Design

Woolen Gardens

European travelers such as Antonio Maria del Chiaro were struck long time ago by the uncommon abundance of woolen carpets in each Romanian home, be it aristocratic, bourgeois or peasant. Carpets were laid mainly onto the walls of the rooms, but they also covered the beds,

Master Builder Manole

Downstream on the wideArgesh River's sideNegru Voda's riding;Ten men go beside him:Masons, craftsmen fine, Masterbuilders – nine;Manoli makes ten,The greatest craftsman. Down this dale, they're boundTo erect and foundA monastery hall,A memorial. There, as

Romanians - 1943

excerpt THE ROMANIANS' SPIRITUAL LIFE The Two Myths of Romanian SpiritualityIn any culture, there is always a central myth that discovers it and that is to be found in all its major works of art. Romanians' spiritual life is dominated by two myths that express,

The Architect

Emil Popescu was an architect. His specialty was the oil factories and we can say, without any exaggeration, that wherever in the country an oil factory had been built in the last five or six years, one could easily tell it was the work of architect Popescu's skilled

Don Juan

excerpt Nobody listened to him or did so intermittently, the Russian mumbled something, excited by the other's mumbling, Mr. A. V. Emilian was drinking, capitalizing on the exaggerated attention the strange guest was receiving from the little old lady. This one-nighter,

A Farewel To Europe

Chapter IVexcerpts The doorbell rang earnestly. I had noticed, during my long career as an art scholar, that all of my doorbells manifested a sort of unexpected zeal, an eagerness that suggested that these tiny technical devices strove to reach the condition of an animate

Editor's Note

With the no. 25 issue, Freaks and Outlaws, the PLURAL collection embarks on a new, semestrial series, donning a new design and proposing more exciting themes. Our aim, though, remains the same: to reinstate the connection, and at the same time highlight the connections,

Sexinesses

At first sight, nothing could be more reasonable or understandable than the illustration of the present issue of PLURAL. As the texts spin around the sexual obsession in Romanian literature, running from Creanga`s licentious Tale of All Tales to Agopian and Aldulescu`s swank,

Eros And Thanatos In Polynesia

It so happened that I lived for a while in Polynesia, and this extends the story up to the Antipodes. I had recently come back from the countries of the South Pacific, from the Polynesian islands. I was bringing with me the brain tomographies of a Maori minister, the file

Literary Subtlety And Challenge. A Wannabe Preface To A Remarkable Debut

Some of the readers of this book may very well not go beyond the first part. Actually, they may not go through with their reading at all. Despite the efforts of our predecessors, from Conachi and Negruzzi to Creanga, from Rebreanu to Bogza and young Eliade, joined, after

New Literary Sincerity

It was not easy for Romanian literature to evolve up to Ioana Bradea's novel, to its so provokingly violent title (itself a sophisticated, impudent blend of meanings and connotations as long as the dictionary designates just one object: a pipe)! And to think that once

Traviata On The Grass

excerpt When I first met her, she said she adored Pablo Neruda's poetry and La Fontaine's erotic fables, which are un petit secret délicieux and, once a month, she would listen to a fragment of Le Petit Prince, interpreted by Gérard Philippe. She also told me