Bled

The Wild Wine Gallery

excerpt Bunthe had thought it appropriate to put up their two unexpected guests from Bucharest with Father Calist. The villagers were saying they had got lucky. The weather was beautiful, spring was coming. The sun shone as if it was already April. The wildflowers that

Religious Conversion In 19th Century Moldavia

The baptized JewIn the late 1990s I had planned to include at the end of my book The Imaginary Jew in Romanian Culture a chapter entitled The Baptized Jew. As I worked on this subject I realized that it had been extensively discussed by the historian Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu

Khazar Jews. Romanian History And Ethnography

excerpts Motto: It is known that, when a people is about to disappear, first its high society disappears, and with it the literature. (Milorad Pavici, The Khazar Dictionary) Lazar Saineanu and his studies in folklore. An ethnographic controversyLazar Saineanu was a very

The Jews

In the nineteenth century, and also in the inner-war period, Romania had one of Europe's largest Jewish communities. Between the wars, its Jewish population was the third largest in Europe both in absolute terms (after Poland and the USSR) and as a proportion of the

Ascensions

Climb… Climb… Keep climbing. Higher and higher. At the top, Love's waitingWith a bouquet of roses.  Climb. Go upward. Always higher. If you don't find a pathCarve it open. In LoveThere are no ready-made ways. You cleave them yourself.  Climb… Even if you

The Divine Salamina

excerpt Themistocles was standing at the bow of his ship, which was beyond the battle line, so he could oversee the entire battle, staring inquisitively at the enemy. He could even see the grudging eyes of the warriors, filled with hatred. But the Persian battle line still

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 Germans In Romania

There had been groups of German colonists in all the historical provinces, which came to make up Greater Romania at the end of 1918. But these Germans had not immigrated into Romania: they had come to Bessarabia when it belonged to Russia (and was returned to Soviet Russia

History According To Spiro Zervas

Lend us some cash, do, till pay-day, now how's one supposed to react to such an entreaty, and at such short notice, too?, one may have or not have the money, but when one has an equally hard time making ends meet, when the gap between the lustre of respectability and

Triumphalus, Or The Sunset Of The Stallions

excerpt The Old Geezer had come again to the shore of the Black Sea to buy himself an eye. The other reason was to spend a honeymoon here. As a rule, he would go back with an extra honeymoon and the same number of eyes. Five years before, appalled as he was by the fact

Choix De Textes

POEMES I JOURNAL D'UN TEMPS HABITE (1980)ID'abord la merœil clignait sur le sableressac au rythme du cœurcontour effeuillé par le ventsouvenir du sommeil puis les jardinsde lilas de cerisespalissades chemins le pas des autresSous le bleu parasol des matinsà

Nationally-Specific Art In Interwar Romania

Art history is usually at ease when imposing its own concepts and technical terminology upon an apparently unconscious body of visual accomplishments called works of art. For art historians and art critics, art seemingly exists in order for theorists to put words on it and