TALENT ŞI CARACTER

• ….”Spectacolul consecvenţei, în gîndire şi în ţinută, pe care-l oferă acest volum este impresionant. Sarcasmul demn, freatic ori de suprafaţă, al scrisorii către Ceauşescu, din 1984 (cea cu inenarabilul "Excelenţă") se regăseşte neschimbat, în esenţă, în articole din '90 sau din '97. De altfel, e de spus că, în materie de scriitură sardonică, Dorin Tudoran atinge performanţe de virtuozitate, evocînd modelul arghezian şi găsindu-şi, în prezent, un echivalent doar în pamfletul de tip Dinescu. (Diferenţele specifice ar consta, repede spus, în aceea că Dorin Tudoran n-are "răutatea" şi versatilitatea Mărţişorului, iar faţă de Mircea Dinescu, reprezintă un alt soi de spirit ludic-casant în instrumentarea maliţiei).”…

George PRUTEANU
Dilema, nr. 283, 3 iul.. 1998

Semantic

In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lance in the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean hack, and a greyhound for coursing. An olla of rather more beef than mutton, a salad on most nights, scraps on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, and a pigeon or so extra on Sundays, made away with three-quarters of his income. The rest of it went in a doublet of fine cloth and velvet breeches and shoes to match for holidays, while on week-days he made a brave figure in his best homespun. He had in his house a housekeeper past forty, a niece under twenty, and a lad for the field and market-place, who used to saddle the hack as well as handle the bill-hook. The age of this gentleman of ours was bordering on fifty; he was of a hardy habit, spare, gaunt-featured, a very early riser and a great sportsman. They will have it his surname was Quixada or Quesada (for here there is some difference of opinion among the authors who write on the subject), although from reasonable conjectures it seems plain that he was called Quexana. This, however, is of but little importance to our tale; it will be enough not to stray a hair's breadth from the truth in the telling of it. You must know, then, that the above-named gentleman whenever he was at leisure (which was mostly all the year round) gave himself up to reading books of chivalry with such ardour and avidity that he almost entirely neglected the pursuit of his field-sports, and even the management of his property;....
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A Portrait...

CHAPTER 1

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo
His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face.
He was baby tuckoo. The moocow came down the road where Betty Byrne lived: she sold lemon platt.
O, the wild rose blossoms
On the little green place.
He sang that song. That was his song.
O, the green wothe botheth.
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Pretéxt

"La vraie vie, la vie enfin découverte et éclaircie, la seule vie par conséquent réellement vécue, cette vie qui en un sens, habite à chaque instant chez tous les hommes aussi bien que chez l'artiste. Mais ils ne la voient pas, parce qu'ils ne cherchent pas à l'éclaircir. Et ainsi leur passé est encombré d'innombrables clichés qui restent inutiles parce que l'intelligence ne les a pas "développés". Ressaisir notre vie; et aussi la vie des autres; car le style pour l'écrivain aussi bien que pour le peintre est une question non de technique, mais de vision. Il est la révélation, qui serait impossible par des moyens directs et conscients de la différence qualitative qu'il y a dans la façon dont nous apparaît le monde, différence qui s'il n'y avait pas l'art, resterait le secret éternel de chacun. Par l'art seulement, nous pouvons sortir de nous, savoir ce que voit un autre de cet univers qui n'est pas le même que le nôtre et dont les paysages nous seraient restés aussi inconnus que ceux qu'il peut y avoir dans la lune. Grâce à l'art au lieu de voir un seul monde, le nôtre, nous le voyons se multiplier et autant qu'il y a des artistes originaux, autant nous avons de mondes à notre disposition, plus différents les uns des autres que ceux qui roulent dans l'infini, et qui bien des siècles après qu'est éteint le foyer dont ils émanaient, qu'il s'appelât Rembrandt ou Ver Meer, nous envoient encore leur rayon spécial."

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A Professor of Phonetics

As will be seen later on, Pygmalion needs, not a preface, but a sequel, which I have supplied in its due place. The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. They spell it so abominably that no man can teach himself what it sounds like. It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him. German and Spanish are accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible even to Englishmen. The reformer England needs today is an energetic phonetic enthusiast: that is why I have made such a one the hero of a popular play. There have been heroes of that kind crying in the wilderness for many years past. When I became interested in the subject towards the end of the eighteen-seventies, Melville Bell was dead; but Alexander J. Ellis was still a living patriarch, with an impressive head always covered by a velvet skull cap, for which he would apologize to public meetings in a very courtly manner. He and Tito Pagliardini, another phonetic veteran, were men whom it was impossible to dislike. Henry Sweet, then a young man, lacked their sweetness of character: he was about as conciliatory to conventional mortals as Ibsen or Samuel Butler. His great ability as a phonetician (he was, I think, the best of them all at his job) would have entitled him to high official recognition, and perhaps enabled him to popularize his subject, but for his Satanic contempt for all academic dignitaries and persons in general who thought more of Greek than of phonetics.

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A Happy Ending

LYUBOV GRIGORYEVNA, a substantial, buxom lady of forty who undertook matchmaking and many other matters of which it is usual to speak only in whispers, had come to see Stytchkin, the head guard, on a day when he was off duty. Stytchkin, somewhat embarrassed, but, as always, grave, practical, and severe, was walking up and down the room, smoking a cigar and saying:
"Very pleased to make your acquaintance. Semyon Ivanovitch recommended you on the ground that you may be able to assist me in a delicate and very important matter affecting the happiness of my life. I have, Lyubov Grigoryevna, reached the age of fifty-two; that is a period of life at which very many have already grown-up children. My position is a secure one. Though my fortune is not large, yet I am in a position to support a beloved being and children at my side. I may tell you between ourselves that apart from my salary I have also money in the bank which my manner of living has enabled me to save. I am a practical and sober man, I lead a sensible and consistent life, so that I may hold myself up as an example to many. But one thing I lack--a domestic hearth of my own and a partner in life, and I live like a wandering Magyar, moving from place to place without any satisfaction. I have no one with whom to take counsel, and when I am ill no one to give me water, and so on. Apart from that, Lyubov Grigoryevna, a married man has always more weight in society than a bachelor. . . . I am a man of the educated class, with money, but if you look at me from a point of view, what am I? A man with no kith and kin, no better than some Polish priest. And therefore I should be very desirous to be united in the bonds of Hymen--that is, to enter into matrimony with some worthy person."
"An excellent thing," said the matchmaker, with a sigh.
"I am a solitary man and in this town I know no one. Where can I go, and to whom can I apply, since all the people here are strangers to me? That is why Semyon Ivanovitch advised me to address myself to a person who is a specialist in this line, and makes the arrangement of the happiness of others her profession. And therefore I most earnestly beg you, Lyubov Grigoryevna, to assist me in ordering my future. You know all the marriageable young ladies in the town, and it is easy for you to accommodate me."
"I can. . . ."
"A glass of wine, I beg you. . . ."

Classical Student

BEFORE setting off for his examination in Greek, Vanya kissed all the holy images. His stomach felt as though it were upside down; there was a chill at his heart, while the heart itself throbbed and stood still with terror before the unknown. What would he get that day? A three or a two? Six times he went to his mother for her blessing, and, as he went out, asked his aunt to pray for him. On the way to school he gave a beggar two kopecks, in the hope that those two kopecks would atone for his ignorance, and that, please God, he would not get the numerals with those awful forties and eighties. He came back from the high school late, between four and five. He came in, and noiselessly lay down on his bed. His thin face was pale. There were dark rings round his red eyes. "Well, how did you get on? How were you marked?" asked his mother, going to his bedside. Vanya blinked, twisted his mouth, and burst into tears. His mother turned pale, let her mouth fall open, and clasped her hands. The breeches she was mending dropped out of her hands. "What are you crying for? You've failed, then?" she asked. "I am plucked. . . I got a two." "I knew it would be so! I had a presentiment of it," said his mother. "Merciful God! How is it you have not passed? What is the reason of it? What subject have you failed in?" "In Greek. .. Mother, I . . . They asked me the future of phero, and I . . . instead of saying oisomai said opsomai. Then . . . then there isn't an accent, if the last syllable is long, and I . . . I got flustered. . . . I forgot that the alpha was long in it . . . . I went and put in the accent. Then Artaxerxov told me to give the list of the enclitic particles. . . . I did, and I accidentally mixed in a pronoun . . . and made a mistake . . . and so he gave me a two. . . . I am a miserable person. . . . I was working all night. . . I've been getting up at four o'clock all this week . . . ." "No, it's not you but I who am miserable, you wretched boy! It's I that am miserable! You've worn me to a threadpaper, you Herod, you torment, you bane of my life! I pay for you, you good-for-nothing rubbish; I've bent my back toiling for you, I'm worried to death, and, I may say, I am unhappy, and what do you care? How do you work?" "I . . . I do work. All night. . . You've seen it yourself." "I prayed to God to take me, but He won't take me, a sinful woman . . . You torment! Other people have children like everyone else, and I've one only and no sense, no comfort out of him. Beat you? I'd beat you, but where am I to find the strength? Mother of God, where am I to find the strength?" The mamma hid her face in the folds of her blouse and broke into sobs. Vanya wriggled with anguish and pressed his forehead against the wall. The aunt came in. "So that's how it is. . . Just what I expected," she said, at once guessing what was wrong, turning pale and clasping her hands. "I've been depressed all the morning. . . There's trouble coming, I thought . . . and here it's come. . ." "The villain, the torment!""Why are you swearing at him?" cried the aunt, nervously pulling her coffee-coloured kerchief off her head and turning upon the mother. "It's not his fault! It's your fault! You are to blame! Why did you send him to that high school? You are a fine lady! You want to be a lady? A-a-ah! I dare say, as though you'll turn into gentry! But if you had sent him, as I told you, into business . . . to an office, like my Kuzya ....

Dante and the Lobster

by Samuel Beckett (1934)

IT was morning and Belacqua was stuck in the first of the canti in the moon. He was so bogged that he could move neither backward nor forward. Blissful Beatrice was there, Dante also, and she explained the spots on the moon to him. She shewed him in the first place where he was at fault, then she put up her own explanation. She had it from God, therefore he could rely on its being accurate in every particular. All he had to do was to follow her step by step. Part one, the refutation, was plain sailing. She made her point clearly, she said what she had to say without fuss or loss of time. But part two, the demonstration, was so dense that Belacqua could not make head or tail of it. The disproof, the reproof, that was patent. But then came the proof, a rapid shorthand of the real facts, and Belacqua was bogged indeed. Bored also, impatient to get on to Piccarda. Still he pored over the enigma, he would not concede himself conquered, he would understand at least the meanings of the words, the order in which they were spoken and the nature of the satisfaction that they conferred on the misinformed poet, so that when they were ended he was refreshed and could raise his heavy head, intending to return thanks and make formal retraction of his old opinion.

He was still running his brain against this impenetrable passage when he heard midday strike. At once he switched his mind off its task. He scooped his fingers under the book and shovelled it back till it lay wholly on his palms. The Divine Comedy face upward on the lectern of his palms. Thus disposed he raised it under his nose and there he slammed it shut. He held it aloft for a time, squinting at it angrily, pressing the boards inwards with the heels of his hands. Then he laid it aside.

He leaned back in his chair to feel his mind subside and the itch of this mean quodlibet die down. Nothing could be.......

In A Thousand Years

Yes, in a thousand years people will fly on the wings of steam through the air, over the ocean! The young inhabitants of America will become visitors of old Europe. They will come over to see the monuments and the great cities, which will then be in ruins, just as we in our time make pilgrimages to the tottering splendours of Southern Asia. In a thousand years they will come!
The Thames, the Danube, and the Rhine still roll their course, Mont Blanc stands firm with its snow-capped summit, and the Northern Lights gleam over the lands of the North; but generation after generation has become dust, whole rows of the mighty of the moment are forgotten, like those who already slumber under the hill on which the rich trader whose ground it is has built a bench, on which he can sit and look out across his waving corn-fields.
"To Europe!" cry the young sons of America; "to the land of our ancestors, the glorious land of monuments and fancy--to Europe!"
The ship of the air comes. It is crowded with passengers, for the transit is quicker than by sea. The electro-magnetic wire under the ocean has already telegraphed the number of the aerial caravan. Europe is in sight: it is the coast of Ireland that they see, but the passengers are still asleep; they will not be called till they are exactly over England. There they will first step on European shore, in the land of Shakespeare as the educated call it; in the land of politics, the land of machines, as it is called by others.
Here they stay a whole day. That is all the time the busy race can devote to the whole of England and Scotland. Then the journey is continued through the tunnel under the English Channel, to France, the land of Charlemagne and Napoleon. Moliere is named: the learned men talk of the classic school of remote antiquity: there is rejoicing and shouting for the names of heroes, poets, and men of science, whom our time does not know, but who will be born after our time in Paris, the crater of Europe.
The air steamboat flies over the country whence Columbus went forth, where Cortez was born, and where Calderon sang dramas in sounding verse. Beautiful black-eyed women live still in the blooming valleys, and the oldest songs speak of the Cid and the Alhambra.
Then through the air, over the sea, to Italy, where once lay old, everlasting Rome. It has vanished! The Campagna lies desert: a single ruined wall is shown as the remains of St. Peter's, but there is a doubt if this ruin be genuine.
Next to Greece, to sleep a night in the grand hotel at the top of Mount Olympus, to say that they have been there; and the journey is continued to the Bosphorus, to rest there a few hours, and see the place where Byzantium lay; and where the legend tells that the harem stood in the time of the Turks, poor fishermen are now spreading their nets.
Over the remains of mighty cities on the broad Danube, cities which we in our time know not, the travellers pass; but here and there, on the rich sites of those that time shall bring forth, the caravan sometimes descends, and departs thence again.
Down below lies Germany, that was once covered with a close net of railways and canals, the region where Luther spoke, where Goethe sang, and Mozart once held the sceptre of harmony! Great names shine there, in science and in art, names that are unknown to us. One day devoted to seeing Germany, and one for the North, the country of Oersted and Linnaeus, and for Norway, the land of the old heroes and the young Normans. Iceland is visited on the journey home: the geysers burn no more, Hecla is an extinct volcano, but the rocky island is still fixed in the midst of the foaming sea, a continual monument of legend and poetry.
"There is really a great deal to be seen in Europe," says the young American, "and we have seen it in a week, according to the directions of the great traveller" (and here he mentions the name of one of his contemporaries) "in his celebrated work, 'How to See all Europe in a Week.'"

(Hans Christian Andersen's short story: In A Thousand Years)

________________________________________________

Andersen

It is a delightful spring: the birds warble, but you do not understand their song? Well, hear it in a free translation."Get on my back," says the stork, our green island's sacred bird, "and I will carry thee over the Sound. Sweden also has fresh and fragrant beech woods, green meadows and corn-fields. In Scania, with the flowering apple-trees behind the peasant's house, you will think that you are still in Denmark." "Fly with me," says the swallow; "I fly over Holland's mountain ridge, where the beech-trees cease to grow; I fly further towards the north than the stork. You shall see the vegetable mould pass over into rocky ground; see snug, neat towns, old churches and mansions, where all is good and comfortable, where the family stand in a circle around the table and say grace at meals, where the least of the children says a prayer, and, morning and evening, sings a psalm. I have heard it, I have seen it, when little, from my nest under the eaves." "Come with me! come with me!" screams the restless sea-gull, and flies in an expecting circle. "Come with me to the Skjaergaards, where rocky isles by thousands, with fir and pine, lie like flower-beds along the coast; where the fishermen draw the well-filled nets!" "Rest thee between our extended wings," sing the wild swans. "Let us bear thee up to the great lakes, the perpetually roaring elvs (rivers), that rush on with arrowy swiftness; where the oak forest has long ceased, and the birch-tree becomes stunted. Rest thee between our extended wings: we fly up to Sulitelma, the island's eye, as the mountain is called; we fly from the vernal green valley, up over the snow-drifts, to the mountain's top, whence thou canst see the North Sea, on yonder side of Norway. "We fly to Jemteland, where the rocky mountains are high and blue........

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Precépt

"Poţi, dar nu mai are nici un haz. Indiferent ce i-ai spune, nu-l mai scoţi din sărite. Ba se mai uită şi lumea chiorîş la tine, că-i tulburi odihna. Să-i răspunzi de dragul adevărului? Pe cine mai interesează adevărul, cînd la noi ceea ce contează e cine-o zice mai usturător?
Ideea lui Adrian Marino de a le-o zice, cum ar veni, postum celor despre care avea o părere proastă, pe drept sau pe nedrept, reia tradiţia autohtonă a memoriilor cu efect întîrziat. Cu anumite deosebiri.
Liviu Rebreanu a cerut ca Jurnalul său să nu fie publicat decît la 50 de ani de la moartea lui. Avea şi el cîţiva clienţi pe care i-a făcut de două parale, dar îndeobşte persoane care l-au atacat de nenumărate ori, răscolindu-i răuvoitor trecutul. Nu i-a căşunat pe nimeni din senin, iar atitudinea lui era mai degrabă una de tip constatativ „Iar m-a atacat cutare” şi cu cîte un epitet, în coada constatării.
Adrian Marino îi ia la tocat şi pe cei cu care i s-a întîmplat să polemizeze, dar şi pe unii cu care a avut relaţii bune, pe care îi acuză de păcate prin ricoşeu. Cred că cei care au preferat să nu comenteze caracterizările pe care li le-a consacrat Marino au făcut mai bine decît Mircea Dinescu, cel care a declarat pentru EVZ că „Marino minte şi mort” şi că memorialistul ar fi fost informator la SIE. Dinescu n-ar fi trebuit să profite de funcţia lui la CNSAS pentru a-i da o contralovitură, postum, lui Adrian Marino. Chiar dacă teoreticianul literar l-a atacat aiurea la disidenţă, preluînd murdării apărute prin România mare. Văd că după apariţia în EVZ a fragmentelor din cartea lui Adrian Marino a reînviat şi vechea discuţie despre dreptul la contestare. Asta cu trimitere, evident, la aşa-numiţii boieri ai minţii. Ca şi cum Pleşu şi ceilalţi boieri contemporani ai intelectualităţii autohtone ar sta netulburaţi pe niscai socluri,........."..
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Accepții

Aristotel si arta
Instinctele, sentimentele, pasiunile, gândurile, erorile sunt oglindite În opera de artă purificatoare, mai ales în spectacol. Şi folclorul cuprinde elemente artistice şi morale de rangul întâi, înţelepciunea, rafinamentul şi puterea plăsmuirii fiind extinse până în magic şi mitic. Lui Lucian Blaga i-a plăcut să spună că veşnicia s-a născut la sat. Versurile populare culese de el exprimă un rafinament sufletesc pe care nu-l poate depăşi nici cea mai rafinată sensibilitate a unui poet din orice timp. "Dorul transobiectic şi transorizontic, jalea transobiectică şi transorizontică şi urâtul transobiectic şi transorizontic", cum interpretează aşa de inspirat Blaga, acest "în sine" poetic
Eu nu am o poziţie antimodernă - folosesc aci comoda teorie a epocilor, legate de timp şi de stiluri, ca desfăşurări istorice ale spiritului în spaţiu - fiindcă doresc ca omul să devină stâpân raţional al naturii. De aceea, concep o artă modernă În care să nu existe neştiinţa, zănăticia, improprietatea termenilor, impostura, inadvertenţa, murdăria, trivialitatea, josnicia şi revărsările informe ale sufletelor inşilor dezechilibraţi, vicioşi, obosiţi şi neputincioşi. Tristeţea metafizică nu trebuie să nască pofta pentru putred şi deşeu. Sufletele bolnave nu pot crea artă adevărată, construcţiile lor prezentând interes pentru descompuşi. Nu-mi place decadenţa pseudoartistică, aşa cum n-o suport pe cea morală de extracţie joasă, a inşilor care nu pot ieşi din pielea lor, iar când ies în lumea lucrurilor şi a ideilor, le desfigurează. Cum spune Goethe:
"Şi ce-i înalt, se face jos,
Şi ce e drept, se face strâmb,
De văd pe dos, sunt sănătos.
Numai urâtul e frumos."(Faust, Zoilo-Tersit, traducere de Lucian Blaga)
Purii citadini ai vremii noastre îşi înfăşoară vidul lăuntric într-o simbolică obscură, care poate fi numită impostură.
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Urmuz

Fabulă

Cică nişte cronicari
Duceau lipsă de şalvari.
Şi-au rugat pe Rapaport
Să le dea un paşaport.
Rapaport cel drăgălaş
Juca un carambolaj,
Neştiind că-Aristotel
Nu văzuse ostropel.
„Galileu! O, Galileu!
Strigă el atunci mereu –
Nu mai trage de urechi
Ale tale ghete vechi.”
Galileu scoate-o sinteză
Din redingota franceză,
Şi exclamă: „Sarafoff,
Serveşte-te de cartof!”

Morală

Pelicanul sau babiţa.

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The Bee

It was Maeterlinck who introduced me to the bee. I mean, in the psychical and in the poetical way. I had had a business introduction earlier. It was when I was a boy. It is strange that I should remember a formality like that so long; it must be nearly sixty years. Bee scientists always speak of the bee as she. It is because all the important bees are of that sex. In the hive there is one married bee, called the queen; she has fifty thousand children; of these, about one hundred are sons; the rest are daughters. Some of the daughters are young maids, some are old maids, and all are virgins and remain so. Every spring the queen comes out of the hive and flies away with one of her sons and marries him. The honeymoon lasts only an hour or two; then the queen divorces her husband and returns home competent to lay two million eggs. This will be enough to last the year, but not more than enough, because hundreds of bees are drowned every day, and other hundreds are eaten by birds, and it is the queen's business to keep the population up to standard --say, fifty thousand. She must always have that many children on hand and efficient during the busy season, which is summer, or winter would catch the community short of food. She lays from two thousand to three thousand eggs a day, according to the demand; and she must exercise judgment, and not lay more than are needed in a slim flower-harvest, nor fewer than are required in a prodigal one, or the board of directors will dethrone her and elect a queen that has more sense..... .
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The Titan

When Frank Algernon Cowperwood emerged from the Eastern District Penitentiary in Philadelphia he realized that the old life he had
lived in that city since boyhood was ended. His youth was gone,
and with it had been lost the great business prospects of his
earlier manhood. He must begin again.
It would be useless to repeat how a second panic following upon a tremendous failure--that of Jay Cooke & Co.--had placed a second fortune in his hands. This restored wealth softened him in some degree. Fate seemed to have his personal welfare in charge. He was sick of the stock-exchange, anyhow, as a means of livelihood, and now decided that he would leave it once and for all. He would get in something else--street-railways, land deals, some of the boundless opportunities of the far West. Philadelphia was no longer pleasing to him. Though now free and rich, he was still a scandal to the pretenders, and the financial and social world was not prepared to accept him. He must go his way alone, unaided, or only secretly so, while his quondam friends watched his career from afar. So, thinking of this, he took the train one day, his charming mistress, now only twenty-six, coming to the station to see him off. He looked at her quite tenderly, for she was the quintessence of a certain type of feminine beauty.
"By-by, dearie," he smiled, as the train-bell signaled the approaching departure. "You and I will get out of this shortly. Don't grieve. I'll be back in two or three weeks, or I'll send for you. I'd take you now, only I don't know how that country is out there. We'll fix on some place, and then you watch me settle this fortune question. We'll not live under a cloud always. I'll get a divorce, and we'll marry, and things will come right with a bang. Money will do that."....

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The Beauties

I REMEMBER, when I was a high school boy in the fifth or sixth class, I was driving with my grandfather from the village of Bolshoe Kryepkoe in the Don region to Rostov-on-the-Don. It was a sultry, languidly dreary day of August. Our eyes were glued together, and our mouths were parched from the heat and the dry burning wind which drove clouds of dust to meet us; one did not want to look or speak or think, and when our drowsy driver, a Little Russian called Karpo, swung his whip at the horses and lashed me on my cap, I did not protest or utter a sound, but only, rousing myself from half-slumber, gazed mildly and dejectedly into the distance to see whether there was a village visible through the dust. We stopped to feed the horses in a big Armenian village at a rich Armenian's whom my grandfather knew. Never in my life have I seen a greater caricature than that Armenian. Imagine a little shaven head with thick overhanging eyebrows, a beak of a nose, long gray mustaches, and a wide mouth with a long cherry-wood chibouk sticking out of it. This little head was clumsily attached to a lean hunch-back carcass attired in a fantastic garb, a short red jacket, and full bright blue trousers. This figure walked straddling its legs and shuffling with its slippers, spoke without taking the chibouk out of its mouth, and behaved with truly Armenian dignity, not smiling, but staring with wide-open eyes and trying to take as little notice as possible of its guests.

There was neither wind nor dust in the Armenian's rooms, but it was just as unpleasant, stifling, and dreary as in the steppe and on the road. I remember, dusty and exhausted by the heat, I sat in the corner on a green box. The unpainted wooden walls, the furniture, and the floors colored with yellow ocher smelt of dry wood baked by the sun. Wherever I looked there were flies and flies and flies. . . . Grandfather and the Armenian were talking about grazing, about manure, and about oats. . . . I knew that they would be a good hour getting the samovar; that grandfather would be not less than an hour drinking his tea, and then would lie down to sleep for two or three hours; that I should waste a quarter of the day waiting, after which.....
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Old Age

UZELKOV, an architect with the rank of civil councillor, arrived in his native town, to which he had been invited to restore the church in the cemetery. He had been born in the town, had been at school, had grown up and married in it. But when he got out of the train he scarcely recognized it. Everything was changed. . . . Eighteen years ago when he had moved to Petersburg the street-boys used to catch marmots, for instance, on the spot where now the station was standing; now when one drove into the chief street, a hotel of four storeys stood facing one; in old days there was an ugly grey fence just there; but nothing--neither fences nor houses --had changed as much as the people. From his enquiries of the hotel waiter Uzelkov learned that more than half of the people he remembered were dead, reduced to poverty, forgotten.

"And do you remember Uzelkov?" he asked the old waiter about himself. "Uzelkov the architect who divorced his wife? He used to have a house in Svirebeyevsky Street . . . you must remember."

"I don't remember, sir."

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Dostoievski's Идиот

PART I - CHAPTER I

Towards the end of November, during a thaw, at nine o'clock one morning, a train on the Warsaw and Petersburg railway was approaching the latter city at full speed. The morning was so damp and misty that it was only with great difficulty that the day succeeded in breaking; and it was impossible to distinguish anything more than a few yards away from the carriage windows.

Some of the passengers by this particular train were returning from abroad; but the third-class carriages were the best filled, chiefly with insignificant persons of various occupations and degrees, picked up at the different stations nearer town. All of them seemed weary, and most of them had sleepy eyes and a shivering expression, while their complexions generally appeared to have taken on the colour of the fog outside.

When day dawned, two passengers in one of the third-class carriages found themselves opposite each other. Both were young fellows, both were rather poorly dressed, both had remarkable faces, and both were evidently anxious to start a conversation. If they had but known why, at this particular moment, they were both remarkable persons, they would undoubtedly have wondered at the strange chance which had set them down opposite to one another in a third-class carriage of the Warsaw Railway Company.

One of them was a young fellow of about twenty-seven, not tall, with black curling hair, and small, grey, fiery eyes. His nose was broad and flat, and he had high cheek bones; his thin lips were constantly compressed into an impudent, ironical--it might almost be called a malicious--smile; but his forehead was high and well formed, and atoned for a good deal of the ugliness of the lower part of his face. A special feature of this physiognomy....
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Scut

După fiecare teză, olimpiadă judeţeană, examen, îmi întrebam invariant mezina :

- Cu scut sau pe scut ?
(tipologie spartană : învingi sau mori )

- Sub scut !, îmi răspundea ea.
[până azi, nu se exista pentru aceasta sintagmă nici o interpretare istorică ]
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Așadár

Avantajele utilizarii 'mass-média' contemporane.

On-line

Estimând corelarea funcţională între dezvoltarea instrumentelor informatice şi capacitatea de concentrare intelectuală, examinând evoluarea timpului de reflexie - consider lecturarea on-line un exerciţiu intelectual util.

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Matematiceáscă,