2007 News Archive

AMBASSADOR KIRBY OPENS LITERATURE EXHIBIT IN CHISINAU

July 10, 2007

Ambassador Kirby at “American Literature in the Bassarabian Space, 1918-2007” exhibition

On Tuesday, July 10, Ambassador Michael Kirby visited the headquarters of the Moldovan Writers’ Union to help open an unprecedented exhibition of the works of various American writers translated into Romanian and Russian in Moldova from 1918 to 2007.  The exhibition named “American Literature in the Bassarabian Space, 1918-2007” was funded by the U.S. Embassy in Chisinau.  The Romanian Ambassador to Molodva was also present at the event, attended by about sixty members of the Union. 

The period covered by the exhibition spans an era during which the area known as Bassarabia, part of which became today’s Moldova, went through tremendous permutations and redifinitions.  In his remarks, Ambassador Kirby highlighted the role of literature in recording such changes or becoming the voice of its times.  He focused on the example of one of the highlighted authors, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, to illustrate how his work recorded the changes through which America went in the mid-1800s.