Ares

excerpt The loaded boats – from time to time you can hear the thumping of a strong fish striking against the freshly tarred wood – are lined up in the narrow canal, towed by Michea's tug. Come on, you dark-bay horse, take me to my beloved, don't tarry! Timosca

Just as there comes a time for getting married and for retiring, there also comes a time for the sublime. After one has knocked together some fortune, he starts thinking about growing rich spiritually, too. . . It just won't do to own a dwelling with an inner staircase.

On some days I feel universal when listening to Hora în căruţă (Jig in the Cart); I can even picture a cart then, all its joints rattling among the frozen missiles of the world. I get dizzy and a teardrop warms up the Murmansk under my eyelids. Hora Stacatto (Stacatto

excerpt Maria had come to town during the war, leaving her native Tântava, and managed to find a job as apprentice for Verona Tailor's Shop, along with her sister Vasilica. The tailor's shop was located behind ARO building, stuck right on the white painted house,

Minimal Joys  To fully take delight in minimal joys – here is one of the irreducible experiences of joy in the East of Europe before 1989. The minimal joys mustn't be confounded with the simple joys. It is one thing to enjoy a piece of hot bread and a glass of wine

excerpt  Never have I felt more keenly all that separates us from the West than in a summer afternoon spent in the Versailles gardens. In the park full of Greek memories: Apollo's Pool, that of Latona, in which the superposed arrangement of the gardens that mount towards

excerpt Two or three years had passed in a very happy atmosphere, the only years of my childhood that stayed with me clearly. I was 11. Chira was 15 and I stayed with her all the time, with a voluptuousness that I was to understand only later. I followed her, like a dog,

excerpt Between 9. 30 and 10. 30 in the evening, all the other restaurants were empty, but the Popovici Garden was packed, they put more tables in every corner, and when even that was no longer possible, friends asked those who had arrived earlier to let them sit at their

VII. TURNU-MĂGURELE PARTIES While the three friends met, once or twice a week, and talked peacefully and wisely about matters of the soul, the town around them changed, in the readers of the export societies, the wheat in gold, received on land and water thousands of bottles

excerpts The formulae that announced guests to the Danielescus' meals were varied, appropriate to the guests. For example:Tonight you're laying one more cover, told only to the maid a few moments before dinner by Mrs. Danielescu, meant that the same oilcloth was

excerpt Had they just finished dinner, that Pirgu was dying to flee. The gentleman was thirsty. Thank God for the variety of wines at that time, abundant and not expensive; Bordeaux and Bourgogne wines for royal feasts. Still, Gorica was not very pleased with them, he was

The dancing tea partyGuţă Mereuţă was indeed waiting, sad, with a proboscidean long nose. He couldn't dance. He had nothing in appearance or in speech that could have attracted a woman. His eyes pushed aside, towards the temples, by the broad root of the olfactory