Ordin

Safta was a victim of her past of love affairs and amorous generosity, but also of the human decay from the madhouse times and from all times. The former chanteuse had decided, the night when she ordered the enamoured shopkeeper to break the fiddles of the fiddlers, to give

Grasp the tray of each dayWith both handsAnd join the line passingBefore this counter.  There's more than enough sunFor everybody,More than enough sky,More than enough moon.  From the earth arise the aromasOf luck, happiness, and glory,Tickling your nostrilsEnticingly.

Have you noticed the relaxed way in which we actually re-create ourselves in our times off? Dem lieben Gott die Tage stehlen – Germans refer to the waste of time as to a theft committed in the face of God. I remember an episode during my student years, when, at the close

Dedicated to Ol' Eugen Hang on, ol' man: they caught once a 450-kilo sheatfish! It was nine meters long! They used a sheep for bait! There'd been ducks and geese disappearing from the Danube, but when it took away two children…That's what Ol'

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

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

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

The dancing tea partyGuţă Mereuţă was indeed waiting, sad, with a proboscidean long nose. He couldn't dance. He had nothing in appearance or in speech that could have attracted a woman. His eyes pushed aside, towards the temples, by the broad root of the olfactory

The Lumière Brothers' toy, perfected year after year, challenges Thalia and Melpomene and the people of Bucharest take cinemas by storm. Businessmen are quick in smelling money, and thus many individuals whose energy used to be spent at the haberdasher's or on

excerpt Finally, one Sunday the old man decided that we should drive to the estate belonging to an uncle of mine in Arges, to Manesti, and spend three-odd days there. We had to leave early, so as to get there by noon. But since the old man had some kind of unexpected business,

The Bucharest people have the right, in the beautiful autumn days – especially on Sundays – to populate Victory Street, so that between 11 and 12 the carriage traffic becomes impossible. From Capsa and up to Palace Square, especially on the pavement, there is a true