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Cotadi is short and thickset, with bulging muscles, his legs articulated twice outwards and once inwards; he is always unshaven. His raven black hair is covered with dandruff, sparklers and precious tortoise-shell combs. Cotadi cannot stand upright because of an armor-like

Cotadi is short and big-bellied, brawny, his legs are curved twice outside and once inside, and he is eternally unshaven. His ebony dark hair is full of dandruff and studded with shiny little crystals and expensive tortoise shell combs. Hardly ever does Cotadi stand upright

Of all preparations for the voyage, the majority had been concluded; he finally managed to pay the rent, too, with the help of his two ducks who did not let him appeal to the compassion of his neighbours. The only thing they asked in exchange was that he should allow them

Artists are wanderers par excellence. This is the case not only for the itinerant artists of the Middle Ages, those architects, stone-carvers, painters and stained-glass artists that moved their workshops all around Europe, building and embellishing cathedrals here and there.

We are four university professors, invited here in the year 2000 (we have started to use this number with a certain panache) for conferences and for negotiations concerning a possible world congress of the International Society for Comparative Literature – one from Germany,

excerptTo put it in a nutshell, there are three races living in Congo today:The Pygmies, scattered all over the territory and on the verge of extinction;Nuba, the invaders who live in the north – and, finallyThe Bantu, the most numerous. Several distinct and independent

The summon sounded imperative, I had positive interests, thank goodness – I was to receive by the hands of professor Cioranescu the second volume of his memoirs - this, as he had no intention of coming to the country this year – moreover, my curiosity was not inconsiderable.

Lisbon, a town whose name comes from the mythical traveler Ulysses – so they say – , illustrated in the Middle Ages by so many navigators and explorers curious and eager for adventure, shows to the visitor first its drowsy side. It is true that I first visited it on

We are stepping in on a realm of legend. My reader undoubtedly knows the thrill of finding himself in places bearing a special aura. Something memorable has occurred there. Not necessarily a glorious, heroic deed, a moment of history, but an act of spirit (pardon my grandiloquence!)

excerpts30th September When I get on the tram, in Zurich, I cross myself. To whom? Not to the tram, of course, but to the Power that gave some people (engineers, technicians, workers) the ability to create such public means of transportation: and to others (the passengers)

excerptsWhen you arrive in Frankfurt, coming from Eastern Europe, you find too little of what you knew about Germany from the readings of its great writers. Another world, other values, another history. A civilisation of concrete and of computers. It is only when you arrive

The news that a German foundation offered me, many years ago, a scholarship to Heidelberg gave me an incommensurable joy and an unrestrained curiosity of knowing places that, for a very long time, I could only associate with the plot of Wilhelm Meyer Förster's play.