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excerptI will never forget the nights spent with Bogdanof and Van Manen around Calcutta, in Serampore and Titagarh. Bogdanof, who had been the consul of the Tsarist Empire to Teheran and Kabul for ten years, was at the time my teacher of Persian. He had made friends with

Sometime in April the old and refined Victorianist Robert Langbaum came to Virginia in order to hold a conference at our university. Going out for a meal, I mentioned that I was going to spend a week in Hong Kong at the beginning of May for professional purposes. He answered

excerptsAlthough if you observe it partially and with amusement the Chinese landscape may look like any other landscape, the fundamental impression is of being on another planet. The soil suggests here that the matter froze quickly while boiling and it stood still in dramatic

As I said in the above-written, the Chinese religion has three important parts, of which the most important, the philosophical one, is at the same time the oldest of all and the most respected and praised among the people. It has many followers and, instead of God, they

excerptsKartvel architecture, in its plastic traditions associated with nature and derived from nature, covered much more than the mountains; the current material of the tops was also brought down into the valleys, for towns. This is how it happened with the immense Zion

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

*On Handak street, which meets Anastase street a few steps away from the place where I'd eaten, the bustle was at its height. Although lazy and indifferent when they have nothing to do, Arabs are very much alive and quick when there's a chance of making some money.

Have you ever thought that no collection is being put together about us, the people of today, and that as a consequence we will not be represented in the museums of the future? Has anyone preserved samples of toilet paper of the last decade, has anyone deemed necessary to

I did not meet the great, indefatigable entomologist Aristide Caradja (1861-1955), but everything I have found out about him from firsthand sources has helped me understand he was a unique personality, an absolutely fascinating man. It is undoubtedly an indirect kind of

Another bibliophilist concerned with theoretical problems related to rare, old book evaluation is Ion Iliescu, Aesthetics professor at the University of Timişoara, the possessor of a rich and valuable collection. Author of many papers on aesthetics (Course of General Aesthetics),

The history of a country's libraries is made not only of facts and events related to large (or smaller) institutions, but also of phenomena that illustrate the taste for books and bibliophily of particular individuals, especially when such libraries come to be included

The feelings for beauty and for art in general are multiple and diverse; they follow an ascending path, turning into a passion for the sensitive person, who loves it and who vibrates with emotion in front of any artistic manifestation situated on the realm of perfection.