Romanian Language

It's all set! On Saturday I am to deliver a speech in the plenary meeting of the SPDRM. There's no way out: I did, in a moment of utter weakness, promise an old friend of mine, Mrs. Parigoridi – so it is now for me a matter of conscience, of honour, of heart

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

The Balkans are Europe's ass.  The Romanian language has complete virtues, that is, it can be the vehicle of anything spiritual created by man. It is very hard to use. With it, one may become an eagle or a lectern singer. The Romanian language has all the axiological

*excerpts THE SOPHISTICATED PEASANTS The Romanians are a social phenomenon. As a nation among nations, they are westerners evolved in the East. They are Latins surrounded by Slavs. They are Romans two thousand years away from Rome. They are contemporaries re-produced on

excerpts Chapter IIIThe Nature of the Being  (…) Anybody who knows this nation will agree that the Romanian is a born opponent. Whatever is proposed to him, his first reaction, the first temptation of his thought is to oppose it. But, strangely, his opposition does not

Chapter IIROMANIANISM AND AUTOCHTHONISMexcerpts Continuing the clash of ideas of the previous decades, the 1930s too witnessed a confrontation on the evolution formula of the Romanian make-up. Two directions were pitted against each other. One favorable to the maintenance

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

excerpts We have wondered many times if it is possible to find or to hypothetically build a matrix-space, or an unconscious spatial horizon, as an underlying spiritual layer for the Romanian folk culture anonymous creations. The subject is worth the risk of any and all

Foreword The few words that I put as motto at the beginning of this book can be translated like this: God must have had a hidden plan for this people that the western states rediscovered on the banks of the Danube and adopted like Pharaoh's daughter adopted Moses.

* It's not easy being a Romanian writer. There is a double misunderstanding regarding the perception of Romanian culture abroad. Before referring to it, I must say that the idea of national writer is itself a misunderstanding. If in sport a sort of benign vanity makes

Shortly after World War I a new name amidst art collectors in the know started to compel recognition: that of poet Ion Minulescu. At that time, more intensely than in previous years, he would, due among others to his obligations as Director General of the Arts, visit exhibitions,

excerpts IV In his office on the ground floor, Saferian, on a chair and surrounded by four men, all standing, was contemplating an oil portrait, set near them against the back of an ordinary straw chair. It is an Ingres, most certainly, said one of the four, a man with trimmed