Remember
Ceci est un fait-divers atroce. Les Mémoires du Bal-Mabille There are dreams we seem to have lived sometime long ago, somewhere, as well as things we lived about which we ask whether they were not a dream. That's what I was thinking of yesterday evening when, rummaging
Occurrences In Current Unreality
I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire. P. B. Shelley When I stare at a fixed point upon the wall at length, it sometimes happens that I no longer know who I am, nor where I am. On such occasions I experience my lack of identify from afar, as if for a moment I had become a
Bucharest - Memory Walled-In
Architecture represents a means of interrogating history. Rather ominous, it is to be feared, when the question applies to the Romanian capital. Why so? The way Bucharest has been subjected to transformations in the last century accounts for the living changes affecting
Three Controversial Books
What is one supposed to understand by image and to what extent should one take it to heart? Physiologically, the image is the consciousness one is left with about an absent object. It is, therefore, the opposite of perception, i. e. representation of a present object. In
Bucharest Of Yore
A thousand years ago on the spot where Bucharest stands today there rose a town called Perun; this Perun was the god of fire and thunder with the ancient Slavs, featured with a golden face, silver hair and beard. It replaced the Greeks' Zeus and the Roman Jove. The
How To Screen A Book
Arhip is giving advice to a young film director:What are your grounds in selecting a book for a film version?First of all, it has to be visual, easy to put on film. Wrong! proclaims Arhip. If it is visual, everyone will claim that putting it on film is a piece of cake, a
The Larva
It was almost closing time. I guess you all know what a horrible time that is! The waiters are all in a hurry not to miss the last tram that leaves Balcescu Square at ten past one; they are therefore busily collecting the tablecloths while the customers are still eating,
Long Autumn
In our parts, at Jassy, autumn starts late in May and lasts until Christmas. There is no summer in Jassy. If from time to time, winter did not come we could say we have only autumn over here. Nice weather begins with foul smells, green flies and heat. Then it turns nasty.
Eugen Ionesco - Interviews
UNDER THE QUESTION MARK: MAN If you were asked to portray yourself as you did in your books, diaries, or in Present Past, Past Present, how would you introduce yourself? Eugène IONESCO: It is very complicated. I don't know. I don't know who I am. I don't
About Drama
Honestly, Corneille bores me. We probably only love him (without believing in him) out of habit. We are forced to. They imposed him on us in school. I cannot stand Schiller. For a long time I thought Marivaux' plays were unserious games. Musset's comedies are thin,
About Literature
I see literature as a mere social occupation and those who do literature as a mere guild, such as shoemaking, binding books, law, politics, carpentry, and so on. No other guild is as vain and presumptuous as the poets'. The shoemaker does not claim he does a metaphysical
Museums: What They Are And What They Must Be. The Example Of America
We think too often that a museum is a repository where you discard all sorts of objects. Arts, history, natural sciences, technology, curiosities. You place exhibits from all these domains into bright and spacious halls; you range them nicely one next to the other and sometimes