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1921. End of the year. The Romanian State Opera House was established in Bucharest. 1938. The month of August. The young institution was holding, through its representatives, master Floria Capsali to its bosom, who was employed on that occasion to nurture the destiny of

A first attempt at collecting in a book texts on personalities of Romanian dance or who have spent a decisive stage in their formation within the framework and in the atmosphere of a Romanian school is bound to be controversial. Although partial and subjective, the present

Do Romanians look in a particular way, precisely as Romanians, and not merely as people of their own times? The answer to such a question of image, apparently simpler than the one to the proper being of the Romanians, is actually much more difficult. And this basically because

Some time in the autumn of 1994, Sorin Alexandrescu asked in an interview in 22 magazine why, in the canonical battle between the various radical-democrat and nationalist structures of the opposition (and of the government), more attention is not paid to the real traditions

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