Iorga

New Critical Studies, 1920

The programmatic article of THE NEW TREND, 1906excerpts …To start a war against foreign culture because we, in our barbarity, have taken the bad parts from it, is – an exaggerated but suggestive comparison – to do like mulattos in Liberia, were they, disgusted by

Tradition And Modernity In The 1920s (IV)

excerpts Chapter IV. What path shall we choose for our evolution? 1 The history of modern Romania has registered, periodically, a phenomenon that might seem strange at first glance. That is the discussion, every two or three decades, concerning the development of the country

Tradition And Modernity In The 1920s (III)

excerpts Chapter III. Reason and rationalism under accusation  2 The truth is that any objective examination of the ideological phenomenon that we are studying cannot avoid the conclusion that things were quite similar in France and Germany. By entering the territory

The Second Independence, 1926

There is a technique of the life of the matter and a technique of the life of the soul. One is the result of scientific findings and inventions based on precise and universally valid laws; the other is the result of long-wearing inner experiences of man with himself, with

Religion And Identity In Interwar Romania: Orthodoxism

In the two decades between the world wars the majority of Romanian intellectuals were engaged in a grand debate about what it meant to be Romanian and how national character determined social and political development. [1] The ideological commitments of the protagonists

The Erstwhile Snows

Winters in Ramnicu Valcea were quite mild in those times, though there was plenty of snow (I guess this is the cliché of those whose childhood memories are blurred by their excessive subjectivity); anyway, they unfolded following a certain ritual: at the beginning of December

The Maritime Cemetery Of Sulina

I enter Sulina as one would enter a myth; that is to say, I have that feeling of chimerical quality, of life heightened into memory. The ship sets anchor, therefore I find myself at Sulina, the gateway to the Delta, watching the white countenance of the town, the neatly

Towards Sulina

On the arm… downstream. Facing a grove with sparse trees, the Danube pauses in an endless lake, segregating at the bottom. Silvery waved, the Saint George Arm rushes to the right – a dead arm, with no fishermen's boats on it, only a decrepit Turkish town the likes

The Danube Delta From 800 To 1900

The Delta has undergone tremendous changes over the centuries. The oldest written sources, from the Greek-Roman times, concur only partly; yet in majority they offer hints of modifications. Numerous ancient references have been used to identify and track down geo-morphologic

The Foreigners And The Modernization Of Bucharest

excerpts Short overview The modernization of Bucharest was a complex and dynamic historical process, spanning roughly the interval between 1848-1948, a period when the process of modernization of the Romanian society in its totality revolved around the town of Bucharest

Loosening The Lace

Time. Lighting. The artist. Coercion. An indefinable instinct (common sense?). Arousal. Prurient interest, as defined in the Roth or Miller tests. The function (sexual proxy) assigned by the individual viewer or reader. Beauty, shape, or truth versus lust. Communication

Du Billet Au Traité: Le Français Chez Les Roumains

C'est un fait reconnu depuis longtemps: les plus grands accomplissements culturels des Roumains ont presque toujours transité la culture française dans leur parcours vers le monde. Brancusi, Enescu, Ionesco, Cioran sont les figures de proue de ce que l'on pourrait