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UNDER THE QUESTION MARK: MAN If you were asked to portray yourself as you did in your books, diaries, or in Present Past, Past Present, how would you introduce yourself? Eugène IONESCO: It is very complicated. I don't know. I don't know who I am. I don't

The founder of the Theater of the Absurd (with The Bald Soprano, staged in 1950 by Nicolas Bataille at the Theatre des Noctambules in Paris, a play he had begun in the 40s while still in Romania under the title English without a Teacher), a member of the French Academy from

Honestly, Corneille bores me. We probably only love him (without believing in him) out of habit. We are forced to. They imposed him on us in school. I cannot stand Schiller. For a long time I thought Marivaux' plays were unserious games. Musset's comedies are thin,

Not thinking about anything. Only thinking of petty little things. Not thinking about the Whole. Thinking about everything and nothing. Thinking about petty little nothings. And, if I can, I think that God thinks me, thinking under God's protection. Is God there? Does

Very few people think: very few in comparison with the nation. And which is more, as these thinkers are kept far away from the lofty secrets of politics, from the lofty secrets of science and research, and from the lofty secrets of the police and of those who secretly run

Sometimes I happen to have beautiful utopian dreams. Sometimes I dream that it was not Lenin in that sealed car crossing Germany and going to Russia in 1917, rather there were three or four odious American capitalists: Russia, Europe would have been saved. Imagine all those

COMMUNISM IS THE GREATEST FAILURE IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND At the recent congress of the delegations of Communist parties from all over the world, held in Berlin, many well-known things have been reiterated: satellite-countries will continue to live under the Soviet umbrella,

You like any book if you want to. You dislike any book if you want to. I believe literary criticism is useless, and I believe literature has no metaphysical significance. If I do literary criticism, I do it because I have nothing else to do. I do not feel I am committed

It has been said – for good reason – that the Romanian word dor [aprox. yearning] is untranslatable, which made all foreign lexicographers leave it in its original form in most literary texts. But in music there is also a dor enescian [Enescian yearning], which someone

Alfredo Casella: Enescu is delicate and sensitive, communicative too, like all Latins. Despite his spontaneous and amazingly rich inventiveness, his creation illustrates a process of will, which no artist can overlook. I have seen such a perfect accord between intention

The history of world music has witnessed many spectacular overturns in the hierarchy of values, when names of purely local interest whose death was not even announced in an obituary (Johann Sebastian Bach) became world famous personalities a century later. Quite often, internationally

excerpts We want to see Brâncuşi. Do you know him? asked Florica. We're old friends. But he is ill, it's not easy to get an appointment. Anyway, let's try. On the same day, October the 13th, 1956, we met Colomba again at 'Les deux magots', among