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Echoes: Excerpts From The Farewell Concert

In an obituary published in the Tages Anzeiger of Zurich, Mario Gerteis draws a suggestive portrait of Celibidache in his youth. A nervous fiery ball, halfway between histrionics and insight, between passion and obsession. His dark locks hanging over his face in disorder,

The Romanian School Of Conductors

It is no secret to anyone that in Romania every person who has a good voice and musical talent has sung at least once, in his or her youth, in a choir. People say about Banat, the western region on the boundary with Hungary and Yugoslavia that it is the land of choirs, because

Traditional And Modern

Showing the electors' arrival in Frankfurt due to the crowning of Joseph II as King of Rome, Goethe mentions the fact that among the most obedient and distinguished personalities some had ridden to Frankfurt according to the old traditional custom, while others had

P.S. With Victor Brauner (This Is How I Would Like To Write)

With immense delicacy and great scrupulousness he [Gellu Naum] would each time talk about Victor Brauner – the friend from his youth years he had met on the occasion of an exhibition opened at Mozart Hall in Bucharest. It was 1935. The twenty-year old youth, Gellu Naum,

Dream, Poetry, Lacework And The Great Congenial

I can almost hear Gellu Naum saying: I fell on the pavement on account of the old tree roots which have heaved it. There was a smell of putrid leaves. And of putrid earth. I could not lift myself up. From somewhere, came a cur of a dog. 'You want grass,' I asked.

The Passage

1. You open one door and there appears another, then another, and another, up to the last one – which does not even exist – and thus you find yourself at the first door – which does not even exist – and you make a round, once more, unto familiar places, as what you

Writers In Troubled Waters

Those writers obsessed by the form, which they do not hesitate to convert into a norm, are too well familiar with the pain that accompanies the process of completing a page in a duly controlled, stylish, manner. Ultimately, one writes on waters, since all messages are, from

A Day Of Drunkenness

Jean Clement is a distinguished, refined gentleman, always wearing gloves, striped trousers, and a bowler hat. He is a machines buff: in his cell, straddling his cane, he drives an invisible car, imitating the sound of the klaxon with his voice. When approached, he feigns

Benjamin Fundoianu (Fondane)

Real name: Benjamin WexlerBorn in Iasi, 1898. Boarding school in Iasi. Debut at 16 in O. Densusianu's The New Life magazine (1914). He reads some of his poems to Ion Minulescu during the refuge (Iasi). He establishes the Island avant-garde theatre (with Armand Pascal).

Mircea Cărtărescu About The Modernity Of Romanian Literature

* It's not easy being a Romanian writer. There is a double misunderstanding regarding the perception of Romanian culture abroad. Before referring to it, I must say that the idea of national writer is itself a misunderstanding. If in sport a sort of benign vanity makes

Diary

excerptsWednesday, September 30, 1936 Sunday and Monday at Roman. I left the place most disquieted. I had the feeling I should never be able to rejoin life again. Everything seemed futile, absurd (…)Now it's all behind me. In a way, it went clear out of my mind.

The Nightmarish Dreaming Of Max Blecher

The reverie aims to take hold of imaginary territories when the real ones are missing. Max BLECHER In his novels and especially in Occurrences in Current Unreality this process of dreaming turns into an account of an immediate unreality. I-mediated to be more accurate,