Roma

Bucharest Wit

In Romanian, Bucharest is a plural noun. This implies it is a multifaceted city, dazzling in its diversity. However, it is not a conglomerate of villages, of boroughs, like London or New York. There are not self-contained neighborhoods, each with its main street (High Street),

Chronicles Of An Optimist

excerpts NOISES OF THE CAPITAL For reasons I cannot exactly explain, the flow of ideas circulated by the independent press has strikingly dwindled to a mere trickle. One can only put it down to the times of fatigued irritation we are living through as we wait for the much

Magic Lantern Projections: A Dialogue With Octogenarian Actress Dina Cocea, Honorary Citizen Of Bucharest

The oldest recollections of actors of your generation used to begin with the scene of a provincial school festival: the future star winning a well-known, sympathetic audience made up of parents, grandparents, family friends, touched aunts. The memory of past reality is overwhelmed

Elena Văcărescu: An Unforgettable Character Of Bucharest

Special attention should be given to Elena Văcărescu, whose outstanding personality and whose life contributed greatly to the revival of the Romanian spirit, inherited from her forerunners. Until not long ago, mention was often made of the four Văcărescu poets and the

Familiars Of The Old Royal Court

excerpt …sage citoyen du vaste univers. [1] La Fontaine With you I liked to live through, in the memory, my thirty years of voyages, with you, again, should you not feel bored, I shall live through, in the memory, my childhood and early youth. This will entail returning

Museums Of Bucharest

The history of Bucharest art museums begins in 1836, when the painter Carol Wallenstein inaugurated the first of them on the premises of St. Sava high school. In 1864, the School of Fine Arts was established. The concept of a museum exists in every art collection, thus many

Bucharest - Memory Walled-In

Architecture represents a means of interrogating history. Rather ominous, it is to be feared, when the question applies to the Romanian capital. Why so? The way Bucharest has been subjected to transformations in the last century accounts for the living changes affecting

Walking With A Cane In Bucharest

 Bucharest Again It is hard to explain the emergence of a language and the birth of a nation – they seem to be part of a mystery. All of a sudden, history records, in some part of the world, an unknown nation and a new language, probably derived and related, but new.

Letters From Budapest

in Hungarian, Papirusz Book, Budapest, 1999 Budapest literary historian Martos Gabor (b. 1953), an expert in the Magyar literature written in Romania between 1970-1990, well-known in the Transylvanian cultural milieu, held a regular column in the Bucharest Hungarian cultural

Memory And Strolls

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

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

Traveling To Bucharest Between The Wars

A French historian said once that the work you would best like to dedicate your time to is the one that seems to compel you to do so. This is what happens to me right now. Urged by a real passion for knowing the events and forerunners that once lived in this place, I have