HEAVENLY COLORS
FOR THE ROMANIAN TRICOLOR

-text by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe;
photos made in Targoviste (past Capital City of the Romanian Land)
by Valentin Grigore (1, 2-4, 5-7, 17-19, 24-26)
and in Bucharest (current Capital City of Romania)
by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe (8, 9-15, 16, 20, 21-23);
design by Florin Alexandru Stancu-

The flag of Romania has three colors:
red, yellow and blue,
like in the picture from above
taken by Valentin Grigore.

In fact, this is the most glorious variant of the Romanian flag,
when this country was a kingdom,
but later its coat of arms was mystified by communists,
and reconstituted only in part by the post-communist regimes.

However, the three colors have remained integral over time,
as we can often find them in the sky
(Valentin Grigore will show us how)
during sunrises or sunsets…

or in various atmospheric phenomena:
iridescent clouds, rainbows, sundogs…

In my turn,
I was lucky to catch a solar halo right over
the Petrache Poenaru Metro Station in Bucharest,
named after he who was credited as the founder of the Romanian tricolor
(basing his option on the three colors used by the first unifier
- in 1599-1600 -
of the three Romanian historical provinces
- Wallachia, Transylvania and Moldova -,
Mihai Viteazul the Brave
in his letters).

Petrache Poenaru (1799-1885)
was an amazing personality.

Firstly he was a secretary of Tudor Vladimirescu (1786-1821),
who led the Romanian Revolution of 1821 (in which he and his army
conquered Bucharest for almost three months and convinced the Ottoman Empire
to accept again Romanian rulers over the Romanian countries),
a period of time in which Poenaru proposed this kind of flag
and initiated a revolutionary newspaper.

Then he studied in Vienna and Paris,
invented the fountain pen in France,
and, returning to Romania,
he became an elite pedagogue and a co-founder of fundamental institutions.

However, I suppose that the reason for which
that Metro Station was named after him
consists not only in his prodigious career,
but also in the fact that he was the first Romanian man
who described a trip by train (England, 1831).

Regarding the Romanian tricolor,
it became the official flag of the provisory government of the Romanian Land
during the Revolution of 1848,
and the official flag of United Romania in 1861.

The Romanian tricolor knew also a moment of artistic culmination
thanks to a song by Ciprian Porumbescu (1853-1883,
composer, violinist, pianist, conductor, poet, revolutionary,
and because of a special circumstance,
author of the music for the hymn of… Albania!),
whose statue I photographed in the Herastrau Park.

In the original variant,
he described the colors of the Romanian flag:

“Red is the fire which crosses
My heart full of longing…”

“Yellowish like the proud sun
Will be our future…”

“And blue is the faith
For the nation that we love…”

In other variant of this song
the lyrics are
(sorry for my modest translations without rhythm and rhyme,
I just hope that three other pictures by Valentin Grigore,
which will follow them,
with red, yellow and blue in the sky,
would excuse me):

“I know three colors in the world,
Which I love as sacred jewel,
They are colors of old fame,
Remembering a brave people.

As long as in the sky and in the world
These three colors will be,
We will have an imposing name
And an imposing future.

Red is the fire of bravery,
Sacrifices that never perish,
Yellow, the gold of the field,
And blue our sky…”

Before the Christmas of 2015,
I saw a Bucharestian boulevard artificially lit by the colors of the Romanian flag
(right near the astronomical observatory of the Children Palace)
and, incidentally, the Crowned Moon very close.

This made me remember that the current Romanian coat of arms
does not include the representation of the crown made by King Carol I
from guns used during the independence war (1877-1878).

So that I composed a supplementary stanza
(or rather a mini-astro-photo-poem, or cosmopoem)
in the spirit of Ciprian Porumbescu’s Tricolor
(inspired also by Mihai Eminescu’s “What I wish you, sweet Romania”).

My Dear Romania, I wish you
A gold future, like a Crowned Moon,
And I hope this future over your three colors
Will come very soon!

And, thinking that the Romanian coat of arms contains
the Sun, the Moon and the planet Venus,
I prefer to end this project with an astrophotographic poem by Valentin Grigore,
including all these three heavenly bodies
among the (red, yellow and blue) colors of the sky.

HEAVENLY COLORS FOR THE ROMANIAN TRICOLOR

HEAVENLY COLORS
FOR THE ROMANIAN TRICOLOR