Conferences

The National Theatre from Bucharest announces the restart of the series of conferences initiated in 2006, in a debate meant to mark the end of the Caragiale Year. Sunday, 2^nd December, at 11.00, at the Small Hall, will take place the conference on the theme I.L. Caragiale: actuality and actualization held by Ioana Pârvulescu and Dan C. Mihăilescu, in a dialogue moderated by Ion Caramitru. Two admirers and authentic connoisseurs of Caragiale's life and work, Ioana Pârvulescu and Dan C. Mihăilescu will show why Caragiale's writing lasts one century after his death and where we are positioned, nowadays, in relation to the great writer who intercepted the essence of the derisory and absurd theatre named Romania.

About Ioana Pârvulescu

She is an academic lecturer at the Faculty of Letters from Bucharest, where she teaches modern Romanian literature. For 18 years she was an editor at România literară. She initiated and was in charge of the "Night Table Books" collection at Humanitas Publishing House. She is a passionate reader of journals, memoirs, letters and newspaper type documents, from which she recreates lost worlds. She wrote several essay books, reedited several times, among which Return to the Interwar Bucharest (2003), In the Intimacy of the 19th Century (2005), The Book of Questions (2010). The author's concern with Caragiale materialized in two essays: In the Land of Mitică: Seven Times Caragiale (2008) and The World as a Newspaper. The fourth power: Caragiale (2011). The novel Life begins on Friday (2009) was published in 2011 in a Swedish translation as well. The most recent book published by the author about Bucharest is the novel The Future Begins on Monday (2012).

About Dan C. Mihăilescu

Born in 1953, he is a critic, literary historian, and translator. He is a researcher at the History and Literary Theory Institute "G. Călinescu" (1980 - 2003), a secretary in the editorial board of the Magazine of History and Literary Theory (1983 - 1986), the editor of the supplement Letters, Arts, Ideas of the newspaper Cotidianul (1991 - 1996, 2001 - 2004), and starting from the year 2000 the author of the show The Man who Brings the Book, at ProTV (the Prize of the National Audiovisual Council in 2003). He is also a literary reviewer at the magazines Transilvania, 22, Ziarul de duminică, Jurnalul naţional, Evenimentul zilei.

He made his editorial debut in 1982, with the volume Perspectives on Eminescu (the Union of Writers' prize for debut, reedited at Humanitas, 2006), followed by Lucian Blaga's Dramaturgy (1984), Questions of Poetry (1989), Right wing left-handedness (1999), Cut book (2003), Pleasure Writings (2004), Post Communist Romanian Literature (vol. I, 2004, vol. II, 2006, vol. III, 2007), Straightening the Left (2005), Literary Life (vol. I, 2005, vol. II, 2006), Dancing on Ruins (2006), Nicked ideas (2008), About the Man in the Letters. Mihai Eminescu (2009). He made the anthologies I. L. Caragiale about the World, Arts and the Romanian People (2012), I. L. Caragiale. The Most Beautiful Letters (2012) and he is the author of the volume I. L. Caragiale and the Calligraphy of Pleasure (2012).

Translated by: Izabella Feher