on various media, which reproduce the spiritual experiences of those who directly participated in the war. An exceptional event that marked, at that time, the existence of the modern human being, the First World War generated avariety of forms of artistic expressions, creations made by mediating several types of languages, from the literary and musical one to the one specific to visual arts: painting, graphics, sculpture, photography, film, etc., each having the war as its central theme. The First World War brought anumber of serious particular issues to the table. An overview of the types of creators who expressed spectacular and diverse thematic works, after the conclusion of the conflict, helps us to differentiate two such groups. The works of well-known writers, who in verse or prose approached the war theme, thus seeking to explain and justify, in the most elaborate forms, this great global conflict. War is being evoked in close relationship with agreat diversity of authors’ personal experiences. The ample or concentrated narrative prose describes the progressive fracture occurring between the armed forces’ vision and the civil population’s vision on the war, and one of the sensitive topics here is the reintegration into the civil society, once the conflicts were over, of the former combatants, veterans, substantially mutilated, etc. The rift between the battlefront and civilian life is particularly presented from apost-war perspective. Pacifism, arepresentative feeling for the combatant soldiers of those times, becomes atopic of great interest in society, and later on turns into adesideratum or political slogan. Internationalism and aprofound nationalism feeling take root. Literary works, such as Erich Maria Remarque’s Im Western nichts Neues, Ernest Hermigway’s AFarewell to Arms, W.Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, etc., are edited and translated into several languages. Romanian writers who experienced war in person expressed themselves mainly in novels: Liviu Rebreanu, Pădurea spânzuraților [‘Forrest of the Hanged’]; Camil Petrescu, Ultima noapte de dragoste, prima noapte de război [‘The Last Night of Love, the First Night of War’]; Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu , Balaurul [‘The Dragon’], awoman’s vision on war, but also in memoires: George Topârceanu, Pirin Planina, and in publishing: Octavian Goga, Ne învață Mărășeștii [‘We Learn from Mărășești’]. The film industry took over the war theme: movies based on afew popular novels and novellas were made, along with documentaries, which have become significantly of interest in recent years. conflict comprised much of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, states in North and South America, for ashort time China and some islands in the Pacific Ocean, etc. More than 9 million people died as aresult of the fighting, and there were over amillion victims behind the front lines due to the poor conditions created by the conflicts. (*** 1978; Ionescu, 2014; Hogg, 2007). OPEN ACCESS
SAbINA ISPAS 73 War, as aliterary thematic, is present mainly in popular poetry, but also in short narrative works— memoirs, legends, stories. The verses of awell-known lyric poem are directly addressed to the powerful sovereign: „Împărate, împărate,/ Pune pace, nu te bate/ Că-ți mor cătanele toate’ [Your Majesty, Oh, Your Majesty,/ Bring peace, and do not go into battle, / Or all your men-at-arms will lose their lives]. Thus, the second group of creators, explicitly individualized, consists of avery wide and diverse category of ‘folk writers’, whose artistic creation is based on traditional motifs, specific to the ‘rural’ creation, mostly in the form of narrative prose with specific themes (for example, memories from the battlefront) or poetic texts, sometimes sung, which are part of the lyrical song itself, of the narrative song, but also of the species with ceremonial or ritual function, some from the funeral register. (In the case of funeral scripts, we distinguish the funeral and mourning ceremonial songs) (Brăiloiu, 1932, pp.280–359; Brăiloiu, 1937, pp.1–84; Bîrlea, 1973, pp.509–581). The folk creators use the direct experience of the battles and follow the dramatic nature of the events: death on the battlefront, the large size of the battlefields, anew type of military training and new weapons and techniques of fighting, imprisonment, survival, and homecoming. The war is ‘narrated’ through memorates, personal stories, and family stories (Călin, 1992, pp.103–108), but also in versified texts of some established categories of the oral culture system— genres and species whose literary texts are structured having the war as areference point: the epic song, the oral diary, 2.Statue erected (1929) in the memory ofthe specialized troops for the execution of fortification works, roads, bridges a.s.o. engineers — Bucharest. OPEN ACCESS
74 STUDIA ETHNOLOGICA PRAGENSIA 1/2023 versified letters, poetic texts of the lyrical song, etc. Together, they all form athematic unit whose presence has become particularly authoritative throughout the conflict and afterwards. Apsychological motivation of telling personal narratives is also considered: ‘when putting it into words, the memory is not passively lived on the contrary its moments are systematically reconstructed, and the identity of the protagonist comes closer to the exemplary one of the mythical hero’ (Fruntelată, 2004, p.29; Călin, 1993; Dobre, 2001).5 War folklore has become distinct and specific, which with the outbreak of the second world war can be identified through new forms and structures expressed in the correspondence between those on the battlefront and those left behind, relatives, friends, authorities, etc. Village intellectuals and cultural activists in Romania during the first decades of the twentieth century were familiar with the activities of collecting and publishing folklore in all its forms of expression, so for many of them the collection and publishing of texts depicting war, the lives of the people on the battlefronts and the state of the people left ‘behind, off the battlefront’, ‘at home’, was anatural cultural act. The first collections of war poetry were printed having suggestive titles by which the editors endeavoured to highlight the dramatic circumstances in which their authors lived: Lăcrimioare. Cântece de război culese de la fetele din Poiana Sibiului [ ‘Little Tears. War Songs Collected from the Girls in Poiana Sibiului’], 1917; „Floarea dorului’. Poezii de dor, de drag și de jele. Versuri cătănești. Culese din Bănat de Milentie Cerbe [‘Yearning Flower. Yearning, loving and mourning poetry. Battlefield lyrics’. Collected in Bănat by Milentie Cerbe]; C.Rădulescu-Codin, Cântece din războiu zise de flăcăi și fete între 1914–1919 [‘ Songs from the War Told by Lads and Lasses between 1914–1919’]; Ioan Pop, Cântarea celor rămase acasă. De mai multe femei din Ardusat. Comunicate de… [‘The Song Of The Women Left Behind At Home. By several women in Ardusat’. Passed on by …]; R.Hodoș, Frunzulițe din răsboi. Versuri din Ardeal și Bucovina adunate și alese de… [‘Leaves of war. Lyrics from Transylvania and Bucovina’ gathered and selected by…]; George Țăran, Cântece poporale din răsboiu. Primite din partea vitejilor noștrii de pe câmpul de luptă. Aranjate de…, vol. I–III [‘Folk Songs of the War. Received from our warriors on the battlefield’. Arranged by…, vol. I–III]; Gheorghe Cătană, Flori din războiu. Versuri poporale culese din gura soldaților de…,1919 [‘Flowers from the War. Folk verses collected verbally directly from the soldiers’…]; Aurel Esca and Ion Iosif Schiopul, Flori de sânge. Cântece populare ardelenești de pe câmpul de războiu adunate de… [‘Bloodflowers. Transylvanian folk songs from the battlefield’ gathered by…]. The themes frequently used in poetic texts have as their central hero the soldier, before and after mobilization, when he separates from his girlfriend, wife, family, children, the field that he can no longer work on and who is forced to respond to new requests, to face the psychological shock caused by the battles and the awareness of the danger of apainful death among strangers. The actual fight is described, the unknown and inhospitable lands where the one responding to his military duties has arrived are depicted, portraits of the enemies, but also of the superior officers ‘of adifferent nationality’, under whose command the soldiers were forced to fight are drawn up. We have the image of the wounded soldier, prisoner in aforeign country, 5 See also: von Sydow, 1948; Dégh, 1984; Honko, 1989; Stahl, 1989. OPEN ACCESS
SAbINA ISPAS 75 away from the family and the native places. The combatants, who became ‘folk poets’, much more numerous than those included in the category of ‘established’ writers, who in their civil lives carried out totally different activities and lived according to traditional norms and prescriptions— peasants, workers, craftsmen, etc.—, created, following the folk pattern, mainly versified texts— army and war poetry—, but also personal journals and memoirs. As time passed, some motifs formalized and generated stable repetitive structures. In his work dedicated to the analysis of soldier Vasile Tomuț’s poems, Constantin Brăiloiu makes some observations that are revealing for the definition of these categories of the ‘folk’ artistic work, made mainly of the inhabitants of rural spaces, where the influence and even the presence of some of Anton Pann’s verses is noted. ‘The notebook in which Vasile Tomuț wrote his poems resembles almost all the Transylvania and Bukovina poems Ihave seen so far’, he observes. ‘[…] In those areas, the country people call this type of book a‘verș’ (or sometimes ‘viers’) (variants for ‘verse’)— which apparently are very old— which they use to refer to: 1) asomewhat scholarly poem, meant to be sung, and 2) ahandwritten notebook containing mainly this type of poems’ (Brăiloiu, 1944, p.7). He quotes Iosif Stoia, ‘the peasant in Drăguș’, who had some verses (verș) composed during his army years and […] who put the songs he knew into verses (verș)’. C.Brăiloiu also renders the information received from the rural poet relating to the techniques used to make them: the verse ‘was not abook. Imade it. Igot some pieces of paper, Isewed them up and wrote on them. Over ahundred, perhaps even more verses’ (Ibid, p.8). As per C.Brăiloiu’s notes, the Folklore Archive of the Romanian Composers’ Society contained ‘an older verse, handwritten around 1877 by Dumitru Fogoroș, achurch singer in the said Drăguș’(Ibid), in relation to which the professor observes: ‘It is clear that Fogoroș has mainly found inspiration in the printed works’ (Ibid). For the analysis of the text called The Song of the Bells, which we are here referring to, we take into account the specificity of the category mentioned by Ovidiu Bîrlea in his work Folclorul românesc. I.Momente și sinteze [‘The Romanian Folklore’]: ‘“verș” (avariant for verse), or more rarely ‘joltar’ (in the region of Crișana), […] artistic works of the rural scholars, which are interpreted exclusively by the church singers before marching to the cemetery, or at the grave, at the end of the funeral service. They are spread mainly in Transylvania, however small infiltrations have been noted remotely to the South and the East of the Carpathians as well. […] The funeral verses have astructure identical to the star songs, […] they contribute to the pomposity of the funeral itself and sometimes even make the down-hearted shed tears’.6 Therefore, within the Romanian folk culture athematic section evolved, which soon became productive and dynamic; it contains the folklore of the military camp and of the war7. The ones interested in writing around such topics were mainly the 6 «Verș», mai rar «joltar» (Crișana), […] creații ale cărturarilor sătești, pe care le cântă numai diecii înainte de plecarea la cimitir, sau la groapă, la sfârșitul slujbei. Ele circulă numai în Transilvania, dar slabe infiltrații au fost semnalate insular și în sudul și estul Carpaților. […] Verșurile funebre au structura identică cu cea acântecelor de stea, […] măresc fastul înmormântării și câteodată chiar storc lacrimi din sufletele atât de obidite (Bîrlea, 1981, p.493). 7 «Verșurile» la morți și cele militare, au, de asemenea, multe, foarte multe puncte commune, după cum scrisorile-reportaj trimise din tranșee sau lagărele de prizonieri trebuie OPEN ACCESS
76 STUDIA ETHNOLOGICA PRAGENSIA 1/2023 combatant soldiers, fighting on various battlefronts. However, the ones that remained at home, ‘behind, off the battlefield’ also created poetic texts describing the yearning for the departed, the daily hardships, the pain experienced by those deprived of their parents’ support, or by the spouses and brothers on the battlefield. They are ‘dramatic stories’ on the solitude of those remaining and of those leaving, memories, stories of places, of families, etc., which they all establish aspecific type of communication, not necessarily active or concrete, but mostly virtual. Anarrative category having its own specific personality has even appeared— the memories— with asecondary theme: war memories. During the nineteenth century it was very common among all population categories to keep personal ‘journals’. As aliterary genre still attested nowadays and accepted specifically by the end of the nineteenth century and in between the wars, it să ne ducă cu gândul la ceea ce deja cunoaștem sub numele de jurnal-oral, dar și la cronicile și povestirile în versuri. La granița dintre cele două culturi, dintre cele două literaturi— cea cultă și populară, ne întâlnim cu oliteratură de autor aparținând ambelor straturi, dar de amândouă refuzată ca fiindu-le străină’ [«Verșurile» for the deceased and for the military also have numerous, really numerous things in common, just as the report letters sent from the war trenches or the prisoner camps should remind us of what we already know by the name of oral journal, but also of chronicles and narrative poetry. On the border line separating the two cultures, the two types of literature— the cult and the folk one, we find an author’s literature which belongs to both layers, at the same time rejected by both, as considered foreign to them’.] (Dobre, op.cit., pp.139–140). 3.The monument of the Romanian heroes from the First World War erected on Caraiman Peak (1924–1928), Bucegi Massif, Carpathian Mountains — cf. postcard from the interwar period from the Romanian Academy Library. OPEN ACCESS
SAbINA ISPAS 77 contributed to the emergence of the war journals during the great conflict; along with it, apopular oral narrative text in verses evolved, and it can sometimes be associated to the ballad, with adiverse thematic, which belongs in fact to the ‘oral journal’; it is still productive nowadays, when it of course elaborates current topics. As already stated, in some areas of Romania there are present those text categories with ritual and ceremonial features: the verș (variant for verse), the ‘mourning of the dead’ song— both used on occasion of the funeral service, some of them created by folk authors specifically to evoke the identity of the deceased, or significant moments in his or her life, or the circumstances of his or her death8—, the free lament; the verș, acategory widely spread mainly in Transylvania, meets the ‘oral journal’ in Oltenia, Muntenia and Moldova and is similar to some thematic categories of the family ballads. Sometimes, this lyrical species is simply called asong, referring to ‘mourning’, ‘lamentation’, ‘and sad dramatic story’. In 1944, C.Brăiloiu published such anotebook written by soldier Vasile Ion Tomuț, apeasant from Botoșana village, Suceava county, who had enrolled with the Austro-Hungarian army (Brăiloiu, 1944). He lived intensely the events of World War I, he was aprisoner in Russia for 3 years and travelled to Siberia, the Caucasus, the Urals, and the Caspian Sea. After being released, he was sent back to the battlefront, to the Tyrol Mountains, as he himself confessed, he travelled through Serbia, through Budapest, Vienna, and Lemberg (Brăiloiu, 1944, p.7). He wrote several poems, analysed by Constantin Brăiloiu in the work we mentioned. In many cultures, attested official ceremonials are held for those who are to leave for their military service or to participate in the war. ‘The young men leaving for the military camp takes place within aceremonial […] and in some variants (of the literary text n.b.) the representation is magnificent. Found in totally different positions from the emotional point of view, there are the young lads and their weeping mothers, but also the animals they used to care for. In this context, the pastoral songs bring in their specific, own note’9. In the Romanian tradition, apart from the ‘initiation’ feature this type of manifestation often implied, there is also another component marked by afuneral connotation, where the sung poetic text had aspecial place. On such an occasion, significant, painful events of aman’s life were being evoked, and among these there were: alienation, separation from the loved ones, from the family, from the birthplace, and the depression caused by the feeling of loneliness. It was not so much the fear of death that was disturbing as the ‘longing’ for balance, normality and safety, which living by traditional norms ensured, and which would never return, even if the departed was to return home. 8 Apetrece: areconstitui în minte trecutul, aînsoți, aconduce pe cineva la plecare obucată de drum, aconduce un mort la groapă [To spend, to escort: to reconstruct the past in one’s mind, to accompany somebody, to escort someone for some time, to escort the deceased to the grave] (Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române, 1996, p.786). 9 Plecarea feciorilor în tabăra militară are loc în cadrul unui ceremonial […]. În unele variante (ale textului literar n.n.) spectacolul este măreț. La el participă, în ipostaze opuse ca stare sufletească, nu numai feciorii și maicile care plâng, ci și animalele pe care aceștia leau îngrijit. În acest context, cântecele păstorești aduc onotă proprie, specifică (Dobre, op. cit., pp.66–67). OPEN ACCESS
84 STUDIA ETHNOLOGICA PRAGENSIA 1/2023 p.786. [The Explanatory Dictionary of the Romanian Language. Bucharest]. Dégh, L. 1984. The Theory of Personal Narrative Experience, in Papers 1–4, Congress of ISFNR, Bergen, Norway, June. Dobre, A. 2001. Folclorul taberei militare. Armata și tăzboiul în folclorul românesc. Onouă abordare. București: Editura DELIANA. [Folklore of the Military Camp. The Army and the War in the Romanian Folklore. ANew Approach. Bucharest: DELIANA Publishing House]. Dobrotă, E. 1917. Lăcrimioare. Cântece de război culese de la fetele din Poiana Sibiului, Poiana Sibiului [Small Tears. War Songs Collected from the Girls from Poiana Sibiului]. Fruntelată, I. 2004. Narațiunile personale în etnologia războiului, București: Editura Ager, p.29. [Personal Narratives in Ethnology during War, Bucharest: Ager Publishing House]. Hogg, Ian V. 2007. Dicționarul Primului Război Mondial. București: Editura Niculescu [Dictionary of World War Iby…. Bucharest: ‘Niculescuʼ Publishing House]. Honko, L. 1989. Folkloristic Theories of Genre, from Studia Fennica. Review of Finnish Linguistics and Ethnology, 33. Ionescu, Mihail R. (coord). 2014. Românii la începutul Marelui Război. De la atentatul de la Sarajevo la moartea regelui Carol I, București: Institutul pentru Studii Politice de Apărare și Istorie Militară [Romanians at the beginning of the Great War]. Stahl, S.D. 1989. Literary Folkloristics and the Personal Narrative. Indiana University Press. von Sydow, C.W. 1948. Selected Papers on Folklore. Published on the occasion of the 70th birthday, Copenhagen. Text și context în definirea contemporană amemoratului, în Anuarul Institutului de Etnografie și Folclor. Serie nouă. 1992. tom 3, pp.167–177 [Text and Context for the Contemporary Definition of Memorate, from the Yearbook of the Institute of Ethnography and Folklore. New Series, Vol.3, 1992]. *** 1978. România în anii Primului Război Mondial, I–II. București: Editura Militară [Romania in the First World War, I–II. Bucharest: Military Publishing House]. Sabina Ispas is amember of Romanian Academy of Sciences, senior researcher and director at the Constantin Brăiloiu Institute of Ethnography and Folklore of the Romanian Academy, where she also manages the Archives. She is amember of international societies and organizations, President of the Arts, Architecture and Audiovisual Section of the Romanian Academy, President of the Commission of Folklore of Romanian Academy, and member of The Romanian Society of Ethnology. She was associate professor at Bucharest University, University of Craiova, Private University Hyperion in Bucharest and at the Romanian-American University in Bucharest, Faculty of European Integration. She is editor-in-chief of Revista de etnografie și folclor/Journal of Ethnography and Folklore (Bucharest) and the Anuarul Institutului de Etnografie si Folclor C.Brailoiu (Yearbook of the C.Brăiloiu Institute of Ethnography and Folklore). She supervises PhD research, has written books and hundreds of studies, some of which have received international and national prizes. Her fields of specialization and major interests are: techniques and methodology of folk collection, structure and functions of folk archives; textual criticism of folklore; typology of folk literature; comparative studies with aspecial emphasis for the South-East Europe and Middle East folklore; folklore and religion relationship; folklore and contemporary societies; theory of genres with interest in ballad, fairy-tales, lyrics, Christmas carols, popular books; folklore and the globalization of cultures; folklore, expression of cultural identity; preservation of traditional culture and intangible heritage. Contact: [email protected] OPEN ACCESS