Ungaria

The Couch Grass

Even if this was a long time ago, two of the phrases that remind me of her really bring her back to my mind. When her yard was filled with Gypsies, and – everybody knows this – such a thing happens often enough, because this is the way they go, in gangs, she would chase

Brief Presentation Of The Armenian Community

Excerpts The oldest findings prove the presence of Armenians on the present territory of Romania, more precisely in Moldavia, in an inscription on a tombstone in Cetatea Alba, dated 967 AD. The Hungarian chroniclers Simon Kesay and Thuroczi recorded that, under Duke Geza

The Art Of War

excerpt1 Day was a-dawning sluggishly on Saints Eusignius, Nona and Fabius, a Saturday as it happened; like unto a blunt blade scraping at the gloom caked all over our bodies did the daybreak appear, and impotent, too. The bells tolled half-heartedly and a thin film of

On Minority Writers

The idea to bring together in one volume (be it even one issue of a prestigious publication) excerpts from the works of ethnic minority writers seems to me generous and even necessary. From the very beginning, one characteristic distinction appears useful to me. Since this

On The Romanian Melting Pot

When King Béla of Hungary decided to invite the Saxons to settle in Transylvania, the land had been severely depopulated by the Mongol invasion. The Germans came from the dry lands of Northern Europe and found here what must have seemed to them sort of a Promised Land.

On Minorities' Literature

In Romania, no less than 18 minorities live alongside the majority population, having more or less weight. This has favored – especially in some cases – a very interesting and significant cultural melting pot process, the birth of an extremely rich and diversified cultural

On Hungarian Literature

Four years ago, in June 1996, the World Conference on Language Rights held its session in Barcelona, the capital of the Spanish region Catalonia. As the result of several years' work of preparations, the Universal Declaration of Language Rights was adopted here. PEN,

On Minorities

Historical circumstances have made Romania – before and after the great union of 1918 – a country with various ethnic minorities, some very old: Hungarians, since about the end of the first millennium; Armenians, Gypsies, Greeks, and Germans – since the Middle Ages;

Editor's Note

Only when dialogue and tolerance begin to work at normal parameters, will truths be understood in their essence, and applied in the practice of life.  Hoping that a book may constitute a celebration even in these unpredictable, amazing, and occasionally grievous times,

R.E.M.

excerpt I am going to tell you of things that happened back in 1960 or 1961, when I was still a little girl, no more than 12 years old. I was living with my family in Moşilor Street, in one of those queer houses, with the second floor protruding a little, with two very

Letters From Budapest

in Hungarian, Papirusz Book, Budapest, 1999 Budapest literary historian Martos Gabor (b. 1953), an expert in the Magyar literature written in Romania between 1970-1990, well-known in the Transylvanian cultural milieu, held a regular column in the Bucharest Hungarian cultural

Three Controversial Books

What is one supposed to understand by image and to what extent should one take it to heart? Physiologically, the image is the consciousness one is left with about an absent object. It is, therefore, the opposite of perception, i. e. representation of a present object. In