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This study intends to analyze the barely known literary personality of Carmen Sylva, the first Romanian queen. Since Carmen Sylva was a German-born princess, yet lived almost her entire life in the Romanian cultural environment, the main point of this paper is to analyze the idea of writing while being split between two different cultures. Carmen Sylva’s self-assumed role of cultural mediator is in this respect obvisouly worth mentioning. However the main question of this study lies not necessarily in the role, but rather in the place of this writer with two homelands. Did she indeed manage to become a cultural mediator or was she her entire life nothing more than an outsider?
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 text introduces the anthological volume of Queen-poetess Carmen Sylva Poveştile unei regine [The Stories of a Queen] and highlights the fact that both her prose – tales and stories – and her poems are representative not only of her favorite themes and motifs, but also of the specific stylistic features of the author.
The present review refers to the work of Silvia Zimmermann Das Königsbild im Werk Carmen Sylvas und in Fotografien des Fürstlich Wiedischen Archivs.[The Kingʼs Image in the Work of Carmen Sylva and on Princely Archive Photographs belonging to the Wied House] The year 2014 had a triple meaning for the first Romanian Royal House: 175 years since the birth of King Charles I (20 April 2014), 145 years since his wedding with princess Elisabeth of Wied (15 November 1869) and the death centenary of King Charles I (10 October 1914, at the Peleș Castle). Silvia Zimmermann selects and comments upon texts and images which depict the reign of Charles I over Romania, a very beneficial period for the development of the country
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.