How The City Is Seen Through The Eyes Of A Stranger. Paul Morand’s Bucharest | Wednesday Intersections

Wed, July 22, 19:00-21:00, at Gabroveni Inn

Debate around the Bucharest, by Paul Morand book (Humanitas, 2015, translated by Emanoil Marcu)

With: Dan C. Mihăilescu, Andreea Răsuceanu and Alina Pavelescu

Moderated by: Svetlana Cârstean

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Published in 1935, Paul Morand’s book, reveals, sometimes in a flattering way, other times quite on the contrary, a familiar Bucharest even for us in 2015, caught in its eternal and always recognizable aspects.

“You cannot translate words, as they do not evoke the same images. Out spring, in France, the shyest of the seasons, begins under snow and ends up under water; long as our youth, it lasts for four months. Frühling is our jolly awakening sung by Germanic Europe. The Romanian spring is a violent awakening from a hibernating numbness: it explodes like a bombshell. In Bucharest, you get out on the first beautiful day, with barely emerged buds, and by nightfall, when you return back home, everything is leafy. All animals are expecting babies; stray bitches go and have their pups in abandoned houses, and roe filled sturgeons move heavily upstream Danube. In groceries, the price of caviar goes down by a third. The bear staggers out of his lair, while flowers in plum orchards stain mountain tops in pink. (…)

Spring is only a short call of summer, quick like a rooster sound, of wheat harvested since June, of flowers in Cișmigiu and Carol parks, Romanian flowers, that never die, which climb anywhere and resist anything, from suffocating dust to torrid sun. Double layered windows open. After the Moșilor fair and the May 10 Military Parade, Bucharest appears in all its splendor. The pleasure and the greenness are part of its diabolical charm.”