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Just as there comes a time for getting married and for retiring, there also comes a time for the sublime. After one has knocked together some fortune, he starts thinking about growing rich spiritually, too. . . It just won't do to own a dwelling with an inner staircase.

On some days I feel universal when listening to Hora în căruţă (Jig in the Cart); I can even picture a cart then, all its joints rattling among the frozen missiles of the world. I get dizzy and a teardrop warms up the Murmansk under my eyelids. Hora Stacatto (Stacatto

I was playing belote – ancient surrealism heralding as its ultimatevalues the nine and the Jack, nobody knows why, some poets claim this is an idea meant to consecrate the troubadour and the portal he passes under at night – I waspeacefully playing one evening in a house

excerptclick here to see film preview Heeler produced from a slit of his belt an unopened package of smokes, casually took place on a stump and began rolling a cigar. Moromete squatted down and rolled one from Heeler's pack, after which he stretched his arm to laggardly

Minimal Joys  To fully take delight in minimal joys – here is one of the irreducible experiences of joy in the East of Europe before 1989. The minimal joys mustn't be confounded with the simple joys. It is one thing to enjoy a piece of hot bread and a glass of wine

In the olden times, in the Year of Our Lord 1937, as soon as the vernal wind had started wafting, I would cross the Danube with a handful of companions, to hail the passage of woodcocks in some of the parts of the Dobrudja. We reposed in propitious places, groves and copses,

excerpt Two or three years had passed in a very happy atmosphere, the only years of my childhood that stayed with me clearly. I was 11. Chira was 15 and I stayed with her all the time, with a voluptuousness that I was to understand only later. I followed her, like a dog,

None of the great men of 1848 – a Romanian scholar noticed once – had a particular understanding of music. The boyar sons from a hundred years ago assimilated everything regarding the arts that they encountered abroad, but not music. Not even today, perhaps, do we have

excerpt  These lines will introduce us into the international career of the great violin virtuoso. At the height of his career, Grigoraş Dinicu carried across the world the fame of Romanian fiddlers and of the rich Romanian folk song. After the creation of the Bucharest

excerpt Finally, one Sunday the old man decided that we should drive to the estate belonging to an uncle of mine in Arges, to Manesti, and spend three-odd days there. We had to leave early, so as to get there by noon. But since the old man had some kind of unexpected business,

excerpt In the town square, behind Gustav Café, there is the variety entertainment ale-house with the strange name Bucharest Hotel (it has room only for women-artists), Mr. Cocoşel's winter public house. Ancient house, rather long and low, the hotel twinkles its

excerpt The pub was no better than other houses in the village, it just had a tiled roof and, in two little wire-netted windows overlooking the street, bottles of coloured drinks, jars of motley bonbons, and various other merchandise sought after by peasants. The front