Apa

The Accident

excerptStanding in front of the Corso building on Calea Victoriei one day, he felt someone's familiar gaze follow him from across the street, as if to catch his eye. He crossed over, as though answering a call, and discovered a picture of Ann among several other portraits

On Jews And Judaism

The Jewish problem is not only a problem of the absolute Mathematician; it is one of the whole mankind. The first Christian commentators of the Pentateuch kept calling the attention to the mistake of registering the Scripture to the letter. Certainly, the Jews in Moses'

Occurrences In Current Unreality

I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire. P. B. Shelley When I stare at a fixed point upon the wall at length, it sometimes happens that I no longer know who I am, nor where I am. On such occasions I experience my lack of identify from afar, as if for a moment I had become a

The Chase

I first heard of the persecution of Christians when I was in the second form at primary school. Mr. Salmen, our teacher, told us that people had been thrown alive to the wild beasts and that they had gone to death with pride after agonies of pain. Much later, I happened

Purgatory

Beetle legs ran across his face and he woke up. He stretched and got up, threw the tiny insect on the floor and crushed it, still half asleep. Then he looked down over his body searchingly, pleased with the way he could make his arm muscles twitch and jump as he wanted.

Kaddish Elegy

1Not you, Allen Ginsberg,nor you, the Jewish God of Revenge,nor his five-thousand years old people,shall hear my Kaddish,but you, Gentiles, shall hear it,here,in Europe. I, the uncircumcised,a child of the baptized childrenof a thousand years, -before your eyes I grew a

Sightseeing

Visiting cities, a consumer tourist practice, is usually presented in the same image wrapping like shopping in a boutique, or attending to a show: one goes for the glossiest package, the funniest label, the wildest excitement vouched for. As a tourist product, a city is

Bucharest As An Alternative Space

It may be said about some cities that they are theatrical; that – in other words – they look like a stage set. Take, for instance, Venice or Naples. It may be only an illusion, however, given a host of plays by Goldoni or Eduardo de Filippo whose plots revolve around

Recent Public Memorials In Bucharest: Paul Neagu's Century Cross

Paul Neagu's Century Cross was set up at Charles de Gaulle Plaza (the former TelevisionPlaza), Bucharest, in September 1997, as a memento of the 1989 anti-Communist riots. It is a six meter wide lenticular bronze disk with a large cross pattern on both faces made up

Everyone With The Bucharest He Deserves

After my first visit to Bucharest, in the mid-eighties, I returned to my native province with a splitting headache; I recounted the details of this anecdote elsewhere* – anyway, they had to do with two mugs of beer and a few mititei – spicy burgers – swallowed on a

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

Bucharest Wit

In Romanian, Bucharest is a plural noun. This implies it is a multifaceted city, dazzling in its diversity. However, it is not a conglomerate of villages, of boroughs, like London or New York. There are not self-contained neighborhoods, each with its main street (High Street),