Blaga the poet is inextricably bound up with Blaga the philosopher. He pursued similar goals in poetry and philosophy: to uncover the meaning of existence and to account for man's place in the universe.

    It is a country that presents many paradoxes. In this book the preeminent Romanian historian Lucian Boia examines his native land's development from the Middle Ages to modern times, delineating its culture, history, language, politics and ethnic identity. Boia introduces us to the heroes and myths of Romanian history, and provides an enlightening account of the history of Romanian Communism. He shows how modernization and the influence of the West have divided the nation - town versus country, nationalists versus pro-European factions, the elite versus the masses - and argues that Romania today is in chronic difficulty as it tries to fix its identity and envision a future for itself.The book concludes with a tour of Bucharest, whose houses, streets and public monuments embody Romania's traditional values and contemporary contradictions.

    The Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of the Balkans provides 50 two-color, full-page maps, each accompanied by a facing page of explanatory text. These maps illustrate key moments in Balkans history in a way that is immediate and comprehensible, making it come alive. Students will regard it as a useful reference, and general readers will enjoy it for its clarity and wealth of information.

    As such, his paintings are distinguished by their wealth of occult notations and an eclectic use of diverse religious symbolism. Brauner's work attests to a unique integration of his Eastern European roots into more flamboyant Western modernism. Despite his many years living in Paris he retained his Romanian identity as evidenced in his choice of titles, his palette, and primarily his choice of imagery, reverting over and over again to his childhood memories and anxieties, to the Balkan landscape, and to the magic and spiritual symbols of his upbringing. This book demonstrates how Brauner's work differs from that of his famous Surrealist counterparts, de Chirico, Ernst, and Tanguy for example, extending our idea of Surrealism itself through his use of poetry, both direct and analogical, his highly narrative depictions of personal and social relations, and his extraordinarily colorful palette.

    Translated from the German by Harry Mathews, Christopher Middleton, and Rosmarie Waldrop. "An Oskar-Pastior-poem is like life. As soon as you think you've got hold of it, it has already moved you ahead by the fraction of a hair"-Klaus Hensel. "For Pastior, language itself is the stuff of life.He explores it through puns, lists, strings, heaps, fields, dictionaries, alphabets, collage, montage, potpourris-all in orgiastic expansion. The result is 'thought-music as a leaping perspective'-a perspective, in which a successful 'nonsensical' text like 'ur-cur trusts sulfur baths: plush' (p. 90) 'is infinitely more precise than this kind of statement'"-from the Introductory Note by Rosmarie Waldrop.