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Dimitrie Cantemir's Descriptio Moldaviae is considered the first [pre-] modern historiographical text of national history/geography and is celebrated as the first academic work written by a native Romanian that can still be used as a scientific reference today. We postulate in the present article that the modernity of the Catemirean writing is not derived from its academic virtuousness and informational value, but rather from its long history and circulation throughout the Enlightened Western and Eastern Europe. For the reconstruction of the text circulation, we will not follow the traditional linear pattern of cultural transfer, of publication and re-publication, of text production and translation, but we propose to reconstruct (even if only partially, given the information gaps) the complicated and entangled network that this text, as non-human actant, creates around it, and the effects and mutations it produces along its various stops in space and time. Following a chronological path, we aim to highlight the entanglements of various actors and actants and less so the unidirectional relationship between humans and artefacts. Thus, Descriptio Moldaviae becomes an important actor in a complicated and globally active network that highlights the intrinsic interconnectedness of the pre-modern world, still so familiar today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Revista Ştiinţifică "Vasile Adamachi" (1910–1948) had aimed since its first edition to disseminate the newest achievements of science to the interested general public with the explicit intention of building national consciousness and solidarity that would forward Romania's natural powers through science. Even though the editors of the journal had complained constantly that their efforts to promote the national scientific movement were making slow progress, they maintained their openness toward the international state of research by publishing notes and reviews of the main scientific developments worldwide. Caught between those two ideals (that of a Romanian science and of keeping up with the international scientific scene), the journal reflects the struggles, the difficulties, but also the successes of the individual researchers, acting as a two-way communication channel between science producers and consumers. It provides us with a valuable insight into the Self versus Other perception in a time when contact between the Romanian and Western European cultures was beginning to consciously evolve from mere imitation of a dominant power to the incorporation of fragmented foreign categories. It is a perfect example of 'patchwork', in which the native and foreign elements coexisted in a continuous process of redefining and reshaping the newly formed national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The birth of Romanian-language science does not coincide with the birth of the nation and it becomes problematic when trying to define it as a fixed and static cultural concept confined within the national state borders. Oscillating between two main views on "national science" as being a contact point and a separating line between cultural spaces, we will analyse in this article the way in which the Romanian-language science coagulated in scientific schools in the first interwar decades by using French and German models, decanting them and transforming them in a relevant way. We contend that this coagulation of foreign models into a "national" science was not the merit of a coherent central political project but rather a common endeavour of individuals from all cultural centers who actively contributed, through their collaboration and competition, to the participation of Romanian-language science to the international dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This essay focuses on the choreographer Fedor Lopukhov, giving a brief overview of his career and examining his work on the balletThe Bolt, scored by Shostakovich. A pioneering figure of Soviet ballet and a strong influence on the young George Balanchine, Lopukhov fell in and out of favour with the regime several times which led to his choreographic work being unfairly forgotten.The Boltfor instance was struck off the repertoire after only one performance in April 1931. Lopukhov’s innovative choreography, which fused cabaret and music hall styles with classical ballet, physical culture and even acrobatics offended the increasing traditional tastes of the Stalinist regime. Although the choreography itself has been lost, the essay attempts to recover its key themes by examining a collection of photographs which show the rehearsals ofThe Boltand which are housed in the archives of the St Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music. Lopukhov’s visionary amalgamation of modern artistic trends with classical ballet concepts and his numerous collaborations with experimental designers and composers deserve to be better know. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Julian/Jutta Schutting, as a self-conscious author, understands the literary activity as a common and democratic act of creation, performed both by the writer as well as by the reader, thus revealing and connecting the multitude of associative meanings of the literary artifact. Until 1989, until her transformation, the writing of Jutta Schutting was a "secret therapy for survival," by means of which the troubled existence was to be overcome through the creative power and the originality of her work. Back then she described her art as a "hybrid life ... neither ... nor..., both ... and ...," an attempt to transform the personal inner conflict into curative fictional models. This "neither ... nor ... - both ... and ..." situation illustrates the androgynous attitude towards this kind of fictionalized models, this tonality being also supported at the stylistic level that escapes any formalist framework of the genre literature. "Gralslicht. Ein Theaterlibretto" ["The Grail's Light. A Theatre- Libretto"] was published in 1989 by Residenz-Publishing House and is explicitly "composed" as a modern interpretation of Wagner's "Parsifal" in the typical manner of Schutting. The language ceases to be referential and becomes almost exclusively self-referential, because the dialogues do not rely on a situation of communication [communication situation], but are to be regarded as an interactive exchange of monologues. The female character "Kundry" is almost completely absent from the stage [at the level of the stage] and becomes evident only in the dramatic game between the two male characters that regard her and her duality as the principle of the eternal feminine. Kundry remains active only at the textual level and becomes a life example and a pretext in the love-chastity debate between Parsifal and Don Giovanni. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]