The Romanian Riveter
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INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITORS Welcome to The Romanian Riveter. manager of ‘Sorin Titel’ Timiș County With this edition of our magazine of Library, director of LitVest, one of European writing, we focus not just on Timișoara’s two literary festivals, and a country’s literature, but on the an esteemed poet, novelist and literary writing from a specific city and region: critic. Our thanks go to him for curating Timișoara and Timiș County. As you a fascinating and eye-opening selection can see from the architecture that of writing from his city, and to adorns our cover and illustrates this Timiș County Council for making this volume,Timi șoara is a very special magazine possible, the first ever place. Located in the far west of magazine of contemporary Romanian Romania, close to the borders with literature in English. We’re launching Serbia and Hungary, it sits on it with some special events this a crossroads of both culture and September in both Timișoara at LitVest history. This has made it particularly and London at the Romanian Cultural fertile ground for writing, as you Institute. Details on our website! will see from the diversity of form, With Covid-19 making travel to language and style presented in this Romania difficult, we hope that this magazine. In fact some of Romania’s edition of our magazine will offer you the greatest contemporary authors hail next best thing: a tour of the literature from this region. Our magazine also of Timișoara, the Banat region and presents some of the literature from wider Romania. Enjoy your trip! the rest of the country. This edition of The Riveter is Editors a collaboration between the European Rosie Goldsmith and West Camel Literature Network and Tudor Crețu, 1 EDITORIAL BY TUDOR CREȚU, GUEST EDITOR Many people speak of the Banat Stoica’s great lyrical achievements, region, of which Timișoara is the capital, hiddenbeneathhiscloakofmanofthe as an area connected with civilization people, chronicling the daily and rather than culture, with material the domestic, place him among the rather than spiritual values. The writer finest poets of his generation. who put this region on the literary map Nevertheless, in spite of the great and created the notion of a great talent of the sixties generation, the Banat literature was Sorin Titel most powerful group of writers from (1935–1985), our most important Banatcameoutofthe1980s,atimeof novelist, short-story writer and darkness, communism and oppression. essayist, and one of the outstanding It is no coincidence that the author personalities of his era. Alongside Herta Müller, who was born inTimi ș poetsȘ erban Foarță, Petre Stoica County and became a recognised and Anghel Dumbrăveanu, and critics literary figure of the underground in Livius Ciocârlie and Cornel Ungureanu, Timișoara in the eighties, was later he belonged to the sixties generation awarded the Nobel Prize (in 2009). Her around which the literature of generation came from a remarkable Timișoara started to flourish.Ș erban environment, one in which the eminent Foarță wrote, with Andrei Ujică – the professors of Timișoara University’s outstanding film director who started Faculty of Letters (Eugen Todoran, G.I. his career as a prose writer – the Tohăneanu, Livius Ciocârlie, Marcel best-known lyrics ever written Cornis-Pope, Simion Mioc, Iosif Cheie for a Romanian rock band: ‘Lyrics for Pantea, Vasile Tudor Crețu and others) Phoenix’ (1976). By contrast, Petre could boast that their students were 2 among the most talented ‘young Instead, he moves the street into his wolves’ of Romanian literature. poems and in his own unmistakeable The literary underground had manner: footsteps ‘are lost in their considerable importance too at this own labyrinth’ or they ‘listen to the time. The self-taught poet, Ion silence’.Footprints are ‘like tiny insects Monoran (‘Mono’), worked as a stoker / crushed underfoot’.Steps, footprints, in the basement of a typically streets – these are some of the ‘knots’ communist block of flats – literally found in Bunaru’s poems. underground.‘ThewholeMediterranean Among the major representatives Sea must have flown through these of 1980s Timișoara prose are Daniel pipes’, he wrote. Monoran played Vighi, Viorel Marineasa and Mircea a significant role in the 1989 revolution, Pora – all featured in this magazine. which kicked off inTimi șoara: on Vighi started by writing short stories, the 16th of December he stopped the but then turned to novels and more trams in one of the city’s central substantial projects, like the Corso squares, to encourage and strengthen Trilogy (2016), one of the most the protests. After his death in 1993, complex works about Timișoara ever hebecamesomethingofalegend.One written. In Viorel Marineasa’s short of the literary VIPs of the communist stories and novels, socio-historical period once berated him for his fiction gains a new and original eagerness: ‘What is it with you? Do aesthetic dimension, while Mircea you want to trample all over literature Pora writes the most poetic prose of with your boots?’ But Mono became the three. This does not detract from part of literature. And, ever rebellious, the strong narrative elements of his he did not take off his boots – that work, however. In fact, few writers can would have been too much like entering produce such an ideal combination of a sacred temple. His writing style is different registers: humour, social reminiscent of that of his German criticism, and oneirism – the literary contemporaries, down to earth, direct movement defined by dreams, and autobiographical. IndeedVânt imagination and hallucinations that potrivit până la tare (‘Moderate to countered the realism and surrealism Strong Wind’, 1982), the anthology of of the establishment. All this, we need German poets from Romania, is to remind ourselves, occurring under among the most influential poetry one of the most oppressive communist collections of the decade. regimes in the world. Eugen Bunaru is another The paradigm shift that noteworthy poet of thisOptzeci ști characterised the Optzeciști generation (‘eighties’) generation. He does not has been rightfully recognised: take poetry onto the street; he is American culture became the not colloquial and prosaic, nor does he predominant model, to the detriment use virulent language or messages. of Romania’s traditional links with 3 French. In Timișoara, the shift occurred through the series and collections of through translations from American poems published by publishers poetry by the poet Petru Ilieșu and Marineasa in the 1990s and Brumar Professor Marcel Cornis-Pope, a trail- after 2000. Up to June 1990 and the blazerinRomanianstudies of English and Mineriad, when democratic protests American literature, and through Mircea in Bucharest were brutally repressed, Mihăieș’s studies about Faulkner and Orizont, Timișoara’s main cultural Joyce, which were to follow. periodical, enjoyed a print run of more German-language culture also than 50,000 thousand copies. After played a major role, through Petre the Mineriad, the magazine’s Stoica’s translations of the Austrian circulation fell by half. In 1990, poet Georg Trakl, to take one example, the newly installed post-Ceaușescu through the activity of Aktionsgruppe government’s crackdown on the free Banat (the German-speaking literary press and the economic decline of resistance movement created in the the country caused similar drops in Banat region), and through Herta circulation in cultural publications Müller, who emigrated to the Federal across the country. RepublicofGermanyin1987.Itisalso A remarkable phenomenon of worth mentioning that the first great these times was the involvement novel of Timișoara, The City Lost in of Timișoara’s writers in drafting the Mist, was written by a Hungarian: country’s most important post-revolu- Méliusz József. tionary political document: the In the 1990s, after the Romanian Proclamation of Timișoara, whose Revolution, two categories of authors famous ‘Point 8’ requested that ‘the made their debut: those of the electoral law should deny former Optzeciști generation who had been party activists and Secret Police unable to publish under communism: officers the right to be nominated as poets Ion Monoran, Gheorghe candidates on any list for the first Pruncuț, Adrian Derlea etc; and those three running legislatures’. Viorel belonging to the new, post-1989 Marineasa, Vasile Popovici, Lucian generation of authors. Vasile Szabo, GeorgeȘ erban and Rodica Draghincescu is a leading Daniel Vighi were among the authors light of this new generation. Vehement oftheProclamation. and reflective, erotic and political, Theendofthe1990sandthefirst her poetry now enjoys European years of the new millennium were recognition. Adrian Bodnaru and influenced by the activity of the Third RobertŞ erban are other notable Europe College, based in Timișoara, voices, both of them also well known which explored the Banat’s Mittel- as editors and / or publishers. europa identity, and its multi- After the 1989 revolution, lingualism and multiculturalism Timișoara’s literary output excelled, (a consequence of its unique 4 geographical location), and became more realistic and narrative. The a centre of intellectual development. reverse process – lyricised prose – is Among its defining figures were quite rare, however. Adriana Babeți, Livius Ciocârlie, Other important writers of this Mircea Mihăieș, Cornel Ungureanu new millennium include Alexandru and Smaranda Vultur. Potcoavă, who started as a poet, only to Another important literary estab- shift to prose and narrative poetry. lishment to gain importance over the His most important novel, Viața și years is the Pavel Dan Literary Society. întoarcerea unui Halle (‘The Life and Founded in 1958, it is the longest- Return of a Halle’, 2019), is an running society of its kind in Romania. expressive work in which the plot It is based at the Timișoara Students’ animates history – and vice versa. House and since 1996 its coordinator Another writer of this generation is has been Eugen Bunaru. Bogdan Munteanu. The biographical Of the prose writers, who shone portrait plays a special part in his after 1990, Radu Pavel Gheo is one of writing, and humour is one of his key the leading lights.