PiE

Memoirs Of A Witness

I was born and I spent my childhood in the capital of the country that is called Romania, a state that at that time had prided itself for about a decade with the name of Greater Romania, which was a creation of the preceding generation, but also the outcome of a long series

Vasile Socoliuc

Vasile Socoliuc was born on August 7, 1937, at Tisauti, Suceava County. After taking courses at the Fine Arts School in Bucharest, he attended the N. Grigorescu Fine Arts Institute, graphics department. He worked as a graphic artist with the Publishing House for World Literature,

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For me, to draw means to tear something out of the unknown, to exhibit a piece of inner life, to put it in images. The materialization of this effort demands honesty, first of all. Yet, this is not enough, for you also need continuous labor in order to support creation.

Hutsuls And Their Embroideries

Hutsuls or Huculs, a group of Ukrainian highlanders, live in the Carpathian mountains, to the South-East of the Boykos, a region bordering on the territory of the Romanians. They differentiate themselves from the surrounding Slavic peoples by physiognomy, and by their traditional

My Grandfather Mehmed Ali

My grandfather Mehmed Ali was an old-fashioned Turk. He wore a long beard and the traditional Turkish costume. Each morning he would sit down next to the charcoal, the earthenware pot filled with live coals, sip his coffee and puff his long-stemmed chibouk. He would often

The Ethnogenesis Of The Dobrujan Turks

The definition of the genesis, as well as the delimitation of the area where the Turkish people was formed, and from where they spread from Central Asia to the Mediterranean Sea, is still a controversial issue among specialists. Discussions between Turkology scholars usually

Doja's Horse, Spek's Tractor And The Missing Hook

Spek Jr. , from Satu Nou, had a tractor called Doja. Since nothing in the world is fortuitous, the name of that machine was not fortuitous either. Spek Sr. , a filthy Jew, as he was called by some people from Iosefin, was a fervent advocate of communism and had been hurdled

A-Peakin' An' A-Pinin'

Of the one I love, a songI will sing my whole life long. Sing, I will – sick to the bone,Like a loser, lest I'd moan.  She was daddy's precious gem,Wish I kissed her tunic's hem,Her red lips apt to inviteDaddy's teeth to take a bite. Oh, she was so

Dilitufan

* Once upon a time there was an emperor, half snake, half man. This emperor had a daughter. She was locked in a room, so as not even the sun could touch her, until she was twenty-two. At that time, a Gypsy came to the pond to catch fish. He caught two fish, the kings of

The Dynamic Equivalence Of Gypsy Fashion

Gianina lu' Manşonică of Sinteşti interviewed by Tita Chiper Our host's courtyard could be best described as transition in progress, accurately preserving each of its successive stages: it begins with two run-down foreign cars, and ends with an ashen tent proudly

Four Life Stories

At the Outskirts of Giurgiu*At the outskirts of Giurgiu there was a Turkish village, and that village was called Selima. When the Turks left the city, a hundred and a half years ago, we, the gypsies who tinned the pails, continued to live in that village. We remained in

The Violin Player Ion Voicu

It is hard to say when the Gypsies came to Romania for the first time, and then settled for good, but the oldest documents date from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when the royal charters mentioned the fiddler slaves, sold alongside the dependencies and objects from