romania revealed

The late poetry of Eugen Jebeleanu.

Translated from Romanian by Matthew Zapruder and Radu Ioanid with an introduction by Andrei Codrescu, Secret Weapon: Selected Late Poems brings Jebeleanu to a broader English-speaking audience not a moment too late.

Appearing in English for the first time, Eugen Jebeleanu’s lyric testimonies to life under the Ceausescu government are profoundly unsentimental, yet deeply moving expressions of collective and personal guilt. Trapped between his clear understanding of the government’s corruption and brutality, and his own dilemmas as a public figure and reluctant favourite of Ceausescu, the poet found an outlet for his disillusionment in the spare, allegorical poems of his later life. Pensive and emotional, Jebeleanu’s final collection provides an enlightening, searing, and necessary record of life under totalitarian conditions. Both Andrei Codrescu’s introduction and the translator’s preface provide context for this politically and artistically significant book.

Born in 1911, Romanian poet Eugen Jebeleanu published twelve collections of poems, received numerous European literary awards, and was nominated by the Romanian Academy for the Nobel Prize. His poems about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima presented a profound cultural critique of modern warfare.

By the time of his death in 1991, Jebeleanu had transformed from a young, committed communist to a bitter and unsparing critic of the Ceausescu regime. You can read a few of his translated poems at Slope. Secret Weapon was his final collection.

LATE GALLOP

An opaque brim of shadow
hung on my forehead.
Come on, I told myself,
you are a jockey
in the sky
of your late life.
You can still be useful,
even if you can no longer hold out
against the nurse with shiny steel teeth.
And I started to gallop,
between weeds, between forests, between
happy fawns with such tender, humid snouts,
between brilliant, fiery statues, until
I heard a voice whimper
It hurts, everything hurts.
And everything was hurting.
And I entered a cave without end.
And only the far-off snout of a deer
signaled me. And this is all.

 Follow the bread crumb trail through an enchanted forest.
Jebeleanu (Wikipedia) 
"The Saddest" (Poets.org)
"Secret Weapon" (Galatea Resurrects #18)
Tismeneanu on Jebeleanu (Revista 22)
"A Quiet Protest" by Priscilla Becker (New York Sun)
Jason Stumpf vivisects translation, Zapruder, and Jebleanu (Harp & Altar) 

Herta Muller on her Securitate file.

Suddenly I found my file, too, under the name of Cristina. Three volumes, 914 pages. It was allegedly opened on 8 March, 1983 – although it contains documents from earlier years. The reason given for opening the file: "Tendentious distortions of realities in the country, particularly in the village environment" in my book "Nadirs". Textual analysis by spies corroborate this. And the fact that I belong to a "circle of German-language poets", which is "renowned for its hostile works".

The file is a botched job by the SRI on behalf of the old Securitate. For ten years they had all the time in the world to "work" on it. You could not call this cooking the books, the file has simply been emptied of all substance.

(Excerpted from a great interview at sign and sight)

Oh my Mai.

A few pieces of Romanian history from books around my house.

From the inside cover of an abecedar.

From the inside of a story book- it looks awfully competitive for "communism".

An ode to "The Party" and its metaphysical gifts.

Jean Negulesco's legacy.

Jean Negulesco (or Ion Negulescu, but not to be confused with Ion Negulescu) was born in 1900 in Craiova in southern Romania. In Paris, as a young man he was a friend of Constantin Brancusi and other members of the artsy crowd in Montparnasse and Montmartre. In fact, his artistic career did not begin in cinema. According to the stellar deep space daguerrotype:

Because once you've directed films in Hollywood all other claims to posterity become secondary, Romanian-born Jean Negulesco is best known for his work as a screenwriter, production designer & director, even though he first came to America in 1929 for an exhibition of his paintings. Before giving himself over to the business of show, he was first & foremost a painter & designer. His marker sketches bear a striking resemblance to those of Cocteau and, of course, Picasso from the same period, but like most artists who are trained as designers, he was able to astutely mimic almost any modernist style.

Though he began his career in Paris as a painter and scenic designer, taught by his fellow Romanian Brancusi and friendly with Modigliani, the Parisian market did not absorb his work. When he left for the United States to exhibit his work in New York, he was asked to prepare some drawings for the rape scene in The Story of Temple Drake (1933), based on William Faulkner's harrowing book, Sanctuary. 

Negulesco found that he had to depict the scene in discreet visual terms so that it could be passed by the censor. The producer of the film, Benjamin Glazer, liked the result so much that he made Negulesco his assistant, enabling him to gain experience in almost all aspects of movie-making. His work as second-unit director at Paramount and then at Universal brought him to the attention of Gordon Illingworth, producer of short subjects at Warner Bros, who put him in charge of those with pretensions to art. The rest is history.

A sample of Negulesco's drawing.

Director and Painter Jean Negulesco ponders his sketches of Claudette Colbert, star of his Three Came Home (1950).

In 1927, he moved to the United States and began his movie career as a sketch artist for Paramount Pictures, where he designed the opening montage for the musical Tonight We Sing. In 1944, he directed his first successful movie, The Mask of Dimitrios, based on a story by Eric Ambler.

Among his successful movies were The Conspirators (1944), Three Strangers (1946), Johnny Belinda, with Jane Wyman (1948), The Mudlark (1950), How to marry a millionaire, starring Marilyn Monroe, Titanic (1953), Three Coins in the Fountain (1954), Daddy Long Legs, with Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron (1956).

Negulesco was famous for his directing style, represented by images taken from unusual angles and the use of shadows and silhouettes. He was the first to use the cinemascope technique in movies like How to marry a millionaire or Daddy Long Legs. He made the first movie about an aircraft accident and the first one about the tragedy of war prisoners during World War II.

In 1948, he directed Johnny Belinda, a drama about the rape of a deaf-mute girl and the scandal triggered by her resulting pregnancy. The movie was a success; Negulesco was nominated for an Academy Award for best director (he lost to John Huston), and Jane Wyman won the Oscar for best actor.

Negulesco worked with Hollywood’s biggest stars including Fred Astaire, Lauren Bacall, Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe, Richard Burton, Lana Turner, Irene Dunne, and Sophia Lauren.

His 1954 movie Three Coins in a Fountain won two Academy Awards for cinematography and for the title song and was nominated for an Oscar for best picture. In 1955, Negulesco received a BAFTA Award for Best Film for How to Marry a Millionaire. His 1959 movie, The Best of Everything, was on Entertainment Weekly’s “Top 50 Cult Films of All-Time” list. In 1970s, he retired from film making and moved to Spain.

Perhaps he painted this during his time in Spain...

In 1985, he published his autobiography entitled Things I Did and Things I Think I Did. Negulesco died in Marbella, Spain in 1993 at the age of 93 leaving behind 72 movies. He is remembered as a key contributor to the film noir genre.

More to explore:

• Hat tips go to Alex Fodor for her bio on Jean (from which I borrowed quite heavily)
• An excellent synopsis and bio on Jean from the Prodan Foundation.
• Negulesco's Hollywood star.
• Diva's Classics also has a great bit of info about Jean's life and development.
• I Love Cinema reviews his film, Humoresque.
• More art by Negulesco. If you would like to purchase one for me as a gift, I will marry you in my next life.

Ghita Ionescu's legacy to Romanian history.

One of Ghita Ionescu's most critical contributions to Romanian and post-communist studies  was his emphasis on the academic study of "opposition" to political regimes. He founded a journal at LSE, Government and Opposition, which explored this topic in many countries which were communist-led at the time. He also wrote a book, Opposition: Past and Present of a Political Institution, with Isabel de Madariaga, emphasizing his view of opposition as a civil institution. 

At the time, the field of "Soviet Studies" still focused on analysis of formal government institutions under communist regimes, including the COMECON. Content analysis of party documents was all the rage. Professor Ghita ameliorated the study of communist regimes by introducing the test posed by opposition and its role in the evaluation and popular legitimacy of a political regime.

Certainly his association with Radio Free Europe played a role in his interest in the social phenomenon of political dissidence. In fact, Radio Free Europe would have been a pointless endeavor without the assumption that popular legitimacy remained critical to a communist regime's long-term hold on political power.

In fact, Ionescu believed that popular movements, as opposed to internal government reform, would eventually bring an end to the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. 

More links, information, and works influenced by Professor Ghita Ionescu:

• His obituary by John C. Campbell in The Independent
• Ionescu's books are available in Romanian from Humanitas
• Hlavacek, Petr and Holzer, Jan (2009) "Opposition in Non-Democratic Regimes: Notes on Possibilities and Limits of Current Theory," World Political Science Review: Vol. 5 : Iss. 1, Article 5.
• Cas Mudde, "Populism in Eastern Europe", Radio Free Europe, 8 March 2000.
• Robert Cutler, "Soviet Dissent Under Khruschev: An Analytical Study", utilizes Ionescu's opposition paradigm.
• Laura Radulescu, "An Intellectual Cleansing Which Never Took Place, Or How We Became What We Are"

Paul Celan's literary love affair with Ingeborg Bachmann.

From Romania to Austria

Celan's parents were killed in the Holocaust; he escaped death by working in a Nazi labor camp. When he realized that the communists were going to take power in Romania, surrealist poet, translator, lecturer, and essayist Paul Celan fled Romania for Austria. There he fell into German literary circles and began a love affair with Ingeborg Bachmann. 

Love Gets Lukewarm

The affair was neither sordid nor spacious enough to last. Though Celan chased ghosts, fancies, and implausibles around Nazi-wasted Europe, his love life never met the aesthetically-jaunty standards of surrealism. In fact, it seems he was quite the realist, knowing Bachmann's feelings dwarfed his own. How Bachmann reconciled her love for Celan with her philosophical crush on Martin Heidegger remains baffling. 

Ina Hartwig writes about the newly-published correspondence between Celan and his short-time lover:

"Glorious news" the 21-year old Ingeborg Bachmann writes in a letter to her parents, the "surrealist poet" Paul Celan has fallen in love with her. It is May 1948, Vienna. The 27-year-old Celan, whose parents, Leo and Friederike Antschel, died in a German concentration camp in Ukraine, had fled just a few months earlier from Bucharest, via Budapest, to Vienna. Bachmann, the daughter of a teacher and a former member of the Nazi party, is writing her PhD on Heidegger. Celan, of all people, will write in a letter to Bachmann several years later, that Heidegger's choking on his own mistakes is more agreeable to him than the solid Federal German conscience of someone like Heinrich Böll. 

The correspondence opens with Celan's poem "In Egypt", which he sends to his beloved, with the dedication "to one who is painfully precise", on her 22nd birthday. It contains a motif, so tantalising and uncomfortable, that it foreshadows the conflicts to come: "Adorn the stranger beside you most beautifully./ Adorn her with the pain for Ruth, for Mirjam and Noemie". This motif of "adorning pain" - the pain of the Jewesses adorns the Gentile - is close to the bone, and yet it constitutes something akin to the constitution of the love between the Austrian philosophy student, who stands before a precipitous career as a poet, and the stateless Jew from Czernowitz in Galicia, whose most famous poem "Deathfugue" has already attracted attention in literary circles.

Like Hannah Arendt, Bachmann's early intellectual milieu revolved around the existential writings of Martin Heidegger. Later, she would abandon Heidegger's existentialism for Ludwig Wittgenstein's analytic, language-centered philosophy. In the interim, however, she would love a man which her intellect was trained to scorn. Though this book has not yet been translated for English or Romanian audiences, I'm holding out hope. 

The last letters in the book were written by Celan's widow to Bachmann following Celan's suicide in 1970. Bachmann, herself, died under mysterious circumstances, suicide-speculating circumstances. Their love passed away before their bodies.

For the Hungry

"Celan" is actually an anagram of the Romanian spelling of his surname, Ancel. For more about Celan, Bachmann, and their tryst:

• "Celan and Heidegger: Translation at the Mountain of Death", a thoughtful essay by Pierre Joris.
• Dr. Klaus Hubner reviews the book for the Goethe Institut.
• Paul Celan on Osip Mandelstam, courtesy of Pierre Joris encore.
• Four new translations of poems by Paul Celan by Iain Fairley in Guernica.
• Stephen Mitchelmore examines the "post-Holocaust" poetry of Paul Celan for Spike magazine.
• David Vickrey read the German version of the book and liked it enough to blog about it here.
• Paul Celan from LightDuress (Cycle 6).

Help Phillipe Legrain with his new book.

Phillipe Legrain doesn't believe that immigration is the cause of Europe's social and economic ills. In fact, Legrain makes the case that immigration, as experienced through globalization, might actually be a good thing. Currently working on a new book about the effects of globalization, Legrain will be examining the "risks to globalisation from the ongoing crisis (such as protectionism, nationalism and political extremism)" and try to find what needs to change in the global economy, as well as what doesn't need to change. 

Using a combination of first-hand reporting, economic and political analysis, and reasoned argument, Legrain is in the process of gathering the materials, examples, stories, and real-life data which will give life to his book. On his blog, Legrain makes a request which I think might be well-taken by some English-speaking Romanians: 

I'd be really grateful if you could suggest papers I should read, people I should talk to, and places I should visit. I'm particularly interested in hearing about people that the mainstream media often neglects. You may be able to point me to a small business in China whose exports have evaporated and whose migrant workers are going home, or to one that is prospering by taking on a new line of work. You may know Icelandic people who can relate how their lives have been turned upside down by the financial collapse. You may have connections to communities in Australia that until recently were booming by exporting to China, and drawing in lots of foreign workers as a result; how are they coping? You may know Mexicans who have gone home from the US, or Poles who have left the UK or Ireland, because of the recession. And amid all the gloom and despair, what new opportunities are emerging that could help build a better and fairer global economy? Or something else entirely. Please email me on mail AT philippelegrain DOT com I'll get back to you if I think there could be a fit. Thank you very much.

Take F.A. Hayek to heart on this one, and provide Legrain with a little local knowledge that he might not otherwise discover. In the meantime, I'll be scratching my own head for ideas.

On the Romanian literary scene...

Sharon Mesmer and her friends involved in the Best American Poetry are "run ragged" by the Romanian Writer's Union. 

Meanwhile, the Guardian UK has chosen to honor the 20th anniversary of the Wall's fall with a literary extravaganza featuring Eastern European writers, a subject close to my heart. You can read the short story, Zgaiba, by Stelian Tanase, and other bests from the Balkans and post-Soviet state.

"Dust of Ideologies" by Nicolae Iorga.

People were enchanted for so long by the sparkle of new ideologies, whichever pressed against them, out of respect for a long tradition and from conviction before certain principles, an older conception. A whole generation of youth directed themselves towards the left or the right, not from reading doctrinal books or heeding the calls of the political apostles, but from the vision of a revolution they believe they can create, some even for the purported good of mankind, however this good might be understood.

But more powerful than any abstract construction is race, and all the mystery contained therein; and what interests are deemed authoritative change frequently from one day to the next!

And look! Those bound to a creed-- the credulous-- not only sincere, but fanatic to the point of cruelty, found themselves all on the road to Damascus where, stricken by the arrow of reality, fell only to rise again somehow different from before.

[...] Irreconcilable little souls travel alongside, struggling with fallen hearts as the spectators of former champions pose themselves difficult questions.

There is only one answer to these questions: the big lights go far until they suddenly go out at the precipice.

[This first appeared as "Praf de ideologii" written by Nicolae Iorga, published in Neamul romanesc, anul XXXIV, nr. 279 din 19 Decembrie 1939, p.1. I welcome suggestions and corrections to my translation.]

Anna Louise Strong's description of Moldova and Romania: Part 1.

Anna Louise Strong was an American Soviet sympathizer who published numerous propaganda books and pamphlets during the post-war period. In Peoples of the USSR (1944), Strong offers an interesting description of Romania and Moldova, tinged with bright Redpropaganda. This is a wonderful read for anyone who needs reminding that history is always written from a certain arm chair by a certain person with a particular perspective.

Soviet Moldavia lies between the Ukraine and Romania. The Carpathian mountains bound it on the north, while its southern shores are washed by the Black Sea. It is 13,600 square miles in area, half again as large as Holland, and has some 2,200,000 people. It is a garden of rich black, soil. But for centuries it has been a neglected garden. Only a small part of Moldavia has been in the USSR for any length of time. Most of it was annexed in 1940 when the territory called Bessarabia was returned by Romania to Russia. Bessarabia forms about five-sixths of Soviet Moldavia.

In Soviet Moldavia, now that the Nazis have gone, the village elders in the shabby clay villages bring out the ceremonial tray of bread, salt, and wine, the traditional peasant welcome, and offer it to the Red Army. Dark Moldavian women present earthen pitchers of cold well water to the thirsty troops. Barefoot boys in brown homespun and tall sheepskin caps crowd around the Red Army planes on sodden fields, their brown eyes staring as if a miracle had come.

Moldavia lies at the gap between the Black Sea and the Carpathians, through which in ancient days the tribes from Asia migrated into Europe. This territory was conquered by all the tribes that passed; if they failed to conquer it, they did not get through. The gap was narrow and the tribes were many. So the population became very mixed. Some say that Moldavians are largely Slav, others that they are largely a Romanian people from Thrace.

The early Greeks knew this territory as the stronghold of the dreaded Cimmerians. Later there were Scythians here. When Trajan conquered the territory, making it part of the Roman province of Dacia in AD 106, the tribes of the area were Slavs. The Slavs built cities in the sixth century, some of which still exist. They joined Kiev-Russ in the great campaign against Constantinople in the tenth century. When Kiev-Russ split into principalities, one of the largest and richest was located in the area. It was Chervonaya-Russ-- Red, or Golden, Russ. 

A Romanized tribe from Thrace known as Vlachs came north in the thirteenth century and drove the Slavs from part of the land. Almost at once the great Mongol invasion overwhelmed both Slavs and Vlachs in a common slavery. In the sixteenth century, the Turks seized the area and the hapless land became the battleground for many successive wars between the Turks and the Poles. During this period it became known as the principality of Moldavia......

Later the Western part of Moldavia, then under Turkish rule, joined with another subject state to form Rumania, a vassal state of the Turkish Empire. In 1877 Rumania helped Russia against the Turks and thereby won independence. The new Rumanian state wanted Bessarabia too. But the same conference of European powers that recognized Rumania as an independent state recognized Russia's right to Bessarabia.

Searching for Emil Cioran.

Searching for Cioran  by Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston bills itself as "a critical portrait of French philosopher and mystic Emil Cioran", which somehow misses the point of his unmistakably Romanian influences and influence. Since I haven't had the pleasure of reading this latest book on the exorcist of despair, I've scoured the book reviews to learn more.

Michael Dirda's review for the Washington Post classifies this book as a "biography and memoir". At issue, of course, is Cioran's youthful associations with right-wing nationalism and anti-Semitism. Dirda explains that Zarifopol-Johnston originally intended to write a full biography, but she died before she was able to get past the rough drafts of Cioran's Romanian years. Her husband edited the sections and filled in the spaces., though the book contains "a long account of Zarifopol-Johnston's own thoughts and feelings when she returned to her native Romania to speak with Cioran's brother and surviving friends".

As Dirda observes, Zarifopol-Johnston uses Erik Erikson's "pattern of repudiation and devotion" to trace Cioran's intellectual and literary evolution. First, Cioran repudiates his career as a Romanian intellectual. Then he temporarily devotes himself to the extreme ideology of "apocalyptic nationalism", which he abandons when his "spiritual mission" changes focus from nation to self. The resulting "born-again writer" is treated carefully by his biographer, who wishes to "understand Cioran rather than accuse him", thereby avoiding the "trial mentality" at work in books like Marta Petreu's An Infamous Past.

Perhaps IU Press bills Cioran as a "French philosopher" because Cioran made small secret of his torment at being a Romanian. Dirda writes:

The young Cioran saw being Romanian as a misfortune. He was reared, he felt, in a backwater country, home to a primitive culture and an obscure language. "Forgive me God because I was born Romanian" became his personal motto. He grew up feeling simultaneously bored and disgusted with Romanian life, increasingly prey to vicious insomnia and even to epileptic fits. Like so many romantic young men and women before him, he also "believed in the prestige of unhappy passions."

Given the extent of Cioran's influence on Romanian intellectual history, perhaps nowhere more evident than in his fatalism and resignation, Cioran might have chosen to follow his head rather than his heart. Granted, his heart's impurities, including a Nietzschean reverence for power and a tendency to disparage history's victims (which possibly played a part in his anti-Semitism), were as impure as one can get. But rather than change his heart, Cioran changes his mind. And we are left without an interpreter. 

Because I always hate to close the book on Cioran, there is more.... Book review at Planet Cioran + "Romanian Intellectual Flirtations with Fascism: The generation of 1927" + Sam Munson, "The Trouble With Cioran", The National, 30 April 2009 + "12 interesting bits of information about Emil Cioran"

Norman Manea is honored by Romanians.

The Observer Translation Project is devoting this month to the work of Romanian writer Norman Manea, who recently won the 2009 Gheorghe Crăciun Lifetime Achievement Award. Critic Carmen Musat describes Manea's work:

A witness to the paired totalitarianisms of the 20th century, Norman Manea is a writer of survivals. His medium is Romanian. He belongs to the world. With Gogol he shares the ability to express life’s absurdity while rendering—while constituting—overwhelming humanity. This in the face of the nullity and mediocrity essential to vast tracts of the human condition. His prose offers a deep insight into the abnormal essence of a totalitarian society where the political factor exerts overwhelming control over daily existence, down to the finest details of personal life. His work focuses on the dissolution of identity, intimacy and inner life under the dreadful pressures that force people to hide their true selves behind masks. Preoccupied with personae, the sensitivity of  Norman Manea’s prose goes beyond the stance, style and  technique of which it is made  and materializes as the willingness and necessity to live inner truth—by all means.

Manea offers a simple self-portrait in his own words:

In the public arena, Augustus the Fool faces, unavoidably, the Clown of Power. All human tragicomedy may be seen in this encounter, in the history of the Circus as History. In the world-circus the writer - and I see myself as one- seems ill equipped for everyday life in which his fellow men offer and receive their share of credible reality. And yet his weakness may be also be seen as an unconventional and devious strength, his solitude as a deeper kind of solidarity, his imagination as a shortcut to reality. I may fit the portrait of such an adventurer trying to humanize his shipwreck wherever he may be.

Among other precious stones, Jean Harris translates "Sentimental Education", a short by Manea. Her translation is actually quite good-- it captures his rhythm and restlessness on the page, without mooring him to cliche. An excerpt:

The young gentleman attracted to philosophy not to commerce hesitated to make short of the shameless smarting in his pants at a doctor’s. There were no private medical offices anymore. He had no one to whom he could talk about scandalous secrets. He resigned himself to living together in fear with the viruses of the damned. The newspapers and the radio and books and conferences and mass meetings didn’t address such hidden bourgeois anxieties. “The greater the moral depravity, the more severe public opinion.” Ever less revolutionary, reality was confirming the sayings of the revolutionary, Saint-Juste, who didn’t live long enough to witness socialism.

For more, read the entire translation here. Manea made the list of top 100 books on totalitarianism for his novel, The Black Envelope (review forthcoming).

A surreal-less post on Gellu Naum, who reads his poems "in a low voice, extremely low, in the deepest silence."

Gellu Naum had immeasurable respect for the art of boulevard strolling. As an early institutionalizer of Romanian surrealism, Gellu noticed that the large cracks in the sidewalks made women cringe. This observation might have turned him into a forerunner of magical realism were it not for ...

Communism made the publication of poetry difficult because the ink was always invisible for those in the avant-garde. But Gellu had his Zenobia-- if he didn't have her, he would have invented her, and, in fact, having her made her invention somewhat less daunting. So Gellu did (and had) both. In 1968, a miraculous intervention made the ink black so Romanians could read again and writers could publish. Unfortunately, those writers who required colored ink for their publications would have to wait until 1990, when the Turks would open bazaars on the streets of Bucharest.

Gellu was a man, but he could have been more. He could have been a long, winding shopping list curled around a baba's fist, each line another symptom of Gellu's existence. If a young lady were to discover such a list crumpled up near a Happy Meal bag, she would be in possession of Gellu's list-fulness, the sum of his parts, the sum-thing like this:

• Love as a literary game
• The dialectics of the imaginary
• A critique of misery
• Comana
• A blue shore
• A children's book
• An old military uniform without epaulettes
• Vacationing vultures
• The road of foreshadowings
• Thick dark hair
• The Eastern Front
• The secret being
• Eloge de malhombra
• Athanor
• A framed portrait of Victor Brauner
• An empty obit
• Nobody for a long time
• A pulse just as blind and obscure

"On translation" by Andrei Codrescu.

The Mass creates. The systemic mind or Form misunderstands this creation and makes it Form. Form, in its turn, is sold to the Mass, who misunderstands and makes it Mass. The misunderstanding of the Mass to form creates the two-party system and the misunderstanding of Form by Mass creates the middle class. These two varieties of Misunderstanding describe, at any given moment, the exact state of the culture. The exact state of the culture is what we call the worst. The best, on the other hand, has no relationship to the actual state of the culture because it is involved solely with the future. The translator then has two choices. He can translate the best in which case he will have no fun because the future is uncertain and therefore serious. One can only laugh at what's solidly here. And he can translate the worst, which is what I do, and be forever amused.

[From Alien Candor: Selected Poems 1970-1995 by Andrei Codrescu.]

[The photo was taken by Ovidiu Sim.]

The best endnote in Katherine Verdery's book, "The Political Lives of Dead Bodies".

Rarely is an end-note a rich as Swiss chocolate with macademia nuts. This particular specimen comes from Katherine Verdery's path-breaking book, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change. Voila end-note #29 for the chapter entitled, "Dead Bodies Animate the Study of Politics":

Before pooh-poohing the idea that "regular" people leading "regular" lives worry much about this sort of thing, note that some 70 percent of the US population believes in angels-- a fact that throws light on why the TV program Touched By An Angel has such high ratings.

Perhaps I might illustrate the "cosmic" in the "everyday" for Eastern Europe with one of its most widespread and popular folk tales. The tale appears all across Southeastern Europe but is particularly well-crystallized in Romania. It has caught the imagination of folk both learned and not, and my experience indicates that it still does. The story in outline concerns a young shepherd who sees his favorite lamb sorrowing, and asks her why. She tell him that she has overheard his two companions scheming to kill him. Knowing that animals can foresee the future, he believes her, then proceeds to tell her how he wants his funeral to be handled; his wishes show popular beliefs that violent deaths of the young require special treatment and, in the case of an unmarried person, a symbolic wedding so that his life can have included all the major components of human existence. He wants to be buried not in a church cemetery but in the meadow, with his sheep singing the funeral laments, and pines and stars as wedding/funeral guests.

According to Eliade, the tale's most profound message is the shepherd's will to change the meaning of his destiny, turning it into a moment in a cosmic liturgy. By taking the folk-practice of the "death wedding" and making it a cosmic event, he succeeds in transforming a dire event into a sacrament, thus triumphing over his own fate. Folk balladeers as well as intellectuals who love the tale find in it an affinity between the sheperd's destiny and that of the Romanian people. The shepherd has made an absurd event meaningful by responding to adversity with a new spiritual creation (Eliade 1970: 251-254). For more on the Romanian form of this tale, see Kligman 1988: Stahl 1983. 

For more on Miorita and related topics:

• The text of the ballad.
• Another version of the Miorita legend.
  
• Mircea Eliade on a certain incapacity.
• Lucian Blaga on the mioritic space. 
• A psychoanalystic perspective on the Romanian myth of the master-builder.
• Vintila Mihailescu on mioritic fatalism.
• A modern mioritic remix.
• An Aromanian shepherd.
• Goana dupa brad.
• Ciobani.ro.
  
• Mircea Eliade on the Romanian spiritual life.
  

Mircea Cartarescu's magical wand.

Mircea Cartarescu is a Romanian writer, essayist, literary critic, poet, and university lecturer. His style struts the line between the magical realism, New Wave, and reverie of the obscure. In a wonderful feature for Sign and Sight,  Jorg Plath calls him "the man who has made Bucharest mystical", turning the dismal greys of communism to a "metaphysical superstructure". Plath walks us through Cartarescu's past:

In 1980 Cartarescu's writing focused on the everyday. At the age of 24 he joined the legendary university "Monday circle" led by literary critic Nicolae Manolescu. "Faruri, vitrine, fotografii" (headlights, window displays, photographs) is the title of his debut work published that same year. "We moved from the European poetry tradition to the American, we wanted to be faster, harder, more powerful." Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara were the models for the "Eighties Generation", who dedicated themselves to the reality of here and now and survived unscathed at the university despite their dissident views. After producing three volumes of poetry as a student and while working as a primary school teacher on the outskirts of Bucharest, Cartarescu began writing prose. The narrative round dance entitled "Visul" (the dream) appeared in 1989, two months before the revolution. The original title, "Nostalgia" was ruled out because of the Tarkovsky film of the same name, the first story cut out by censors who judged it to be too violent, and Elena had to be renamed Maria to avoid any possible association with Elena Ceausescu.

After the revolution "Nostalgia" could appear uncensored and Cartarescu could finally become a university lecturer and travel. As we leave the roof, passing some scrawny plants, he tells of the initial shock felt by Romanians, who were used to shortages of everything, on first entering the West. In the meantime Cartarescu has got used to the West: "Since 1990 I've spent half my life abroad."

Here is an excerpt from "Nabokov in Brasov", translated by Julian Similian, which can be read in full online, courtesy of Words Without Borders:

I wasn't listening anymore. I was slowly waking up. Oddly, thinking of Securitate, the most unlikely and stupid things were coming to mind: a long line to get beer at Bucur Obor, hundreds of people and a very nervous individual shouting when a few gypsies tried to cut in. "He's from Securitate, I know him," an old man told me with a kind of respect. "He's got power to put things in order." In my apartment building there were many people from Securitate, I played with their children. I recalled the jokes about them, Mother's warnings to be careful what I said, because Securitate was everywhere. Who were the people who worked for Securitate? What was Securitate? And why was it my fate, like a bad joke, to become a man with someone who worked for Securitate, even though she was only about to become one of them? I let her speak, I let her try her best to convince me (herself, really) that she was doing the right thing, and so she went on and on with her plea to the void, long after she realized I wasn't listening to her anymore. I could barely see her face. Through the paper-thin walls of the building you could hear everything: someone flushing the toilet, voices on the TV, music . . . After she finished she lit another cigarette and silently smoked it to the end. Then she stretched "voluptuously" next to me, kissed me "sweetly," caressed me obscenely-no quotation marks this time-and wanted to start from the top. I pushed her hand away and told her, like an automaton, without feeling the "drama" of that moment, that she was an idiot, that she would ruin not only her own life but the life of many others as well, that I didn't want to have anything to do with her if she took that step. And in fact, if she'd already accepted, what did she want from me?

As usual, the burden of other people's desires disturb the landscapes of everyday life. For more written by or about Cartarescu, explore the following:

• "The Gypsies: A Romanian Problem"
• "Eastern European Prejudices Regarding Homosexuals"
• "Two Romanias"
• Two poems: "I'm Smiling" and "The Blonde Beast"
• A selection of Cartarescu's poems in Romanian 
• "Mircea Cartarescu on men who have something feminine about them"
• On expectations of Barack Obama
• On culture and money
• On the history of the Roma in Romania
• Nostalgia
• Excerpt from The Roulette Player
• Blog entries about Cartarescu include ABC of Reading, Errata 1, Masters of Drama, Blog About EU & Romania and Elly

A Romanian-Alabamian's dream come true.

What could a Romanian residing in Alabama possibly desire that would require an invocation of this dual identity? What would satisfy the hunger usually sated by Southern soul food spiced with mamaliga, sarmalute, and ciorba? Where does the dark mustiness of Southern literature nestle comfortably alongside the skittish combustibility of Romanian writing?

Forget the fact that I am a globalized mutt who has developed an intense mistrust of any kennel-- American or Romanian-- and prefers to live in cars where the windows are open. Forget my own misgivings about nationalism, patriotism, self-esteem, and resume voyeurism. Forget everything I've ever said or suggeted about politics and conspiracy and other forms of failed literature. For there is hope and excitement on the Romanian horizon. The Observer Translation Project aims to bridge the language barrier by providing translations of previously untranslated fictional gems. For those who long enchanted by the misgivings of the Romanian pen, this project is an oasis.

A Romanian writer is highlighted in every issue, thus opening the doors of cross-cultural discourse for the discovery of relics and treasures. Apart from translating novels, stories, and essays, the Project includes critical essays and translation notes.

Dip into pathological memory and the nostalgia of the return, the exile's tattoo, the dissident's favorite pair of blue jeans, the stoicism of Soviet toilets, Napoleon in Bucharest, the social stasis facilitated by intellectuals glorifying the ditch as the best abode, token immortalities, the heady drum-beat of a wasted morning, dinners with the devil or the pope, the din inside the artist's head, the cosmic significance of dark bodies, and so much more.

[The photo was taken by Miri Bratu. ]

Romanian writing featured in Words Without Borders.

Words Without Borders, subtitled "the magazine for international literature", turned my afternoon to gold. I've linked most of  the stories, essays, and poems by Romanians which I could find featured on the website. Many include poems by famous Romanian authors which were recently translated to English.

• "Pastoral" by Max Blecher
• "Inscription on a Tomb" by Tristan Tzara
• "Encounter" by Gabriela Adamesteanu
• "Domestic Sadness" by Tristan Tzara
• "Come With Me to the Countryside" by Tristan Tzara
• "The Birch Grove" by Luminita Mihai Cioaba
• "Queen of the Night" and "Stone Flower" by Luminita Mihai Cioaba
• "I" by Eugene Ionesco
• "Old Song" by Tristan Tzara
• "Voice" by Tristan Tzara
• "Last Night" by Paul Celan
• "A Kiss" by Ioan Flora
• "Friend Midear" by Tristan Tzara
• "Poem for Marianne's Shadow" by Paul Celan
• "Tip of the Day, or Shakespeare and Computers" by Adrian Otoiu
• "To Live In Sin" by Virgil Duda
• "A Friend of the Archangel" by Gabriela Melinescu
• "L'apparition" by Mariana Marin
• "Red and White" by Mariana Marin
• "Mynheer" by Mariana Marin
• "The Karenina Complex" by Mariana Marin
• "Beretta" by Mariana Marin
• "Crematorium" by Marta Petreu
• "Here" by Marta Petreu
• "In Another Life" by Marta Petreu
• Excerpt from The Roulette Player by Mircea Cartarescu
  

Emil Cioran's "History and Utopia".

In History and Utopia, Emil Cioran's disenchantment with Enlightenment idealism burns through all six essays. He is not swayed by promises for a better future, nor does he allow himself to be shamed for the tragedies of the fast. Instead, Cioran wants humans to sculpt their existence with the clay that they are given at any particular moment in time, rather than constantly try to improve the clay or learn how all the clays of the past were created. Ultimately, if we are not sculpting, our hands are empty: 

We are born to exist, not to know; to be, not to assert ourselves. Knowledge, having irritated and stimulated our appetite for power, will lead us inexorably to our ruin. It is Genesis, not our dreams and our systems, that has perceived our condition.

Cioran wants to hold all the books we have read against us. The most dangerous man is the one who knows exactly what is right-- and burns with the desire to make right a reality. Scholars have disagreed with the extent to which Cioran's existential pessimism represents a dissent against communism in Romania, his native land. Given his tendency to write aphoristically, rarely dwelling on details or proper names, Cioran cannot be tied to a political position on Romanian communism.

So we must run our fingers over the scaffolds in hopes of discovering a little Braille. Certainly Cioran is clear about the need for "an awareness of existential futility" to act as the "sole weapon against theological and ideological deliriums", to borrow Tomislav Sunic's language. The way out of utopian delusionism is a position of profound skepticism towards any promises to amerliorate the human condition. In this view, Cioran's rejection of Hegelian dialectic and Marxism in general is abundantly clear. Nothing we can learn will help us to make the world a better place.

As Cioran puts it:

Knowledge subverts love: in proportion as we penetrate our own secrets, we come to loathe our kind, precisely because they resemble us. When we have no further illusions about ourselves, we retain none about others; the unspeakable that we discover by introspection we extend, by a legitimate generalization, to other mortals; depraved in their essence, we rightly endow them with all the vices which, oddly enough, most of us turn out to be unfit for or averse to ferreting out, to observing in ourselves or in others. How easy it is to do evil: everybody manages; but to assume it explicitly, to acknowledge its inexorable reality, is an unwonted feat. In practice, anyone can compete with the devil; in theory, this is not the case. To commit horrors and to conceive horror are two irreducible actions: no common ground between the experience of cynicism and cynicism in the abstract. Let us beware of those who subscribe to a reassuring philosophy, who believe in the Good and willingly erect it into an idol; they could not have done so if, honestly peering into themselves, they had sounded their depths or their miasmas; but those-- rare, it is true-- who have been indiscreet or unfortunate enough to plunge all the way down to the bottom of their beings, they know how to judge man: they can no longer love him, for they no longer love themselves, though remaining-- and this will be their punishment-- nailed even faster to themselves than before..."

"The Good" is not worth pursuing-- not to the extent that it must be established and enforced by human beings, whose own self-loathing stands in the way of serving the Good. Or serving each other. Everything is undercut by Cioran's assumptions of cynicism as the general condition of humankind. As such, Cioran is not for the tender-hearted or the avid servants of the "public good" who build their beautiful lobbies in Washington, DC hoping to influence the most powerful bureacracy in the world. What we do in the name of "the Good" (or in the name of God) requires a profound regard for destruction; and the desire to describe our dirty hands as a natural consequence.

For more analysis and probing of Cioran, see:

• "Cioran and the Worship of Apocalypse" by Jon K. Loessin
• "E.M. Cioran: To Infinity and Beyond" by Stephen Mitchelmore
• Michael Dirda on Searching for Cioran  
• "Emil Cioran and the Culture of Death" by Tomislav Sunic
• Cioran's biography on a great website devoted to his work
• A Cioran bibliography
  
• To discuss Cioran, join the Project Cioran Yahoo Group.
  

The purpose of history as understood by Ceausescu.

Thanks to book stands of Bucharest which lined the streets in the early 1990's, I was able to purchase a number of Romanian history books and textbooks issued under the Ceausescu period. At first glance,the texts are remarkable only for their dramatic, airbrushed pictures of the Great Leader, Ceausescu, posted immediately inside the cover.

I thought I would share a little excerpt from an "official" history published by the Romanian News Agency Publishing House in 1980 entitled, Romania: Pages of History. This book was produced to serve as international propaganda supporting the aims of Romanian national socialism. My copy is printed in English on the flimsy, toilet-paper-like pages so popular in communist countries. However, the book indicates that the book is also available in French, German, Russian, and Spanish.

At that time, Ceausescu's concern about Russian intervention (best execmplified in the sending of troops to Poland and Czechoslovakia to punish unfriendly local leaders) led him to become the mouthpiece for rights of national self-determination. The tension between his assertion of these rights to national self-determination and the presence of large minorities of Germans and Hungarians in Transylvania forced Ceausescu to dance a rhetorical jig. Ultimately, his commitment to national socialism made little sense in light of his purported commitment to international communism. He provides his own convoluted version of this view in the introduction to this book:

In our epoch, when the nations have strongly asserted themselves, it is in this sense that one should understand the question of the nationalities which live on the territory of one state or another as an outcome of a long, historical coexistence. They should enjoy all the gains of the socialist society in our countries, all the freedoms, use the language they choose, as it is guaranteed in Romania. At the same time, we should understand that we have the common duty to make socialism triumph through the joint work of all citizens, regardless of nationality, in each of our countries, to ensure, by close cooperation, their fast and multilateral progress, observing the principles which underlie the ideals of the socialist society.

We must firmly be against the imperialist policy of strength and dictate, for a broad economic, cultural-scientific policy of equality and respect among all peoples. This is the only way in which history can serve the real purposes of science and, at the same time, our socialist aspirations, the policy of developing Romania, our people, securing it a dignified and equal place among the socialist nations, among all world nations.

Ceausescu's verbal ju-jitsu does not shy away from revealing the true purpose of history as understood by the Romanian communists, namely, "to serve the real purposes of science and.. socialist aspirations". As Ceausescu makes clear, history exists to serve the needs of the state. If the state needs to provide a scientific basis for historical materialism, history must assume its proper position as story-teller for this campaign. If the state needs a justification for political repression, history must reveal the true enemies which lie within. History is government's hostage.

According to Romania: Pages of History, Bucharest is the "capital of world historiography". In an essay by Ion Popescu-Puturi, Ceausescu himself is revealed as the father of history, second only to the invisible Hegelian dialectic which compels Marx's march towards communism. Popescu-Puturi writes:

Romania's capital city is the venue of the 15th International Congress on Historical Sciences held over August 10-17 under the high patronage of President Nicolae Ceausescu. The choice of Romania as the place for a scientific event of such scope is a recognition of her prestige enjoyed in the world, of her contribution to the defence of peace, development of broad relations among peoples, among scientists all over the world. The holding of the world congress of history in Bucharest comes also as a recognition of Romania's long traditions and reputed school of historical research which enjoys the president of the country's direct support and guidance. President Ceausescu's profound concept of the origins and historical fate of the Romanian people laid down in true essay form in his speeches has given broad propsects to the Romanian historiography to elucidate the major moments in Romanian history, to approach and solve essential problems of world history.

The writings in this book provide an triumphalist, Romano-centric, and often anti-Slav interpretation of historical events in the founding of the Romanian state. The fact that this history was taught to millions of young students in Ceausescu's Romania certainly accounts for the political power of Romanian nationalism in the current postcommunist environment.

For more information on Ceausescu's historiography, the 15th International Congress, and related threads:

• An article from History Today on the 15th International Congress for which this book was produced.
• An excellent article by Razvan Paraianu titled "The History Textbooks Controversy in Romania".
  
• The report from the 19th International Congress of Historical Sciences) on the theme, "The Uses and Misuses of History and the Responsibilities of Historians, Past and Present".
• Dr. Lajos Kazar takes issue with a few assertions made at the Bucharest Congress about the dates of Romanian statehood. His concerns are duly noted.
• Other activities in which Ion Popescu-Pututi gained fame and reknown, apart from writing historical propaganda, of course.
  

Codrescu on censorship in communist Romania.

These chunks of writing are drawn from Andrei Codrescu's wonderful memoir, The Disappearance of the Outside: A Manifesto For Escape in which he details his experience under Romanian communism and his life in exile. In the excerpt below, Codrescu describes the role and confusion of communist censors:

The Janus-faced censors in the towers had to look both outside and inside their domain for unauthorized books. In addition they had to define and maintain the official ideology they were sworn to defend. It was not an easy job, particularly since no one, at least in Romania, was doing it with any particular zeal. After Stalin had written all the books, only exegetes and enforcers were left. Our schoolteachers, forced to parrot the line of the textbooks, were bored out of their minds, as were we. The immense boredom into which I was born was an ideal conductor for the forbidden and the transcendent. The (real) penalties meted for breaching this boredom made it all worthwhile: my world was made to order for adolescent rebellion. I viewed my teachers and the countless Party small-fry who ran everything as insects (particularly since I'd read Kafka). These bugs were trying to confine my world with their unconvincing edicts because they were not well. They were ill.

The censor was a flawed person because he could not be entirely loyal. To be so, he'd have to have an exact idea of what he was being asked to forbid, and the State could not provide one. Consequently, he embarked upon his enterprise of interdiction with only the vaguest of guidelines, and found that he had to invent the enemy. The use of imagination, even under such minimal conditions, was self-defeating because imagination, once kindled, could not be extinguished. The censor, at the mercy of his blazing imagination, began to see enemies everywhere while beset simultaneously by the suspicion that they did not exist at all. This sort of paranoia followed by radical doubt eventually became self-paranoia and self-doubt: the censor questioned his own existence. He became invisible to himself at certain times and in varying degrees, states for which he compensated by making himself extremely visible and dangerous at other times. These moods determined the weather and depth of censorship.

A few pages later, Codrescu turns to the self-censorship practiced by so many under communist regimes. In return for icing Ceausescu's birthday cakes, the self-censored were ensured vacations to Mamaia. But no vacation can take a man far enough from the treacherous self.

The self-censored, who pursued a life without intellectual minefields, suffered from tameness. They were timid academics who kept their jobs through endless kowtowing and mandarin reasoning. Their conservative forms were quite well crafted, hiding the empty insides. Content had vacated them, leaving in its wake a sterile virtuousity that was the subject of endless, equally sterile reviews.

The self-censored kept the literary machine grinding on to no one's surprise, pleasure or delight. They turned up dutifully at congresses, readings, conferences, and rallies, their puffed-up, gray faces with large, dark circles under heavy, horn-rimmed glasses. Their air of weariness was a signal to the world to leave them alone so that they could start drinking. The self-censored drank themselves to death at the red-clothed tables of the Writer's Union, in dives, and at home. When they traveled abroad, their first order of business was getting expensive booze to drink. It was their payoff for years of restraint, deliberate suppression of talent, thought, and life....

The self-censored lied, but they were so unconvincing that every word they wrote was the opposite of what they would have liked everyone to believe. They served as weather vanes. Their only hope, and one that was,  alas, being realized, was that eventually everyone would exhibit the same ambiguous,  ironic disposition. At that point, the lie moved on to a new level, where it was authenticated by ubiquity. Foreign journals and books were confiscated at the border, not because of their content but because they conferred status to the censor who could display them on his coffee table. Too amorphous to hurt, too ambiguous to catch, too faceless to love, the self-censored flowed heavily, as a sort of intellectual molasses, into the life of the country, gumming up the works.

A brief introduction to the writing of Bogdan Tiganov.

Bogdan Tiganov writes about life in Romania following the end of communism. In The Wooden Tongue Speaks, he covers the last twenty years of post-communist Romania in the form of poems and stories which reveal the illusory freedom of totalitarian socialism. One of the short stories in this book, "The Old Man's Village", is available for free to read online. You can also access four poems, including the one posted below, in addition to his "Colour Poems" (aka "colour aphorisms").

Everything, Something, and Nothing

We live in separate rooms
Each to their own, fair enough,
Equals.

We take what we need and when we need it,
Whether it's a slice of pizza or a slice of affection
And we don't give back. Democracy.

We walk down the street like morons
Not knowing what to do and where to go
Or whether to escape like Gauguin.

And secretly or openly we discuss escape
Like we discussed the meal last night,
Quick and microwavable.

What will we do
There
When the only thing we can't escape
Is us?

Who's going to love us and accept us
When we've spent our time
Denying
Us?

And all the beauty, the landscapes, the sunsets,
They won't make much sense to us,
Just like modern art,
Vision, principles or dignity.

Welcome to London, friends.
We won't ever talk as I've forgotten how to
And we won't ever feel, no, not really,
As we've paid out our feelings daily,
Whored out our emotions for survival,
Given everything in return for something.

He is currently working on a novella entitled Last Rights of Modern Man.

Donald Dunham's dissertation on Romanian art.

The Romanians are a social phenomenon. As a nation among nations, they are westerners evolved in the East. They are Latins surrounded by Slavs. They are Romans two thousand years away from Rome. They are contemporaries re-produced on Trajan’s Column.

They are peasants with the utmost in sophistication. They farm instinctively, but are suspicious of machinery. They speak a language like Italian but the majority of their words are Slavonic. They are superstitious but religious at the same time. They are astutely intelligent, but refuse to be intellectual. They submit to invasion but preserve their identity. They support great wealth and extreme poverty. They produce striking beauty yet can live in filth.

As a collective personality, the Romanians are Oriental in their souls although Latin on the surface. Their patience is almost unending but they are quick to explode in argument; they are peace-loving yet would disintegrate without controversy. They are passive but strong in their resistance; spontaneously adaptable, still difficult t influence. They are romantic but never escape from reality.

They are charming yet cruel in their ridicule, warmly emotional but calculating, generous yet concentrate on the ‘main chance.’ They are opportunistic but lose interest after they have gained the advantage; they seize the moment, still adopt the long view.

The Romanians are a people of colorful contrasts and extreme extremes, born in classic times, ravaged by barbarians, indentured to the Turks, dominated by the Byzantines, the Greeks, dictated to by the Hungarians, Poles, Austrians and others, seduced by the French and not recognized as a country until 1878. Yet they emerge with a character that defies this confusion, that is definitely, emphatically, unmistakably Romanian. This character was born of a Dacian shepherd and a Roman lass, whose progeny became dwellers with nature itself, epicureans with earthy values and a tough constitution.

It developed in composition and grew in strength under the invasions of waves of barbarians. Slavs were added to the original Dacians and the Roman colonizers. Christianization was extended in Wallachia and Moldavia by the Byzantine Church and intrigue was introduced as a science by the Greek ruling emissaries of the Sublime Porte. With the intrigue came the Greek culture of the mind – the analytical clarity of the Mediterraneans – which evaporated as Greek, as it was quickly absorbed as Romanian. Following this permeation came the magnetic seduction by Paris and the synthetic adoption of French-Western artistic values, by those classes who would afford to visit the “Rive Gauche” and return.

Today you find the cult of the mind imbedded as an element of character in all classes second only to emotional spontaneity as a national characteristic. The Greeks were more successful than the French because they came to Romania and did not make Romanians come to them, and because their main influence was middle class and thereby could infect those classes both above and below them. The French appealed to aristocracy; the upper and wealthy classes of Romania went to Paris yearning to prove themselves by Gallic standards, perhaps eventually to return to the country of their birth to demonstrate their cultural acquisitions.

It was 1947. The Soviets were stationed in Romania under the auspices of the Allied Commission.

Donald Dunham wrote his doctoral dissertation for Professor George Oprescu, who, at the time, was secretary of the International Commission for Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations. The subject of his dissertation, Rumanian Profile: A Study of National Character as Reflected in the Visual Arts, dove-tailed with the assumptions of the European nation-state. It was submitted to the Faculty of Arts and Letters on May 20th, 1948. Dunham introduced it as follows:

Rumanian Profile is a study of the character of the Rumanian people as reflected in their visual arts. It is based on the contention that man is better analyzed by his artistic achievements than by his behavior, that the history of art in many respects is a more exact commentary on a country than its political history.

Dunham provides a brief history of the Romanian nation and then begins to examine the relationship between a people and their national arts. He looks at the artistic traditions of the Romanian elite as they developed under Greek-Byzantine influence (particularly in architecture) and under French influence during the 19th century (particularly in painting). He explores parallels between the Romanian national painter Nicolae Grigorescu and the American expatriate James Whistler. Dunham contrasts the elite traditions with the peasant traditions, using embroidery as the medium for describing peasant art.

While Dunham deals richly with the artistic traditions of Moldavia and Wallachia, he does not touch upon the traditions of Transylvania. Dunham excuses this on the grounds that Moldavia and Wallachia, the original provinces of unified Romania, "possess the essential ingredients while the other areas are culturally on the periphery". However, in a conversation with Ernest H. Latham, Jr., Dunham suggested that the real reason for this exclusion was that his status as an American diplomat in the postwar period made it impossible for him to get permission to travel to Transylvania and other regions. He didn't want to write about architecture and art which he was unable to view in person. In this sense, his dissertation failed to adequately portray the relationship between the Romanian "national character" and its artistic traditions.

Despite its limitations, Dunham's dissertation is remarkable in the fact that it was "the first American doctorate conferred in Romania", according to the roundtable convened with that title by the Association of Friends of the United States in June 1995. It exemplifies the role of history as inculcator of national values and creator of national identity. Dunham's appreciation for Romanian people and culture might sound a little expansive to modern ears, but it is an excellent historical document.

An excerpt from his dissertation dealing with Wallachian architecture and Byzantine influence is available online courtesy of Plural magazine. The excerpt quoted at the beginning of this post is also available from Plural.

Norman Manea's "Compulsory Happiness".

If happiness is a choice, then what does it become when compelled? Norman Manea's collection of novellas, Compulsory Happiness, toys with "the institutional optimism" required by a systemic application of communist ideology whose results insist, contrary to physical evidence, on the best life for everyone. These four novellas were written in Romanian during the deepest murk of the Ceausescu dictatorship. One was published in Romanian in 1981, the others in German in 1988 or 1989. They were first collected in a single volume in French.

The novellas do not follow the conventional plot scheme. Instead, the reader is invited inside the head (or perhaps only inside the room) of a person/s living in fear, intellectually bound by an ideology so inconsistent that insanity is not a plea but a mentality. Manea writes with the clean-cut despair of Kafka, but, unlike Kafka, manages to address human relationships and the external world with nostalgia. There are no conclusions or plot resolutions-- only a hovering, contagious terror that poisons the thoughts, loves, relationships, and hopes of its citizens.

In "The Interrogation", a young woman prisoner is tortured and starved as the secret police attempt to get information about her intellectual associates. However, when it is decided that the Plenipotentiary will meet with her, the prison wards immediately feed her caviar and insist that she begin to behave "normally", or at least offer the pretense to "normalcy", for the Plenipotentiary, despite his big name, is very sensitive to that which lies outside the realm of the normal. During the meeting, the Plenipotentiary asks questions and then tells the young prisoner that he is appreciated because his reports come to "an optimistic conclusion, the compulsory optimism, the institutional optimism" required by a system with the pretension to absolute control.

"Composite Biography" takes Ceausescu's infatuation with control to its absurd conclusion-- an systemic attack on "chance", or luck, which does not play into official plans. The novella is lengthy, but the most interesting part occurs when a Comrade proposes that the winners of national lotteries should no longer be selected by lot but, instead, "chosen from deserving citizens" to "avoid the injustices caused by chance". Here we get a frightening view of the central-planning mindset taken to its logical extreme. At this extreme, even luck (not to mention nature) is an enemy of the state, especially if this state mandates happiness.

According to the Comrade, this is "ideologically consistent with the concepts of dialectical materialism regarding the world, life, and the active role of man, who is not subject to fate, but is the master and creator of events".

Did the end of communism usher in a rightful heir in fatalism? After all, if Romanian communism, which purported to uproot fate and empower man, was revealed as a sham, what was left to believe? Clearly the communist experiment dealt a blow to the idea of human agency and responsibility, particularly in creating and sustaining a culture which repeatedly denied both. In "Composite Biography", for example, the protagonist suffers from a "generalized syndrome" which he witnesses in others. He believes this syndrome is due to an inability to make, do, or be anything anymore, since everything is decided by others. The Party members are "Puppets" dancing on their pre-ordained strings; the non-Party members are silent shadows, not real or strong enough to assert physicality. The ultimate goal is "to control chance"-- the become the gods which have been dethroned.

Of course, there is more.... just not in my words:

• The best bio I've found on Manea so far is this one.
• "A Lasting Poison", an article by Manea in which he remarks upon Milan Kundera's claims that communism never happened.
• "Norman Manea on the lasting poison of Stalinism" via podcast.
• Unlike Herbert Mitgang, I think the word "satire" is far too flimsy and loaded with Western regalia to do Manea's work justice. Instead, i prefer to say that he draws on the tradition of using the absurd to convey the problems of meaning and life under totalitarianism.
• Don't miss Michael Shafir's "The Man They Love to Hate: Norman Manea's 'Snail House' Between the Holocaust and the Gulag" in PDF format.

An excerpt from "The Neighbors of Franz Kafka".

One of the more interesting tracts on the postcommunist experience from a stylistic standpoint was penned by Vladimir Tismaneanu and Mircea Mihaies in the form of a "novel". I've always wondered if this was meant as a play on the dissident tactic of writing the truth and then insisting upon its fictional character to communist authorities. The book, The Neighbors of Franz Kakfa: A Novel of Neuroses skims the difference between Romania and other Eastern bloc countries with a collection of observations on the cultures of European communism. In it, the alleged Romanian fatalism is continuously contrasted with the more activist spirit of its Catholic neighbors.

The authors refer to Emil Cioran, the prophet of the Romanian fatalist approach, regularly. They also bemoan the new nationalist scourge rising in the wake of communism. 

Paul Goma is right: 1956 was the occasion manquee in Romania. The Romania intellectuals continued to enjoy their isolation from their peers in the other Eastern European countries. There was no thaw in Romania, just the perpetuation of the terrorist mechanism. Could it have been different? What if some of the literary barons of the time, the Petru Dumitrius, Marin Predas, Eugen Jebeleanus, G. Calinescus, and Geo Bogzas had opened their mouths and spoken the truth? Cioran's desperation about his former motherland was rooted precisely in this sentiment of historical impotence. His frantic excitement about the Hungarian revolution was matched only by his painful regret that history had once again passed Romania by. As for Noica: his response to Cioran was meant to explain why Romanian intellectuals were silent. For this justification of failure he was later sentenced to many years in jail. In prison, instead of pondering the responsibility of Hegelian-Marxist dialectics for the Leninist nightmare, he learned how to love his tormentors. When he was liberated in 1964, he even volunteered to become a 'trainer' in Marxism for the younger generation. The regime's failure to recruit himfor such a pedagogy was just another proof that Romanian communists were poor ideologues.

Exploring Ceausescu's warm relationship with the USA: Part 2.

Perhaps the most revealing book on the political battle over communist Romania's MFN status is Pinstripes and Reds by David Funderburk. Funderberk was a Reagan appointee who served as ambassador to Romania from 1981-1985. Funderburk's book is an indictment of the Romanian communist government as well as the US State Department and foreign policy establishment that helps to keep Ceasescu in power. It is also a more personal indictment of foreign policy demi-gods including Lawrence Eagleburger, Alexander Haig, President George Bush, Paul Tsongas, Ronald Reagan, and especially Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.

The policy which Funderburk deplores is the policy of differentiation, which "dates back to the late 1960's strategy developed by Nixon and Kissinger" and "has continued to be the American policy through Republican and Democrat administrations in large part because the elite of the State Department has made it a litmus test for any who would advance in the Eastern European affairs area". As a policy, differentiation was a fairly simple and sensible one-- the US government would treat European communist countries differently, not as a solid monolithic bloc, based on their records of economic liberalization, respect for human rights, and putative independence from Moscow. This meant that "good" communist regimes would be rewarded with official visits, MFN status (including trade credits and tariff reductions), and "friendship" treaties, while "bad" communist regimes would receive none of these carrots. At the time of the book's publication, Hungary and Romania were "good" MFN status states, while Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Bulgaria, and Poland were not.

Vice President Bush made a clear statement of this differentiation policy in his Vienna speech on September 21, 1983:

"In our relations with the countries of Eastern Europe, we take these differences into account, our policy is one of differentiation-- that is, we look to what degree countries pursue autonomous foreign policies, independent of Moscow's direction; and to what degree they foster domestic liberalization-- politically, economically and in their respect for human rights. The United States will engage in closer political, economic, and cultural relations with those countries such as Hungary and Romania which assert greater openness or independence."

The perceived benefits of this differentiation policy for the United States included trade, emigration, and "leverage". MFN would give the US leverage in human rights and emigration cases. In a footnote, Funderburk expresses his concern about the effectiveness of this "leverage":

"MFN was intended for countries to improve human rights and allow freer emigration, not those that decide on getsures just prior to annual MFN renewal. State (Dept.) post facto puts the cart before the horse. If Romania lost MFN, it would be hard to imagine treatment of political and religious dissidents getting worse."

Funderburk is a fascinating fellow in his own right-- a passionate Baptist Christian who refers to his "conservatism" throughout the book with pride and yet calls Ceasescu to task for outlawing abortion and contraception. It is difficult to read this book without admiring his passionate commitment to human rights. As a self-described foreign policy "realist", Funderburk wants Romania's MFN status to be revoked on the grounds of consistent human rights violations, secret transfers of American technology to the Soviets, illegal arms trade, abuse and persecution of Christians and Jews, and incessant duplicity with regards to official agreements. The State Department's longstanding commitment to differentiation policy keeps the US government from seeing the farce that is Romanian "foreign policy independence", from condemning Ceausescu's brutal treatment of his own people, and from acting in accordance with the evidence. As a result, the US government is rewarding one of the most devious, anti-American communist regimes in the world. He notes:

"Romania's leadership gained pretige, support, and credibility with the Third World and non-aligned countries by having a steady stream of US visitors in Bucharest. Ceausescu's harsh domestic policies were in effect given a stamp of approval by such visits."

Rather than advance his position in the foreign policy establishment, Funderburk chose to resign from his post in 1985 and return to teaching at a university. When Funderburk resigned, the MFN battle was continuing in Congress, with those who opposed MFN status for Romania lining up behind Senator Jesse Helms. The Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the Trade Act linked the assignment of MFN status to the establishment of free and open emigration procedures. This Amendment was at the core of the political dispute over MFN.

In spite of the information provided by Funderburk, Romania received MFN status again in 1985 and 1986. At this time, the Ceausescu regime had implemented a new policy which required hopeful emigrants to pay the Romanian state for the cost of their public education before being granted a visa. In a country without money, this meant that that a recent graduate would have to find $50,000 hard currency when owning that kind of hard currency was considered a crime.

In 1987, Romania's MFN status was suspended for six months contingent on an improvement in the human rights record. Ceausescu called this a "free emigration" policy, and the US government concurred.

• "Exploring Ceausescu's warm relationship with the US: Part 1" preceded this post. In it, I explore the origins of Romania's independent foreign policy.
• The Foreward for this book, written by Phillip M. Crane, is available online.
• Reagan's nomination of Funderburk for Amabassador.
• If you scroll down, there is a good discussion of Funderburk and US policy at "US Administration, the Hungarian lobby, and the Romanian-Hungarian conflict".
• Funderburk was right about the Romanian government selling military secrets and technology to the Soviets. A great article on Romanian-Soviet relations is "Romania and the Soviet-Union, 1965-1989".

Nicu Steinhardt, the happy monk.

Paula, at Receiving Light, shared a long excerpt by Nicu Steinhardt that made my day and reminded me of Steinhardt's amazing faith. For those unfamiliar with Steinhardt, I've posted the best online bio I've found, written by Claudia Miclaus:

The celebrated Romanian writer, hermit and confession father bearing the name of Nicolae Steinhardt was born near Bucharest, in Pantelimon. He was of Jewish descent, born of Romanian mother and a Jewish father. He was a great admirer of the Romanian culture and spirituality, his conversion to Orthodoxy being in perfect harmony with his tremendous love for all things Romanian.

He graduated from the Law and Literature School of the University of Bucharest in 1934. Later on, in 1936, he started his PhD in Constitutional Law. Consequently, between 1937 and 1938, he traveled to England, Austria, France and Switzerland.

The communist persecutions started in 1948, when non-communist intellectuals were declared "enemies of the people". Yet his real troubles began in 1959, when he refused to testify against his friend and former school colleague Constantin Noica during a court trial. Because of his refusal, he was found guilty of "crimes against social order", together with the "batch of mystical-Iron Guardist intellectuals".

He was also charged with the penalty of 13 years’ forced labor in several communist prisons such as Jilava, Gherla, Aiud, and others. While being in prison, he discovered the joy of pure and true faith and decided to convert himself to the Orthodox Christianity. Therefore, he was baptized there, in jail. Although performed by an Orthodox hermit, his baptism was witnessed by people of different denominations-2 Roman-Catholic priests, two Greek-Catholic priests and a Protestant pastor, which gave an "ecumenical character" to this special, crucial event of his life.

His most famous writing is "The Happiness Diary", based on the memories of the years spent in the communist prisons. Unfortunately, the so-called "Securitate" confiscated the very 1st edition of this book, in 1972, and returned it to its author three years later, after censuring it. Since he had written another version of the same book, the Securitate also confiscated it from him in 1984. Steinhardt ended by having several variants of this writing.

"The Happiness Diary" is now included among the best writings of the Romanian literature. It has as a motto a Bible quotation: "I do believe! Help me overcome my unbelief!" (Mark, 9:24). Steinhardt explains that these simple, honest words stand for the most perfect definition of Christianity.

In 1980, sixteen years after his being released from prison, Nicolae Steinhardt got into the Rohia Monastery, working there as a librarian and writer also. Since he was an excellent counselor and father-confessor, many weekly visitors came to Rohia, to look for spiritual guidance from the brilliant "Father Nicolae". Many people still go there nowadays, to visit his famous library and enjoy the peace and serenity governing that beautiful place.

He spent the last days of his life in Baia Mare, at the city hospital. Many of his admirers and friends came to his funeral, though it was strictly supervised by the communist Securitate.

Pope John the 2nd made the following assertion regarding the personality of Nicolae Steinhardt: "Out of the numerous witnesses of Christ that bloomed in the fields of Romania, I would like to mention the hermit of Rohia, Nicolae Steinhardt, an exceptional believer and also a highly-cultivated man, who perceived in a very special way the enormous treasures common to the Christian churches."

Indeed, Steinhardt’s life has been a genuine example of pure faith and commitment to the Christian principles. While answering to the question "what do I owe Christ?", Steinhardt refers to the feeling of general peace, wrapping around his heart. Peace with God, peace with other people, with the whole world, with evil-intended people, with those who did him wrong, with those to whom he did wrong and, above all, peace with himself. "To be good is to be in harmony with one’s self", Oscar Wilde once said.

Steinhardt also repeatedly expressed the idea of an unbelievably generous God, full of grace and mercy, the God of Christianity. One of his favorite quotes seemed to be the one belonging to the celebrated Russian writer F.M. Dostoevsky: "if anyone ever proved to me, beyond any doubt, while I am on my dying bed, that Christ is not the truth, that the real truth is another one, if the arguments provided to me were impossible to contradict, I wouldn’t give it another thought: I would choose Christ over truth."

And so he did.

• You can find the story of Nicu's life in his own words (granted, they are Romanian words) here.
• The wikipedia on Nicolae Steinhardt.
  
• "Giving You Shall Receive" by Nicu Steinhardt.
• "365 uncomfortable questions", an interview with Steinhardt (Romanian). Not all the questions and answers are posted, but what can be read is truly fascinating.
• "Communism: The Refined Laboratory of Terrorism, Nicolae Steinhardt, The Diary of Happiness", a very informative paper in pdf
• Nicu's mention in The Steinhardt Family Book
  
• An interview with Virgil Ciomos, who talks about Parintele Steinhardt to Radio Romania International
• Excerpt from The Happiness Diary, 1935
• Excerpt from The Happiness Diary, 7 March 1960
• A fistful of links from a neat little blog dedicated entirely to Steinhardt,
  

       

Stanciu Stroia's prison memoirs.

Stanciu Stroia knows the unavoidable side of totalitarianism-- the extended prison sentence offered to  those who refuse to put on the uniform and start marching lock-step. His honest book, My Second University, was published in 2005. Here is an excerpt from the introduction, written by his grandson, to Stroia's book:

To better understand my grandfather’s memories, one must be familiar with Romania’s political situation before and during World War II and in the eventful period that followed. The next several pages do not represent an attempt at an exhaustive history lesson—numerous comprehensive textbooks written by competent individuals serve that purpose. Rather, they constitute a succinct and chronological presentation of the essential events and circumstances that shaped Romania’s fate. The intention is not to overwhelm the reader with superfluous information, but to provide a framework for facilitating comprehension of the book’s content. Historical facts often differ in their packaging and labeling according to the distributor’s opinions. The information selected here comprises well-known, rudimentary data and dates, accompanied by interpretations based on my own reading, observations, and conclusions. It is researched history supplemented by personal experience. For the apparent redundancy of ideas, I ask the reader for forgiveness. It is aimed at underscoring necessary points. Ultimately, this introduction’s ambitious proposition is to provide basic answers to timely questions: How was Communism in Romania possible? What happened to the people who opposed it? Why is it important for you, the reader, to know about it? What is the story’s contemporary relevance? If the following text succeeds in delivering the intended message, the significance of knowing these answers will be evident. [...]
To forgive and to forget are entirely different concepts; one does not consequentially imply the other. A crime can be forgiven, but if it is forgotten, the victim’s punishment becomes continual. The survivors must not forget, while those who have been spared must not ignore. Without subscribing to the notions of “competitive martyrdom” or “monopoly of suffering,” the Communist repression has to at least be put in its proper perspective. And although I am equally appalled by other atrocities committed throughout the world—particularly at the time of this publication—I believe that the Stalinist crimes of the past century should occupy a well-documented and deservedly infamous place in the historical literature. Their significance has not faded over the past fifty years, and they represent a history lesson that ought to be told, so that the world learns from it and avoids a repetition of a terrible past. Ignorance is at the root of all evil—according to an old maxim; a clear understanding of how Communism was possible is crucial for our own self-preservation. [...]
One can argue that it takes a multitude of socioeconomic and political elements, favorable internal circumstances, and a permissive or powerless international community for a radical government to emerge. Unfortunately, auspicious conditions develop frequently, and the results are painfully similar. This personal saga is an eye-opener regarding events with a true potential for recurrence if collective political vigilance fails. One glimpse at the current international situation is sufficient to reveal the present-day relevance of this memoir.

Who was this dangerous man, and what threat did he pose to Romanian communist society? Here is a brief bio that might fill in the details:

Dr. Stanciu Stroia was born in rural Transylvania. He was a graduate of Cluj University Medical School, with a doctoral dissertation on the “Radiotherapy in Basedow desease”, submitted in 1928. As a junior doctor he moved over to the Regional Hospital of Fagaras where, in the early 1930’s he established the first department of Internal Medicine. By the age of 41 he became the director of that establishment. This was during WWII and only one year earlier the Soviet armies occupied Romania. With them, on the back of Russian tanks came the fifth columnists, the handful of exiled Romanian communists who were going to impose a new “social order” of Stalinist brand. At this point Dr. Stroia’s high-profile medical position, caused him to be invited to join the ranks of the Communist Party, which he refused. This stance marked him as an “undesirable” by the Communist hierarchy. Once Romania turned into a one-party dictatorship, in 1948, the medical know-how became subsidiary to political allegiance: this is how, in 1949, Dr. Stroia was demoted from his position of hospital director. Two years on he was under pressure to become an informer of the Securitate, the ubiquitous Romanian Secret services. This he rejected outright, because of his personal and professional ethics and so, in 1951, he was arrested for allegedly “helping and not denouncing anti-communist partisans”. He was given a six-years prison sentence on trumped up charges of “favoring the crime of plotting against the Romanian state”. Within 48 hours of his arrest, his wife and two young children were evicted from their private property, his estate was nationalized, the medical practice confiscated and the house eventually demolished. During his long prison years, he was not allowed to receive any correspondence or food and clothes parcels, except on one occasion. On his release, in December 1957, Dr. Stroia was made to sign a declaration undertaking not to disclose his prison experiences, under threat of being re-arrested. He was also forbidden to restart his medical practice in his home town and was relocated instead in a remote province. Nine years after his release and after many failed attempts Dr. Stroia was granted, in unusual circumstances, a “political and judicial rehabilitation”, for a crime he has never committed and which was in private, but never officially acknowledged, of having been a “misguided interpretation of the law”. He retired at the age of 64, when Ceausescu just came to power and thereafter he spent all summers in his native village in Transylvania, where he offered free medical consultations.

Anyone with grandparents who lived in communist Romania has heard at least half of this biography before-- the stealing of property, the forced signatures of declarations, the closing of professional practices, the destruction of family histories.... The list goes on-- for each person, there are minor differences-- and not one speck of life as it was lived prior to communism remains untouched. Under Romanian communism, nothing was marginal.

If you read Romanian, you can learn more about Stroia and his book from this article by Lidia Vianu. If English is your preferred tongue, you can learn a little more here.