Memories are often tied to spaces, objects, to materiality. They can also travel with these matters, as they are affected by the passing time and the commemorative practices of individuals and groups. The National Village Museum "Dimitrie Gusti," in Bucharest, Romania, is an interesting meeting point of memory journeys from several contexts. Traditional houses originating from different ethnographic regions in the country are brought together in a central area of the capital city, in a commemoration of simple livelihoods, of cultural heritage. As I spent a great part of my youth playing around these buildings, they also gained a new significance for me. Using Astrid Erll’s theories on traveling memory, insights from Marcel Proust's Swann’s Way, and Katherine Hayles’ ideas on materiality, I want to explore how the same constructions can link to various layers of individual or collective remembrances along the years. Homes can turn into monuments. Serious commemorations can become a playground. There is much that can be said about a national museum, and its stories change depending on the one who tells them.

Memory and Materiality: Some Working Definitions

Two concepts that have traveled far in time and academic fields, memory and materiality can be defined in many different ways. By underlining their inclination to change, they can also appear dynamic. This is the case for the following two working definitions.

In her article, Astrid Erll presents a history of memory studies, then focuses on her own additions to the field.1 After reflecting on notions of individual and collective memories, Halbwachs’ “social frames,” and other resounding names and terms, she theorizes on transcultural memory as a traveling entity.2 Erll explains this concept “as the incessant wandering of carriers, media, contents, forms, and practices of memory, their continual ‘travels’ and ongoing transformations through time and space, across social, linguistic and political borders.”3 She lists the elements at play in the complexity of memory creation, and emphasizes the “unceasing motion” involved in this process.4 Taking each term aside for a closer analysis, this definition grows in clarity: People are carriers of memories, as individuals and through the groups with which they share their histories.5 Objects and technology, certain media, can also contain recorded accounts of events, and impressions can be passed from one carrier or media to another.6 In this process, the content, the stories of what is remembered, can be altered too (forgotten, repressed, exaggerated etc.).7 Furthermore, the practices or rituals through which humans commemorate marking events can also change with time or depending on influences from other parts of the globe.8 Lastly, Erll refers to forms as elements with meaning, “symbols, icons or schemata,” which can have different connotations based on the changing times and contexts in which they are mentioned.9 Considering these aspects, it seems memory and history are not set in stone. Their connections with materials, however, is worth delving into.

In her Writing Machines, Katherine Hayles explores the function of materiality in various digital or printed media.10 The pages themselves show a creative use of this concept, as some words appear in bigger font, others are underlined, and whole sections look as if magnified through a lens. Also, on the edges of the text there is a pattern of vertical lines similar to how a book looks from the side, or to a bar-code, depending on the interpretation. Besides what she shows through examples, Hayles also directly explains what she means by text materiality.11 She expands this into a general definition: “In the broadest sense, materiality emerges from the dynamic interplay between the richness of a physically robust world and human intelligence as it crafts this physicality to create meaning.”12 Reflecting on what surrounds them and further transforming their environment, people make sense of the materials around them. In doing so, they often attribute new layers of meaning to what they see and create. It seems Hayles’ view on materiality does not only refer to a tangible world, but also to human abilities of finding significance even in the simplest of objects.

The Fragile Contours of Memories: Proust and Personal Remembrances of Spaces

After years of summer camps spent on its premises, the Village Museum Dimitrie Gusti is a place well charted in my memory. To draw a picture of this space, I will turn to my own impressions on it. From the entry, a white building with a ticket booth, visitors can take either of three stone alleys ramifying through a maze of humble houses. Everything is surrounded by greenery. I prefer walking to the left towards the lake, where there is a "floating" blue building with fishing equipment. This side extends from a tall gate to another, both leading to the park across the lake. The first is next to a wooden carousel, and the second is next to the oldest building in the museum, a church made from the same material. Sometimes tourists are allowed inside, and can see the faded paintings on its walls. To the right, the museum’s rim is fenced. It takes at least two hours to look at all the exhibits, which indeed form a village of hay, clay, braided twigs and solid wood buildings. If any performances at the central stage attract the visitors' attention, or if their children start to chase the chickens living there, then the tour can last for longer.

Turning to another description from memory, the narrator in Swann's Way by Proust also reflects on an important place for him, Combray.13 When he “revived old memories” of his hometown, they often blended into each other in a mixture of darkness and light.14 He was aware that the city could look differently too, in other instances, yet he only had his own recollections of it.15 They could vivid, focusing on episodes that marked him. An example is when “the whole of Combray and its surroundings, taking shape and solidity, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from [his] cup of tea.”16 The narrator’s mother gave him this hot drink and madeleine cake on a winter day.17 The taste of these treats filled him with a state of bliss that reminded him of where he spent his youth.18

Similar to those in Proust’s text, my remembrances of the Village Museum are fading into one another, changing with the passage of time. They are also dependent on my surroundings, and perhaps on other senses too: a visit to the museum might trigger even more related memories to the surface of consciousness, just like a taste of the traditional sweets sold at the entry. When I think of the blue house by the lake, I also think of the times I ate my lunch there on the wooden pontoon. This happened so often that I cannot separate the days from one another, but I do recall a more unusual experience as well: A child fell in the water there, and his father rescued him. I witnessed the scene with worried eyes, and I imagine the boy’s memories of the lake house are probably less peaceful than mine. Each visitor or curator of this village has their share of stories about it. I could also add more details about my favorite hide and seek spots, or a windmill that fascinated me, but there are other layers of memories to explore here, which are important for bigger groups of people. For this purpose, most facts on the museum are based on the information available online on its official website.19

Long Standing Commemorations: The Museum’s Affirmation of the Nation

With the word “national” in its title, the Village Museum is closely tied to the collective memory of Romanians, showcasing traditional houses from ethnographic areas in the country, preserving cultural heritage. This is its official commemorative function, contributing to the nation’s aim for longevity. The museum spans an outdoor area of over 100.000 m2 next to the capital's largest park and lake, Herăstrău (recently renamed after King Michael I). Its central position is also telling of the exhibition's centrality in Romanian culture. In terms of origin, some buildings date back to the 17th century, while the most recent ones are from the 20th century. The houses have literally "traveled" from Moldavia, Transylvania, Oltenia, Maramureș, from all regions around the country, to be assembled again in the museum. They have been well- preserved, but some of their parts have also been replaced, especially after the damage produced by two fires in 1997 and 2002. Telling of time, weather and hazards’ effect on materiality, this issue touches on memory representation too. Like the ship of Theseus, if all parts come to be replaced with similar ones, then will these houses still represent tradition as initially intended, or will they become a shadow of what they used to be?

Worn out Wood and Fading Times: Thinking Back to the Beginning

Looking at their original function, all the buildings or annexes exhibited in the Village Museum were initially part of people's homes or close knit communities. There used to be religious ceremonies in the churches now mostly left for tourists to admire. Hay beds and low wooden tables served people's sleeping and eating habits. The memories of peasants living in these households have traveled with their belongings and now appear in the imagination of those looking at their materiality. To better preserve these old objects, they are kept at a safe distance from the public’s curiosity. There was a time, however, in which they again fulfilled their initial purpose. From 1940 until 1948, the village museum hosted refugees from Basarabia and Bucovina. It offered shelter, while it had to cease its touristic activity. The new inhabitants could not be relocated sooner, which contributed to the damage and removal from display of several exhibits. Tensions between home and monument related memories grow stronger in this time- frame. The materiality of village pieces was initially meant for human use, but then traveled to the context of museum preservation. Any shifts between these stages can cause literal and discursive frictions for these buildings and what their function should be, respectively.

Furthermore, as already exemplified through some marking events, the museum also has a beginning and history of its own. It was opened for the public in May 1936, after an opening ceremony held in the presence of King Carol II. The name in its title, Dimitrie Gusti, is of the sociologist and folklorist who greatly contributed to the creation of this space. Therefore, this background adds to the official commemorative purposes presented in the previous section. The museum not only affirms collective memories of traditional Romanian villages, but also tells the story of how a nation’s representatives tried to preserve these remembrances and their material connections.

Conclusion

As exemplified by the National Village Museum “Dimitrie Gusti,” places of commemoration can activate complex layers of memories for the individuals and collectives observing them. Using Astrid Erll’s definition of traveling memory, Katherine Hayles’ view on the dynamics of materiality, and a parallel with Marcel Proust’s narrative on Combray, I reflect on personal, national or other group remembrances connected with this space. My memories from there exemplify the vivid or blurry forms that remembrances can take, and how they can be marked or triggered by materiality, available through the senses. As the museum consists of an outdoor collection of old traditional buildings from all ethnographic regions in Romania, this newly formed village gives households the function of monuments. They affirm cultural values deemed important by curators on the level of national collective memory. Invited to imagine the life of the peasants who initially built the constructions preserved here, visitors are faced with a series of narratives (the initial use of these houses, their history since the beginning of the museum, their relevance in these contexts), while also being able to create their own impressions of these surroundings. A home, a monument, a playground, each exhibit can travel a long way on the observers’ memory lanes.

1. Astrid Erll, “Travelling Memory,” Parallax 17, no. 4 (2011): 4-18, https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2011.605570.

2. Erll, “Travelling Memory,” 4-18.

3. Erll, 9.

4. Erll, 12.

5. Erll, 12.

6. Erll, 12-13.

7. Erll, 13.

8. Erll, 13.

9. Erll, 13-14.

10. N. Katherine Hayles, Preface, Chapter 1, and Chapter 2, in Writing Machines (Cambridge/London: Mediawork MIT Press, 2002), 4-33.

11. N. Katherine Hayles, “Chapter 2: Material Metaphors, Technotexts, and Media-Specific Analysis,” in Writing Machines (Cambridge/London: Mediawork MIT Press, 2002), 32-33.

12. Hayles, “Chapter 2,” 33.

13. Marcel Proust, Excerpt from Swann’s Way, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, (New York: The Modern Library, 1992), 58-65.

14. Proust, Excerpt from Swann’s Way, 58.

15. Proust, 59.

16. Proust, 64-65.

17. Proust, 60-62.

18. Proust, 63-65.

19. “Historical National Museum of the Village “Dimitrie Gusti,”” https://muzeul-satului.ro/en/despre-noi/istoric-muzeul-satului/.

The English version of this introduction can be found through a button on the top-right corner of the page. The translation there is not entirely clear, so I turned to the Romanian version and paraphrased from there.

Bibliography

Erll, Astrid. “Travelling Memory.” Parallax 17, no. 4 (2011): 4-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2011.605570.

Hayles, N. Katherine. Preface, Chapter 1, and Chapter 2. In Writing Machines, 4-33. Cambridge/London: Mediawork MIT Press, 2002.

Proust, Marcel. Excerpt from Swann’s Way. Translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, 58-65. New York: The Modern Library, 1992.