***

 

Lucruri care se intâmplă in Japonia:

1. Din clasa întâi până în a 6-a se preda o materie "drumul despre bunul simț” din care elevii învață comportamentul civilizat și manierele de bun simț!

2. Nu rămâne nici un elev repetent din clasa întâia până la clasa a 7-a, fiindcă scopul este educația și implantarea principiilor și nicidecum învățământul și stocarea informațiilor!

3. Japonezii cu toate ca sunt considerați printre cei mai bogați oameni din lume, nu angajează femei de casa sau dădace pentru creșterea copiilor, părinții sunt primii răspunzători de educația copiilor!

4. Elevii japonezii, zilnic,  timp de 15 minute, fac curat în școlile lor împreuna cu educatori, învățători și profesori, lucru ce a determinat apariția unei generații modeste și atente la fenomenul curățenie și igiena!

5. Fiecare elev japonez are tot timpul la el periuța de dinți și își spală dinții după ce mănâncă și în acest mod învață de mic cum să se păstreze igienic!

6. Profesorii iau masa cu 30 de minute înaintea elevilor, ca să fie siguri ca mâncarea este buna și nu este alterata, fiindcă elevul este considerat viitorul țarii și trebuie protejat!

7. Gunoierul în Japonia este cunoscut sub numele de ”inginer sanitar” și are un salariu de 5000 până la 8000$. Pentru a ocupa acest post candidatul trebuie să treacă proba scrisa și orala!

8. Este interzisa utilizarea mobilului în trenuri, restaurante și locurile publice cu spații închise și mobilul trebuie setat pe modul ”bun simț” care la ei este foarte important!

9. Dacă te duci la un restaurant cu bufet suedez vei vedea ca fiecare pune în farfuria lui atât cât ii trebuie, nu fac risipa, nici nu lasă resturi de mâncare în farfurii!

10. Media de întârziere la trenuri pe an este de 7 secunde!

***

 

😢Dureros de emotionant!

Sunt nenumărate cazuri,

in care părinții bătrâni și neputincioși sunt  uitati în singurătate! 

Doamne, Dumnezeul nostru, ai grija de parintii dați uitării! 😢

Mai veniți copii, pe acasă! 

CUCUL ȘI BĂTRÂNA 

Din țări străine, mai devreme

S-a întors la casa lui  un cuc.

Copacul plin de floare  geme,

Iar el cântă parcă-i  năuc.

Și vine zilnic să îl vadă

O bătrânică în baston.

Ce bucurie, că în ogradă

Are un suflețel...în pom.

-Tu, păsărică călătoare,

Din care parte a lumii vii?

Zburând poate-ai văzut în cale

Vre-o unul dintre ai mei copii?

Îi tot aștept mereu să vină

Măcar la sfinte sărbători.

Că am rămas în sat străină

Fără de nici un puișor.

Nimeni nu-mi deschide portița,

Să mă întrebe vre-un cuvânt.

Vorbesc seara cu iconița

Și cu Maica Domnului Sfânt.

-Tu, cucule, zborul de-ți iei

Și vei pleca mâine, poimâne

De-i întâlni  copiii mei,

Să le arăți drumul  la mine.

M-aș duce eu la fiecare,

Dar am îmbătrânit demult.

Și bietele mele picioare

Pân la portiță doar mă duc.

Nimeni nu-mi deschide portița,

Să mă întrebe vre-un cuvânt.

Vorbesc seara cu iconița

Și cu Maica Domnului Sfânt.

-Tu, cucule, zborul de-ți iei

Și vei pleca mâine, poimâne

De-i întâlni  copiii mei,

Să le arăți drumul  la mine.

M-aș duce eu la fiecare,

Dar am îmbătrânit demult.

Și bietele mele picioare

Pân la portiță doar mă duc.

Pe-o ramură de măr rotat,

Cucul în limba lui doinește.

Iar o bătrână în toiag

Necazurile-i povestește.

Autor: Natalia Mazilu-Miron

***

 

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

William Shakespeare is arguably the most famous writer of the English language, known for both his plays and sonnets. Though much about his life remains open to debate because of incomplete evidence, the following biography consolidates the most widely-accepted facts of Shakespeare's life and career.

In the mid-sixteenth century, William Shakespeare's father, John Shakespeare, moved to the idyllic town of Stratford-upon-Avon. There, he became a successful landowner, moneylender, glove-maker, and dealer of wool and agricultural goods. In 1557, he married Mary Arden.During John Shakespeare's time, the British middle class was expanding in both size and wealth, allowing its members more freedoms and luxuries, as well as a stronger collective voice in local government. John took advantage of the changing times and became a member of the Stratford Council in 1557, which marked the beginning of his illustrious political career. By 1561, he was elected to be one of the town's fourteen burgesses, and subsequently served as Constable, then one of two Chamberlains, and later, Alderman. In all of these positions, the elder Shakespeare administered borough property and revenues. In 1567, he became bailiff—the highest elected office in Stratford and the equivalent of a modern-day mayor.Town records indicate that William Shakespeare was John and Mary's third child. His birth is unregistered, but legend pins it on April 23, 1564, possibly because it is known that he died on April 23rd 52 years later. In any event, William's baptism was registered with the town of Stratford on April 26, 1564. Little is known about his childhood, although it is generally assumed that he attended the local grammar school, the King's New School. The school was staffed by Oxford-educated faculty who taught the students mathematics, natural sciences, logic, Christian ethics, and classical languages and literature.Shakespeare did not attend university, which was not at all unusual for the time. University education was reserved for wealthy sons of the elite, and even then, mostly just those who wanted to become clergymen. The numerous classical and literary references in Shakespeare’s plays are a testament, however, to the excellent education he received in grammar school, and speaks to his ability as an autodidact. His early plays, in particular, draw on the works of Seneca and Plautus. Even more impressive than Shakespeare's formal education is the wealth of general knowledge he exhibits in his work. His vocabulary exceeds that of any other English writer of his time by a wide margin.In 1582, at the age of eighteen, William Shakespeare married twenty-six-year-old Anne Hathaway. Their first daughter, Susanna, was not baptized until six months later—a fact that has given rise to speculation over the circumstances surrounding the marriage. In 1585, Anne bore twins, baptized Hamnet and Judith Shakespeare. Hamnet died at the age of eleven, by which time William Shakespeare was already a successful playwright. Around 1589, Shakespeare wrote Henry VI, Part 1, which is considered to be his first play. Sometime between his marriage and writing this play, he moved to London, where he pursued a career as a playwright and actor.Although many records of Shakespeare's life as a citizen of Stratford have survived, including his marriage and birth certificates, very little information exists about his life as a young playwright. Legend characterizes Shakespeare as a roguish young man who was once forced to flee London under suspect circumstances, perhaps having to do with his love life, but the paltry amount of written information does not necessarily confirm this facet of his personality.In any case, young Will was not an immediate universal success. The earliest written record of Shakespeare's life in London comes from a statement by his rival playwright Robert Greene. InGroatsworth of Witte (1592), Greene calls Shakespeare an "upstart crow...[who] supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you." While this is hardly high praise, it does suggest that Shakespeare rattled London's theatrical hierarchy from the beginning of his career. In retrospect, it is possible to attribute Greene's complaint to jealousy of Shakespeare's ability, but there is little evidence one way or the other.With Richard III, Henry VI, The Comedy of Errors, and Titus Andronicus under his belt, Shakespeare was a popular playwright by 1590.* The year 1593, however, marked a major leap forward in his career when he secured a prominent patron: The Earl of Southampton. In addition, Venus and Adoniswas published - it is one of the first of Shakespeare's known works to be printed, and it was a huge success. Next came The Rape of Lucrece. By this time, Shakespeare had also made his mark as a poet, as most scholars agree that he wrote the majority of his sonnets in the 1590s.In 1594, Shakespeare returned to the theater and became a charter member of the Lord Chamberlain's Men—a group of actors who changed their name to the King's Men when James I ascended the throne. By 1598, Shakespeare had been appointed the "principal comedian" for the troupe; by 1603, he was "principal tragedian." He remained associated with the organization until his death. Although acting and playwriting were not considered noble professions at the time, successful and prosperous actors were relatively well respected. Shakespeare’s success left him with a fair amount of money, which he invested in Stratford real estate. In 1597, he purchased the second largest house in Stratford—the New Place—for his parents. In 1596, Shakespeare applied for a coat of arms for his family, in effect making himself a gentleman. Consequently, his daughters made “good matches,” and married wealthy men.The same year that he joined the Lord Chamberlain's Men, Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet,Love's Labour's Lost, The Taming of the Shrew, and several other plays. In 1600, he wrote two of his greatest tragedies, Hamlet and Julius Caesar. Historians and scholars consider Hamlet to be the first modern play because of its multi-faceted main character and unprecedented depiction of the human psyche.The first decade of the seventeenth century witnessed the debut performances of many of Shakespeare’s most celebrated works, including many of his so-called history plays: Othello in 1604 or 1605; Antony and Cleopatra in 1606 or 1607; and King Lear in 1608. The last of Shakespeare's plays to be performed during his lifetime was most likely King Henry VIII in either 1612 or 1613.William Shakespeare died in 1616. His wife Anna died in 1623, at the age of 67. Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of his church at Stratford. The lines above his tomb—allegedly written by Shakespeare himself—read:Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear To dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones And cursed be he that moves my bones.*The dates of composition and performance of almost all of Shakespeare's plays remain uncertain. The dates used in this note are widely agreed upon by scholars, but there is still significant debate around the dates that he completed many of his plays.

***

 Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Themes, Motifs & Symbols

Themes

DIFFERENT TYPES OF ROMANTIC LOVE

Modern readers associate the sonnet form with romantic love and with good reason: the first sonnets written in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italy celebrated the poets’ feelings for their beloveds and their patrons. These sonnets were addressed to stylized, lionized women and dedicated to wealthy noblemen, who supported poets with money and other gifts, usually in return for lofty praise in print. Shakespeare dedicated his sonnets to “Mr. W. H.,” and the identity of this man remains unknown. He dedicated an earlier set of poems, Venus and Adonis and Rape of Lucrece, to Henry Wriothesly, earl of Southampton, but it’s not known what Wriothesly gave him for this honor. In contrast to tradition, Shakespeare addressed most of his sonnets to an unnamed young man, possibly Wriothesly. Addressing sonnets to a young man was unique in Elizabethan England. Furthermore, Shakespeare used his sonnets to explore different types of love between the young man and the speaker, the young man and the dark lady, and the dark lady and the speaker. In his sequence, the speaker expresses passionate concern for the young man, praises his beauty, and articulates what we would now call homosexual desire. The woman of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the so-called dark lady, is earthy, sexual, and faithless—characteristics in direct opposition to lovers described in other sonnet sequences, including Astrophil and Stella, by Sir Philip Sidney, a contemporary of Shakespeare, who were praised for their angelic demeanor, virginity, and steadfastness. Several sonnets also probe the nature of love, comparing the idealized love found in poems with the messy, complicated love found in real life.

THE DANGERS OF LUST AND LOVE

In Shakespeare’s sonnets, falling in love can have painful emotional and physical consequences. Sonnets 127–152, addressed to the so-called dark lady, express a more overtly erotic and physical love than the sonnets addressed to the young man. But many sonnets warn readers about the dangers of lust and love. According to some poems, lust causes us to mistake sexual desire for true love, and love itself causes us to lose our powers of perception. Several sonnets warn about the dangers of lust, claiming that it turns humans “savage, extreme, rude, cruel” , as in Sonnet 129. The final two sonnets of Shakespeare’s sequence obliquely imply that lust leads to venereal disease. According to the conventions of romance, the sexual act, or “making love,” expresses the deep feeling between two people. In his sonnets, however, Shakespeare portrays making love not as a romantic expression of sentiment but as a base physical need with the potential for horrible consequences.

Several sonnets equate being in love with being in a pitiful state: as demonstrated by the poems, love causes fear, alienation, despair, and physical discomfort, not the pleasant emotions or euphoria we usually associate with romantic feelings. The speaker alternates between professing great love and professing great worry as he speculates about the young man’s misbehavior and the dark lady’s multiple sexual partners. As the young man and the dark lady begin an affair, the speaker imagines himself caught in a love triangle, mourning the loss of his friendship with the man and love with the woman, and he laments having fallen in love with the woman in the first place. In Sonnet 137, the speaker personifies love, calls him a simpleton, and criticizes him for removing his powers of perception. It was love that caused the speaker to make mistakes and poor judgments. Elsewhere the speaker calls love a disease as a way of demonstrating the physical pain of emotional wounds. Throughout his sonnets, Shakespeare clearly implies that love hurts. Yet despite the emotional and physical pain, like the speaker, we continue falling in love. Shakespeare shows that falling in love is an inescapable aspect of the human condition—indeed, expressing love is part of what makes us human.

REAL BEAUTY VS. CLICHÉD BEAUTY

To express the depth of their feelings, poets frequently employ hyperbolic terms to describe the objects of their affections. Traditionally, sonnets transform women into the most glorious creatures to walk the earth, whereas patrons become the noblest and bravest men the world has ever known. Shakespeare makes fun of the convention by contrasting an idealized woman with a real woman. In Sonnet 130, Shakespeare directly engages—and skewers—clichéd concepts of beauty. The speaker explains that his lover, the dark lady, has wires for hair, bad breath, dull cleavage, a heavy step, and pale lips. He concludes by saying that he loves her all the more precisely because he loves her and not some idealized, false version. Real love, the sonnet implies, begins when we accept our lovers for what they are as well as what they are not. Other sonnets explain that because anyone can use artful means to make himself or herself more attractive, no one is really beautiful anymore. Thus, since anyone can become beautiful, calling someone beautiful is no longer much of a compliment.

THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF BEING BEAUTIFUL

Shakespeare portrays beauty as conveying a great responsibility in the sonnets addressed to the young man, Sonnets 1–126. Here the speaker urges the young man to make his beauty immortal by having children, a theme that appears repeatedly throughout the poems: as an attractive person, the young man has a responsibility to procreate. Later sonnets demonstrate the speaker, angry at being cuckolded, lashing out at the young man and accusing him of using his beauty to hide immoral acts. Sonnet 95 compares the young man’s behavior to a “canker in the fragrant rose” or a rotten spot on an otherwise beautiful flower. In other words, the young man’s beauty allows him to get away with bad behavior, but this bad behavior will eventually distort his beauty, much like a rotten spot eventually spreads. Nature gave the young man a beautiful face, but it is the young man’s responsibility to make sure that his soul is worthy of such a visage.

Motifs

ART VS. TIME

Shakespeare, like many sonneteers, portrays time as an enemy of love. Time destroys love because time causes beauty to fade, people to age, and life to end. One common convention of sonnets in general is to flatter either a beloved or a patron by promising immortality through verse. As long as readers read the poem, the object of the poem’s love will remain alive. In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 15, the speaker talks of being “in war with time” : time causes the young man’s beauty to fade, but the speaker’s verse shall entomb the young man and keep him beautiful. The speaker begins by pleading with time in another sonnet, yet he ends by taunting time, confidently asserting that his verse will counteract time’s ravages. From our contemporary vantage point, the speaker was correct, and art has beaten time: the young man remains young since we continue to read of his youth in Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Through art, nature and beauty overcome time. Several sonnets use the seasons to symbolize the passage of time and to show that everything in nature—from plants to people—is mortal. But nature creates beauty, which poets capture and render immortal in their verse. Sonnet 106 portrays the speaker reading poems from the past and recognizing his beloved’s beauty portrayed therein. The speaker then suggests that these earlier poets were prophesizing the future beauty of the young man by describing the beauty of their contemporaries. In other words, past poets described the beautiful people of their day and, like Shakespeare’s speaker, perhaps urged these beautiful people to procreate and so on, through the poetic ages, until the birth of the young man portrayed in Shakespeare’s sonnets. In this way—that is, as beautiful people of one generation produce more beautiful people in the subsequent generation and as all this beauty is written about by poets—nature, art, and beauty triumph over time.

STOPPING THE MARCH TOWARD DEATH

Growing older and dying are inescapable aspects of the human condition, but Shakespeare’s sonnets give suggestions for halting the progress toward death. Shakespeare’s speaker spends a lot of time trying to convince the young man to cheat death by having children. In Sonnets 1–17, the speaker argues that the young man is too beautiful to die without leaving behind his replica, and the idea that the young man has a duty to procreate becomes the dominant motif of the first several sonnets. In Sonnet 3, the speaker continues his urgent prodding and concludes, “Die single and thine image dies with thee”. The speaker’s words aren’t just the flirtatious ramblings of a smitten man: Elizabethan England was rife with disease, and early death was common. Producing children guaranteed the continuation of the species. Therefore, falling in love has a social benefit, a benefit indirectly stressed by Shakespeare’s sonnets. We might die, but our children—and the human race—shall live on.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SIGHT

Shakespeare used images of eyes throughout the sonnets to emphasize other themes and motifs, including children as an antidote to death, art’s struggle to overcome time, and the painfulness of love. For instance, in several poems, the speaker urges the young man to admire himself in the mirror. Noticing and admiring his own beauty, the speaker argues, will encourage the young man to father a child. Other sonnets link writing and painting with sight: in Sonnet 24, the speaker’s eye becomes a pen or paintbrush that captures the young man’s beauty and imprints it on the blank page of the speaker’s heart. But our loving eyes can also distort our sight, causing us to misperceive reality. In the sonnets addressed to the dark lady, the speaker criticizes his eyes for causing him to fall in love with a beautiful but duplicitous woman. Ultimately, Shakespeare uses eyes to act as a warning: while our eyes allow us to perceive beauty, they sometimes get so captivated by beauty that they cause us to misjudge character and other attributes not visible to the naked eye.

Readers’ eyes are as significant in the sonnets as the speaker’s eyes. Shakespeare encourages his readers to see by providing vivid visual descriptions. One sonnet compares the young man’s beauty to the glory of the rising sun, while another uses the image of clouds obscuring the sun as a metaphor for the young man’s faithlessness and still another contrasts the beauty of a rose with one rotten spot to warn the young man to cease his sinning ways. Other poems describe bare trees to symbolize aging. The sonnets devoted to the dark lady emphasize her coloring, noting in particular her black eyes and hair, and Sonnet 130 describes her by noting all the colors she does not possess. Stressing the visual helps Shakespeare to heighten our experience of the poems by giving us the precise tools with which to imagine the metaphors, similes, and descriptions contained therein.

Symbols

FLOWERS AND TREES

Flowers and trees appear throughout the sonnets to illustrate the passage of time, the transience of life, the aging process, and beauty. Rich, lush foliage symbolizes youth, whereas barren trees symbolize old age and death, often in the same poem, as in Sonnet 12. Traditionally, roses signify romantic love, a symbol Shakespeare employs in the sonnets, discussing their attractiveness and fragrance in relation to the young man. Sometimes Shakespeare compares flowers and weeds to contrast beauty and ugliness. In these comparisons, marred, rotten flowers are worse than weeds—that is, beauty that turns rotten from bad character is worse than initial ugliness. Giddy with love, elsewhere the speaker compares blooming flowers to the beauty of the young man, concluding in Sonnets 98 and 99 that flowers received their bloom and smell from him. The sheer ridiculousness of this statement—flowers smell sweet for chemical and biological reasons—underscores the hyperbole and exaggeration that plague typical sonnets.

STARS

Shakespeare uses stars to stand in for fate, a common poetic trope, but also to explore the nature of free will. Many sonneteers resort to employing fate, symbolized by the stars, to prove that their love is permanent and predestined. In contrast, Shakespeare’s speaker claims that he relies on his eyes, rather than on the hands of fate, to make decisions. Using his eyes, the speaker “reads” that the young man’s good fortune and beauty shall pass to his children, should he have them. During Shakespeare’s time, people generally believed in astrology, even as scholars were making great gains in astronomy and cosmology, a metaphysical system for ordering the universe. According to Elizabethan astrology, a cosmic order determined the place of everything in the universe, from planets and stars to people. Although humans had some free will, the heavenly spheres, with the help of God, predetermined fate. In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 25, the speaker acknowledges that he has been unlucky in the stars but lucky in love, thereby removing his happiness from the heavenly bodies and transposing it onto the human body of his beloved.

WEATHER AND THE SEASONS

Shakespeare employed the pathetic fallacy, or the attribution of human characteristics or emotions to elements in nature or inanimate objects, throughout his plays. In the sonnets, the speaker frequently employs the pathetic fallacy, associating his absence from the young man to the freezing days of December and the promise of their reunion to a pregnant spring. Weather and the seasons also stand in for human emotions: the speaker conveys his sense of foreboding about death by likening himself to autumn, a time in which nature’s objects begin to decay and ready themselves for winter, or death. Similarly, despite the arrival of “proud-pied April” in Sonnet 98, the speaker still feels as if it were winter because he and the young man are apart. The speaker in Sonnet 18, one of Shakespeare’s most famous poems, begins by rhetorically asking the young man, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

. He spends the remainder of the poem explaining the multiple ways in which the young man is superior to a summer day, ultimately concluding that while summer ends, the young man’s beauty lives on in the permanence of poetry.

***

 

JULIUS CAESAR

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

The Tragedy of Julius Caesar is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1599. It is one of several plays written by Shakespeare based on true events from Roman history, which also include Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra.

Summary:

Two tribunes, Flavius and Murellus, find scores of Roman citizens wandering the streets, neglecting their work in order to watch Julius Caesar’s triumphal parade: Caesar has defeated the sons of the deceased Roman general Pompey, his archrival, in battle. The tribunes scold the citizens for abandoning their duties and remove decorations from Caesar’s statues. Caesar enters with his entourage, including the military and political figures Brutus, Cassius, and Antony. A Soothsayer calls out to Caesar to “beware the Ides of March,” but Caesar ignores him and proceeds with his victory celebration (I.ii.19, I.ii.25).

Cassius and Brutus, both longtime intimates of Caesar and each other, converse. Cassius tells Brutus that he has seemed distant lately; Brutus replies that he has been at war with himself. Cassius states that he wishes Brutus could see himself as others see him, for then Brutus would realize how honored and respected he is. Brutus says that he fears that the people want Caesar to become king, which would overturn the republic. Cassius concurs that Caesar is treated like a god though he is merely a man, no better than Brutus or Cassius. Cassius recalls incidents of Caesar’s physical weakness and marvels that this fallible man has become so powerful. He blames his and Brutus’s lack of will for allowing Caesar’s rise to power: surely the rise of such a man cannot be the work of fate. Brutus considers Cassius’s words as Caesar returns. Upon seeing Cassius, Caesar tells Antony that he deeply distrusts Cassius.

Caesar departs, and another politician, Casca, tells Brutus and Cassius that, during the celebration, Antony offered the crown to Caesar three times and the people cheered, but Caesar refused it each time. He reports that Caesar then fell to the ground and had some kind of seizure before the crowd; his demonstration of weakness, however, did not alter the plebeians’ devotion to him. Brutus goes home to consider Cassius’s words regarding Caesar’s poor qualifications to rule, while Cassius hatches a plot to draw Brutus into a conspiracy against Caesar.

That night, Rome is plagued with violent weather and a variety of bad omens and portents. Brutus finds letters in his house apparently written by Roman citizens worried that Caesar has become too powerful. The letters have in fact been forged and planted by Cassius, who knows that if Brutus believes it is the people’s will, he will support a plot to remove Caesar from power. A committed supporter of the republic, Brutus fears the possibility of a dictator-led empire, worrying that the populace would lose its voice. Cassius arrives at Brutus’s home with his conspirators, and Brutus, who has already been won over by the letters, takes control of the meeting. The men agree to lure Caesar from his house and kill him. Cassius wants to kill Antony too, for Antony will surely try to hinder their plans, but Brutus disagrees, believing that too many deaths will render their plot too bloody and dishonor them. Having agreed to spare Antony, the conspirators depart. Portia, Brutus’s wife, observes that Brutus appears preoccupied. She pleads with him to confide in her, but he rebuffs her.

Caesar prepares to go to the Senate. His wife, Calpurnia, begs him not to go, describing recent nightmares she has had in which a statue of Caesar streamed with blood and smiling men bathed their hands in the blood. Caesar refuses to yield to fear and insists on going about his daily business. Finally, Calpurnia convinces him to stay home—if not out of caution, then as a favor to her. But Decius, one of the conspirators, then arrives and convinces Caesar that Calpurnia has misinterpreted her dreams and the recent omens. Caesar departs for the Senate in the company of the conspirators.

As Caesar proceeds through the streets toward the Senate, the Soothsayer again tries but fails to get his attention. The citizen Artemidorus hands him a letter warning him about the conspirators, but Caesar refuses to read it, saying that his closest personal concerns are his last priority. At the Senate, the conspirators speak to Caesar, bowing at his feet and encircling him. One by one, they stab him to death. When Caesar sees his dear friend Brutus among his murderers, he gives up his struggle and dies.

The murderers bathe their hands and swords in Caesar’s blood, thus bringing Calpurnia’s premonition to fruition. Antony, having been led away on a false pretext, returns and pledges allegiance to Brutus but weeps over Caesar’s body. He shakes hands with the conspirators, thus marking them all as guilty while appearing to make a gesture of conciliation. When Antony asks why they killed Caesar, Brutus replies that he will explain their purpose in a funeral oration. Antony asks to be allowed to speak over the body as well; Brutus grants his permission, though Cassius remains suspicious of Antony. The conspirators depart, and Antony, alone now, swears that Caesar’s death shall be avenged.

Brutus and Cassius go to the Forum to speak to the public. Cassius exits to address another part of the crowd. Brutus declares to the masses that though he loved Caesar, he loves Rome more, and Caesar’s ambition posed a danger to Roman liberty. The speech placates the crowd. Antony appears with Caesar’s body, and Brutus departs after turning the pulpit over to Antony. Repeatedly referring to Brutus as “an honorable man,” Antony’s speech becomes increasingly sarcastic; questioning the claims that Brutus made in his speech that Caesar acted only out of ambition, Antony points out that Caesar brought much wealth and glory to Rome, and three times turned down offers of the crown. Antony then produces Caesar’s will but announces that he will not read it for it would upset the people inordinately. The crowd nevertheless begs him to read the will, so he descends from the pulpit to stand next to Caesar’s body. He describes Caesar’s horrible death and shows Caesar’s wounded body to the crowd. He then reads Caesar’s will, which bequeaths a sum of money to every citizen and orders that his private gardens be made public. The crowd becomes enraged that this generous man lies dead; calling Brutus and Cassius traitors, the masses set off to drive them from the city.

Meanwhile, Caesar’s adopted son and appointed successor, Octavius, arrives in Rome and forms a three-person coalition with Antony and Lepidus. They prepare to fight Cassius and Brutus, who have been driven into exile and are raising armies outside the city. At the conspirators’ camp, Brutus and Cassius have a heated argument regarding matters of money and honor, but they ultimately reconcile. Brutus reveals that he is sick with grief, for in his absence Portia has killed herself. The two continue to prepare for battle with Antony and Octavius. That night, the Ghost of Caesar appears to Brutus, announcing that Brutus will meet him again on the battlefield.

Octavius and Antony march their army toward Brutus and Cassius. Antony tells Octavius where to attack, but Octavius says that he will make his own orders; he is already asserting his authority as the heir of Caesar and the next ruler of Rome. The opposing generals meet on the battlefield and exchange insults before beginning combat.

Cassius witnesses his own men fleeing and hears that Brutus’s men are not performing effectively. Cassius sends one of his men, Pindarus, to see how matters are progressing. From afar, Pindarus sees one of their leaders, Cassius’s best friend, Titinius, being surrounded by cheering troops and concludes that he has been captured. Cassius despairs and orders Pindarus to kill him with his own sword. He dies proclaiming that Caesar is avenged. Titinius himself then arrives—the men encircling him were actually his comrades, cheering a victory he had earned. Titinius sees Cassius’s corpse and, mourning the death of his friend, kills himself.

Brutus learns of the deaths of Cassius and Titinius with a heavy heart, and prepares to take on the Romans again. When his army loses, doom appears imminent. Brutus asks one of his men to hold his sword while he impales himself on it. Finally, Caesar can rest satisfied, he says as he dies. Octavius and Antony arrive. Antony speaks over Brutus’s body, calling him the noblest Roman of all. While the other conspirators acted out of envy and ambition, he observes, Brutus genuinely believed that he acted for the benefit of Rome. Octavius orders that Brutus be buried in the most honorable way. The men then depart to celebrate their victory.

***

 THE EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 

POETRY 

The Norman Conquest worked no immediate transformation on either the language or the literature of the English. Older poetry continued to be copied during the last half of the 11th century; two poems of the early 12th century—“"Durham,"” which praises that city’s cathedral and its relics, and “"Instructions for Christians,"” a didactic piece—show that correct alliterative verse could be composed well after 1066. But even before the conquest, rhyme had begun to supplant rather than supplement alliteration in some poems, which continued to use the older four-stress line, although their rhythms varied from the set types used in classical Old English verse. A postconquest example is “"The Grave,"” which contains several rhyming lines; a poem from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle on the death of William the Conqueror, lamenting his cruelty and greed, has more rhyme than alliteration.

INFLUENCE OF FRENCH POETRY 

By the end of the 12th century, English poetry had been so heavily influenced by French models that such a work as the long epic Brut (c. 1200) by Lawamon, a Worcestershire priest, seems archaic for mixing alliterative lines with rhyming couplets while generally eschewing French vocabulary. The Brut draws mainly upon Wace’s Anglo-Norman Roman de Brut (1155; based in turn upon Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae [History of the Kings of Britain]), but in Lawamon’s hands the Arthurian story takes on a Germanic and heroic flavour largely missing in Wace. The Brut exists in two manuscripts, one written shortly after 1200 and the other some 50 years later. That the later version has been extensively modernized and somewhat abridged suggests the speed with which English language and literary tastes were changing in this period. The Proverbs of Alfred was written somewhat earlier, in the late 12th century; these proverbs deliver conventional wisdom in a mixture of rhymed couplets and alliterative lines, and it is hardly likely that any of the material they contain actually originated with the king whose wisdom they celebrate. The early 13th-century Bestiary mixes alliterative lines, three- and four-stress couplets, and septenary (heptameter) lines, but the logic behind this mix is more obvious than in the Brut and the Proverbs, for the poet was imitating the varied metres of his Latin source. More regular in form than these poems is the anonymous Poema morale in septenary couplets, in which an old man delivers a dose of moral advice to his presumably younger audience.

By far the most brilliant poem of this period is The Owl and the Nightingale (written after 1189), an example of the popular debate genre. The two birds argue topics ranging from their hygienic habits, looks, and songs to marriage, prognostication, and the proper modes of worship. The nightingale stands for the joyous aspects of life, the owl for the sombre; there is no clear winner, but the debate ends as the birds go off to state their cases to one Nicholas of Guildford, a wise man. The poem is learned in the clerical tradition but wears its learning lightly as the disputants speak in colloquial and sometimes earthy language. Like the Poema morale, The Owl and the Nightingale is metrically regular (octosyllabic couplets), but it uses the French metre with an assurance unusual in so early a poem.

DIDACTIC POETRY 

The 13th century saw a rise in the popularity of long didactic poems presenting biblical narrative, saints’ lives, or moral instruction for those untutored in Latin or French. The most idiosyncratic of these is the Ormulum by Orm, an Augustinian canon in the north of England. Written in some 20,000 lines arranged in unrhymed but metrically rigid couplets, the work is interesting mainly in that the manuscript that preserves it is Orm’s autograph and shows his somewhat fussy efforts to reform and regularize English spelling. Other biblical paraphrases are Genesis and Exodus, Jacob and Joseph, and the vast Cursor mundi, whose subject, as its title suggests, is the history of the world. An especially popular work was the South English Legendary, which began as a miscellaneous collection of saints’ lives but was expanded by later redactors and rearranged in the order of the church calendar. The didactic tradition continued into the 14th century with Robert Mannyng’s Handling Sin, a confessional manual whose expected dryness is relieved by the insertion of lively narratives, and the Prick of Conscience, a popular summary of theology sometimes attributed to the mystic Richard Rolle.

VERSE ROMANCE 

The earliest examples of verse romance, a genre that would remain popular through the Middle Ages, appeared in the 13th century. King Horn and Floris and Blauncheflour both are preserved in a manuscript of about 1250. King Horn, oddly written in short two- and three-stress lines, is a vigorous tale of a kingdom lost and regained, with a subplot concerning Horn’s love for Princess Rymenhild. Floris and Blauncheflour is more exotic, being the tale of a pair of royal lovers who become separated and, after various adventures in eastern lands, reunited. Not much later than these is The Lay of Havelok the Dane, a tale of princely love and adventure similar to King Horn but more competently executed. Many more such romances were produced in the 14th century. Popular subgenres were “the matter of Britain” (Arthurian romances such as Of Arthour and of Merlin and Ywain and Gawain), “the matter of Troy” (tales of antiquity such as The Siege of Troy and King Alisaunder), and the English Breton lays (stories of otherworldly magic, such as Lai le Freine and Sir Orfeo, modeled after those of professional Breton storytellers). These relatively unsophisticated works were written for a bourgeois audience, and the manuscripts that preserve them are early examples of commercial book production. The humorous beast epic makes its first appearance in Britain in the 13th century with The Fox and the Wolf, taken indirectly from the Old French Roman de Renart. In the same manuscript with this work is Dame Sirith, the earliest English fabliau. Another sort of humour is found in The Land of Cockaygne, which depicts a utopia better than heaven, where rivers run with milk, honey, and wine, geese fly about already roasted, and monks hunt with hawks and dance with nuns.

THE LYRIC

The lyric was virtually unknown to Old English poets. Poems such as “"Deor"” and “"Wulf and Eadwacer,"” which have been called lyrics, are thematically different from those that began to circulate orally in the 12th century and to be written down in great numbers in the 13th; these Old English poems also have a stronger narrative component than the later productions. The most frequent topics in the Middle English secular lyric are springtime and romantic love; many rework such themes tediously, but some, such as “"Foweles in the frith"” (13th century) and “"Ich am of Irlaunde"” (14th century), convey strong emotions in a few lines. Two lyrics of the early 13th century, “"Mirie it is while sumer ilast"” and “"Sumer is icumen in,"” are preserved with musical settings, and probably most of the others were meant to be sung. The dominant mood of the religious lyrics is passionate: the poets sorrow for Christ on the cross and for the Virgin Mary, celebrate the “five joys” of Mary, and import language from love poetry to express religious devotion. Excellent early examples are “"Nou goth sonne under wod"” and “"Stond wel, moder, ounder rode."” Many of the lyrics are preserved in manuscript anthologies, of which the best is British Library manuscript Harley 2253 from the early 14th century. In this collection, known as the Harley Lyrics, the love poems, such as “"Alysoun"” and “"Blow, Northern Wind,"” take after the poems of the Provençal troubadours but are less formal, less abstract, and more lively. The religious lyrics also are of high quality; but the most remarkable of the Harley Lyrics, “"The Man in the Moon,"” far from being about love or religion, imagines the man in the Moon as a simple peasant, sympathizes with his hard life, and offers him some useful advice on how to best the village hayward (a local officer in charge of a town’s common herd of cattle).

A poem such as “"The Man in the Moon"” serves as a reminder that, although the poetry of the early Middle English period was increasingly influenced by the Anglo-Norman literature produced for the courts, it is seldom “courtly.” Most English poets, whether writing about kings or peasants, looked at life from a bourgeois perspective. If their work sometimes lacks sophistication, it nevertheless has a vitality that comes from preoccupation with daily affairs.

PROSE 

Old English prose texts were copied for more than a century after the Norman Conquest; the homilies of Aelfric were especially popular, and King Alfred’s translations of Boethius and Augustine survive only in 12th-century manuscripts. In the early 13th century an anonymous worker at Worcester supplied glosses to certain words in a number of Old English manuscripts, which demonstrates that by this time the older language was beginning to pose difficulties for readers.

The composition of English prose also continued without interruption. Two manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle exhibit very strong prose for years after the conquest, and one of these, the Peterborough Chronicle, continues to 1154. Two manuscripts of about 1200 contain 12th-century sermons, and another has the workmanlike compilation Vices and Virtues, composed about 1200. But the English language faced stiff competition from both Anglo-Norman (the insular dialect of French being used increasingly in the monasteries) and Latin, a language intelligible to speakers of both English and French. It was inevitable, then, that the production of English prose should decline in quantity, if not in quality. The great prose works of this period were composed mainly for those who could read only English—women especially. In the West Midlands the Old English alliterative prose tradition remained very much alive into the 13th century, when the several texts known collectively as the Katherine Group were written. St. Katherine, St. Margaret, and St. Juliana, found together in a single manuscript, have rhythms strongly reminiscent of those of Aelfric and Wulfstan. So to a lesser extent do Hali Meithhad (“Holy Maidenhood”) and Sawles Warde (“The Guardianship of the Soul”) from the same book, but newer influences can be seen in these works as well: as the title of another devotional piece, The Wohunge of Ure Lauerd (“The Wooing of Our Lord”), suggests, the prose of this time often has a rapturous, even sensual flavour, and, like the poetry, it frequently employs the language of love to express religious fervour.

Further removed from the Old English prose tradition, though often associated with the Katherine Group, is the Ancrene Wisse (“Guide for Anchoresses,” also known as the Ancrene Riwle, or “Rule for Anchoresses”), a manual for the guidance of women recluses outside the regular orders. This anonymous work, which was translated into French and Latin and remained popular until the 16th century, is notable for its humanity, practicality, and insight into human nature but even more for its brilliant style. Like the other prose of its time, it uses alliteration as ornament, but it is more indebted to new fashions in preaching, which had originated in the universities, than to native traditions. With its richly figurative language, rhetorically crafted sentences, and carefully logical divisions and subdivisions, it manages to achieve in English the effects that such contemporary writers as John of Salisbury and Walter Map were striving for in Latin.

Little noteworthy prose was written in the late 13th century. In the early 14th century Dan Michel of Northgate produced in Kentish the Ayenbite of Inwit (“Prick of Conscience”), a translation from French. But the best prose of this time is by the mystic Richard Rolle, the hermit of Hampole, whose English tracts include The Commandment, Meditations on the Passion, and The Form of Perfect Living, among others. His intense and stylized prose was among the most popular of the 14th century and inspired such later works as Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, Julian of Norwich’s Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love, and the anonymous Cloud of Unknowing.

***

 

Figuri din vechiul București: Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești, un escroc fermecător, decedat pe 12 mai 1922, la doar 51 de ani...

Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești s-a născut pe 13 iunie 1870 la Pitești și a fost o figură controversată a începutului de secol XX. Se pare că după tată ar fi fost albanez, iar din partea mamei ar fi avut urmași în familia boierească a Baloteştilor. În epocă i se spunea “Castelanul de la Vlaici”, după numele unei frumoase moşii pe care o avea în judeţul Olt. Bogdan-Pitești a crescut într-un colegiu catolic, a încercat să urmeze Medicina la Montpellier, după aceea s-a înscris la studii de Litere şi Drept la Paris, fără să le termine, a fost expulzat din Franţa cel mai probabil pentru un furt de velocipede, și-a căutat norocul în Elveția, dar în cele din urmă a fost trimis în țară.

Mecena al artiștilor, gazetar, eseist și poet, amic cu Ștefan Luchian, Nicolae Vermont, Al. Macedonski, Mateiu Caragiale și tânărul Tudor Arghezi, în 1896 a întemeiat Salonul Independenților, după modelul „Salonului Societății Artiștilor Independenți” din Paris, iar în 1898 a fondat „Societatea Ileana”. Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești a fost de mai multe ori arestat și depus la Închisoarea Văcărești, a pretins că este coborâtor al boierilor Bogdănești și fiu nelegitim al domnitorului Alexandru Ioan Cuza, a colaborat cu ocupantul german în anii Primului Război Mondial și s-a stins la București, pe 12 mai 1922, la vârsta de 51 de ani, lăsând în urmă o colecție fabuloasă de opere de artă care s-a risipit după moartea lui.

“Acum douăzeci şi cinci de ani, scria Const Mille în ziarul Lupta în mai 1922, a apărut pentru prima oară în Bucureşti figura lui Bogdan-Pitești. Era o înfăţişare decorativă, cu mustaţa şi barbişonul în vânt, cu înfăţişarea de om frumos şi simpatic. El avea ce e drept un trecut cam tulbure, deşi era încă tânăr şi ar fi putut să nu aibă trecut. Fusese expulzat din Elveţia şi Franţa. El pretindea că această expulzare se datoreşte părerilor lui anarhiste. Mulţi însă afirmau că anarhismul lui nu era cu nimic vinovat sau cu foarte puţin, în aceste măsuri luate contra lui. I se puneau în sarcină câteva infarcţiuni la codul penal, infracţiuni însă îndoielnice. Guvernele elveţian şi francez, neputându-l pedepsi, l-au expulzat. Această chestiune n-a putut fi rezolvată, s-a trecut peste ea, şi Bogdan-Pitești, în prima fază a vieţei lui, a fost primit cu braţele deschise de către societatea noastră, foarte tolerantă de altfel, şi de oamenii de litere şi de artişti, pe atunci foarte puţini, şi boemi ca şi Bogdan-Pitești.

Cu ce trăia el? Cine întreabă la noi de aşa ceva? Se ştia că familia lui are o moşioară în judeţul Olt, la Vlaici, din care dânsul mâncase cea mai bună parte şi pe lângă partea lui, şi partea mumei sale. Dar aceasta nu scobora întru nimic reputaţia lui în ochii societăţii, căci, slava Domnului, decavaţi de felul lui Bogdan-Pitești, erau şi sunt sute şi mii.

Se formă clar în jurul lui un grup literar și artistic din care mai târziu ieşi Societatea „Ileana”. Sub auspiciile lui şi cu a lui cheltuială, apăru revista cu acelaşi nume, revistă la care colaborau cu penelul şi peniţa Vermont, Luchian, Basarab, Artachino şi alţii, iar cu condeiul Ioan Bacalbaşa, arhitectul Ştefan Ciocârlan, o fire artistică care a dispărut de mult din lumea artelor, Cincinat Pavelescu etc…

Opera mai de seamă a grupării a fost aducerea în ţară a lui Sar Peladan, ca să fie un ciclu de conferinţe. Sar Peladan îşi luase numele de Mag şi, pentru ca să reuşească, îşi luase o înfăţişare specială, care atrăgea privirile. Cu toate acestea Sar Peladan era un desăvârşit artist, un critic de artă excelent. El fundase salonul Croix Rose, ca scriitor scrisese multe romane fantastice.

Sar Peladan a fost gustat ca conferinţiar de publicul nostru snob şi asta a pus oarecum în evidenţă revista Ileana şi pe Bogdan Piteşti, care a jucat rolul de amfitrion al scriitorului francez.

Dar până atunci faima lui Bogdan Piteşti era modestă. Lumea îl considera ca pe un om extravagant, care voia să se lanseze prin aceste aere de om ciudat, nedisciplinat, care avea oroare de ordinarul vieţii şi tot aşa oroare de guler scrobit, căci el veşnic arbora o eșarfă în jucul gâtului Atât şi nimic mai mult, afară de colportarea unor zvonuri asupra moravurilor sale. Dar cine să ridice perdeaua vieţii cuiva?

Dar iată că izbucni deodată un mare scandal. Mai mulţi indivizi se plânseră la parchet că au fost escrocaţi de directorul Ilenei, Bogdan Piteşti făgăduindu-le că le va da posturi de casieri, de administratori, de încasatori, şi mai ştiu eu ce la revista lui, le încasase garanţii pe care nu le mai putea da înapoi. Directorul Ilenei a fost arestat şi depus la Văcăreşti. Era prima dată când făcea cunoştinţă cu această închisoare, care mai în urmă i-a devenit familiară.

Toţi prietenii lui erau alarmaţi. Bogdan-Piteşti însă era impasibil. Drapându-se în dispreţul său pentru toate aceste prejudecăţi, el îşi făcea o glorie din faptele lui, mergea la judecătorul de instrucţie cu fruntea sus, cu verbul ridicat, indignat faţă de acei pe care îi sărăcise. În fiecare zi erau scene tragi-comice între Bogdan-Piteşti şi partea civilă, care voia să-l sfâşie. Au fost câteva luni de scandal, apoi lucrurile s-au aranjat, familia lui a despăgubit pe cei păgubiţi care şi-au retras plângerile, aşa că tribunalul în lipsă de reclamaţii a achitat pe Bogdan-Piteşti, redându-i libertatea.

Era în anul 1889. La guvern veniseră conservatorii. Bogdan Piteşti pretindea că ar avea oarecari legături secrete cu guvernul. Şi-a pus așadar candidatura la colegiul al IlI-lea de deputaţi de Olt. Se afirma că îmbrăcat ţărăneşte, cu o cruce mare pe piept, s-ar fi dus în mijlocul ţăranilor cărora le-ar fi spus că e nepotul lui Cuza, făgăduindu-le pământ şi drept de vot. Propaganda lui Bogdan Piteşti, îmbrăcat ţărăneşte, făcută într-un judeţ vecin cu Argeşul, în care nu era ştearsă încă amintirea lui Dobrescu Argeş, a prins. Prefectul Colibăşeanu ştia cum trebuie de făcut alegeri la colegiul al IlI-lea şi nu se interesa deloc de propaganda lui Bogdan Piteşti. Prin administraţie, el dăduse veste ţăranilor că alegerile s-au amânat, iar în ziua fixată ele au avut loc, ieşind bineînţeles candidatul guvernului. Bogdan Piteşti, păcălit, nu se dădu învins. El împinse satele să ceară o nouă alegere. Rezultatul a fost că sătenii din Olt au venit cu miile la Slatina, au stat trei zile nemâncaţi şi plini de indignare în jurul gării, voind să invadeze în oraş, ca să-şi aleagă deputatul lor. Prefectul nu a luat nici o măsură din vreme ca să risipească mulţimea. Agitaţia a ajuns la culme, ţăranii ameninţau oraşul. Atunci a intervenit armata şi s-au tras focuri de salvă în mulţime. Zeci de ţărani au căzut. Bogdan Piteşti bineînţeles era departe. El a fost arestat în Bucureşti şi împreună cu sute de ţărani a fost dat în judecată ca instigator. Procesul însă făcut la Bucureşti a câtorva sute de inşi a ţinut la curtea cu juri vreo trei ani de zile fără a putea fi judecat, aşa că un decret de amnistie a pus capăt acestei tragedii.

Dar viaţa aventuroasă a lui Bogdan-Pitești nu s-a oprit aici. El a mai fost dat judecăţii şi depus la Văcăreşti pentru o nouă escrocherie, la fel cu aceea de la Ileana. A scăpat însă, despăgubind iarăşi pe cei păgubiţi.

Apoi Bogdan-Pitești puse la cale o operă colosală. Era vorba de astădată de a se îmbogăţi. Era pe timpul neutralităţii noastre. Griguță Cantacuzino, cunoscut sub numele de Prensil, vânduse nemţilor gazetele sale „Minerva” şi „Seara”. Pentru ca să mascheze şi mai bine această operaţiune infamă, trecuse de formă ziarul „Seara” lui Bogdan-Pitești. Rolul lui era ca să spurce pe toţi acei care propovăduiau intrarea noastră în acţiune alături de armatele Antantei.

Dar Bogdan-Pitești nu s-a mulţumit cu acest rol scârbos. El găsise momentul oportun ca să-şi pună în practică principiile aşa zis anarhiste, de restituire a bogăţiilor, bine înţeles nu către colectivitate, ci către el însuşi. A început să organizeze şantajuri, începând cu cassa de bancă Marmorosch Blank & Co. Dar de la început i s-a înfundat.

Prins în flagrant-delict, a fost din nou depus la Văcăreşti, judecat şi condamnat. Aici se isprăveşte cariera lui. De atunci el a intrat pentru totdeauna în umbră, dar o umbră foarte somptuoasă, căci de pe urma nemţilor, s-a ales cu atâţia bani încât îşi asigurase o viaţă liniştită, în mijlocul operelor de artă ce a avut bunul-gust de a le strânge. Colecţiunea sa este una din cele mai complete şi mai bine alese. Toţi pictorii şi sculptorii români sunt bine reprezentaţi. Un necrolog ne spune că el intenţiona ca să doneze statului această colecţiune.

Cu toată viaţa lui aventuroasă şi fără scrupule, Bogdan-Piteşti a fost un om de gust şi o fire artistică. S-a înconjurat de artişti şi toată viaţa lui a colecţionat. Ceea ce a lipsit acestui om ca să nu fie în marginile societăţii e, desigur, simţul moral. Lipsit de această busolă, el, sub pretext de o oarecare teorie anarhistă, se socotea deasupra societăţei şi toate regulile dintre oameni le declara prejudecați. El îşi spunea că dânsul e pivotul în jurul căruia se învârteşte lumea. A-şi apropia ceea ce nu-i aparţinea nu era lucru aprehenzibil. Principalul era de a reuşi. Când acest lucru nu se întâmpla, intervenea jandarmul şi punea mâna pe el. Cu ce dispreţ privea el legea şi pe cei ce o aplicau! Puşcăria îi era familiară, era ca la el acasă. Ştia că cu bani se mlădiază asprimele regimului penitenciar.

Ceea ce este curios şi zugrăveşte societatea în care trăim este că Bogdan-Pitești, deşi pus cum am zis în afară de societate, totuşi putu să-şi adune în jurul său o lume de artişti şi de prieteni, fie şi de simpli paraziţi, care îi făceau cor şi-i dădeau iluziunea că trăieşte în sânul societăţei regulate.

Acum a murit. Am crezut util ca să fixez pe hârtie figura acestui om, care în alte timpuri, de pildă în Evul Mediu, ar fi fost un cavaler hrăpăreţ şi aventurier care cocoţat în turnul castelului său feudal jefuia satele, iar la noi ar fi fost un haiduc de codru şi care totuşi la sfârşitul veacului trecut şi la începutul acestui secol a reuşit totuşi să însemneze ceva în lumea artelor şi, în acelaşi timp, în lumea delicvenţilor”.

*** Const. Mille, Lupta, mai 1922

Bogdan-Pitești

Surse:

Adevărul, 1913, 1914

Opinia, 1899, 1913

Universul, 1913

Viața românească, 1960