NATIONAL CULTURE DAY/Adrian Cioroianu: Cultural dimension is extremely important in preserving identity

The cultural dimension is extremely important when it comes to preserving a nation's identity, passing it on to the next generations and, of course, shaping it, head of the National Library of Romania Adrian Cioroianu said in an interview with AGERPRES on the occasion of the National Culture Day.

He said that in order to earn from culture, we must invest first, for the idea of volunteering is a noble and beautiful one but one nation's culture cannot be built just on volunteering. He added that there is need of a real support from the state authorities and more responsibility to promote national culture.

"Culture is what gives you the feeling of belonging," says Cioroianu, while adding that, "from the very beginning it seemed to me a very good idea the establishment of a day of national culture, especially one related to poet Mihai Eminescu, who has been probably one of the identity and cultural pillars of the Romanian society, for more than a century."

In order to increase cultural consumption, says Adrian Cioroianu, we should encourage creativity, at almost any age and especially at young ages, "from music to whatever goes through their head, to robotics or others."

While saying that it is a very good thing people go to the theatre, Cioroianu noticed that "we do not think enough about what it means the consumption of ideas, of written ideas, the consumption of books, the purchase of books." That's why, he added, "it is essential for people to read, regardless of the support [physical book or electronic - editor's note], and I think that we should focus a bit more on young people, encourage them, invest in their education and culture. Before earning from culture, we must invest in it. However, in our country, investments in education and culture are relatively low. And let's abandon the idea that education or culture can be done on the basis of volunteering. Volunteering is noble, it's beautiful, it has its virtues, but no nation can build a culture on just volunteering. It takes investments. The sooner we learn this, the better."

About poetry, Adrian Cioroianu says that today, "poetry is written in Romania as never before" and publishing a book is no longer a problem. "The problem is the impact and the spread of the books' messages. This is where I think the real problem is."

"We have had so many reforms in education in the last 30 years that sometimes I think maybe we only needed to remove references to Ceausescu and communism from the textbooks, considering that, otherwise, education had a fairly good status in society back then, it was more valued than it is today, at least, while now people rather find you charismatic if you say that you didn't learn much in school, but you succeeded in life," added Cioroianu.

In Cioroianu's opinion, the main weak point of Romanian culture is the regional character of the Romanian language and the fact that we have not invested in translations, through official translation programmes that promote contemporary authors, classic authors, and here he underscored that "there are many authors that should be translated, many styles, from detective literature to esoteric or oneiric literature or fiction novel, poetry, and, why not, our classic literature."

The strong points of Romanian culture lie precisely in the fact that those who come in contact with it, while not having too high expectations, are always surprised of what they discover. the Romanian culture has "a lot of peculiarities compared to what we commonly call the Balkans. And by this I mean that, for a century and a half, the Romanian culture also took something from the Austro-German spirit of the Central Europe, along the Greco-Byzantine spirit of the Balkans and also something from the Slavic sensitivity of the East. In Romanian culture you see these notes, you see these lines and it is an added value, a definite value of the Romanian culture and, I repeat, those who discover it are always very surprised."

Finally, Adrian Cioroianu concluded that while "the state doesn't really need to play the part of an impresario anymore, it still needs to get more involved in the promotion of the national culture, which cannot be done without the support of the authorities, regardless of who makes the government. This has nothing to do with the political parties, this should not depend on any political colour, it should just be a priority to all."