Fondane confesses that he sometimes feels distaste when making counterfeit coins for the ostriches out of millet and corn. The counterfeit coins are his pastoral Romanian poems and by ostriches he means his compatriots, who bury their heads in the sand, preferring not to know what happening around them. Already, here, we can detect an ambiguity in Fondane's feelings about his birthplace. On the one hand, of course, he feels tenderness, as he carefully validates this particular world. It the subject of Priveliti (Sites),' a rough-hewn native landscape, evoked unquestionable fondness. On the other hand, there are signs of a festering wound, the keenly felt scar of the incomprehension he has run up against. These ambiguous feelings color the writing of the anthology itself. The image I refer to suffuses the poem Parade, placed first in the book and casting doubt on everything that follows. For this poem a farewell to the poetry written by Fondane while he lived in Romania and used the name Fundoianu (meaning from Fundoaia, an imaginary village which the poet, actually born in Jassy, creates as his birthplace). His soul he proclaims wants to be filled with other words, with other fecundities, with other people, and with other idols. This volume, states the preface to the anthology, is by a poet who died around 1923 at age 24. Adieu to a certain kind of poetry, yes, but also to Romania, since B. Wechsler left the country for good that year. And yet, the bonds were not entirely broken. For proof there this anthology, which Fondane published in 1930 when he had already been in Paris for seven years, using the name Benjamin Fondane, contributing to important French journals, including the 'lite Commerce,2 participating in the group Discontinuit,3 and boasting of having come to blows none other than Andre Breton. From Paris he continues to provide articles and poetry to the avant-garde Romanian reviews, Contimporanul,4 Integral,5 and Unu.6 For a while he even hopes to become a correspondent for a large Bucharest newspaper (see the letter to Rebreanu,7 at that time the president of the Society of Romanian Writers). In 1922, a year before Fundoianu's departure, there was active anti-Semitic unrest. Future leaders of Romanian nationalism considered it the defining period in their intellectual development. The young man also