Vitoria Lipan
from The Hatchet I It is the mountain peasant's lot to earn his daily bread either with the axe or with the sheep hook. Those of them that work with the axe fell firs from the forest and take them to the Bistriţa; there they bind them together into rafts and float
Tonia
from Don Juan CHAPTER VI Sometimes he would run into Tonia by chance. This is one way of putting it, because he often walked the streets close to her house, he went to a beer joint two corners away, sometimes he was in the park nearby speaking kindly, helping small groups
Mrs. T
From The Procrustean Bed Add to these criteria of a physical nature the old preconceived idea of talent. As is known, talent is discovered thus: a boy or a girl, choking with stage fright, before a long table at which a commission are sitting, start declaiming Gens Latina
Hariclea Darcle (1860-1939)
There are masterpieces of musical drama the destiny of which became final in the history of opera owing to singers with a flash of genius. Seemingly, this is how Puccini's Tosca was born, whose protagonist, a superb Romanian soprano from Brăila, lend brilliancy to
The Filigree Of Genius
The Secret Correspondence between Mihai Eminescu and Veronica Micle Halfway through last year, a genuine editor's bomb was being thrown on our cultural market: the Polirom publishing house based in Iaşi had issued – and was launching on 15 June – a volume of secret
Mara
excerpts CHAPTER IMother's Poor Little Things Mara, bless her heart, was now a widow with two children, poor little things, but she was young and healthy and hard-working, and God allowed that she got lucky again. As a matter of fact, when he lived, Bârzovanu, her
Lina
from A Concert of Bach's Music The Amzei Church had donned a festive appearance. People had started coming as early as three o'clock, and by four – the time of the ceremony – the street was crowded with carriages and automobiles. An archbishop was serving.
Estera
from Requiem for Fools and Beasts That day, Estera did not come to the stadium, but the following two evenings she was there again; however, I did not pluck up enough courage to speak to her, and after overtaking me several times, she kept running about three hundred meters
Iulia Hasdeu: A Queen's Diary
The bibliography of my works I threw into the pyre included a 125-pages psychoanalytical study about Iulia Hasdeu. I had discovered her diaristic notes at the State Archives. They were then, and still are, a novelty, and perhaps a sensational thing; I'm talking about
Adela
excerpts Almost every night I talk to Adela on the porch. The ladies go to sleep earlier. Adela shows an attentive, almost submissive, sympathy to the maestro. She is, however, more personal in opinions than before. But what is going on inside her? When she talks it always
Poem
And if the flesh is discontent(in fact, crushed, torn to pieces) – the Spirit laststhe green alcoholof the fruit I used to be…Read my bookand get intoxicatedwith the fragrance of my flesh. by Nina Cassian (b. 1924)
Self And Portrait
Like diaries and memoirs, portraits and especially self-portraits represent a favorite means of inserting the creator's self into history. One may eventually infer, if not directly grasp a writer's or a painter's positions and opinions about his milieu and