Ares

If ever I ventured to write a treatise on the savoir vivre, I would not neglect to address, in an entire chapter, the art of whiling away. It seems to me that this type of happiness – which is, equally, an admirable instrument of knowledge – has long been forgotten.

CHAPTER 12 – THE PRESENT SPIRITUAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ROMANIAN PEOPLE Even when the villager's household doesn't come down to the worst poverty image, the house and the things around have an expression of ephemeral, of provisional. It is made of wood, set

The 'Bulevard' blazes with all its luminous signboards and resembles for just a minute 42nd Street, but it's only playing a game; it just wanted to play at being New York on a 100-meter stretch; in Bucharest, yesterday is quickly forgotten, today doesn't

There's moths cooking in the lampshade… the spider web connects the bed sheet to the floor……in my bed of planks, with silk bedding, with swan down… From: arian21x@yahoo. comTo: flu_viu_mm@yahoo. com A (neo)bohemian is living in Bucharest and doesn't imagine

The bohemia, the obnoxious, damned bohemia kills and often not only figuratively. My stomach, for example, stood defeated, alongside with the bowels, the sphincters, the liver, the brains and in consequence all inspiration, exactly on Friday, the deadline for my article.

excerpt The loaded boats – from time to time you can hear the thumping of a strong fish striking against the freshly tarred wood – are lined up in the narrow canal, towed by Michea's tug. Come on, you dark-bay horse, take me to my beloved, don't tarry! Timosca

Just as there comes a time for getting married and for retiring, there also comes a time for the sublime. After one has knocked together some fortune, he starts thinking about growing rich spiritually, too. . . It just won't do to own a dwelling with an inner staircase.

On some days I feel universal when listening to Hora în căruţă (Jig in the Cart); I can even picture a cart then, all its joints rattling among the frozen missiles of the world. I get dizzy and a teardrop warms up the Murmansk under my eyelids. Hora Stacatto (Stacatto

excerpt Maria had come to town during the war, leaving her native Tântava, and managed to find a job as apprentice for Verona Tailor's Shop, along with her sister Vasilica. The tailor's shop was located behind ARO building, stuck right on the white painted house,

Minimal Joys  To fully take delight in minimal joys – here is one of the irreducible experiences of joy in the East of Europe before 1989. The minimal joys mustn't be confounded with the simple joys. It is one thing to enjoy a piece of hot bread and a glass of wine

excerpt  Never have I felt more keenly all that separates us from the West than in a summer afternoon spent in the Versailles gardens. In the park full of Greek memories: Apollo's Pool, that of Latona, in which the superposed arrangement of the gardens that mount towards

excerpt Two or three years had passed in a very happy atmosphere, the only years of my childhood that stayed with me clearly. I was 11. Chira was 15 and I stayed with her all the time, with a voluptuousness that I was to understand only later. I followed her, like a dog,