Natura

Today, writers no longer bring up sex to shock bourgeois taste, as avant-garde authors used to a hundred years ago. Sex is regarded as a natural, even banal, thing, a fact of life like any other. Dilema veche, December 2004 by Cezar Paul-Bădescu

It is amazing how many children are begotten from the sentimental exultation that one or the other of their parents feel for a third person, another than the partner in the respective action, irrespective if the person in question be a man or a woman. Sometimes this third

excerpt He continued to walk towards the former Senate Square, his hand pressed against his jaw, still paralyzed from the aggression of the figurant, and the bizarre appearance of his General in that particular place. One blow after another. It was too much… It was indeed

Every summer the city on the hill is drowned in green, which explodes in the church park, at the Citadel and at the Cabin and the Grove, while the green willows of the River girdle the city. The summer of fir trees and willows flaps big, unseen wings in a fervor of lofty

excerpt Paul Dunca found himself asking not what has become of the baron, which would have been an equally ludicrous question, but at least still possible at the time, but:How is the baron?The girl burst into a loud laughter and that was her only answer, and Paul Dunca understood

excerpt I was half asleep in a somewhat uncertain state of mind (and of body)… A vague and – at first – terribly tortuous state of wakefulness was gently falling over me; then, the same confounded state came back floating over me, translucent, like some veils unbraided

excerpt Sunday finally came. The rain had stopped falling. The patients were all taken out to get some fresh air. They were all sitting side by side in their wheelchairs under a narrow canopy made of sullied cloth that was once yellow but had now been washed out by the

excerpt  When I came back from the town, I found a note on my table: Come to the library! I met Maitreyi, who told me, terrified: Khokha knows!I tried to look undisturbed and to persuade her that it didn't mean anything. Maitreyi stared at me, clasping my hands, as

excerpt Donna Alba reached the door with her nimble, high pace. Outside, in the hall of the floor, I caught up with her. I switched on the light and moved my hand around, trying, finding no other way, to delay her from the straight, irrevocable path that I had traced out

Chapter 5. The first and last nightsOne evening they were returning from a concert. It was getting late, but they still lingered on the streets, in spite of the cold, damp weather outside. They wouldn't part with each other after the two beautiful hours they had spent

excerpt  Stefan Valeriu left early in the morning and didn't come back until late at night, after dinner. He wandered through several neighboring villages, smoked a lot and talked, very earnestly, about the harvest and the weather with some peasants he met. 'Perhaps

excerpts  So closeSuddenly, the interwar people make the body visible: men are allowed to shave off not only their beards, but also their moustaches – a facial change that overthrows an aesthetic canon with centuries-old resistance – and women, punished and ridiculed