Life Begins on Friday. Ioana Parvulescu

      Foreword

      For a few years before 1900 the days were capacious. The people thrum­med like telegraph wires. They were optimistic and believed, as never before and never again thereafter, in the power of science, in progress and the future. This is why the New Year was the most important time for them: the ever-renewed beginning of the future.

      The texture of the world permitted every mad notion and often the mad notions became reality.

      Romania was in Europe, and her capital was now a cosmopolitan city, which was making great efforts to become organized and civilised. In Bucharest, as every period document attests, you never had a chance to be bored, night or day.

      Sensitive souls were fearful of unknown dangers. A man fended off electric light with his cane. A woman obstinately refused to let her son take her photograph, although she allowed her portrait to be painted. Neuroses were transformed into poetry; pain and opium went hand in hand. Tuberculosis, syphilis and dirt either killed or left deep wounds in body and soul. Evil had not vanished from the world, and ignoring it was not the best method of preparing for the future. There were people who fought it.

      The newspapers had become aware of their own power and it was already possible to die for the written word. And already the written word betrayed them. Money was a problem, but not an end in itself, and there were plenty of people prepared to sacrifice all their money for the sake of a beautiful idea. Children were precocious in imitating grown-ups, grown-ups sometimes behaved like children, and curiosity about life was a joy that did not vanish at any age.

      Before 1900, people believed that God desired their immortality, in the most palpable sense of the word. Nothing seemed impossible and nor was it. Every utopia was permitted. And playing with time was always the most beautiful utopia. Apart from that, people were quite similar in every respect to those who came before them and those who came after them.

      For a few years before 1900 the days were capacious and people dreamed of our world.

      They dreamed of us.