Paste

excerpt I was a boy around thirteen when I first learned how to wield a rifle – though I confess that, ever since, I have made no progress in this craft, quite the contrary, I dare say! I had accompanied my old man to Whitepond Baths, that had seen the cream of the crop

Photos by Dan Hayon excerpts My first adventure in the capital city, sometime in my early adolescence. Confusion and ecstasy, fear and the excitement of the unknown, as though in a foreign country where, strangely, everyone speaks my own language. A dizzying cocktail of

Government Palace in Victoriei Sq. a fragment from the novel Derapaj (Skid), Iaşi, Polirom 2006 Maria’s life glowed with a murky sort of splendor, her past, though committed to oblivion, constantly closing in on her and obscuring her thoughts like the spots of a solar

I no longer love Bucharest. I'm no longer hoping something can be done about this dump of Europe An interview with Mircea Cărtărescu by Ion Longin Popescu Slowly but surely, the old, historic Bucharest – the little that was left after Ceauşescu's demolishing

Fragmentos BATALLA FLORAL[1] Texto escrito con tinta en una hoja de papel. La batalla floral estaba en lo mejor aquel sábado (1894). . . y por haber oído repetidas veces tantas cosas sobre la misma, me había ido yo también para ver de que se trataba. . . Mi amigo

A Message to the International Surrealist Movement  We address ourselves to our surrealist friends scattered all over the world and, as in great shipwrecks, we indicate to them our exact location, at latitude 44° 5' North and longitude 26° East. The inexhaustible

The message addressed to international surrealism. Theoretical contributions and techniques proposed by the Romanian surrealists Between 1938-1940, two young Romanian poets, Gellu Naum and Gherasim Luca, were in Paris – Naum to study philosophy, and Luca as the precarious

The year 1900. Europe's countries are divided on the question: does the 20th century begin in 1900 or in 1901? Some opt for 1900, by virtue of the change in the figure of the hundreds. Others are partisans of 1901, for reasons of more sophisticated arithmetic. Particular

I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire. P. B. Shelley When I stare at a fixed point upon the wall at length, it sometimes happens that I no longer know who I am, nor where I am. On such occasions I experience my lack of identify from afar, as if for a moment I had become a

If you read travel notes by simple tourists or people on journalistic, cultural or political assignments, from the 1920s or 30s, if you peruse recurrent images about a Bucharest imprinted with evil or good charms, equally decrypted and encoded, moving and repulsive, you

It was common knowledge that Iacint Manoil was a lady-killer. He was so ugly that they were impressed. And so direct in his stupidity that he came over as honest. Like a millstone. He was an actor. Only those very beautiful or as ugly as sin can make a career in this profession.

It's all set! On Saturday I am to deliver a speech in the plenary meeting of the SPDRM. There's no way out: I did, in a moment of utter weakness, promise an old friend of mine, Mrs. Parigoridi – so it is now for me a matter of conscience, of honour, of heart