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Entries Tagged as 'Literature'

Romanian Foreign Affairs (I): Rebecca WEST and Antoine BIBESCO

May 1st, 2010 · No Comments · Books, Diaspora, PEOPLE, quotations

Rebecca West: in Paris, on her way home, she had a brief affair with Prince Antoine Bibesco (who wore black crepe de chine in bed), a Romanian diplomat married to Elizabeth Asquith, daughter of the Liberal leader. She was to remember her own affair as ‘rapturous’ but at its close felt that some blight still affected her personal life. The evidence suggests that Bibesco’s sophisticated sex inventiveness frightened Rebecca and that she interpreted it as a further manifestation of male hostility and aggression and she continued in analysis when she returned to London this time with Silvia Payne another early Freudian. Neverthelsess the elation of her first days with Bibesco coloured the writing of ‘The Strange Necessity’ in which her meditations on art and literature are embedded in an account of a ’sun guilded autumn day’ wandering through a magically illuminated Paris.

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Al. O. Teodoreanu, aka ‘Pastorel’ – Romanian Poetry in Translation (X)

February 12th, 2010 · No Comments · PEOPLE, Poetry, Translations

At Stalin’s death I cried my eyes out / The secret being truly gritty: / We’ll have instead to go about / Licking the arse of a Committee.

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Mircea Eliade într-o colaborare cu bucluc

February 11th, 2010 · No Comments · Diaspora, OPINION, PEOPLE

Desemnat de Sorin Antohi drept “noul Eliade”, Ioan Petru Culianu a reprezentat “un fenomen exploziv introdus în cultura română de după 1989”. Sigur, ar fi contra-productiv să repunem în circulaţie ditirambii prin care s-a realizat această masivă manipulare, care în sine ar fi fost chiar benefică, dacă numele discipolului Culianu n-ar fi fost folosit permanent pentru a-l înlătura din cultura românească pe marele Eliade prin acuzaţii nefondate de anti-semitism. Si, evident, dacă interesul s-ar fi axat exclusiv pe noutatea adusă de psiho-sociologul Culianu (1950-1991) în cele trei cărţi publicate cu ajutorul lui Eliade în Franţa la Payot şi Flamarion, apoi traduse în engleză şi italiană. Dar, mai ales, dacă “fenomenul exploziv” n-ar fi fost declanşat de lansarea unor neadevăruri prin editurile Humanitas, Nemira şi Polirom (urmate inconştient de Editura Academiei), inventându-se doctorate în număr excedentar şi săltându-l pe Culianu în scaunul de conferenţiar de istoria religiilor când n-a apucat să fie decât visiting professor, ba încă imaginându-l (în locul ocupat din 1986 de prof. Wendy Doniger) drept “urmaş al lui Eliade” la vremea când nu-şi trecuse încă doctoratul de Stat…

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Poetry in Translation IX – (Horia VINTILA), Dedication

December 17th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Diaspora, PEOPLE, Poetry, Reviews, Translations

DEDICATION (Vintila Horia)
Through streets of Babylon I look confused
For Thee my Lord to come in your pursuit
My voice is hoarse and broken like a lute
Which lost its soul for being over used.

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Nobel prize Winner – Exorting Romania to be honest about its Communist Past

October 8th, 2009 · No Comments · Diaspora, PEOPLE

Herta MUELLER
2009 Nobel Prize for Literature
(Romanian-born German from the Banat of Timisoara, living in Berlin)
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Herta Müller has a sharp sense of realities, as demonstrated in her article published in Tagesspeil of 17 July 2008, which is echoed by the Frankfurter Rundschau:
“It is a scandal that Romania put forward as its representatives (in Germany, a.n.) two [...]

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