Ceausescu

The History Of Nothing: Contemporary Architecture And Public Space In Romania

Richard Rogers Partnership proposal, 1996People's House (Parliament) After 1989: Methods of researching the built environmentResearching Communist architecture is a tricky endeavor in contemporary Romania, where some major actors of that era are still alive, some even

Entrevista Con Mario Vargas Llosa

- ¡ Muy buenas tardes! ¿Como está Ud. , Sr. escribidor? (n. trad. – nombre arcáico que Mario Vargas Llosa usa en forma predilecta en vez del neologismo escritor. ) - Pues, muy bien. Mucho gusto, encantado de hablar con Ud. y con los amigos rumanos de allí. - Aquí,

The Eroticized Universe

The Bucharest Surrealist Group1939-1947* […] Madness, black humor, dreams, eroticism, revolt: if one cannot speak of Unu (One) and Alge (Algae) as surrealist magazines in the strict sense, these themes indicate however the increasing attraction of a number of Romanian

Says Petre Ţuţea

The Balkans are Europe's ass.  The Romanian language has complete virtues, that is, it can be the vehicle of anything spiritual created by man. It is very hard to use. With it, one may become an eagle or a lectern singer. The Romanian language has all the axiological

The Dialectics Of National Self-Criticism

Some time in the autumn of 1994, Sorin Alexandrescu asked in an interview in 22 magazine why, in the canonical battle between the various radical-democrat and nationalist structures of the opposition (and of the government), more attention is not paid to the real traditions

Romanian Diagnosis

excerpts There are quite a few psychological complexes which seem to shape nowadays the popular, maybe even intellectual mentalities and to badly distort people's behavior, as well as their political judgments. It won't hurt pointing our finger at them, speaking

Romania Between Transaction And Contract

In D. Draghicescu's terms, this transactional spirit (Cough up more, sir! – Knock some off, mister!, as a folk saying goes) is the legacy of the Orient, a stamp of the Levant on our past, present and, presumably, future. In this key, the transaction points to a polymorphous

The Nature And Texture Of Peoples

 I must admit I didn't quite understand in the beginning why, shortly after 1989, the Western mass-media has so hastily labeled us as suffering from a deep identity crisis. I was downright indignant: after having sadistically experimented Communism on us for half

Europe Has The Shape Of My Brain

*More than a century ago Europe was not yet known as a cultural construction, an intellectual day-dream, a heap of broken images, a copy in a world without originals. Artists tried to escape the big fortress ensconced in coal smog and torn by wars, social conflicts, and

Last Laugh

My plan for this little article had already taken shape. After having read all the materials, learned quite a few things therefrom, enjoyed the erudition, remembered some of my friends' passion for rare watches, phone cards or antiques, or my own childhood stamp, coin,

Barbu Slătineanu, A Lover Of Beauty And A Victim Of Bolshevism

Member of the Academy Barbu Slătineanu was one of those people that draw your attention at first sight. The first time I met him was by chance: I was a doctor and I went to see his brother-in-law, Playno, who lived in the same house on Obedenaru street. Ever since, I considered

Do Something, Be Somebody

The experimental artist Grigorescu Ion has forged himself some time ago out of the painter Ion Grigorescu. Indeed, in Romanian it is rather unusual for an adult to put his family name before the forename. Customarily, this happens in official documents or in school registers,