Paradoxes of Occidentalism: on Travel and Travel Writing in Ceauşescu's
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
CHAPTER ELEVEN PARADOXES OF OCCIDENTALISM: ON TRAVEL AND TRAVEL WRITING IN CeauşesCu’s ROMANIA* Can we talk about a unitary Romanian image of the West in the Cold War period? Any investigation of ‘the image of the other’ needs to spec- ify the range and nature of sources, as well as the limits of the source base. The few existing studies on Romanian views of the outside world under the communist regime tend to treat the early (pre-1965) period and stress the negative light in which the West was portrayed in official pro- paganda as against an idealised private view.1 The most detailed study of ideology in Ceauşescu’s Romania, while offering a highly complex and nuanced interpretation, maintains nonetheless that in 1970s and 1980s Romania ‘to be against the regime had become synonymous with being pro- European, whereas Ceauşescu and those in factions more or less allied with him ranted against Western imports and the Europeanising oblitera- tion of the national soul’.2 Here I use a previously neglected type of source, namely published and unpublished accounts of travel to western Europe and the wider world in the period 1948–1989, to suggest a slightly different line of thinking about the public image of the West in late communist Romania.3 Short of a com- plete survey, I have laid emphasis on establishing a base of materials so that research may develop in different directions henceforth. Examina- tion of several of these accounts suggests that the pronounced develop- ment of a strong national ideology under Ceauşescu was not necessarily incompatible with writing extensively about western Europe or even with the production of a pro-European discourse, often by the same writers. Although there are detailed bibliographies of the communist period,4 there is no detailed guide to travel literature published in Romania from * In The Balkans and the West, ed. A. Hammond (Aldershot, 2004), 69–80 and then in In and out of focus, ed. D. Deletant (Bucharest, 2005), 183–200. 1 Onişoru, ‘“Vin americanii!” ’; Ţârău, ‘Caricatura şi politica externă’. 2 Verdery, National ideology, 2. 3 The theme has become less neglected since first publication of this chapter: see e.g. Guentcheva, ‘Images of the West’; Bracewell, ‘New men, Old Europe’; and some studies in Péteri, ed. Imagining. 4 Popa, Ceauşescu’s Romania; for a general guide see Deletant, Romania, 261–7. 252 chapter eleven 1948 to 1989. Perhaps more seriously, there are not to my knowledge any recent scholarly studies of the legal framework and sociological practice of travel during this period.5 However, information extracted from other bibliographies may give us an idea of the number of travel accounts pub- lished in different years; of the kinds of places travel writers went to; and the kinds of things they said.6 Thus, a bibliography of recommended works for public libraries issued in 1964 contained a limited number of books of reportage and accounts of journeys, dedicated almost exclusively to highly favourable descriptions of the countries of the Communist Bloc.7 Examples include the Soviet travels of major prose writers like Mihail Sadoveanu, George Călinescu, George Oprescu, Cezar Petrescu, Zaharia Stancu and Geo Bogza;8 established socialists like Scarlat Callimachi, and Dumitru Corbea;9 or younger figures like Victor Bîrlădeanu, Ioan Grigorescu, A.E. Baconsky, and Traian Coşovei.10 Others issued ‘Pages from Korea’; ‘Notes from the Bulgarian People’s Republic’; ‘On the Margin of the Gobi Desert’ or reported from ‘Cuba, the free territory of America’.11 Poland was considered ‘The Phoenix Bird’ by Ioan Grigorescu but Portugal appears hardly to have been considered at all let alone Great Britain or Holland.12 Although the quantity of travel books published was relatively small, it was clearly considered a significant genre with a major didactic function to play as all important Romanian writers practised it, including poets such as Tudor Arghezi, Nina Cassian, Demostene Botez and Tiberiu Utan.13 5 Some miscellaneous but valuable first-hand observations from different perspectives in Hale, Ceauşescu’s Romania, 106–8; Neuberg, Heroes’ children, 89, 115–6, 329; Deletant, Ceauşescu and the Securitate, preface. On ‘micul trafic’, i.e. legal small-trade border cross- ings: Chelcea & Lăţea, România profundă, 191–207; on the German exodus: Hartl, ‘Zum Exodus der Deutschen’; on forcing dissidents to emigrate: Scarfe, ‘Dismantling’. 6 My basic source for this period is the fortnightly bulletin Bibliografia R.S. Romania; Bibliografia literaturii române. See also Gafiţa & Bănulescu, Scriitori români contemporani. 7 Gafiţa & Bănulescu, Scriitori. 8 Sadoveanu, Caleidoscop; Călinescu, Kiev, Moscova, Leningrad; idem, Am fost în China nouă; Oprescu, Jurnal; Petrescu, Însemnări; Stancu, Călătorind; Bogza, Meridiane. Călinescu’s ‘fraternal’ travel writings are conspicuously absent both from the 17–volume edition of his Opere put out in the 1960s; and from the 1978 anthology of his travel writing entitled Însemnări de călătorie. This gives an idea of how such early Russophile texts were already being marginalized by editorial strategies under Ceauşescu. 9 Callimachi, Un călător; Corbea, Anotimpuri. 10 Bîrlădeanu, Aerul tare; Grigorescu, Scrisoare din Moscova; idem, Învinsul Terek; Baconsky, Călătorii; Coşovei, Dimensiuni. 11 Porumbacu, Drumuri şi zile; Nedelcu, Însemnări; Rău, La marginea deşertului Gobi; Popovici, Cuba. 12 Grigorescu, Pasărea Fenix. 13 Arghezi, Din drum; Cassian, Dialogul vîntului cu marea; Botez, Prin U.R.S.S; Utan, Kai- mazarova..