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excerpt1 Day was a-dawning sluggishly on Saints Eusignius, Nona and Fabius, a Saturday as it happened; like unto a blunt blade scraping at the gloom caked all over our bodies did the daybreak appear, and impotent, too. The bells tolled half-heartedly and a thin film of

I first heard of the persecution of Christians when I was in the second form at primary school. Mr. Salmen, our teacher, told us that people had been thrown alive to the wild beasts and that they had gone to death with pride after agonies of pain. Much later, I happened

To clarify the unities of place, time and action in this world: here, now and thus, when one can no longer believe in the laws of happening, because this place is not in the now, and this now does not thus give temporality to the here. The present reality of things past

I've always been fascinated by this city. Still, I can understand it doesn't easily translate to others. Here is a list of things one should try to perceive as charming, although - by all standards - they don't qualify as such:1. Filth. It is the quintessential

excerpt I am going to tell you of things that happened back in 1960 or 1961, when I was still a little girl, no more than 12 years old. I was living with my family in Moşilor Street, in one of those queer houses, with the second floor protruding a little, with two very

In Romanian, Bucharest is a plural noun. This implies it is a multifaceted city, dazzling in its diversity. However, it is not a conglomerate of villages, of boroughs, like London or New York. There are not self-contained neighborhoods, each with its main street (High Street),

excerpts NOISES OF THE CAPITAL For reasons I cannot exactly explain, the flow of ideas circulated by the independent press has strikingly dwindled to a mere trickle. One can only put it down to the times of fatigued irritation we are living through as we wait for the much

If you read travel notes by simple tourists or people on journalistic, cultural or political assignments, from the 1920s or 30s, if you peruse recurrent images about a Bucharest imprinted with evil or good charms, equally decrypted and encoded, moving and repulsive, you

excerpts From Winter to Summer Two seasons, rather than four, by all means. Late fall, with powerful stags calling. After the horse races in Moldavia and the first fires in the remotest houses of Bukovina, winter comes. The only flowers left are those in the carpet wool

The 1850 generation appealed to science, but the 1914 generation appealed to the body. The elliptical mechanisms devised by Morand found their audience in 1924, writes Thibaudet. Who is Paul Morand? Poet, novelist, essayist, diplomat, French ambassador to Romania, Italy,

excerpts In the first half of the XVIIth century, there appeared a new combination of imported styles which has been characterized as the first Wallachian manifestation. The prototype of this style is the village church of Gherghiţa in Prahova county. A later example of

excerpts In the large house of the Barbus, in the Mogoşoaia Bridge Street, the main staircase was guarded by two bronze moors, carrying huge, crystal lamps. Upstairs, you climbed to the boyar's dwelling. Under the first steps, however, a narrow door opened toward the