Homeless Bears And “Stupid Idiots”
on the fight between the hulky body of the hunted and the narrow mind of the hunterYou're a stupid idiot!-thus sounded the insult addressed by a desperate man to a taxi driver, before my very own eyes. The text you are about to read is governed by this paradoxically
The Legendary Wolf: A Shy Killer
The one and only wildlife reserve for wolves in Romania is near Zarnesti, Brasov County. Still, it is weird that, in a country where the wolf threat is used to make children behave themselves and Little Red Riding Hood is a fairy tale almost assimilated as folklore, a reserve
Urban Memory: Museums Of The Romanian Capital
1st row: National History Museum, Old Court Museum, Archeology Museum (detail), National Museum of Art2nd row: Collections Museum, Zambaccian Museum, Theodor Aman Museum, Gh. Tattarescu Museum 3rd row: Storck Museum, Romanian Peasant Museum, Astronomical Observatory (detail),
Playing With The Past
A Word with Two Meanings We invent words, then let ourselves be subjugated by them. There would be no knowledge without words, but it is words again that grow into independent entities, obstacles that come between us and the real world. They move us closer to and at the
The International George Enescu Festival Tradition And The Romanian Athenaeum - The Symbol Building For Romanian Musical Culture
In the heart of Romania's Capital stands the monumental building of the Romanian Athenaeum, the symbolic edifice of the most significant musical events ever since 1889 and, at the same time, the cradle of the International George Enescu Festival. There is no musical
George Enescu At The Beginning Of A New Millennium
The history of world music has witnessed many spectacular overturns in the hierarchy of values, when names of purely local interest whose death was not even announced in an obituary (Johann Sebastian Bach) became world famous personalities a century later. Quite often, internationally
Nicolae Iorga And Music
It comes as no surprise that a genuinely encyclopedic spirit of Nicolae Iorga's caliber, conversant with history, literature, religion, church, army, commerce, education, trades, guilds, arts, etc. , etc. , should be passionate about music. His existence was markedly
The Impossible Escape
Preface In April 1990, I handed over the volume The Silent Escape to the Secretariat of the French publishing house La Découverte in Paris. On September the 1st, the same year, the book was in the bookshops. It's my first book and I don't consider it literature.
To Vote Or Not To Vote
Discussing the character of a nation is as complicated as describing a species of insects from prehistoric times. How can one enumerate its features? How can one analyze its morphology? How can one categorize its behavior? Any large-scale analysis will in fact reduce the
The Thirties. The Romanian Extreme Right
Chapter IIROMANIANISM AND AUTOCHTHONISMexcerpts Continuing the clash of ideas of the previous decades, the 1930s too witnessed a confrontation on the evolution formula of the Romanian make-up. Two directions were pitted against each other. One favorable to the maintenance
Music - A Mirror Of Specific Romanian Psychology
It has been justly stated by foreign researchers that the melancholy of the Romanian folk doina, transposed by the brilliant George Enescu into learned creation, in the characteristic and unmistakable lyricism of the people at the curvature of the Carpathians and the mouth
Mioritic Fatalism
I don't know how it happened, but I have been hearing lately, in various contexts, the well-known adage of our Mioritic fatalism. The meaning was approximately the same every time: nothing is done and nothing can be done because the Romanian is a fatalist, resigned,