Europe

The Woman Painter Of Modern Life

Women artists (originally women-painters) became a reality in Romanian culture only by the turn of the 20th century. Barely having an artistic tradition of the western kind (that is, academic), the national cultural milieu in the 19th century was rather deprived of a professionally

Tonia

from Don Juan CHAPTER VI Sometimes he would run into Tonia by chance. This is one way of putting it, because he often walked the streets close to her house, he went to a beer joint two corners away, sometimes he was in the park nearby speaking kindly, helping small groups

The Filigree Of Genius

The Secret Correspondence between Mihai Eminescu and Veronica Micle Halfway through last year, a genuine editor's bomb was being thrown on our cultural market: the Polirom publishing house based in Iaşi had issued – and was launching on 15 June – a volume of secret

Fetiţa (Girlie)

I saw an ad in newspapers about a trip to the mountains and I got in without knowing anybody. About 30 of us crowded in a big race vehicle, so boys and girls, parcels, cigarette smoke, and jokes mixed up together at random. A certain Biţă was speaking in my ear untiringly.

Iulia Hasdeu: A Queen's Diary

The bibliography of my works I threw into the pyre included a 125-pages psychoanalytical study about Iulia Hasdeu. I had discovered her diaristic notes at the State Archives. They were then, and still are, a novelty, and perhaps a sensational thing; I'm talking about

Self And Portrait

Like diaries and memoirs, portraits and especially self-portraits represent a favorite means of inserting the creator's self into history. One may eventually infer, if not directly grasp a writer's or a painter's positions and opinions about his milieu and

At Home We Speak In Whispers

* Excerpts from an interview with prose writer, political analyst and journalist Stelian TĂNASE (Observator cultural no. 121, 18-24 June 2002) Why did you choose to publish At Home We Speak in Whispers at this particular moment? Books come and go in a writer's imagination.

Eliade's American Experience

It is well known that Mircea Eliade lived numerous experiences of otherness and exile in countries such as India, France, Portugal, America, but it is only in the last that he remained for twenty-seven years. Eliade's perspective on America is somehow indebted to the

Memoirs

vol. II: 1937 – 1960 XXIIII begin to discover America… Chicago, December 10, 1984. For a whole fifteen minutes I have been standing by my window, staring blankly out into the street, without even understanding why. I got up from my desk because I thought it had started

Diary 1929-1961

1945 January 1st Absolutely alone, this Eve. First time ever, I imagine. Listening to the King's speech and to general Rădescu's[i]. Nonetheless, kicked off the evening by a prayer: asked God for PEACE, serenity, calmness. At the depth of my soul: melancholy,

Light And Shade

excerpt THUNDERSTRUCK A few days after having met George Enescu on the road to Peleş, after dinner, I was on my divan smoking a fragrant oriental cigarette next to Princess Maria, resplendent in her long, pink veils; she was knitting without seeing the work, in the semidarkness

Diary

Iaşi, July 12, 1942. We get news from Bucharest that Marshal Ion Antonescu is seriously ill in Predeal. All kinds of versions about his disease, general anemia or the consequences of an old syphilis, so he had to undergo malaria treatment. Meanwhile, it seems that the old