! how much i hate the city

how i hate this city

imprisoned like the living

I come out of it only naked,

imprisoned like the living

I come out of it only naked!

! for new Moldavian cities

you gave us toil and hospice,

I don't know what the ciolãnașe is

under the trams here,

I don't know what the ciolãnașe is

under the wheels from here!

!each a guide

and a little girl, if she sca-

from the satyr of death hide,

mockery does not escape,

from the satyr of death hide,

don't miss the mockery!

!the bad place, turned upside down,

bad place turned upside down

where those who gnawed the bone

they crushed our poor bone

where those who gnawed the bone

they crushed our poor bone!

Death walks his carriage again

through the Bucharest Turkic

who overstepped his bounds

in harapese fashions,

who has passed his measure

in harêpe fashions!

in Zaltati at Furinalii

milk jugs,

in the gutters and canals

and all in the Lord brothers,

in the gutters and canals

and all in the Lord brothers!

……………………………………………….

This fragment is part of Cezar IVÃNESCU's poem, play the doina (Endless Melody) appeared in December 1983 in the volume of the same name, dedicated to the centenary of its publication "Doine" of Mihail EMINESCU.

The pain of the people of Bucharest, born under the blades of the bulldozers that erased a part of our city from history, made the poet of "death" write so darkly that the then mayor, Gheorghe PANÃ, being notified of the appearance and content of the volume play the doina, decided that it should be "melted". After a sustained struggle, which consisted, among other things, in reprinting and replacing a part of the book, giving up over a hundred lines and seventeen poems, the volume appeared.

Can we say that these "fragments" do not correspond to today's realities of the city? That the suffering of the inhabitants of our much-tried capital is not as great as that of fifteen years ago, if not even greater?

Bucharest is becoming more "Turkish" every day and "Harapesti", Chinese, second-hand fashions union, they pour over us without being able to stop them. Brutified by poverty, drowned in the garbage strewn everywhere, "broken to pieces", the citizens of Bucharest look with disdain at the fortunes of the "haramins full of milk", at the "crooks and scoundrels" brothers with a politician "LORD", president of you wonder what enriched tricks on account of the stupidity or insensitivity of some who had to take care not to happen this and this and the other.

We are probably given to live in the post-communist purgatory, all the miseries that our teachers referred to until 1989, when they presented us with capitalism.

It is, of course, far from that city which various visionaries present us as being world center where the "powers of the World" will come for supreme meetings and gestures. Will the future urban planning of the Earth define a coordinate system originating in Bucharest? To have told him someone-sometime to Ceaușescu this, since he had set out full of zeal to build a neoclassical city at a fantastic pace, in the middle of which he would dominate HOUSE OF THE PEOPLE?

Instead of history

The first man we know of who set about building a city was Cain. (Genesis, 4, 17) “...He then began to build a city, and named this city after his son Enoch“. This beginning actually meant the transition of the peoples from the "nomadic" state to the "sedentary" one. And as man was from his beginnings self-centered, he and the city he built became the center of the world. Becoming spiritual, man began to name his city according to his relationship with the universe: sun city, Heliopolisul, the city of peace, Salemul, the house of God, Beith-el.

The science that played perhaps the most important role, in ancient times, in the construction of cities was astrology. The position of the Sun or the Big Dipper determines the location and design of the fortress. Then it appeared gnomonul, a measuring tool that directed the city plan taking into account the center. The location had to be chosen in such a way that in the middle of summer, the gnomon should not cast a shadow. The convergence of winds, waters or telluric currents was also taken into account.

The shape of the cities was different over time starting from the square and reaching the circle, all having a well-thought-out street layout, especially in the cities where the wise had a difficult word to say.

And the more people perfected themselves through knowledge or spiritualized themselves through faith, the more the cities began to gain greatness. The temple, church or pagoda, in the form of a pyramid, cathedral or ziggurat became centers of attraction in the city, not often, as it developed around them. Cities have also developed at the intersection of trade routes, or in our era, from the ambition of a creator, usually an architect, by clearing the jungle or furnishing some rocks. Today, a new city can also arise from the need for experiment or the need to express an artistic dimension. The human being accumulates more and more and needs more and more sophisticated spaces. The city is one of them.

Cosmic expansion will bring new types of cities. On interplanetary stations or on unpopulated planets, the earthly fortress, depending on the environment, will develop other forms. Science fiction literature and film has introduced us to a range of urban designs and populations from Earth's near or far future, parallel worlds or supposed universes.

Of ours

The evolution of the city paralleled the evolution of man. Designing and building, he practically developed industry, commerce, transport and tourism, but perhaps more than in other fields, the psychology and philosophy of the city. The study of the life of the city concerned many. From Babylon to Babylon the Great (Rome), from Jerusalem to Europol, the cities had their mysteries reflected in the transcendent intuited, felt or thought, transmitted from one to another if not directly at least through writing. The rulers of these cities had to be special beings, who understood the real or unreal, visible or invisible life of the space they had to administer.

Nowadays, the fight for the city no longer represents a war of conquest from the outside, Trojan, except where the cities are in the territory of a conflagration, otherwise the fight is fought from within and is mostly political in nature.

The struggle for power is intensifying day by day: from the ideological war expressed through confrontations of programs, or speeches that can often fall into embarrassment, to the spending of huge sums on colorful images, representing smiling candidates, with masks that seem too mobile for the taste of disoriented poverty.

Deeply deepening their voices, looking under their bushy eyebrows, pomade their hair or gnashing their teeth, lovers of power, imagining that they love the city fight among themselves under the tired eyes of the townspeople who only want peace, at least for four years. And because they are not left alone for four years, and are called to choose after two, tired, they don't want to do that either. And no one understands this state. Maybe the link to the national computer system of everyone could solve the citizen's participation in the vote or solving other problems of the city. But, for now, this path in Romania belongs science fiction.

"According to contemporary psychoanalysis, the fortress is a symbol of the mother, under its double aspect - protection and limit. It is generally related to the feminine principle". (Jean Chevalier, Alain Gheerdrant)