Cartarescu: Our culture doesn't need a national day, but a state to promote, finance free artists

Our culture does not need a national day, but "free and enthusiastic artists," an audience "longing for beauty," an effervescent atmosphere to generate ideas and novelty, writer Mircea Cartarescu told AGERPRES.

"I'm the least festive person in the world, and on top of that, I think it's been an inflation of "days" lately: the day of lasagna, car tires, itchy ears... Our culture doesn't need a national day, but free and enthusiastic artists, an audience longing for beauty, an effervescent atmosphere to generate ideas and novelty. The cultural institutions of the Romanian state must know and understand the artists, promote and finance them. There is no such thing as a culture made without money. The era in which Romanian artists have to leave the country in order to become known must end once and for all," said Cartarescu.

The writer believes that the Culture Day is "just propaganda."

"The Culture Day costs the authorities nothing, it's just propaganda, inefficient and superficial. It was established so as to overlap with Eminescu's birthday, a very great poet, but one who would have been misunderstood and persecuted if he had lived today, including by those who chant his name the loudest today. The Culture Day is in fact every day when a good poem is written, a good exhibition is opened, a good film is made or a new song is born," added Mircea Cartarescu.

Confirmed through Law no. 238/2010, at the proposal of academician Eugen Simion, the National Culture Day is celebrated on January 15, when the birthday of the poet Mihai Eminescu is marked.