Tar

I am overcome with horror at the thought that we, Romanians, are facing 'eternity': the proverb. We enter other nations' proverbs like the Scotsman, the Irishman, the Jew, and – in the Balkan Peninsula – the Gypsy. We've brought shame upon ourselves,

III. The Culture of Jackasses When an ass leaves his village to go live in the city a wonderful change occurs in him: his asininity leaves the body and sets straight into the soul. In donkey parlance this means the respective jackass becomes cultivated. Thus, an educated

excerpts Many were the reasons of marriage in the countryside once, but the most important was the family of the chosen one. If the family – the seedling – was bad, the young people from such families had a hard time getting married, and only exceptional personal merits

The other Monday walking on Victoriei Road I met a friend. It is a well-known fact that today any guy you treat to a glass of wine at Fialkowsky's or who is in the delightful habit of bumming two or three lei from you is called a friend. Last year, this guy borrowed

When Mark Twain published the elaborate account of his Old World tour, The Innocents Abroad, America was still young, as a nation, and not yet proud of its culture. To avoid any tasteless outcry of admiration, driven by the contact with the vestiges of lost civilizations

The Romanians from Down Under To my Victoria from the South Pacific IslandsKo te mana o tenei matenga whetu aianeE poturi i ro o te rangi e piki mai* In Aotearoa (New Zealand), I met happy Romanians. Their happiness was either blended with sadness, or boosted up by it.

*excerpts THE SOPHISTICATED PEASANTS The Romanians are a social phenomenon. As a nation among nations, they are westerners evolved in the East. They are Latins surrounded by Slavs. They are Romans two thousand years away from Rome. They are contemporaries re-produced on

excerpts Chapter IIIThe Nature of the Being  (…) Anybody who knows this nation will agree that the Romanian is a born opponent. Whatever is proposed to him, his first reaction, the first temptation of his thought is to oppose it. But, strangely, his opposition does not

Starting from the fact that the Romanian intellectual – as any other – speaks a foreign language, and is delighted to give information to traveling strangers, some foreigners jumped to the conclusion that Romanians do not prefer their language, a ridiculous and wholly

Chapter XII. The Current [1907] Psychological Traits of the Romanian PeopleAll foreigners that visited the Romanian countries were unpleasantly struck by the negative traits of our character. They don't care, says Mr. X. Marmier, for the name of their master. What they

historian In truth, Romanian society has a strong left-wing bent. A complete turnaround compared with the situation extant before communism. At that time, Romania inclined to the right, because it was a country of landowners, big and small (in particular peasants). Communism

I will begin by quoting myself. Talking about the polemics between two people whose intelligence and moral stature I admire (the polemics took place, in its major parts, in the very pages of the 22 magazine), I used to say with a certain regret and doubtfulness: On whose