These descriptions are set in Transylvania, which quite a lot of people think was invented by Bram Stoker. It is a small country between Hungary and Romania, independent in the 17th Century, then part of Hungary as the easternmost zone of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and given to Romania in 1920. The part I know best, a mountain-ringed enclave called Maramures in the far north, on the Ukrainian border, has been called one of the last surviving true peasant societies in Europe. This is more or less true, (system of land tenure, strip farming, village communal organization, use of horse and water power, tenacity of manner in ornament and music, etc.) though the condition is fading in some respects, and it remains true to a lesser extent in the rest of Transylvania, which was subject to a lot of social disruption during the Communist period.

I like to think that in the context of a literary magazine these pieces will be read as stories, or even prose-poems. Not that they are factually inaccurate -- everything was more-or-less as described -- but no attempt is made to cover rationally the implications of what is depicted. The principal aim is accuracy of image forming a construct: any further interpretation is at the liberty of the reader.

They remain glimpses of a reality which is known mainly as instances of sudden surprise, moments of bedazzled confrontation with such things as the kindness and generosity exercised as a matter of course and tradition by some of the poorest people in Europe towards some of the richest... Glimpses also of a coherence, expressed as the condition of entering a stratum, where the details correspond with each other. The landscape (entirely humanized) with its curvilinear and unbounded forms, the slow pace of transport, the readiness of passing kindnesses, the plasticity of the architecture.... These all contribute to a coherence which is also a sufficiency. The prose pieces, of which there are about twelve as yet, project these details so as to let the cohering sufficiency emanate from them. Whether it is a fading coherence or a promising one, a future answer or a terrible problem, such questions are set aside. How it relates to "us" is set aside, since it remains extremely uncertain where and what "we" are in such comparisons -- a true and extensive civilization or a murderous tribe controlled by crazed priests, for instance. Vast considerations may be implicit in these scenes, of progress and technology, civilization, culture, poverty, riches, sanctity, intervention..... but my approach, which is a poetical one, is to locate the seeing eye correctly, and the questioning voice within the bounds of such perception. Even "Over the Border" with all the appearance of a disquisition, remains I think, and hope, basically a dramatic monologue, in which a speaker of uncertain authority (a mere visitor) stumbles over unknowable possibilities and becomes fixated on seemingly minor detail -- like the red tassels on the horses' heads, which are, anthropologically speaking, "to ward off the evil eye", but to say so would be to violate the text's impartiality.