L’antica poesia popolare romena e la modernità. I “canti del morto” di Ilarie Voronca

This article concerns the reception of Romanian folk poetry within the European modernity of the twentieth century. The case under consideration is that of a small collection of Romanian folk songs which spanned Europe in the twentieth century. Their strange and enigmatic poetry, of dazzling and primordial beauty, has fascinated writers and intellectuals, marking the meeting of modernity with the most ancient and unfathomable face of traditional European culture. The songs were collected by Constantin Brăiloiu, a great scholar and theorist of popular music, in 1930 and have been translated into French by Ilarie Voronca, one of the main authors of the Romanian avant-gard of the interwar period.