Poeti

The Psychology Of The Romanian People (1907)

Foreword The few words that I put as motto at the beginning of this book can be translated like this: God must have had a hidden plan for this people that the western states rediscovered on the banks of the Danube and adopted like Pharaoh's daughter adopted Moses.

I May Count Myself As Having Been Born Under A Lucky Star

As early as my years of instruction, while at The Academy of Music in Bucharest – as part of the group of the grand and incomparable professional singer and mentor Constantin Stroescu (Enrico Caruso's partner in Boston, 1915, in Leoncavallo's Pagliacci) – destiny

Dream, Poetry, Lacework And The Great Congenial

I can almost hear Gellu Naum saying: I fell on the pavement on account of the old tree roots which have heaved it. There was a smell of putrid leaves. And of putrid earth. I could not lift myself up. From somewhere, came a cur of a dog. 'You want grass,' I asked.

Gellu Naum

(1. 08. 1915-29. 09. 2001) Gellu Naum (1915-2001) was the only writer pertaining to the historical Romanian surrealist avant-garde who survived, rather untouched but also more or less unheard, the vicissitudes of a half a century of Communist rule. He started publishing

Writers In Troubled Waters

Those writers obsessed by the form, which they do not hesitate to convert into a norm, are too well familiar with the pain that accompanies the process of completing a page in a duly controlled, stylish, manner. Ultimately, one writes on waters, since all messages are, from

The Destiny Of Old-Court Philanderers

In a recent French translation Old-Court Philanderers have made quite a sensation. Different from Panait Istrati whose epic caught our attention, Mateiu I. Caragiale is not so good at describing a certain medium; his force lies in his rhythm, his intimate thrill, his sentence

Mateiu I. Caragiale

Mateiu Caragiale left us a literary heritage, fragmentary in its outlook that puzzled and amazed through its originality, through an appetite for mystery it seemed to originate in, through the secret inspiration that fed it and through its old-fashioned lyricism which was

Algazy & Grummer

[1]Algazy is an old, loveable, toothless, smiling old man; his beard is shaven and silky, beautifully displayed on a grid, screwed up under his chin and enclosed with barbed wire… Algazy does not speak any European language… If you wait for him, however, at dawn, when

Bridge Over Dry Land

This issue is dedicated to some of the most significant bizarre, atypical figures in Romanian literature. Although it consists of a selection of literary sketches and fragments of novels, it can be best described as an anthology of twentieth-century poetic prose, stretching

Iberian Sights

excerpt In 1846, M. Kogalniceanu travels to France and Spain (Notes sur l'Espagne). The recollection of Moldavia lingers with him at the opposite end of the continent. I have studied Spain a great deal, he writes to I. Ghica, a very curious country whose language,

Altitude For Money

Noticing this peculiarity of the traveler abroad, the great institutions, from governments to tourist companies, established tariffs according to the altitude. Climbing the stairs up to the top of Saint Peter cathedral in Rome costs 5000 Italian pounds. Climbing up to 1900

The Transylvanian Pilgrim

excerptsVienna, December 1838 Extra Hungariam non est vita, si est vita, non est ita.  Vienna and Bucharest! Oh, what a difference between these two cities! Like the sun and the planets is this Capital surrounded by adequate corollaries stretching to the margins of the