I Have Been To New China
excerptsAlthough if you observe it partially and with amusement the Chinese landscape may look like any other landscape, the fundamental impression is of being on another planet. The soil suggests here that the matter froze quickly while boiling and it stood still in dramatic
The Romanian Death Iconography Or A Different Kind Of Assisted Death
In the field of iconography the rhetoric of the end manifested itself initially as a history of silences, the absence of the motif being possibly equally significant as its presence since, as Michel Vovelle demonstrated, images interest us as expression of a selective, oblique
The Black Spider
After the last act, with the collar of the raincoat raised, hiding the flowers picked up from the stage by the flyman, he was the last to go out in the street. The doors were closing on the dark halls. The square was empty. The light bulbs threw a bluish and so sad a light
Traviata On The Grass
excerpt When I first met her, she said she adored Pablo Neruda's poetry and La Fontaine's erotic fables, which are un petit secret délicieux and, once a month, she would listen to a fragment of Le Petit Prince, interpreted by Gérard Philippe. She also told me
The Russian Woman
excerpt The more we drew near the little hamlet, the more I felt in my heart the finger of a tremor stirring up the layers of tranquility. And although I tried to shake off this unwanted mood, my eyes were looking round stealthily, for the hillock we would climb, on which
My Peaceful, Multiethnic Village
I saw the light of day in an atypical village of Bucovina. It was a multiethnic village, a kind of summary of Europe. A European Union avant la lettre. It is there, I believe, that a direction in my life was traced, an ecumenical dominant feature, one of understanding of
Ukrainians
The Ukrainians from Maramures and Bucovina – the GuzulsThe Ukrainian settlements in northern Moldavia and Maramures, situated in areas neighboring the Ukrainian ethno-linguistic massif and its prolongation, are the oldest in the country. Archeological and linguistic testimonies
Khazar Jews. Romanian History And Ethnography
excerpts Motto: It is known that, when a people is about to disappear, first its high society disappears, and with it the literature. (Milorad Pavici, The Khazar Dictionary) Lazar Saineanu and his studies in folklore. An ethnographic controversyLazar Saineanu was a very
Plush Plumbeous
excerpt PLUSH PLUMBEOUS RETURNS TO THE TOWN OF MORE-THAN-A-WEE-BIT Once upon a time, there was a place. It was formless and nameless, and no one had yet travelled through it on the tram. At that time, hundreds of thousands of abandoned dolls had begun to wander hither and
Andilandi - Vlad's Journey To The Other Realm
excerpt THE OTHER REALM To those who may wonder who or what Andilandi can be, I will tell that it is not a child. As I will tell them that it is not the name of a cuddling pet or of some computer game (at least not yet). Andilandi is not even the name of a remarkably
Whirligig With Wing
excerpt I May the flame of Saint Vitus strike you, bubblehead! and the slaps shot out in pair like two barrels firing in unison. The one to give them was a very upset Simion Mandruta, and the one to receive them was his rascal of a son, Toader, thin like a rake, fair-haired,