Gent

Damsel Mamuca

excerpt Doctor Tucia, a young man of about twenty-three or twenty-four, tall, slender, swarthy, with a crooked nose, big eyes and bushy brows, and a pretty well outlined forehead, had one of those faces that are likeable and seem beautiful at first sight, especially to someone

Love Asylum And Pharmacy

excerpt Our first poets (the Vacarescus, Milu, Conachi and others) were experts in erotic pathology, the maladies induced by love. But the true physician erotologist appears to have been Anton Pann. The Love Asylum attempted to cure precisely that kind of ailment. The enamored

Turks, Germans, Americans... And Other Nationalities

An event that happened several years ago and has turned, in time, into an urban legend, goes like this: the employees of a German-owned media trust had become lazy and unruly, would come to work when, and if, they felt like it, and would actually work only between two coffee

Memoirs Of A Witness

I was born and I spent my childhood in the capital of the country that is called Romania, a state that at that time had prided itself for about a decade with the name of Greater Romania, which was a creation of the preceding generation, but also the outcome of a long series

La Tzigane

Gais Bohémiens, d'où venez-vous?Béranger She's softly walking by with sylph-like grace,Her ample skirts unfold in gliding pleatsAs she moves lithely, at a hurried pace,Svelte as a lily, through unending streets.  Her dainty foot, arched elegantly, keenTo travel

The Dynamic Equivalence Of Gypsy Fashion

Gianina lu' Manşonică of Sinteşti interviewed by Tita Chiper Our host's courtyard could be best described as transition in progress, accurately preserving each of its successive stages: it begins with two run-down foreign cars, and ends with an ashen tent proudly

The Violin Player Ion Voicu

It is hard to say when the Gypsies came to Romania for the first time, and then settled for good, but the oldest documents date from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when the royal charters mentioned the fiddler slaves, sold alongside the dependencies and objects from

Portrait Of An Artist: Bolek Majerik

Somewhere in Bucovina, away from the madding crowd, there lies a village populated only by Polish successors of emigrants from Czadec. Attested in the 19th century, Plesca village, although separated from the ancestors' values, preserves their language, traditions and

The Wild Wine Gallery

excerpt Bunthe had thought it appropriate to put up their two unexpected guests from Bucharest with Father Calist. The villagers were saying they had got lucky. The weather was beautiful, spring was coming. The sun shone as if it was already April. The wildflowers that

Hans's Wife

Hans (some people called him Hanz, or Franz, others Krantz like the cake, and others didn't even take the trouble to call him that much) had a wife who towered over him by a full head, and had a truly horse-like face. Her legs were long and slender, and seemed to lack

Love Thy Neighbor

excerpts . . . Chaplin. Einstein, Rubinstein, Chagall, Spinoza. I summon these exalted spirits above all because their proximity feels good; their genius, both innocent and supple, has a wholesome quality about it, and their absence from any intellectual banquet worthy

Popa Nan Alley In New Orleans

I was about 6 years old when I heard that Hitler refused to congratulate Jesse Owens at Berlin Olympics. I am one of those who knew that Hitler was the hideous name of a bad man, and Jesse Owens – a kind Negro who ran faster and jumped further than anybody. Hitler could