Modernism

The Music Look

Alexandru Ţipoia (1914, Snagov, Romania – 1993, Geneva, Switzerland) is a rather less known painter even in Romania. This basically because of his pertaining to a limited category of artists whose career started in the most troubled years of World War II. Moreover, he

Inner Nature

Corneliu MICHAILESCU (Bucharest, 1887-Bucharest, 1965) is one of the less known Romanian avant-garde artists, with a particular although somehow exemplar creative itinerary. Despite his relatively long life and apparently static development, he is one of the rare Romanian

B. Fundoianu

(14. 11. 1898 – 2. 10. 1944)He was among the first promoters of pure poetry. In fact traditionalism represents a form of modernism. Traditionalists are most of them former symbolists and therefore Baudelairians, keeping their habit of embracing the universe. Poetry, says

Mircea Cărtărescu About The Modernity Of Romanian Literature

* It's not easy being a Romanian writer. There is a double misunderstanding regarding the perception of Romanian culture abroad. Before referring to it, I must say that the idea of national writer is itself a misunderstanding. If in sport a sort of benign vanity makes

The Nightmarish Dreaming Of Max Blecher

The reverie aims to take hold of imaginary territories when the real ones are missing. Max BLECHER In his novels and especially in Occurrences in Current Unreality this process of dreaming turns into an account of an immediate unreality. I-mediated to be more accurate,

Bridge Over Dry Land

This issue is dedicated to some of the most significant bizarre, atypical figures in Romanian literature. Although it consists of a selection of literary sketches and fragments of novels, it can be best described as an anthology of twentieth-century poetic prose, stretching

Kollectian

Just think that I paid it once, and it pays me off a lifetime instead. * Zambaccian on a canvas by Pallady Having great collectors represents as big a chance for a culture as having great artists. Flourishing arts are hardly imaginable when wealthy art-lovers are missing,

Editor's Note - Memento Vivere

It seems almost provocative to launch such an issue on the local pleasures, pastimes and delights, while nowadays a troublesome Romania appears as plunged into unending economic and social difficulties, striving to cope with various shortcomings and weaknesses. However,

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,

Exuviae

excerpt I was to deal with this vague feeling, this bizarre, somewhat abstract and pure love three times during my teenage years. I had come into this huge and empty room, lured by some strange music that I always found irresistible, insinuating, intoxicating and dangerous.

Fucked Up

excerpts 30. The ass and the airCane and Tolstoi on the train. They talked about the status of the writer in society, how good it was during communism when writers were given cars, villas and fat paychecks. Of course you would keep on writing; today you write and everyone's

A Shortcoming

If we were to maintain that the erotic language as an independent writing mode has at present been obliterated from Romanian literature, we would, perhaps, make a serious overstatement, but not lie entirely: it might seem peculiar, but this European literature, which is