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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.

It is well known that Mircea Eliade lived numerous experiences of otherness and exile in countries such as India, France, Portugal, America, but it is only in the last that he remained for twenty-seven years. Eliade's perspective on America is somehow indebted to the

vol. II: 1937 – 1960 XXIIII begin to discover America… Chicago, December 10, 1984. For a whole fifteen minutes I have been standing by my window, staring blankly out into the street, without even understanding why. I got up from my desk because I thought it had started

excerpts Fighting for an idea for forty years – the idea of liberating your country from communism; never yielding for one single moment, being consistent in this action and in this hate (constantly fuelled and substantiated); organizing your despair, turning it into

1945 January 1st Absolutely alone, this Eve. First time ever, I imagine. Listening to the King's speech and to general Rădescu's[i]. Nonetheless, kicked off the evening by a prayer: asked God for PEACE, serenity, calmness. At the depth of my soul: melancholy,

Today's reader will be disclosed a universe, in this diary, for the reenactment of which one may only draw back on occasional reference points; these, in their turn, might prove incomplete or improper, possibly misleading, directly correspondent with the historical

excerpt THUNDERSTRUCK A few days after having met George Enescu on the road to Peleş, after dinner, I was on my divan smoking a fragrant oriental cigarette next to Princess Maria, resplendent in her long, pink veils; she was knitting without seeing the work, in the semidarkness

After a half-century's wait, in 2000 Aristarc Publishers from Oneşti released a bilingual (French-Romanian) volume by Maria Cantacuzino-Enescu: Ombres et lumières / Umbre şi lumini. Souvenirs d'une Princesse Moldave / Amintirile unei Prinţese Moldave, 926 pages,

Iaşi, July 12, 1942. We get news from Bucharest that Marshal Ion Antonescu is seriously ill in Predeal. All kinds of versions about his disease, general anemia or the consequences of an old syphilis, so he had to undergo malaria treatment. Meanwhile, it seems that the old

January 5, 1940 On Monday I must get down to work seriously and consistently. Apart from this, my life has become unbearable. I don't know what the devil is the matter with me, I feel as if I were growing old and stupid. I suppose I have some obsessions of my own,

*  Sunday, March 31, 1940Rotten weather. I stay indoors and work, bringing my Diary to date. The French and the British hold frequent, definitely long conferences – now in Paris, now in London – attended by militaries and politicians. This incessant activity evinces

Paris, February 7th, 1939The phone wakes me up: it's George, who calls me from Algiers. He keeps waiting for his plane to be repaired. The thought that he left on an old jade – as he says – worries me. I remember my mother-in-law's words and I agree with her: