To Have Seen The Genius Loci

Stories from Giungi, Sânziene Night, Nan's Living Mountain

genius loci: Latin: 1. the guardian spirit of a place, 2. the distinctive character or atmosphere of a place with reference to the impression that it makes on the mind.

Sânziene Night: “each year, on the 24th of June, Romanians celebrate the pagan holiday of Sânziene, a feast of love and happiness, quite similar to the famous Midsummer Night, when the skies are opening and miracles happen and the entire world becomes a magical realm.”¹

Giungi: A Village in Northern Romania

I hadn’t planned for this, but I stayed at my grandparents’ countryside house in Giungi on the 24th of June, during Sânziene Night. Giungi is a village in Romania, situated near the borders with Hungary and Ukraine. According to Wikipedia, it has 138 residents and two churches.

I haven’t visited this house since 2020 when the pandemic hit, six months after my grandmother died. Grandpa died in March this year, a few months before the house was completely renovated and ready to be lived in again. I wonder what’s left behind of the genius loci if the house is completely renovated and the people who lived and loved there are gone.

Grandpa loved this patch of land and this place; he was born here and lived here most of his life. He used to tell me again and again when I was a kid, “There’s no other air like this one here,” referring to its freshness, cleanliness, and maybe to something that I could never completely grasp.

Genius Loci

In classical Roman religion, a genius loci was the protective spirit of a place. It was often depicted in religious iconography as a figure holding attributes such as a cornucopia, patera (libation bowl), or snake.

Over time, this concept has been perceived more as the character of a place, a unique atmosphere that a place embodies. One of the most comprehensive books on this topic is Christian Norberg-Schulz’s Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture.

“In general we have to emphasize that all places have character, and that character is the basic mode in which the world is “given”. To some extent, the character of a place is a function of time. (…) The character is determined by the material and formal constitution of the place. We must therefore ask: how is the ground on which we walk, how is the sky above our heads, or in general; how are the boundaries which define the place.”

I wonder how much of this genius loci is the sensorial and cognitive experience of a place, one that we get when we first interact with it, and how much our perception of the place’s character changes when we interact with the history and culture of the place over long periods of time. When we choose to return to this place again and again.

So, I wonder, do all places have this “genius” noticeable at first sight? Or do we need time and rituals to be able to grasp this “genius”?

For example, in order to truly know the character of a place, do we need to spend a long time forming a relationship with the place, seeing it through the seasons, noticing what changes and what forever stays the same? I cannot think of a better example than Nan Shepherd’s relationship with the Cairngorm Mountains, which she intimately explores in her book The Living Mountain.

“Shepherd was a localist of the best kind: she came to know her chosen place closely, but that closeness served to intensify rather than to limit her vision,” wrote Robert Macfarlane in the introduction to The Living Mountain.

Shepherd came to know the Cairngorms deeply. Slowly, over time, she returned again and again to this place, like visiting an old friend. This reminds me of Georgia O’Keeffe’s own relationship with Pedernal Peak, a prominent mesa near her home at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico: “It is my private mountain. God told me if I painted it enough, I could have it.”

Patrick Kavanagh, the poet of the Irish mundane, understood the importance of intimately knowing a place:

“To know fully even one field or one land is a lifetime’s experience. In the world of poetic experience it is depth that counts, not width. A gap in a hedge, a smooth rock surfacing a narrow lane, a view of a woody meadow, the stream at the junction of four small fields - these are as much as a man can fully experience.”

I believe that many people who get to intimately know a place, are “fierce see-ers,” as Robert Macfarlane beautifully puts it. Shepherd wrote:

“I knew when I had looked for a long time, that I had hardly begun to see.’

What is your most intimate relationship with a place?

I would like to say it’s Giungi for me, the remote place of my childhood, but only now am I starting to see its untetheredness more clearly. And my heart is full for unlocking this vision.

I used to spend almost every day having a morning coffee at Weinerei Forum in Berlin, a café/bistro one minute away from my home on Fehrbelliner Straße. There are many memories mapped to that place: long evenings with friends over wine and complimentary pasta, long mornings writing my essays, and afternoons watching the world go by. On the morning when I received the news that my grandma had died, I went to have a coffee on the open terrace of Weinerei Forum to process what had happened. I know that I considered this place special if my first impulse after getting such news was to leave my home and find comfort there.

When I left Berlin, I didn’t miss the city, but I missed places like Weinerei Forum, which witnessed my life unfolding in all possible ways.

Giungi, again.

Grandpa’s patch of land

I started writing this piece back home in The Hague and finished it today in Giungi. A few hours ago, we were visited by a villager, Emilia, also known as Mica, a woman in her eighties who was born here and has never left the village apart from occasional trips to nearby towns. I cherished her presence; she is strong, sharp, and remarkably optimistic, with a deep understanding of this place gained from witnessing its many seasons and the lives of countless people, including my grandparents, who are no longer with us.

The essence of this place resides deeply within her, prompting me to listen carefully and record her stories, which she recounted vividly, with enthusiasm.

How wonderful it would be to collect millions of stories and feelings from people about the places they intimately know, and to do so for as many people and places on Earth as possible. This, in essence, is why The Flâneurs Project came into being—to intricately chart, comprehend, and cherish places through the eyes of others.

1. https://rolandia.eu/en/blog/romanian-myths-legends/sanziene-the-summer-fairies