Semiotica dreptului de a visa: dimensiuni mitice ale timpului din basmul fantastic românesc
Authors: Cioancă Costel 
Published: March 2021

"Semiotics of The Right To Dream: Mythical Dimensions of Time From The Romanian Fantastic Fairy Tale

A fundamental concept of human existence as a species, Time has always been a defining landmark of the depth of thought of homo sapiens. With religious or scientific character, the ensemble of myths, beliefs, ideas, ideologies, representations and significances given to this concept led, …in time, to the birth of a rich, distinct and complex symbolic imaginary. Both a physical continuum (space-time in which biological, chemical, physical and mechanical processes occur that cause changes in Nature) and a philosophical one (events are perceived and cognitively systematized by man from the past to present towards future), Time it has always aroused peoples interest.
We have deities of Time (Cronus, Zurvan, Maku). We have, also, the characteristic concepts that mark the fictional-mythical transfiguration and the triumph of the irreducible search for the truth of meaning. Such as the promise of a (possible) paradisiacal land of eternity, such as the Aion concept of the ancient Greeks (in the sense of cyclical time/eternity), or the existence of specialized divine beings (Moirs of ancient Greece, Roman Parce or Scandinavian Norns) who measure the profane time (past, present, future), and relates it to the celestial, relativistic, perpetual-eternal time. From the area of pure philosophy who approache the subject, inevitably passing through the field of quantum physics that tries to define as precisely as possible the notion of Time (definition, dimensions, units of measurement etc.), we have approaches to this concept at the level of music, literature, art. An true illud tempus, moving the content from metaphysics to myth, and viceversa, there are the many reflections of famous people about the concept of time. Approaching topics about the existence of ,,fashionable” references (billionaires, famous or just controversial politicians, footballers, actors, etc.), we have a post-modern mythological imaginary offered daily by Time Magazine, The New York Times, The Sunday Times etc. As well, being an important landmark in the editing policy, we have a font agreed by more and more magazines, periodicals, publishing houses - Times New Roman.
The social life of the traditional Romanian communities, who generates and consumes fantastic fairy tales, tried to reconcile the human activities with the constant phenomena of the environment (terrestrial, cosmic). Starting from certain constants that counted human activity with the cosmic and terrestrial rhythms of Nature (day-night succession; the succession of seasons; the rhythmicity of some manifestations of the vegetal and animal kingdom), the calendars had appeared lunar, solar, solar-lunar, popular, Christian, civil). Their existence and use made that the passage of time to be more easily perceived and memorized. The calendar practices and habits, performed in a predetermined time and in a certain way (= ritual), did nothing but mark in the traditional symbolic thinking the specificity of that human time, to perform in that tradition, in Cosmic Time, trans-human time.
This study deal with the valorizations and symbolism given to this concept by the popular imagination from Romanian fantastic fairy tale. The collections of fairy tales offered me some major directions that defines Time, sometimes the traditional imagination being a subtle game of physical constants and mythical-epic variations. Thus, I discovered metaphysical dimensions of time, the reason for linking Time, an optimal time of action, but also the exercise of distance (Time-Space) to be traveled by the hero or realms of eternity, where Time does not even exist as an abstraction…
Everything followed, naturally, by a series of conclusions.
Keywords: imaginary, phenomenology, hermeneutics, Romanian fairytale, Time
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