Alis

'Where do we stand with the Bulgarians?' I ask my friend, X…'Neither here, nor there. ''What do you mean?…''What, don't you see?''I don't actually… for, as you said: neither here, nor there means we don't

About fifteen years ago, during the Brătianu Cabinet, I was editing 'The National Revolt'. It was an essentially combative paper, in strong opposition to the government. Our strength however lay not so much in the leading articles or in the polemic pieces as in

excerpt 'A friend, newspaper reporter' tries to mystify the author by dropping the 'bombshell' about the arrest of some very dangerous anarchists, with bags full of dynamite, poison, daggers, pistols, and compromising letters. The man inquires around

Our century witnessed the birth and death of a most interesting state, a state that no conscientious historian is allowed to overlook. I mean the Republic of Ploieşti, a state that, in spite of its only fifteen hours of life, has undoubtedly written a most famous page in

Caragiale cannot be celebrated officially and patriotically because his writings, his profile as an author, the entire symbolism around his name and works retain an active subversive dimension altogether incompatible with the intrinsic solemnity of a ceremony. One has to

Women artists (originally women-painters) became a reality in Romanian culture only by the turn of the 20th century. Barely having an artistic tradition of the western kind (that is, academic), the national cultural milieu in the 19th century was rather deprived of a professionally

At the same time, the great Russian also remarked that woman is always what we want to make of her. Femininity triggers off creative energies. Through it, the Author dominates the epic matter, and this helps him complete his plan, plot, work. Femininity delays the end by

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

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

from Exuviae  I squat in the middle of the room. I find it hard to talk about myself in the past. And today, only a specific kind of music, sometimes, or some dizzying book can make all the multitudes you are made of get along, keep together, come back docilely to your

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

I have meant to decompose and recompose the forms and the colors in order to prove and disclose their essence. Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu After a short story debut dominated by lyricism (Deep Waters, The Woman in front of the Mirror) and while trying (and managing) to