LE SYMPOSIUM INTERNATIONAL LE LIVRE. LA ROUMANIE. L ...

Media and Social communication, The Roadside Crucifix... 297
As homo symbolicus, the peasant in the former patriarchal community,
or in today’s rural dimension displays a complex form of communication.
the elements of the funeral props (in question) are generators of fables,
producing works that polarize multiple meanings.
“Immediacy“ and “transcendent” create two directions of
communication: from perception to abstract and from abstract to the
circumstantial significance ordered by the frame of events.
Imago mortis remains a permanent presence, which is claimed by the
amount of attitudes, beliefs, customs and habits. Customizing these bestows
on them the aura of attraction and determines the search for similarities,
stereotypes that lead to the idea of cultural identity. “the funeral ritual
rewords space, time and social order” (chicken, 2003, p. 129). the funeral
ritual configures specific roles which “require specific props” (ibid., p.130).
returning to the limits operated by rudolf otto on “disturbing forces”
of magic and the “art of wincing” generated by the cult of the dead, upon
recent fieldwork in conservative island-like areas, (uzdin, Izverna), we
rally to the idea that the actors are endowed and can perform the arts. And
the identity pictures are at the core of these arts: the epic poem in timoc,
naive art in uzdin, the funeral ritual songs in Plaiul cloşani, the art of
conquest in salcia (dolj), Baldovineşti, Pietriş (olt). in this context, the
roadside Crucifix, as the hallmark of romanian cultural identity is present
and represented in all its community or funeral forms. It’s a response to
the exhortation of the Scripture: “In everything you do remember the
end of you.” And perhaps not incidentally (emotional-affective) does Ivo
Georgiev from Vidin confess: “We live more with the dead than with the
living. At all our parties we raise our glasses, in our minds, for the departed.
And the comemoration of the dead, we trimly do it holily.”
A thanatic philosophy is clear, the identity element being the cross (in
life – the roadside crucifix as a charm, in death – the hand cross, the mast, the
cross, post-existence – the roadside crucifix as a death passage symbol), an
element that generates the comemoration attitude (emotional and behavioral).
“Alms for the living” and “alms for the dead” are the landmarks of these
ritual passages established between the two worlds: one with compassion
and the one without mercy. the Cosmic tree, the binder, is present in its
cross substitute. And the cross, with its symbolic funeral variants (peg, mast,
spear, roadside crucifix) is a crucial element in the funeral ritual.
Following recent field research in oltenia, Bulgarian timoc and
Vojvodina, we have tried to make a presentation of the cross, of its central
variant, the crossroad crucifix on three levels: a) the cross in the Community
(vital and funeral forms); b) the cross and ritual time; c) the cross- symbolic