Walk

Hans's Wife

Hans (some people called him Hanz, or Franz, others Krantz like the cake, and others didn't even take the trouble to call him that much) had a wife who towered over him by a full head, and had a truly horse-like face. Her legs were long and slender, and seemed to lack

Love Thy Neighbor

excerpts . . . Chaplin. Einstein, Rubinstein, Chagall, Spinoza. I summon these exalted spirits above all because their proximity feels good; their genius, both innocent and supple, has a wholesome quality about it, and their absence from any intellectual banquet worthy

The Jew

A Jew doing commerce once travelled as farAs Constantinople, to search the bazaar. Since he meant to replenish his earthenware stock,He bought many a cup, and many a crock. He kept buying and buying, and just wouldn't stopTill he filled a large creel right up to the

Death Fugue

Black milk of dawn we drink you in the eveningwe drink you at noon and in the morning and we drink you at nightwe drink and drinkwe dig a hole in the air where one lies comfortablyA man lives in the house who plays with the snakes and writeshe writes when it grows dark in

Balkania - Our Eternal Return

I think I would never have come to love Balkania so much, had I not met Marina Marinescu in Munich several years back. We had been acquainted since we met for the first time in Athens. Florin Marinescu, the specialist in Byzantine history to whom I was talking one day in

The Faces Of the City

Life Histories in Bucharest – the 20th Centuryexcerpt All the Greeks in the city sought to make me their son-in-law. Demostene Gramatopol, 1910-? My initial intention was to interview both Greeks belonging to the old Greek community in Bucharest, and some of those who

Who Is Eginald Schlattner?

Who is Eginald Schlattner and what story is he telling in his debut novel? For the readers in Romania, the Lutheran priest aged 65 who lives in his parish house at Rosia, near Sibiu, where he lives in a community mainly made up of Romanies, Romanians, and only a few Saxons

The Beheaded Rooster

see movie trailer excerpt My grandfather was called Goldschmidt, H. H. I. G. Goldschmidt, and he came from Schirkanyen, near Fogarasch. He was a Saxon of Transylvania, coming from a family eight hundred years old! and, documents could prove it, a pure German for twenty five

The Forgotten Mosilor (May Fair) Street

Mosilor Street, the modern thoroughfare of a Bucharest that struggles so hard to appear occidentalized and yet doesn't quite manage to: something Balkan, Levantine lingers in the atmosphere of the streets, in spite of the concrete ten-floor blocks, of the road with

The Significance Of Transylvania, 1944

excerpts  The significance of Transylvania during the childhood and teens of those who in 1916, at the time of the Old Kingdom, went to place our youth in the melting pot where the spirit of a whole nation was to broil in order to win its political unity is not only of

The Romanian Dimension Of Existence, 1943

excerpts ΙΙThe Being of Being Quantitatively, existence can be conceived of from the point of view of unity or of multiplicity, from the point of view of the whole and from the point of view of the parts. From the first point of view, what we will discover is the nature[1],

The Goals And Destiny Of The Romanian Bourgeoisie, 1942

The capitalist spirit of Romanians (. . . ) Our spirit is far from representing any predisposition to capitalism. We are, by nature, rather anti-capitalists. That is why strangers have found it so easy to occupy the positions derived from capitalism. That is why Romanians