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This article is a critical presentation of the study Der Zauber des fernen Königreichs. Carmen Sylvas Pelesch-Märchen/Farmecul regatului îndepãrtat. Poveştile Peleşului, (The Magic of the Faraway Kingdom. Carmen Sylva’s Tales of the Pelesh), edited at the Ibidem publishing house in Frankfurt this year. The author proves that – contrary to some opinions in current literary criticism, according to which the works of the queen poet were but recorded and retold Romanian folk tales and legends – Carmen Sylva’s writings are personal works with intrinsic literary value, where themes and motifs from the folklore and mythology or from the Romanian and occidental literature are used only as pre-texts. Silvia Zimmermann’s merit is a significant one, namely that of rediscovering Carmen Sylva who has not only been a creator, but also an important mediator between the Romanian and the German culture.
The present study makes reference to the scientific achievements of the Romanian Germanist Horst Schuller. As a journalist, university professor and translator, he developed an extensive research work that has brought forth studies of the Romanian-German criticism as well as many studies of intercultural research. In all of his studies of literary criticism dealing with intercultural themes, Schuller holds the opinion of a bilateral exchange between the ethnic groups of a multi-ethnic state as Romania is. He regards interculturality as a plea for tolerance and communication, i.e. living-with-one-another – not living side by side or living past one another.
This article focuses on the phenomenon of interculturality within the framework of “Poveştile Peleşului”/”Tales of the Pelesh” by Carmen Sylva, the Poet-Queen. Being of German origin and having studied in Germany, but transposed as queen of the Romanian people to a totally different cultural space, Carmen Sylva wants to present the culture of her adoptive country to her home country. She succeeds in doing this through her own works or by translating some Romanian literary works into German, which she propagates in the German language space. Starting from a theoretical basis referring to interculturality, this article refers to the hybrid character of “Poveştile Peleşului”/”Tales of the Pelesh”, to some aspects of presenting alterity, concluding that the author is extremely interested in the culture of the Romanian people, whose language she learned, her ultimate scope being that of bringing the two cultures – the German and the Romanian culture – closer to one another.
Presenting the actual theoretical debates (of Göhlich, Welsch, de Nancy, Bachmann-Medick) with respect to the concept of transculturality, underlining the related aspects such as hybridity, intertextuality, globalisation, the author traces the aspects of transculturality in the process of the translations from Romanian to German. The success of the literary transfer is conditioned by the intra- and intercultural competence, by the knowledge of the identity factors, of the specific operational frame and of the key texts (translations or originals) from the literatures that come into contact with it. As in other countries, where there are specific basic cultural notions with a certain symbolic charge like „birch” in Russia, „hut” in the Czech republic, the traditional cultural universe affirmatively or polemically resorts to cultural words such as „plai” (poetic realm), „codru” (forest), „mioritic” (mioritical). Tracing by means of rich examples the history of translations, the author distinguishes the stages of translations motivated by philological, ethnographic, political interests and lastly and parallel to it, by aesthetical interests. These translations contribute to the identitary image of the Romanians, being normally recorded with an increased attention and sensibility. Concretely applying the discussed theoretical concepts on a text, the author presents the German translation of an essayistic text by Andrei Pleşu, arguing the possible interest of the German public for the writer, emphasizing the ironical hybrid and ludic signs that are important for the translation, with all untranslatabilities of the word games, in order to find at least an adequate, if not equivalent, transfer. The annotations and the translation (starting with the analysis of the title) constitute a demonstration of transculturality applied live.