Jertfa Zidirii În Balada Meșterului Manole Și Reinterpretările Sale Culturale

The paper aims to approach Legenda Meșterului Manole [Legend of Master Manole] from an intertextual perspective, establishing connections between several concepts. These are present in the works Comentarii la Legenda Meșterului Manole [Commentaries on the Legend of Master Manole] by Mircea Eliade, the play Meșterul Manole [Master Manole, 1927] by Lucian Blaga, and the rock-symphonic opera Meșterul Manole [Master Manole, 2013], with a libretto by Victor Cârcu and music by Josef Kappl. The study focuses on fundamental paradoxes, tracing the evolution of the motif of “sacrifice of construction” from a contemporary historical perspective. The first part of the paper will outline the relationships between construction rites and the legend/ballad. It will highlight aspects concerning the archaic phenomenon of the construction myth, an element that led to the emergence of a significant number of legends similar to the one discussed, as presented in Mircea Eliade’s texts. In the second part of the paper, correlations will be observed between the text of the legend/ballad and Lucian Blaga’s drama of ideas, as well as the rock-symphonic opera in the form of a libretto. By placing them in parallel, one can identify and analyze common elements between Blaga’s drama and the popular version of the legend, such as the central theme of sacrifice or the tragic ending. Moreover, by comparing the drama Master Manole and the libretto, recurring features at the level of the formal aspects of the dramatic text will be identified. At the same time, attention will be drawn to the contemporary tendency to move from rite to spectacle, reflecting a broader trend of the spectacularization of traditional forms (a shift from a type of rural folklore to a model of urban folklore, in which certain semantic coordinates are reinterpreted).