Anima

Romanians of more recent generations, but also some of the older ones, who were born before the Soviet occupation, and the instauration of communism in this country, without reaching then intellectual maturity, look to the period that was cut short in 1948 as a privileged

It was the month of June, 1821. Tudor Vladimirescu had risen from the darkness of Oltenia's forests; he had carried from Cernetzi all the way to Bucharest the light of his prophetic claims and he had set down like the sun, somewhere between Goleshti and Targovishte,

Chapter IVexcerpts The doorbell rang earnestly. I had noticed, during my long career as an art scholar, that all of my doorbells manifested a sort of unexpected zeal, an eagerness that suggested that these tiny technical devices strove to reach the condition of an animate

I had known Cucoanesh as far back as the first high school years, but we had never made friends. In university, I lost touch with him. I only learnt that he entered the PolytechnicUniversity. Meeting him, by accident, in a tobacconist's, he told me that he had graduated

excerpt 02/01/1980I am reading something by W. Faulkner, which lives among dusty shelves, with a tidy certitude; that certitude divorced reality a long time ago, quietly depleting, like a breeze of air when it sees injustice taking hold… and I now believe that this is

excerpts Friday EveningGood evening. I am Andreea. Maybe I don't give a fuck about who you are. Ok, I was trying to be polite; I'd like to know whom I'm talking to. Listen, sweetheart, cut the crap, say eiteen. I beg your pardon?Eiteen! Say eiteen, what the

SeptemberexcerptsIlie only looked me up in early September, a few weeks before the harvesting of the vineyards. He had come back alone, by train. He had told some lie to his wife and run over to see me. He was coming towards me with an enamored look in his eyes, ready to

excerpt When I first met her, she said she adored Pablo Neruda's poetry and La Fontaine's erotic fables, which are un petit secret délicieux and, once a month, she would listen to a fragment of Le Petit Prince, interpreted by Gérard Philippe. She also told me

Dies estexcerptsHe would kiss her and caress her breasts clutching them (as if her breasts were mere rubber balls), and he couldn't figure out just how much cheap male instinct, and how much true passion, was hiding behind his gestures. Those were the gestures of a

excerpt The following days, Mioara took the girls for a walk in Chishmigiu Park and treated them on a boat ride (the driver of the black car had rolled up his sleeves and was rowing across the lake, giving the ladies nice smiles from under his pointed moustache). Later

I lived in Amsterdam for a while, it now feels like a different lifetime, perched in the attic of a Flemish house along Watergraafsmeer. The rest of the three-storey building accommodated the owner, a lady of Polish descent, and her rubicund daughter. They would have a bath

excerpts 30. The ass and the airCane and Tolstoi on the train. They talked about the status of the writer in society, how good it was during communism when writers were given cars, villas and fat paychecks. Of course you would keep on writing; today you write and everyone's