Ice

The other Monday walking on Victoriei Road I met a friend. It is a well-known fact that today any guy you treat to a glass of wine at Fialkowsky's or who is in the delightful habit of bumming two or three lei from you is called a friend. Last year, this guy borrowed

And let's be serious for a moment, if just as a whimIon Luca Caragiale In L'Art du roman, Milan Kundera remarked, while speaking of Rabelais, that he coined a significant number of neologisms, many of which have entered French, and then other languages. Not all

…The niggler is a staunch patriot, an exclusive nationalist, a Romanian to the marrow! Everyone must know it! Whether his party is in office or, when unfortunately this is not possible, in opposition, the niggler congratulates Rrromania in the first case, bewails it in

When Mark Twain published the elaborate account of his Old World tour, The Innocents Abroad, America was still young, as a nation, and not yet proud of its culture. To avoid any tasteless outcry of admiration, driven by the contact with the vestiges of lost civilizations

The Romanians from Down Under To my Victoria from the South Pacific IslandsKo te mana o tenei matenga whetu aianeE poturi i ro o te rangi e piki mai* In Aotearoa (New Zealand), I met happy Romanians. Their happiness was either blended with sadness, or boosted up by it.

*excerpts THE SOPHISTICATED PEASANTS The Romanians are a social phenomenon. As a nation among nations, they are westerners evolved in the East. They are Latins surrounded by Slavs. They are Romans two thousand years away from Rome. They are contemporaries re-produced on

excerpts Chapter IIIThe Nature of the Being  (…) Anybody who knows this nation will agree that the Romanian is a born opponent. Whatever is proposed to him, his first reaction, the first temptation of his thought is to oppose it. But, strangely, his opposition does not

excerpt It is said about Maiorescu that he did not really think Romanian scientific and philosophic creation possible, reckoning that the nervous cell is not strong enough. We do not know whether this statement is true or merely fabrication. The fact remains that it is

Chapter XII. The Current [1907] Psychological Traits of the Romanian PeopleAll foreigners that visited the Romanian countries were unpleasantly struck by the negative traits of our character. They don't care, says Mr. X. Marmier, for the name of their master. What they

I will begin by quoting myself. Talking about the polemics between two people whose intelligence and moral stature I admire (the polemics took place, in its major parts, in the very pages of the 22 magazine), I used to say with a certain regret and doubtfulness: On whose

excerpts There are quite a few psychological complexes which seem to shape nowadays the popular, maybe even intellectual mentalities and to badly distort people's behavior, as well as their political judgments. It won't hurt pointing our finger at them, speaking

In D. Draghicescu's terms, this transactional spirit (Cough up more, sir! – Knock some off, mister!, as a folk saying goes) is the legacy of the Orient, a stamp of the Levant on our past, present and, presumably, future. In this key, the transaction points to a polymorphous