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How Modern Is the Modern Romanian Fantastic?

As everything modern, the fantastic mode, which seems to be still one of our great favorites in these last years of the modern millennium is to be defined through the series of transformations of the traditional forms of the fantastic art. In her excellent reference book

The Secret Of Dr. Honigberger

Einem gelang es – er hob den Schleier Goettin zu Sais. . . Novalis I One morning in the autumn of 1934, a messenger brought me a rather strange letter, adding he was waiting for an answer right then and there. The letter was from a lady, Mrs. Zerlendi, whose name I had

The Man In My Dream

In short?In short, right now, as soon as you get home, pack up your things. . . Tomorrow morning, on my way to the station, I'll drop by for five minutes: I'm gonna drag you along! Fifteen days of quietness, of fresh air, after a whole summer in this inferno will

Mînjoală's Inn

A quarter of an hour to Mînjoală's Inn. . . from there, to Popeştii‑de‑sus, a post mile: at an average ambling pace, an hour and a half. . . The horse is good. . . if I feed it at the inn and let it rest for three quarters of an hour. . . it keeps going.

The Gentle Whisper Of The Magic

I certainly am neither the first, nor the only person to notice that the fantastic appears as a distinctive feature of Nordic, non-Latin peoples, rather than of the meridional spirit. The solar, mercantile, skeptical-rationalist South, and the sanguine, outgoing, relativistic

On Multiculturalism

South Pacific, December 1999 To be a Romanian writer (therefore in the minority) in New Zealand! Ibi patria, ubi – wife. In New Zealand, I think about the confluence of our lives. We come from so far apart, we meet unexpectedly, we link our lives, our fates together.

The Couch Grass

Even if this was a long time ago, two of the phrases that remind me of her really bring her back to my mind. When her yard was filled with Gypsies, and – everybody knows this – such a thing happens often enough, because this is the way they go, in gangs, she would chase

On The Romanian Melting Pot

When King Béla of Hungary decided to invite the Saxons to settle in Transylvania, the land had been severely depopulated by the Mongol invasion. The Germans came from the dry lands of Northern Europe and found here what must have seemed to them sort of a Promised Land.

On Minorities' Literature

In Romania, no less than 18 minorities live alongside the majority population, having more or less weight. This has favored – especially in some cases – a very interesting and significant cultural melting pot process, the birth of an extremely rich and diversified cultural

Photographs - A Different Kind Of Bucharester Pedigree

7 January 1839: The Science Academy in Paris announced the arrival of a new art: photography. 39 days later, on 16 February 1839, the historic invention was reported in the Jassy magazine Albina Românească. The first camera – a daguerreotype – known and used in Bucharest

Bucharest As An Alternative Space

It may be said about some cities that they are theatrical; that – in other words – they look like a stage set. Take, for instance, Venice or Naples. It may be only an illusion, however, given a host of plays by Goldoni or Eduardo de Filippo whose plots revolve around

Recent Public Memorials In Bucharest: Paul Neagu's Century Cross

Paul Neagu's Century Cross was set up at Charles de Gaulle Plaza (the former TelevisionPlaza), Bucharest, in September 1997, as a memento of the 1989 anti-Communist riots. It is a six meter wide lenticular bronze disk with a large cross pattern on both faces made up