Miorita

This book by words and photographs illustrates and explains the central role of the ballad Miori?a 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. 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 attach\u00e9 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. Alexandru Husar was a distinguished professor of Romanian literature at the University of Ia?i. He provides an introduction that guides the reader into the deeper meaning and importance of the Miori?a.