Ciprian Porumbescu. Mică poveste despre rochia Berthei (o incursiune printre manuscrise, ediții etc.)

A young Romanian composer from the Austrian Bucovina, Ciprian Porumbescu (1853-1883) is an important figure of the local cultural mythology. This fact, we believe, is due to the association of his image with some ill-fated aspects of his life, such as an impossible love, his premature death, his exultant talent, maybe even his ardent patriotism. In my attempts at recovering the past cultural life of Bucovina, I discovered the journal of Ciprian Porumbescu (that probably includes a rich correspondence as well), written around 1878-1883. I am not talking about a journal on creation, nor about one related to political life. That, in spite of the fact that he was arrested for being the president of a student’s society that had a nationalist nature, yet he didn’t hesitate afterwards being one of the leaders of an international German society. Unfortunately, the above mentioned journal is absent from the public space and the history of its recovery and editing is in itself a history of a failure. That is why, this study is an analysis of the different existing editions of it – that could be described as fragmented, or improvised. In what regards the title of the article, it hints at the imprecisions in transcribing the original text, the difficulties posed by the German existing versions and also at the deficiency of the Romanian translations. Yet, besides all of these, the journal of Ciprian Porumbescu is an exceptional biographical document. Thus, the critique of the existing editions could represent a fist attempt at a textual and analytical recovery of the actual journal.