Nic

I have never met Ştefan Bertalan. A founder of the sigma group in Timishoara, the most influential hub of constructivist experimentalism in Romanian art, Bertalan has always seemed to me somehow ill-timed, included in the canon, and confined therein. I came once into contact

And yon unwedded virgins…(Euripides, The Trojan Tragedy) This story commences in the Mounts of the Pindus. The dawn of the 20th century. Autumn: the time of wedlock. The Pindian event of the season: the wedding of beauteous Helen. Macedo-Romanian villagers called her

Emil Popescu was an architect. His specialty was the oil factories and we can say, without any exaggeration, that wherever in the country an oil factory had been built in the last five or six years, one could easily tell it was the work of architect Popescu's skilled

excerpt During such hours, hundreds of hours, was the final thought born. Sitting like that, like a murky statue, between the bed panel and the door, so that Florica, when she opened the door, did it carefully, not to hit him. But he didn't move an inch and the chair

excerpt23 Anghel is standing in the gateway. His house lies outside the barbed-wire fence surrounding the grounds of the Water House. It's true that his yard becomes indistinct as the grounds begin, but the front of his house is surrounded by a wall standing one meter

 Mr. Popescu, a brave citizen of Bucharest, abode on a street in the slums, where a coach driving past every other day would make a sensation. Cots would vanish into the vast grounds, enabling each of their landlords to bellow to their heart's content, commit murder

After the last act, with the collar of the raincoat raised, hiding the flowers picked up from the stage by the flyman, he was the last to go out in the street. The doors were closing on the dark halls. The square was empty. The light bulbs threw a bluish and so sad a light

excerpt Loneliness tightened up around Daria Ortac. She felt isolated from the world and saddened to death. The wind was about to start splashing scarce drops into the windows. It was a sunset wind, irregularly enveloping, stirring up echoes of sound and human voices. Wrapped

excerpt After Lica's departure, Mrs. Vera had vainly peeked from behind the curtains, trying to see whether they turned their heads one after the other. Lica hadn't turned his head, so Mrs. Vera reached the banal conclusion that all men deride women, and that

Once there was a man who whilst in the world could not be in tune with it – a twisted fellow. His mother fancied she would deliver him precisely at Lenten Shrovetide, when a terrible sleet had struck. That year Easter was due in the dead of winter. His father took his

IBeyond the Stone Cross brothel district, on the left of Vitan Road, there rises the HolyRoadAltarChurch. And a mighty proud church that is! Such paintings, inside and outside, are seldom to be seen but in the abodes of old. If you listen to its parishioners, especially

excerpts Pandele Vergea's home was severed from the heart of the town only by a mere quarter of an hour's walk. Despite that, it was left without the range of any sound from the side-paths quietly leading towards the profundity of a valley – in whose depths churlish