The good savage of romanticism

In the German space, the specific interest for the knowledge of the people - as ?traditions preserved by the people,? and thus the second and better known sense of Volkskunde - appeared only later on and turned to a mainstream under the influence of ?romantic literary ambitions and the emergence of a national historiography? (Brückner, op. cit.: 228). The local/national customs (Sitten und Kultur) were shared as a kind of pre-ethnological object of interest by both approaches, only from rather different standpoints.

In France, this view of the peasant was several times a cultural temptation but never succeeded in the long run:

One should wonder why the discovery of the singularity of popular culture did not engender the idea of a national culture embedded in the peasants? customs, and why neither Legrand d?Aussy, nor Dulaure, Cambry, or Lenoir have not been French Herder. To put it in another way, why was this idea of cultural singularity, as way of thinking the social practices, replaced very soon (?) by the measure of economic or moral distance? By this missed beginning, the ethnological approach of the cultural diversity in France left an open space to (?) a  sociology  of France (Burgui?re, op. cit.). 

And Burgui?re points at the complex political reasons of this different trajectory, nevertheless interfering periodically with romantic dreams about Celtic origins or about regional differences. 

Romanian national ethnology is essentially a romantic one, with romantic influences coming both from both Germany (mainly in Transylvania) and France, with Jules Michelet playing the role of a go-between. It is linked to the political romanticism spreading over Europe in the revolutionary times of 1848. In fact, romantic ethnology begins around 1840, with Alecu Russo?s preoccupations regarding the ballad--this implying both the collection of texts and the commentaries upon their importance from a rhetorical perspective (cf. Russo, [1840] 1942). At the same time, the flag-ship journal Dacia literară, (Literary Dacia), with its famous statement that ?our beautiful customs are interesting and poetical enough,?which means that the Peasant is now considered worth becoming a visible personage, was marking a definitive orientation towards this new perspective. Almost immediately, the first cardinal texts are configured: the collection of fairytales of the Schott brothers, Walachische Märchen (Stutgart ? Tübingen, 1845), a collection made in the line and under the direct influence of the Grimm brothers, respectively the collection of ballads ?gathered and improved? by Vasile Alecsandri. (1852).

Voicing this new representation of the peasants, Vasile Alecsandri will claim that ?the Romanian is born poet.?[3]  Fastidious as it may sound our days, this was meant to say that the Romanian people was a close-to-nature one, speaking in poetical terms[4] as any other ?natural community? and having all the spiritual and moral qualities of the ?good savage.? This marks a crucial ideological twist from the inferior inner-primitive-peasant to the valued good-savage-peasant. The metropolitan ?good savage? is thus turned into the local ?autochthon,? the Peasant becoming the very emblem of this Romanian autochthony.

[3]?The Romanian was born a poet. Gifted by nature with a brilliant imagination and a sensitive heart, he releases the mysteries of his soul in harmonious melodies and in improvised poems. If smothered by yearning, if caught by joy, if astounded by a great deed, he sings his pains and satisfactions, his heroes and history and thus his soul is an endless spring of beautiful poetry? (Alecsandri, [1852]1965 : 99).

[4]Giambatista Vico largely diffused the idea that savage people think in poetical terms. Romanticists largely shared this view. In this respect Jean Cambry, for instance, was claiming at the end of 18^th century that ?the customs of the people are those of nature in its very simplicity. It is imagination that prevails; their language is figurative, full of metaphors and imaginative tricks (?) poetry was born before prose. It is the burning expression of emotions of terror, surprise, admiration or love the nature man feels in a much deeper way then the civilized man? (apud Burguiere, op. cit.).