Octavian’s reply was too inviting a deviation from grammar and vocabulary to be ignored, as he doubtless intended it to be.

But most important is the Mioriţa, that is central. Really know and understand these three works from the inside out and you will be well along in understanding the Romanian personality and the culture which it has created.

The push on this occasion was my question, What are the really fundamental works of Romanian culture which I, as a cultural attaché, should know and know well? Without hesitation Octavian replied, the Mioriţa, the Meşterul Manole, and Luceaf ărul by Mihai Eminescu.

His infectious enthusiasm for his native culture and his lively mind, which likewise rebelled at pronominal drills, needed only the gentlest push from me to close the language book and begin a discussion of some aspect of Romanian culture and history. My teacher, Octavian, needed little to encourage me in my truancy. As I am only a mediocre language student in the best of times, a languid spring fever and the heat of an unairconditioned classroom easily combined with my native laziness to turn my attention quickly away from the boring drills with Romanian pronouns. At that time, I was studying Romanian near Dupont Circle in downtown Washington and preparing for my assignment that summer as the cultural attaché in the American Embassy in Bucharest. The Mioriţa first came to my attention in the late spring of 1983. The Mioriţa: An Introduction in the Form of a Memoir He provides an introduction that guides the reader into the deeper meaning and importance of the Miori?a. Alexandru Husar was a distinguished professor of Romanian literature at the University of Ia?i. 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 Miori?a, the exhibit, and the new English translation developed to caption the photographs. 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. 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. This book by words and photographs illustrates and explains the central role of the ballad Miori?a in Romanian culture.

Miorita by Ernest H. Latham Jr.