Memoria

Simplicity is not an end in art, but one arrives at simplicity in spite of oneself, in approaching the real sense of things. Simplicity is at bottom complexity and one must be nourished on its essence to understand its significance. Catalog of Brâncuşi exhibition, Brummer

 Mioriţa, the most popular Romanian ballad, has its name coming from a rather ambiguous female character, the meek ewe that discloses the plot to her fair master, whose two fellow shepherds plan to kill by the time of sunset, looting his larger and worthy flock. Mioriţa

from Exuviae  I squat in the middle of the room. I find it hard to talk about myself in the past. And today, only a specific kind of music, sometimes, or some dizzying book can make all the multitudes you are made of get along, keep together, come back docilely to your

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.

A talk with Gelu Barbu Each artist who fulfils his destiny up to the zenith of glory becomes the founder of an island nostalgic about the continent. The creator does not represent a boastful, empty oneness but a world within a world. His original formula is achieved thanks

Chapter 3Romania's Psychological and Historical Voids If it were true that the Romanian's spiritual disposition does not surpass the one evinced in the past and that the future is not going to uncover any hidden sides to the Romanian soul, then any attempt to

Maiden Speech at the Romanian Academy, Bucharest, 1940excerpts Gentlemen of the Academy,Honorable Audience, I am elected to a newly-established institution, and I wish to preserve the academic tradition of lauding a forerunner, therefore I feel obliged to come forward with

To carry out a veracious analysis of a people's psychology is a utopian thought, and the multiple risks involved in making estimates and commentaries on the specificity of a still maturing nation become unavoidable. Each individual is a small, but unique and unrepeatable

excerpts Que voulez-vous, nous sommes ici aux portes de l'Orient, où tout est pris à la légère. Raymond Poincaré*Welcoming the Philanderers…au tapis-franc nous étions réunis. L. Protat**Although no further than the night before I had promised myself under

Lisbon, a town whose name comes from the mythical traveler Ulysses – so they say – , illustrated in the Middle Ages by so many navigators and explorers curious and eager for adventure, shows to the visitor first its drowsy side. It is true that I first visited it on

All roads to the West go through Vienna. Generous crossroads where the western world fuses with the horizons of eastern Europe and the Germanic spirit seems to have rich confluences with Latinity, the old Austrian metropolis still conveys the same charm that those claras

You do not need a passport to travel to Egypt or to any other English colony. A visit card will do. In Alexandria, I made friends with the tropical flora: date trees that bear almost 100 kg of fruit each year, bananas or the cursed fruits because they grow without any effort