Author: Costion Nicolescu (Museum of the Romanian Peasant, Bucharest)
Keywords: Romania, Ethnology, village, spirituality, Ernest Bernea
Abstract:
Ernest Bernea is one of the most valuable Romanian ethnologists. Unfortunately, his works are not sufficiently known even today, despite of the fact that in the recent years were edited his manuscripts. In the present study, Mr Costion Nicolescu displays the essential features of his major work: Space, Time and Causality on the Romanian People. The Author analyses the key concepts in Bernea’s work. Already in the title we have the main three key concepts: Space, time and causality. Logically, each of them embraces many other terms. What is striking in his approach is that he does not limit strictly to national tradition of knowing an ethnic tradition, but makes use of the contemporary philosophers, religion historians, ethnologists from the West, but, in this manner, he does not want to become fashionable, or out of an inferiority complex, as do most of the researchers today. He presented the Romanian ethnic worldview as universal, having a philosophy and a religion of its own. The Romanian worldview is not simply one among others, but the right vision, divine and human in the same time. In the category of Space, we have the place, with the courtyard in the centre, then the vicinity or closeness, then, in turn: the village and its boundary, country, cosmos, road, direction, world, points of orientation/landmarks, nature, horizon. These values are not to be taken so much geographically, but spiritually, that is in meaningful manner. In the category of Time, understood as a mirror of the present age, we have the mystery, the passing age, the phenomenon; the past, present and future understood organically; the memory, destiny, calendar, beginning of the future life, inheritance of the old, feast and others. In the category of Causality, we have both a material and a spiritual one; the former comprises the order, laws of nature, hazard, forms, unity, constant values and others, the latter – the mysteries of the world, moral order, faith, norm, meaning of word, thought and others. What is significant here (an aspect which makes the Romanian ethnic worldview superior to many others) is the organicity, the holistic view, or its authenticity, which was long ago forgotten in other cultures, mainly due to the false approach to the spiritual world, or, simple, to the heathen and heretic beliefs.
Pages: 60-80