Contents/Sommaire

ransylvanian eview Vol. XXIV T R No. 1 /Revue de Transylvanie Spring 2015

Contents/Sommaire Romanian Academy Chairman: • Paradigms Academician Ionel-Valentin Vlad Propaganda und Zensur im sozialistischen Rumänien: Struktur und Effektivität 3 Center for Ute Michailowitsch Transylvanian Studies Director: Reading in Communist Power Academician Ioan-Aurel Pop Plants and Factories 16 Catrinel Popa The Romanian Gulag As Reflected in the Novels of the “Obsessive Decade” 29 Ruxandra Cesereanu Home and Families in Communist Romania 44 Luminiþa Dumãnescu The Merchants of Human Beings: The Securitate’s Role in the Emigration of Romania’s Germans (1978–1989) 59 Cosmin Budeancã • Focus Réflexions à l’occasion d’une cérémonie 79 Ioan-Aurel Pop António Lobo Antunes: Un fado polyphonique en prose 82 Ruxandra Cesereanu “Je chemine comme une maison qui brûle” 91 António Lobo Antunes Dinu Flãmând • Transsilvanica Medieval Literacy in Transylvania: Selective Evidence from Parish Churches 109 On the cover: Adinel Dincã ªerban Savu • Europe Untitled (2009), Human Rights As European Values 122 oil on canvas Michael Metzeltin (136×200 cm) • Literature

“Salvific” Memory, “Enlightened” Oblivion: Transylvanian Review continues the Spectral Traces of the Past in Maria Edgeworth’s tradition of Revue de Transylvanie, Castle Rackrent (1800) 135 founded by Silviu Dragomir, which Carmen-Veronica Borbély was published in Cluj and then in Sibiu between 1934 and 1944. • Book Reviews Transylvanian Review is published quarterly by the Center for Transylvanian Ana Victoria Sima, Affirming Identity: Studies and the Romanian Academy. The Romanian Greek-Catholic Church at the Time of the First Vatican Council Editorial Board (reviewed by Lucian Turcu) 149 Cesare Alzati, Ph.D. Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione, Istituto Manuela Marin, Între prezent ºi trecut: cultul di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea, personalitãþii lui Nicolae Ceauºescu ºi opinia publicã Università Cattolica, Milan, Italy româneascã Horst Fassel, Ph.D. Institut für donauschwäbische Geschichte (reviewed by Adrian Popan) 151 und Landeskunde, Tübingen, Germany Mihai Croitor & Sanda Borşa, eds., Konrad Gündisch, Ph.D. Bundesinstitut für Kultur und Geschichte Triunghiul suspiciunii der Deutschen im östlichen Europa, (reviewed by Marcela Sãlãgean & Liana Lãpãdatu) 155 Oldenburg, Germany Mihai Croitor & Sanda Borşa, eds., Harald Heppner, Ph.D. Institut für Geschichte, Graz, Austria Moscova 1963: Eşecul negocierilor sovieto-chineze Paul E. Michelson, Ph.D. (reviewed by Liana Lãpãdatu) 157 Huntington University, Indiana, USA Luminiþa Dumãnescu, Alexandru Zub, Ph.D. Honorary Director of the A. D. Xenopol Familia româneascã în comunism Institute of History, Iaºi, Romania

(reviewed by Roxana Dorina Pop) 156 Editorial Staff Ioan-Aurel Pop Rudolf Gräf Nicolae Bocºan Virgil Leon • Contributors 160 Ioan Bolovan Daniela Mârza Raveca Divricean Alexandru Simon Maria Ghitta George State Translated by Bogdan Aldea—English Liana Lãpãdatu—French Desktop Publishing Edith Fogarasi Cosmina Varga

Publication indexed and abstracted in the Correspondence, manuscripts and books Thomson Reuters Social Sciences Citation Index® should be sent to: Transylvanian Review, ® Centrul de Studii Transilvane and in Arts & Humanities Citation Index , (Center for Transylvanian Studies) and included in ebsco’s and elsevier’s products. 12–14 Mihail Kogãlniceanu St., Cluj-Napoca 400084, Romania. ISSN 1221-1249 All material copyright © 2015 by the Center for Transylvanian Studies and the Romanian Academy. Reproduction or use Printed in Romania by Color Print without written permission is prohibited. 66, 22 Decembrie 1989 St., Zalãu 450031, Romania [email protected] Tel. (0040)260-660598; www.centruldestudiitransilvane.ro (0040)260-661752 paradigms

Propaganda und Zensur im sozialistischen Rumänien Ute Michailowitsch Struktur und Effektivität

Was Propaganda im sozialisti- Propaganda wird hier nicht schen Rumänien betrifft, sind grund- mehr a priori als politisches sätzlich drei unterschiedliche, aufeinan der aufbauende Phasen zu unterscheiden. Erziehungsinstrument ver- In der ersten Phase ist es notwendig, ei- standen, sondern als kultu nen Propaganda-Apparat der Kommu nistischen Partei Rumäniens (pcr)1 auf relles Erziehungsinstrument, zubauen, um die Macht zu erlangen. mit dem Ziel, den „Neuen Diese Phase kann ab dem 23. August Menschen“ als Idealtypus 1944 bis zum 6. September 1950 gelten. Grund dafür ist, dass die Partei, zu erschaffen, was vorange- mit ihrem plötzlichen Status der Lega- gangenen Jahrzehnten of- lität (aufgrund der Ereignisse nach dem 23. August 1944 mit dem Übertritt zu fensichtlich ohne Erfolg blieb. den Alliierten und dem Einmarsch der Roten Armee), sich mit der Situation konfrontiert sieht, einerseits über keine breite sowie homogene Parteibasis und -führung, und damit über keine Ute Michailowitsch feste innere Parteiorganisation zu ver- Mag. Dr., akademische Expertin für Deutsch als Fremdsprache, von 2005 fügen und andererseits, einhergehend bis 2011 als OeaD-Lektorin am Lehrstuhl für Deutsche Sprache und Literatur der Diese Arbeit wurde durch die finanzielle Un- terstützung des Sektorenbetriebsprogramms zur Babeº-Bolyai-Universität tätig. Forschungs Personalentwicklung 2007-2013 ermöglicht, schwerpunkte zu Grammatikvermittlung welches vom Europäischen Sozialfonds im im DaF-Unterricht, österreichische Rahmen des Projektes Nr. posdru/107/1.5/S/ Landeskunde sowie zur Geschichte 76841 „Die neue Promotion: Internationalismus der Frau im Sozialismus. und Interdisziplinarität“ mitfinanziert wird. 4 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) mit ihrem bisherigen Status der Illegalität und politischer Unbedeutsamkeit, in der ländlich orientierten rumänischen Bevölkerung weitgehend unbekannt ist. Es besteht deshalb die Notwendigkeit, die Partei zu organisieren und zu struk- turieren und verstärkt Einfluss auf die Bevölkerung auszuüben, um das Parteipro- gramm an den Mann zu bringen und den Machtanspruch dadurch aufzubauen sowie zu legitimieren. Der schrittweise Übergang zur absoluten Macht der pcr in der Regierung des Landes2 in einer sehr kurzen Zeitspanne ist gekennzeichnet von massiven Propagandamaßnahmen. Zunächst wird das Propagandaministerium (später Informationsministeri- um)3 gegründet, was als erster Schritt in Richtung eines Strukturaufbaus ge- wertet werden muss. Allerdings ist dieser Schritt noch völlig unzureichend, da eine Struktur alleine noch nicht ausreicht, die vorgesehenen Maßnahmen auch tatsächlich umzusetzen. Die bestehenden Probleme mit Propaganda erklärt Ge- neralsekretär Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej bei der Nationalkonferenz des Zent- ralkomitees im Oktober 1945 folgendermaßen: „Nicht alle unsere Aktivisten haben verstanden, dass die politische Linie vorgegeben wird um ausgeführt zu werden, und dass diese Ausführung der politischen Linie nicht möglich ist, ohne Arbeit mit den Massen, ohne Mobilisierung der Massen, ohne lebendigen und permanenten Kontakt zur Masse. Die Methode des Befehlens kann niemals die Methode des Überzeugens ersetzen und es ist nicht ausreichend eine Funktion zu besetzen um politischen Einfluss zu haben.“4 Die Notwendigkeit einer Verstärkung der aktiven Arbeit „mit“ der Bevölke- rung, die Notwendigkeit von Agitation wird hier hervorgehoben. Dazu werden in Folge weitere parteipolitische Entscheidungen getroffen, die einen weiteren markanten Schritt beim Machtaufbau durch Propaganda darstellen. Am VI. Parteikongress (21. bis 23. Februar 1948) kommt es zu einer Umstrukturie- rung innerhalb der Partei, bei der das Zentralkomitee in vier Unterdirektionen umorganisiert wird. Eine Unterdirektion ist die Direktion für Propaganda und Agitation. Ziel ist es, auf lokaler Ebene besseren Einfluss ausüben zu können, und „die ständige Verbindung zu den Massen zu verstärken“,5 damit „jene Mas- sen auf ihre politische und gemeinschaftliche Aktivität vorbereitet [werden kön- nen]“,6 wie Generalsekretär Gheorghiu-Dej erklärt. Zu einer neuerlichen Um- strukturierung kommt es bei der V. Plenarsitzung des Zentralkomitees (23. bis 24. Jänner 1950) wo die Direktion in Sektion für Propaganda und Agitation umbenannt wird und nicht mehr eine von vier Unterdirektionen ist wie zuvor, sondern eine von neun Untersektionen. Die Sektion selbst unterteilt sich wie- derum in folgende Sektoren: Sektion für Propaganda, Parteischule; Agitation; Presse, Wissenschaft; Öffentliches Schulwesen; Literatur und Kunst; Kulturelle Erziehungsarbeit; Verlage; Sektor für Kadernachweise.7 Diese Sektion hat es als Aufgabe, sich grundsätzlich mit „Problemen der Parteipropaganda, ideologi- Paradigms • 5 scher Arbeit, Parteiarbeit in unterschiedlichen Bereichen des kulturellen Lebens und der politischen Massenagitation“8 zu beschäftigen. Diesen beiden Neuorga- nisierungen folgen der Parteistrukturen der kpdsu, wobei hier nicht das Modell der Sowjetunion kopiert wird, sondern als Muster dient. In enger Verbindung zu diesen Vorgehensweisen steht die Neuordnung des gesamten Landes auf administrativ-politischer Ebene9 durch das Gesetz vom 6. September 1950. Es werden 28 neue Regionen gegründet, wobei jede Re- gion ob ihres Entwicklungsstatus in eine von vier Kategorien fällt. Ziel ist es, die Partei nicht nur in parteiinternen Strukturen neu zu formieren, sondern ihren Einfluss auf die gesamten Institutionen des Landes weiterhin zu verstär- ken, auch auf lokaler Ebene, das heißt auf regionaler, städtischer, Bezirks- und Gemeindeebene, bis in die unterste administrative Schicht. Was die Beziehung zwischen intensivierten Propagandamaßnahmen und der neuen Organisierung der Verwaltung des Landes betrifft, gibt Artikel 1 des Gesetzes Aufschluss da- rüber, weshalb es zu dieser administrativen Umstellung kommt, nämlich „zur Sicherung der industriellen und landwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung, mit dem Ziel der Errichtung des Sozialismus und der Erhöhung des Lebensniveaus der Ar- beiterschaft, um das Annähern des Staatsapparates an das Arbeitervolk noch weiter zu erleichtern, um gründlich zur Sicherung der politischen Führungsrolle der Arbeiterklasse beizutragen, und um das Bündnis zwischen der Arbeiterklasse und der arbeitenden Bauernschaft zu verstärken“.10 Je nach Einteilung der Region zu einer der vier Kategorien ändert sich auch die Struktur der Sektion für Propaganda und Agitation (wenn auch nicht von Grund auf). Je nach Bedeutung der Region wird zum Beispiel eine unterschiedliche Anzahl an Personen/Kader für die jeweiligen Untergruppen der Sektion vorgesehen, bzw. wird die Struktur der Sektionen komplexer.11 Ab diesem Zeit- punkt ist die strukturelle Phase zum Machtausbau durch Propaganda- und Agi- tationsmaßnahmen weitgehend abgeschlossen. Abgesehen von strukturellen Propagandamaßnahmen und politischer Agi- tation zum Machtaufbau muss darauf hingewiesen werden, dass es nicht aus- reichen kann, Parteipolitik durch Agitation unter das Volk zu mischen um die Macht für sich in Anspruch zu nehmen, sondern dass vor allem die Kontrolle über diesen Anspruch erhalten werden muss. Dies ist wird durch Informations- filterung in den Medien gewährleistet. Als die Medien mit der größten Breiten- wirkung in dieser Zeitspanne sind Printmedien an erster Stelle zu nennen, die (abgesehen natürlich von der übergeordneten Struktur des Zentralkomitees und der Direktion/Sektion für Propaganda und Agitation) zwei unterschiedlichen Stellen untergeordnet sind: der dgpt und agerpres.12 Die agerpres hat das vorrangige Recht und exklusiv die Aufgabe von „Emp- fang, Übermittlung und Verbreitung von Nachrichten und Fotoreportagen der 6 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) in- und ausländischen politischen, Wirtschafts- und kulturellen Presse“.13 Die Aufgabenbereiche der dgpt werden wie folgt aufgeschlüsselt:

Verfassen des Buletin Oficial [öffentliches Amtsblatt, Anmerkung U. M.] der Volks republik Rumänien; Autorisierung des Erscheinens jedwelcher Druckwerke (Zeit ungen, Zeitschriften, Programme, Plakate etc.), Ergreifen von Maßnahmen zur Respektierung der legalen Druckauflagen; Autorisierung des Drucks von Büchern jeder Art, in der Hauptstadt und Provinz; Autorisierung der Verbreitung und des Vertriebs von Büchern, Zeitungen und allen anderen Arten von Druckwerken, so wie der Import und Export von Zeitungen, Büchern oder Kunstobjekten; Reglemen- tierung der Arbeitsauflagen von Buchhandlungen, Bücherantiquariaten, öffentli- chen Bibliotheken, Zeitungslagern, Bücherlagern etc.; Verfassen und Verbreiten offizieller Pressekommuniqué des Ministerrates und Koordination der Aktivität der Pressedienste der Ministerien, Departemente und öffentlicher Institutionen.14

Die Aufgabenbereiche der beiden Stellen sind somit eng miteinander verknüpft, da die Verbreitung von Nachrichten der agerpres zugeteilt ist, ihr Erscheinen in Zeitschriften etc. aber erst von der dgpt autorisiert werden muss. Der dgpt ist zusätzlich die Zensur im Allgemeinen unterstellt, die Zensurbüros gelten als direktes Organ der dgpt. Grundsätzlich besteht die Aufgabe der Zensoren darin, zu „überwachen, um den Gebrauch von Druckwerken gegen unser volksdemo- kratisches Regime nicht zu erlauben und um das Erscheinen von ungebührlichen und unautorisierten Druckwerken zu verhindern“.15 Dabei wird insofern vorge- gangen, dass die Druckwerke entweder gleich in der Druckerei oder im lokalen Zensurbüro untersucht werden. Zensiert wird in den Druckfahnen und auf den Seiten des ersten Druckexemplars, das dem Zensor in drei Ausfertigungen vor- liegt. Dabei geht nach der Zensur ein Exemplar an die Druckerei zurück (mit dem Verweis „zensiert“ oder „druckreif“), zwei Exemplare bleiben bei dem Zen- sor (wobei eines davon dem monatlichen Bericht an die dgpt angehängt werden muss und nach zwei Monaten die übriggebliebenen Dokumente zu verbrennen sind). Der Zensor ist direkt verantwortlich für jegliches Nichtrespektieren der gesetzlichen Vorgaben.16 Es werden ebenfalls genaue Instruktionen gegeben, welche Informationen zensuriert werden müssen.17 Zusammenfassend kann ge- sagt werden, dass alles zensiert wird, was der Partei, Regierung, dem Staat, der Sowjetunion schaden und den Klassenfeinden und Imperialisten nützen könn- te, sowie Informationen, die in der Bevölkerung Unruhe stiften könnten. Jeder Versuch einer Meinungsbildung wird von vorneherein ausgeschalten, wobei die Partei entscheidet, was an Information veröffentlicht werden darf und was nicht, was die Bevölkerung wissen darf und was nicht. In diesem Zusammenhang kann man in erster Linie von Präventivzensur sprechen. Paradigms • 7

Nach diesem Errichten von Propagandastrukturen zum Machtaufbau kommt es ab 1950 bis 1968 zur zweiten Phase, die von einer relativen Stabilität auf struktureller und inhaltlicher Ebene gekennzeichnet ist. Es wird weiterhin an einem Ausbau der Kontrolle über die Macht gearbeitet, dieser Ausbau schlägt sich in einer Verbesserung der bestehenden Strukturen nieder, was durch ein Umorganisieren und Neuorganisieren gewährleistet wird. In der vorliegenden Arbeit können die einzelnen Schritte dieser Um- und Neuorganisierungen nicht wiedergegeben werden, da dies den Rahmen des Forschungsthemas sprengen würde. Die meisten Änderungen in den Sektionen und Direktionen beziehen sich ohnedies auf die interne Struktur und ihre Organigramme. Inhaltlich gesehen herrscht in dieser Phase vor allem mit Beginn der 60er Jahre auch eine liberalere Stimmung vor. Ab 1968 kommt es dann vor allem inhaltlich zu solch starken Veränderungen in der pcr-Propaganda und ihren Medien, dass man von einer dritten Phase sprechen kann. Es geht dabei zwar immer noch, um den Er- halt der eigenen Macht im Staate, aber aufgrund des neuen Selbstbewusstseins der pcr auf internationaler und nationaler Ebene ab dem Jahr 1968 ergibt sich inhaltlich die Notwendigkeit, Parteipropaganda in andere Bahnen zu lenken, bis hin zu einer vollkommenen Perfektionierung von Propaganda, Zensur und Überwachung. Ein verstärkter Nationalismus, die vollendete Abkehr von der Sowjetunion, die Kleine Kulturrevolution, der ausufernde Führerkult um Nicolae Ceauşescu sowie die Erschaffung des „Neuen Menschen“ im Sinne einer „multilateral entwickelten sozialistischen Gesellschaft“ bedürfen anderer Propagandamaßnahmen als zuvor. Darum wird als neuer struktureller Schritt im September 1971 der Rat für Sozialistische Kultur und Erziehung (kurz cces),18 eine neue zentrale Oberbehörde, die direkt dem Zentralkomitee und Ministerrat unterstellt ist, gegründet, die dazu beitragen soll, im Sinne der neuen Parteilinie der multilateralen Entwicklung der sozialistischen Gesellschaft, „die Gedanken und die Lebensart aller Bürger im Sinne der kommunistischen Ideologie und Ethik zu verändern“.19 Grundsätzlich wird der cces dazu bestimmt, „die gesamte kulturerzieherische Aktivität, die in der Volksrepublik Rumänien durch- geführt wird, zu führen und anzuleiten, […], eine erhöhte geistige Zivilisation des rumänischen Volkes zu gewährleisten, […], den kulturellen Horizont der Arbeiterschaft in Stadt und Land zu erweitern“.20 Weiter soll der Rat „die Massen im Sinn der progressiven Tradition des Vol- kes und der revolutionären Tradition der Arbeiterklasse erziehen, […], Gefühle für sozialistischen Patriotismus unter der arbeitenden Bevölkerung entwickeln, […], die moralpolitische Einheit des gesamten Volkes um die Kommunistische Partei Rumäniens herum konsolidieren“.21 Diese kurze Zusammenfassung lässt erkennen, welch hohes Ziel sich die Par- tei gesteckt hat und welch großer Aufgabenbereich dem cces zufällt. Deutlich 8 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) wird dies, wenn man sich die genauen Befugnisse ansieht, die in Kapitel 2 des Dekrets Nr. 301/1971 aufgeführt werden. Alles was künstlerisches Schaffen und Wirken betrifft, wird von nun an vom Rat gesteuert. Das geht von Literatur, Theater, Musik, über bildende Kunst und Verlagswesen bis hin zum Film. Der Rat ist nicht nur für Produktion, sondern auch für das Verbreiten von Kunst verantwortlich, und damit einhergehend natürlich mit der politischen Orientie- rung der Kunstwerke. Auch Kunststätten wie Museen, Kulturhäuser, Kulturhei- me und Bibliotheken, ja selbst Bars unterliegen von nun an dem Rat. Zusätzlich liegt auch die Finanzierung von Kunst unter anderem beim cces, wobei nicht extra erwähnt werden muss, welche Art von Kunst finanziell unterstützt, geför- dert und autorisiert wird. Diese alles umfassende Behörde diktiert von nun an alle Kanäle, die mit der privaten Öffentlichkeit, dem alltäglichen Leben der Bevölkerung abseits vom Arbeitsplatz in Kontakt kommen und bildet somit selbst einen direkten Kanal zwischen Partei und Volk. Propaganda wird hier nicht mehr a priori als politisches Erziehungsinstrument verstanden, sondern als kulturelles Erziehungsin- strument, mit dem Ziel, den „Neuen Menschen“ als Idealtypus zu erschaffen, was vorangegangenen Jahrzehnten offensichtlich ohne Erfolg blieb. In dieser Phase werden neue erzieherische Propagandamaßnahmen eingesetzt, wobei Ceauşescus Idee seiner Kleinen Kulturrevolution einen wichtigen Beitrag dazu zu leisten hat, den neuen Menschentypen zu kreieren, der am Aufbau einer multilateral entwickelten sozialistischen Gesellschaft beteiligt sein wird, ohne dabei allerdings zu sehr aktiv zu werden. Eugen Denize spricht in diesem Zusammen- hang sogar vom propagandistischen Versuch, gleichzeitig einen passiven und aktiven Bürger zu formieren, der passiv alle Parteivorgaben ohne mitzudenken hinnimmt und sich anpasst und sich aktiv zu einem neuen Menschen entwickeln soll, ohne dabei jedoch Eigeninitiative zu ergreifen.22 Letzte große Schwerpunktmaßnahmen zu Propaganda werden im Dezem- ber 1977 getroffen, mit einem mehrteiligen Gesetzespaket. Eine Gesetzesno- velle zum Pressegesetz wird verabschiedet (Dekret Nr. 471/1977), das Komitee für Presse und Druckwesen (vormals die dgpt, die 1975 in Komitee für Presse und Druckwesen umbenannte wurde) wird aufgelöst (Dekret Nr. 472/1977), der Bereich Radio-Television wird umstrukturiert (Dekret Nr. 473/1977). Um- strukturiert wird ebenfalls die agerpres (Dekret Nr. 474/1977), die fortan die Aufgabenbereiche der ehemaligen dgpt übernimmt.23 Durch das Auflösen des Komitees für Presse und Druckwesen wird gleichzeitig die Stelle aufgelöst, die für Zensur zuständig war. Zwar fallen die Aufgabenbereiche der neuen agerpres zu, Instruktionen zur Zensur selbst gibt es aber wie bei der Gründung der dgpt nicht mehr. Im Gegenteil dazu wird die Verantwortlichkeit für Presseinhalte folgendermaßen gehandhabt: „Die Redaktionskollegien […] tragen die Verant- Paradigms • 9 wortung für den politischen, ideologischen Inhalt der in den Redaktionen ausgearbeiteten Materialien.“24 Damit jedoch nicht genug, denn auch „die Autoren der im Rahmen der Redaktion der agerpres ausgearbeiteten Pressematerialien tragen die Verantwortung für den Inhalt, die politische Orientierung besagter Materialien, zur objektiven Information, um die Wahrheit zu respektieren und um Staatsgeheimnisse zu hüten“.25 Alle Materialien obliegen von nun an der Selbstzensur der Autoren und Re- daktionsmitglieder, wodurch diese Art von Zensur zu „einem raffinierten und wirksamen Mittel der Angst jedes Künstlers, Journalisten, Herausgebers, Regis- seurs“26 wird.

s gilt in einem nächsten Schritt nun zu untersuchen, was sozialistische Propaganda in Rumänien effektiv macht und mit welchen Mitteln sie E arbeitet.27 Effektivität wird einerseits dadurch erzielt, dass die Strukturen und Institu- tionen, die für Propaganda zuständig sind, gleichgeschaltet werden und gleichzeitig agieren. Somit werden alle vorhandenen Informationskanäle und Wege kontrollieren, wie in den vorherigen Abschnitten dieses Kapitels bereits gezeigt wurde. Ein ausufernder Personalstab mit klar abgegrenzten Befugnissen und Zuständigkeitsbereichen sichert zusätzliche eine lückenlose Kontrolle der ein- und ausgehenden Nachrichten. Andererseits agiert Propaganda auch im Falle Rumäniens mit Emotionalisierungsstrategien. Propaganda versucht in erster Li- nie zu überzeugen, und dies wird am erfolgreichsten über Emotion und nicht über Vernunftargumente erreicht. Oder, wie es O’Shaughnessy formuliert: „Per- suasion and propaganda may involve tactical appeals to reason, but in general a process of logical expositions is peripheral to it. Rarely can a process of logical demonstration entirely convince, since it cannot remove all doubts – and where there are doubts, reassurance and therefore further persuasion are needed.“28 Emotionen zur Überzeugung werden meiner Meinung nach vor allem im Bereich der Formierung und Festigung von Wahrnehmungsbildern eingesetzt. Dazu gehören das Erzeugen, das Übertreiben und Überzeichnen von Fremd- und Eigenwahrnehmungsbildern bis hin zur Stereotypisierung, sowie die Pro- jektion von negativen und positiven Eigenschaften auf diese Bilder. Ich habe dazu einige kurze Beispiele aus der sozialistischen, rumänischsprachigen Frauen- zeitschrift Femeia (Die Frau) ausgewählt, die dies veranschaulichen sollen. Das erste ausgewählte Beispiel spricht die Leserinnenschaft direkt an: „Frau- en der Volksrepublik Rumänien! Die Imperialisten haben durch einen neuen Krieg einen Anschlag auf das Leben eurer Kinder vor.“29 Hier haben wir es mit der Konstruktion eines Wahrnehmungsbildes zu tun, das zuerst an Muttergefüh- le appelliert und gleichzeitig die Angst vor einem neuerlichen Krieg anspricht. 10 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

Gleichzeitig entsteht ein positives Eigenbild der rumänischen Frauen als Mütter, die sich um ihre Kinder sorgen und diese schützen wollen, und das negative Fremdbild bzw. Feindbild der Imperialisten, die einen neuen Krieg planen und auch vor Kindern nicht Halt machen. Eine Übertreibung besteht hier vor allem in der Verallgemeinerung der Kriegsbesessenheit aller Imperialisten und der Friedensliebe aller Frauen. Einen noch eindeutigeren Beweis zu diesem letzten Punkt liefert das nächste Zitat, das wohl keiner weiteren Erläuterung bedarf. „Das Exekutivkomitee der ufdr [Union demokratischer Frauen Rumäniens] ruft alle Frauen, die Krieg hassen, dazu auf, den Friedensappell zu unterzeichnen.“30 Es kommen aber auch positive Fremdbilder vor, was hauptsächlich die so- wjetische Frau betrifft. Ein Beispiel dazu habe ich aus einem Artikel zum The- ma Säuglingspflege ausgewählt. „Die Frau muss der sozialistischen Heimat von morgen gesunde und fähige Elemente bescheren, wie das große Vorbild der sowjetischen Frau.“31 Hier kommt es einerseits zu einer Formulierung der Mutterrolle und des Kindergebärens als positive Verpflichtung dem Heimatland gegenüber, mit der zeitgleichen Einschränkung, gesunde und fähige Kinder zu bekommen, wie es, verallgemeinernd, auch die Frau in der Sowjetunion tut. Zur Überzeichnung einer charakterlichen Eigenschaft kommt es im nächs- ten Beispiel. „Für die Massen der Frauen in Stadt und Dorf ist das moralische Klima, in welchem sie leben und arbeiten, von großer Bedeutung, ein moralisches Klima, auf das sie sensibel reagieren.“32 Nicht nur Sensibilität wird hier verallgemeinernd und ausschließlich als Charaktereigenschaft von Frauen aufge- zeigt, sondern sie wird als Reaktion auf ein moralisches Klima ausgegeben. Mit moralischem Klima ist, wie im Verlauf des Artikels erklärt wird, „Arbeitskultur, Hingabe zum Vaterland, gesunde und verantwortungsbewusste Beziehungen innerhalb der Familie, die einen Schutz vor dem schädlichen Einfluss falscher Ideale bietet, die durch die sogenannte Konsumgesellschaft generiert werden“,33 gemeint. Es wird hier so dargestellt, als ob nur Frauen zu einer Wahrnehmung dieser Lebensbereiche und dadurch zu einer Reaktion fähig wären, Männer nicht. Gleichzeitig kommt es hier wieder zu einer Gegenüberstellung des positiven Eigenbildes von moralischer Überlegenheit gegenüber dem negativen Fremdbild der Konsumgesellschaft und des Kapitalismus. Um Missverständnissen vorzubeugen möchte ich explizit hervorheben, dass mit Emotionalisierungsstrategien keine Emotionen erzeugt werden, die nicht schon vorher bestanden haben, sondern dass auf bestehende Gefühle zurückge- griffen und diese eindeutig angesprochen werden. Für die oben ausgesuchten Beispiele lässt sich sagen, dass die meisten Menschen Gefühle wie Angst vor einem neuerlichen Krieg, mütterliches Schutzbedürfnis und Sensibilität bereits in sich tragen und diese nicht erst „künstlich“ durch Propagandaschriften erschaffen werden. Was allerdings mit diesen Gefühlen künstlich erzeugt wird, ist Paradigms • 11 eine Identifikationsplattform, die dazu beträgt, sich in die bereits angesprochene Dichotomie von positivem Eigenbild und negativem Fremdbild einzuordnen. Stereotypisierung und das Zeichnen von Feindbildern wurden bereits als Kennzeichen von Propagandatechniken erwähnt. Brown hat diese beiden Kri- terien in seine Liste inkludiert und kommt insgesamt auf acht Techniken von Propaganda.34 Meiner Meinung nach können vor allem die Punkte Selektion, Lüge und das Sich-Berufen-Auf-Autorität bei kommunistischer Propaganda schon fast nicht mehr voneinander getrennt werde, da die Partei ihren ultimati- ven Macht- und Wahrheitsanspruch dadurch geltend macht, dass Informationen generell nicht (und auf keinen Fall selektive oder falsch ausgegebene Informati- onen) zur Diskussion oder Interpretation gestellt werden dürfen. Zu beachten ist auch das Merkmal der Wiederholung. Wiederholungen finden nicht nur auf inhaltlicher sondern auch auf sprachlicher Ebene statt. Demnach werden nicht nur immer wieder dieselben Themen aufgegriffen (Errichtung des Kommunismus, Klassenkampf, Erfüllung der Fünfjahrespläne, Errungenschaf- ten der Partei etc.), sondern auch sprachliche Mittel wie Slogans, Phrasen, semi- otische Koppelungen werden ständig wiederholt. Dies dient dazu, diese sprach- lichen Mittel soweit zu verinnerlichen bis diese automatisiert sind und keiner neuerlichen Erklärung bedürfen. „Ihre Botschaften und Handlungsaufforderun- gen versucht [Propaganda] zu naturalisieren, so dass diese als selbstverständli- che und nahe liegende Schlussfolgerungen erscheinen.“35 Dazu gehört auch der Bereich des Stils, in welchem die Beiträge verfasst werden. In erster Linie kann man von einem pathetischen Stil sprechen, der vor allem ab dem Jahr 1972 im Zuge des Kultes um Nicolae Ceauşescu und seine Frau Elena zu immer neuen pathetischen Höchstleistungen getrieben wird. Ansonsten lässt sich aber nur ein Stil erkennen, das heißt, dass sich zwischen den verschiedenen Journalisten oder Rednern in den Zeitschriften keine stilistischen Unterschiede ausmachen lassen, da diese „Person nicht wichtig ist, weil sie als Repräsentant der Partei, der Regierung, oder schlussendlich, des Volkes spricht“.36 Der identische Stil geht ebenfalls einher mit dem schon erwähnten Wiedererkennungswert der Phrasen etc. durch ihre ständige Wiederholung. Einen interessanten Ansatz dazu bietet Chakotin, der in seinem 1939 erst- mals erschienen Werk davon ausgeht, dass man bei politischer Massenpropa- ganda vom Pawlowschen Prinzip des konditionierten Reflexes sprechen kann.37 Er ist der Ansicht, dass eine Phrase, ein Symbol, ein Diagramm etc. durch Wie- derholung zu einem konditionierenden Faktor werden kann, welcher dann zu einem Signal wird, dass eine bestimmte Reaktion in der Masse auslöst. Chakotin bezieht sich in erster Linie auf die Massenkundgebungen der Nationalsozialis- ten, das von ihm beschriebene System mag meiner Meinung nach aber auch für die Agitprop-Veranstaltungen der Kommunisten sowie für kommunistische 12 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

Propaganda insgesamt gelten, wobei Chakotin Symbole (er nennt das Haken- kreuz als Beispiel) als Auslöser politischen Inhalts für bestimmte Handlungs- und Denkweisen annimmt. Die gesamte Beziehung zwischen politischem Inhalt und Symbol wird so dargestellt:38

ls Basis der Pyramide wird hier als Beispiel der Marxismus angegeben, der dann zum Programm der Sozialisten wird. Als Slogan könnte das A Motto „Arbeiter aller Welt vereinigt Euch!“ gesehen werden, wobei als Symbol zum Beispiel Hammer und Sichel einen Hinweis auf die untergeord- neten Beziehungsebenen geben. „The symbol is generally conceived as an in- stantaneously evocative representation of an idea or doctrine; it is the almost automatic sign that rallies men by suggestion around the idea.“39 Die ständige Verwendung und Wiederholung der Symbole führt dann zu einer Automatisie- rung und einem gleichzeitigen Reflex des Verstehens. Die Inhalte müssen nicht neuerlich erläutert und Handlungsaufforderung nicht neuerlich ausgesprochen werden. Es reicht aus, das Symbol wiederholt in Kommunikationssituationen einfließen zu lassen, und das Publikum assoziiert ohne weitere Erklärung den In- halt und die Botschaft, die dahinter steckt, was auch für die propagandistischen Phrasen, Symbole in Zeitschriften (und auf Kundgebungen) der pcr ab 1950 gelten, die durch ihre Überrepräsentation in den Medien zu einer intendierten sofortigen Wirkung auf das Publikum abzielen. Mit diesem intendierten Reflex arbeitet Propaganda. Die beschriebenen psychologischen Taktiken wie Emotionalisierungs-, Kon- ditionierungsstrategien, sowie das Filtern und Sperren von Information durch die Kontrolle aller öffentlichen Meinungskanäle zeigt, wie tief Propaganda- und Zensurmaßnahmen hier gehen. Ihr Ziel ist es, durch „Umstrukturierung von Konzepten, Modifizierung von Schlussfolgerungen, Neuschaffen von morali- schen Normen, Entwicklung anderer Bewertungskriterien, Deformierung von zwischenmenschlichen Beziehungen, Umgestalten von Gefühlen, in einem Paradigms • 13

Wort, der Anwendung von Bewusstseinsmanipulation, den Neuen Menschen zu erschaffen“.40 q

Anmerkungen

1. Die Bezeichnung pcr (Partidul Comunist Român [Kommunistische Rumänische Partei]) wird im Folgenden durchgehend für Kommunistische Partei Rumäniens verwendet. Wiewohl erwähnt werden muss, dass die Parteibezeichnung im Laufe der Geschichte der Partei mehrmals abgeändert wurde, von PCdR (Partidul Comu- nist din România [Kommunistische Partei Rumäniens] gegründet 1921) zu pmr (Partidul Muncitoresc Român [Rumänische Arbeiterpartei]) 1948 und schlussendlich 1965 zu pcr. 2. Vgl. dazu: Adrian Cioroianu: Pe umerii lui Marx. O introducere în istoria comunismului românesc. Bukarest: Curtea Veche 2007, S. 46-64. 3. Gründung des Ministeriums für Propaganda (Legea Nr. 201/1945, veröffentlicht in Monitorul oficial Nr. 69, vom 24. März 1945). Ein Jahr später wird dieses zum Ministerium für Information umgewandelt (Decret-lege Nr. 130/1946, veröffent- licht in Monitorul oficial Nr. 54, vom 5. März 1946). Siehe dazu: Ştefan Bosomitu: Planificare – implementare – control. Apariþia şi dezvoltarea aparatului de propa- gandã comunist în România. 1944-1950. In: Structura de partid şi de stat în timpul regimului comunist. Anuarul Institutului de Investigare a Crimelor Comunismului în România. Bd. III. Iaşi: Polirom 2008, S. 29-31. (Alle Übersetzungen U. M.) 4. Raportul politic al Comitetului Central la Conferinþa Naþionalã a Partidului Comu- nist Român. Octombrie 1945, S. 35. 5. Raportul politic al Comitetului Central la Congresul Partidului Muncitoresc Ro mân. 21 Februarie 1948, S. 158f. 6. Ebda. 7. danic, fond cc al pcr, Cancelarie, Dossier 7, Bd. I, 1950, p. 62-72, 210-217. Zitiert nach: România. Viaþa politicã în documente. 1950. Bukarest: Arhivele Naþionale ale României 2002, S. 34. 8. Ebda, S. 33f. 9. Siehe dazu: Legea Nr. 5/1950, vom 6. September 1950, veröffentlicht in Bule- tinul Oficial Nr. 77, vom 8. September 1950. http://www.lege-online.ro/lr-lege-5-1950-%28116926%29.html. (Eingesehen am 29. Dezember 2012.) 10. Ebda. (Markierung U. M.) 11. Für eine genaue Auflistung der einzelnen Sektionen in den jeweiligen Kategorien vgl. Bosomitu, Planificare – implementare – control, S. 44-47. 12. dgpt: Direcþia Generalã pentru Presã şi Tipãrituri [Direktion für Presse und Druck- wesen]; agerpres: Agenþia Românã de Presã (Rumänische Presseagentur), beide 1949 gegründet. 14 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

13. Decret Nr. 217/1949, veröffentlicht in Buletinul oficial Nr. 32 vom 23. Mai 1949, Art. 2 u. 3. http://www.lege-online.ro/lr-decret-217-1949-%2822117%29.html. (Eingesehen am 11. Dezember 2012.) 14. Decret Nr. 218/1949, veröffentlicht in Buletinul oficial Nr. 32, vom 23. Mai 1949, Art.1. http://www.lege-online.ro/lr-decret-218-1949-%2822118%29.html. (Ein- gesehen am 12. Dezember 2012.) 15. Unter Verschluss gehaltene Instruktionen der dgpt bzgl. der Aktivität der Zensur- büros konform hcm 612/1949, zitiert nach Bogdan Ficeac: Cenzura comunistã şi formarea „Omului nou“. Vorwort von Baniel Barbu, Nachwort von Petru Ignat. Bukarest: Nemira 1999, S. 43. 16. Vgl. ebda, S. 45. 17. Für eine genaue Auflistung der zu zensierenden Informationen siehe: ebda, S. 48f. 18. Consiliul Culturii şi Educaþiei Socialiste, cces [Rat für Sozialistische Kultur und Erziehung], gegründet durch: Decret 301/1971, veröffentlicht in Buleti- nul oficial Nr. 108, vom 21. September 1971. http://www.lege-online.ro/lr-decret-301-1971-%2824703%29.html. (Eingesehen am 12. Dezember 2012.) 19. Ebda. 20. Ebda, Kapitel 1, Art. 1 und 2. 21. Ebda, Kapitel 1, Art. 2. 22. Vgl. Eugen Denize: Propaganda comunistã în România (1948-1953). Târgovişte: Cetatea de Scaun 2009, S. 43. 23. Vgl. Decret Nr. 471/1977, 472/1977, 473/1977, 474/1977, alle veröffentlicht in Buletinul oficial Nr. 138 vom 26. Dezember 1977. 24. Decret Nr. 474/1977, veröffentlicht in Buletinul oficial Nr. 138 vom 26. Dezember 1977, Kapitel 3, Art. 21. http://www.monitoruljuridic.ro/act/decret-nr-474-din- 24-decembrie-1977-privind-organizarea-si-functionarea-agentiei-romane-de-presa-agerpres-emitent-consiliul-de-stat-24202.html. (Eingesehen am 12. Dezember 2012.) 25. Ebda. 26. Cãlin Hentea: Propagandã fãrã frontiere. Bukarest: Nemira 2002, S. 260f. 27. Es soll hier kein Versuch einer allgemeinen Definitionsbildung zum Propagandabe- griff unternommen werden, da jener Begriff unterschiedliche Bedeutung in unterschiedlichen historischen und politischen Kontexten erhält. Im Grunde ziehe ich allerdings die Formulierung von Thymian Bussemer vor, der von Propaganda als „die in der Regel medienvermittelte Formierung handlungsrelevanter Meinungen und Einstellungen politischer oder sozialer Großgruppen durch symbolische Kommu- nikation und als Herstellung von Öffentlichkeit zugunsten bestimmter Interessen“ spricht. Siehe Thymian Bussemer: Propaganda. Konzepte und Theorien. Mit einem einführenden Vorwort von Peter Glotz. 2., überarb. Aufl. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften 2008, S. 33. 28. Nicholas Jackson O’Shaughnessy: Politics and Propaganda. Weapons of Mass Se- duction. Manchester: Manchester University Press 2004, S. 41. 29. Femeia, Nr. 2, März 1949 (II. Jahrgang), S. 2. 30. Femeia, Nr. 5, Mai 1950 (III. Jahrgang), S. 5. Paradigms • 15

31. Femeia, Nr. 10, November 1949 (II. Jahrgang), S. 25. (Der unglückliche Gebrauch des Wortes Element für Kind entstammt dem Original, und wurde in der Überset- zung beibehalten.) 32. Femeia, Nr. 7, Juli 1976 (XXIX. Jahrgang), S. 3. 33. Ebda. 34. The use of stereotypes; The substitution of names; Selection [of facts]; Downright lying; Repetition; Assertion; Pinpointing the enemy; The appeal to authority. Sie- he: James A. C. Brown: Techniques of Persuasion. From Propaganda to Brainwas- hing. London: Penguin 1963, S. 26-28. 35. Bussemer, Propaganda, S. 33. 36. Lavinia Betea: Psihologie politicã. Individ, lider, mulþime în regimul comunist. Iaşi: Polirom 2001, S. 196. Die im rumänischen als „limba de lemn“ [Holzsprache] bezeichnete Sprache der pcr und ihrer Mitglieder weist dieselben Merkmale wie andere propagandistische Sprachen auf. Zu ihren Besonderheiten verweise ich hier auf die Arbeit von Lavinia Betea, wo sich eine genaue Auflistung der syntaktischen und morphologischen Kennzeichen finden lässt. 37. Serge Chakotin: The Rape of the Masses. The Psychology of Totalitarian Political Propaganda. London: Routledge 1940. Im Original: Le Viol des Foules 1939. 38. Ebda, S. 100. 39. Ebda, S. 109. 40. Tiberiu Troncotã: România comunistã. Propagandã şi cenzurã. Vorwort von Brînduşa Armanca. Bukarest: Tritonic 2006, S. 32.

Abstract Propaganda and Censorship in Socialist Romania: Structures and Efficiency

Propaganda and censorship are used by the Romanian Communist Party not only to control public opinion and information channels but first and foremost to establish political power. The article’s focus is on the different stages of the propaganda measures taken by the Party from 1944 to 1989. The strategies differ from a first attempt to implement political power by creating propaganda structures such as state departments or sections to an overall surveillance by censorship. A second point analyses the efficiency of communist propaganda in terms of form and content.

Keywords political propaganda, censorship, communist state structures Reading in Communist

C a t r i n e l P o p a Power Plants and Factories

“I would have recommended The Reader As a New Man you books that could have hose who have had the curi- helped you solve your personal osity of skimming through Ro- T mânia literarã (Literary Roma problems, if you had any.” nia) magazine from the early ’70s (shortly after the rebranding of the Gazeta literarã/Literary Gazette magazine) will have noticed that, starting with issue no. 30 from the summer of 1970, the magazine hosted a series of surveys or opinion polls conducted among readers in “plants, factories, work sites.”1 Why this choice? We find the explanation several lines further down, in the opening paragraph of the first article: because it is in these places that “we can find the centers of social life where prototypes of the future world are created, where the prefigu- ration of an existential frame which will become a norm in the very near

This work was supported by the strate- Catrinel Popa gic grant posdru/89/1.5/S/62259, Pro- Assistant lecturer at the Faculty of Letters ject “Applied social, human and political of Bucharest University. Author, among sciences. Postdoctoral training and post- others, of the book Labirintul de oglinzi: doctoral fellowship in social, human and Repere pentru o poeticã a metatran political sciences” co-financed by the Eu- zitivitãþii (The labyrinth of mirrors: ropean Social Fund within the Sectorial Aspects pertaining to a poetics of Operational Program Human Resources meta-transitivity) (2007). Development 2007–2013. Paradigms • 17 future originates; these are the incandescent areas where the development of socialism contributes, to a great extent, to shaping a new human conscience.”2 In other words, there was a feeling of ideological change, of stricter political control mainly oriented towards the future (focusing on the strategies needed to create “the new man”), which would culminate, a year later, in the proposals regarding the measures to be taken in order to improve the political and ideological activity, the Marxist-Leninist education of party members and of the entire working class, proposals made by Nicolae Ceauşescu on 6 July 1971, known under the generic name of “July Theses.” In the following pages, we will try to analyze the way in which the portrait of the “new reader” is constructed, starting from the thirty or so surveys published in România literarã magazine over approximately three years. In spite of all the artificiality implied in such a construct, it is not so difficult to distinguish traces of what Tzvetan Todorov called “the fragmentary mentality,”3 a permanent characteristic of the totalitarian historical context, especially in what the reporters’ attitude is concerned (many of them were respected intellectuals such as Dorin Tudoran or Bujor Nedelcovici). Actually, as inconceivable as it first may seem, these surveys acquire, beyond a certain point, a somewhat honorable function, from the perspective of their authors, who were either contributors or editors of the magazine. Despite the obviously propagandistic package offered each and every time, the journalists seem to delude themselves that they are doing the right thing and they take their mission of promoters of new literature among the working men very seriously. Since, as it is loudly stated in the same programmatic introduction to the series of investigations (signed by the entire editorial office as rl), “we are interested to find out, and to disclose to our readers, the echo contemporary Romanian literature has upon the manufacturers of material goods, to show which are the works that have drawn their attention, what authors and what literary trends attract this audience which is representative for the sensibility and artistic taste of the period, from so many points of view.”4 The surveys are broadly conducted after the same pattern: the reporter goes into the factory, stopping firstly at the library of the institution (where he asks the librarian several questions and skims through the reading lists of the readers), sometimes he interviews a few employees that come his way (engineers, blue collar workers, technicians, clerks) regarding their literary preferences, drops in at the factory bookstore (if there is one) and, in the end, he drafts an “enlightening” program for the working class (getting them accustomed to the subtleties of modern poetry seems, by far, one of the most challenging tasks). There is no need to insist upon the fact that many of these surveys seem comical today, although involuntarily so (especially because both the interviewees 18 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) and the interviewers put quantity first, just as it happened in the news bulletins of the time that focused on the success brought by reaching and even exceeding the annual or five-year production quotas). It is more interesting to try to establish the differences (few as they are) in the way the readers of the fundamentalist regime of the ’50s were “trained” and even “involved in the creative process” (let us remember the famous 1948 issue of Scânteia/Sparkle magazine where blue collar workers presented writers with a list of interesting topics for the new literature).5 As for the surveys we are analyzing, the desire of the editorial team to avert any possible doubts regarding the authenticity of the materials presented is quite explicit: “The surveys presented here have been conducted by the editors and contributors of our magazine in full compliance with the material offered to them by the factory supervisors, conveying the answers of the readers, and the editorial team invites those who will participate in the surveys in the future to embrace our action and to openly, clearly and fundamentally express their personal opinions regarding today’s literature.”6 It is highly possible that this really was the case (although, when one of the “roving correspondents” highlights that “ideological literature . . . is very popular, not only for political education,”7 we have serious reasons to question his integrity). All in all, even if—by reduction ad absurdum—we accept the premises of “perfect compliance” with the reality discovered at the factory, what is debatable is precisely the purpose of the jour- nalistic quest: the attempt to transform, once again, the act of reading (in line with the abusive spirit of the ’50s) from a personal and private activity, into a collective (and at the same time collectivist) behavior where both the writer and the reader work to “shape a new human conscience.” We are fairly close to the attempt to revive the semi-illiterate and easily manipulated reader of the Stalin period whom Evgheni Dobrenko called “state reader,”8 referring to the situation in the Soviet Union. On the whole, we are dealing with a reader created according to the aesthetic doctrine of socialist realism, at the opposite pole of the “book consumers” of the Western world, a reader whose only expectation is to be modeled, transformed by imposed reading, in line with the egalitarian principles of communism. How- ever, it is also true that in the ussr, as well as in its satellite countries, this project did not account for the inherent subversive potential of reading (sometimes, paradoxically, even if reading was programmed and regulated). Sociologists of reading know fairly well that it is not easy to cope with the diversity, variety and dynamism reading entails as a multi-layered and polymorphous phenomenon. Needless to say that in such a context, the Model Reader mentioned in semiot- ics treatises is scattered into a confusing variety of situations. The reader is no more than a heterogeneous character, caught in the intricate web of constraints. Paradigms • 19

This is why reading will never, not even under the strictest totalitarian regime, be exclusively subordinated to hierarchical control. There will always be room for functions additional to those of training/education: escapism, entertainment, knowledge etc., to the extent to which any society is a mosaic of different cultural layers, with their own preferences, interests, tastes and concerns. If we also add to this the personal characteristics of each and every reader, the resulting picture is one of confusing diversity.

The Contradictory ’70s

n the other hand, it is also true that, in the Romanian public milieu of the ’70s, institutional constraints were a powerful presence, with a O further complication brought by “the ambiguous nature of the ideology that sets out to define a collective future without mentioning an absolute criterion for response.”9 If to this image we add “the combination of the precipi- tated shifts between ‘closeness’ and ‘openness’ of a vulnerable period of looser regulations,”10 and, on the other hand, the vanity and the cowardice of the writers caught between the pressures coming from the party and the natural desire to assert themselves, what we get is an image of a “revolution allowed by the police.” It is not by chance that Matei Cãlinescu talked about the “psychological and moral tensions of duplicity,”11 which, far from being limited only to the 1950s, characterized even the period of relative liberalization of the mid–1960s. This is essentially the counterpart to the fragmentary mind-set Todorov spoke about, which is responsible for double reading and for the reactions of a certain part of the public, willing to discover in political novels, for example, truths that were taboo and which could hardly be found in history schoolbooks. In a nutshell, there is no doubt that, in the early ’70s, “re-reading texts that had long been considered taboo could not be done easily, as it involved delicate calculations and premeditation . . . doubled by the revival of the critical spirit that was to account for the validity of this reinstatement.”12 Translating all this into a metaphorical register, we can think about Truf- faut’s vision from the final scene of Fahrenheit 451 (the screen version of Ray Bradbury’s novel). The context we are analyzing is just as unusual as that one, a world where “never-ending communist happiness” is instituted at first by burning books, and later by selective reinstatement of literary works, only to lead, in the end, to the revival of “the nation of statues” (trends and figures of the past) for obvious propaganda purposes. Going back to the surveys conducted by România literarã magazine we notice firstly that the so-called liberalization period of the mid–’60s had several effects 20 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) that should be taken into account, which were little or not at all anticipated by the party representatives. Among them, the diffuse individual perception (especially among intellectual elites) that there was no turning back to the dark Stalinist era, that individual liberties (though fragile) could not be taken away easily, once earned. This aspect is quite evident in the survey conducted by Bujor Nedelcovici, for example, at the Electrical Company of Bucharest. Of course, the sensation of a diversity of opinions, beyond the role played by the readers who were interviewed, some of them really intelligent and “competent,” comes, first and foremost, from the writer’s abilities (the writer transforms his “subjects” into characters, and the survey into a genuine prose piece). Perhaps it would not be an exaggeration to consider, even, a sort of hidden polemic addressing the uni- formity that the collectivist and gregarious sprit entails. We listen, for example, to comrade Ciobanu Petru (the factory physician) who expresses his opinions about Matei Iliescu, Radu Petrescu’s work, “an interesting novel given its artistic method involving the interference of the plot with the hero’s thoughts and memories,”13 or about Bietul Ioanide, by G. Cãlinescu, a memorable novel “that shows exactly how a social class vanished from history.”14 Comrade Boanþã Pavel, an electrician with the Complaints Services, admits that he prefers adventure and travel books, plays by Aurel Baranga, Horia Lovinescu and Teodor Mazilu, but that he does not read much poetry: “I like poetry less, because it is complicated and I don’t have too much time.”15 We can sense a trace of guilt in his words, as he has not met his quota for contemporary poetry… A recurrent figure in all these surveys is that of the librarian. Discrete or aggressive, his or her presence offers us enough arguments to bring into discussion what Thomas Pavel once called the absurdity of the new man.16 Here are the coordinates of the dialogue between Ovidiu Ştefãnescu (reporter) and comrade Sandu Nadia, librarian at the library of the Electromagnetica power plant, “a micro-space of book flow”:17 Reporter: “This means that each subscriber has read 35 books a year, 3 books a month.” Librarian: “Please, you should not mention these absolute figures . . . Besides the fact the library has functioned poorly (due to my illness), we also have a book stand where we sell books. As far as I know, over 50,000 copies are sold here every year. So, apart from the library, there is a second reading . . . I would like to inform you that many books pass from subscribers to non-subscribers. I could say that every reader in the power plant reads at least 20 books a year.”18 Comrade Sandu Nadia proves to be a dedicated worker, being very persua- sive in her job, also acting as a sort of psychologist, since she considers that Paradigms • 21 recommending a book should be done depending on the readers’ personal state of mind. “I had recommended to a reader The Sun Also Rises [published in Ro- manian under the title Fiesta], by Hemingway, but when he returned the book I had to recommend Animale bolnave [Sick animals, a novel by Nicolae Breban], two seemingly different books.”19 She rebukes a young woman worker who had not been to the library even once by saying: “I would have recommended you books that could have helped you solve your personal problems, if you had any.”20 Another comrade librarian, Haitã Lenuþa, a very serious person, with a lot of experience in the field (“I have been a librarian here, at Republica factory, for ten years”21 as she proudly informs the reporter), admits that she encounters difficulties when it comes to “directing” the readers’ choices: “Adventure books are most in demand. The readers influence each other. Word of mouth from one reader to another is stronger than recommendations coming from the librarian . . . On most occasions the reader asks for a certain book, one that was recommended by a fellow worker or which he heard about . . . As for us, we do our best to direct the choices of the readers who are willing to trusting (sic!) our recommendations.”22 What Dorin Tudoran says, that “the reader’s trust in the librarian’s recommendations represents 80 per cent of the reason for having this job,”23 makes Haitã Lenuþa launch a counterattack, arguing that librarians have no support from the young writers or the critics. If the books written by the writers of the new wave (such as N. Velea, I. Neacşu, D. Þepeneag, Gabriela Melinescu, L. Dimov, etc.) had prefaces and biographical tables, things would be different, the librarian would be supported in his dissemination job:

Librarian: Couldn’t literary critics or historians who often offer lengthy studies, difficult for the mass readers, draft these pages which are much more interesting for them, rather than show off with precious subtleties, often to no avail? Reporter: Those who write the adventure novels you mentioned also do not benefit from the miraculous notes you are proposing, and yet… Librarian: You might think I have something against the ‘others,’ but really, it’s like people are really different too. Reporter: What do you mean? Librarian: Every time we invited writers like H. Zincã, C. Chiriþã, I. Grecea, N. Tãutu, R. Tudoran, T. Uba, T. Filip to meet the readers, they happily accepted and answered eagerly to all the questions they were asked. On the other hand, other writers that were invited to come to our factory acted very surprised by our proposal, hinting to us that these meetings are completely uninteresting for them.24 22 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

From the “Dogmatic Complex” to the “Reinstatement Complex”

e can distinguish the implicit premises of the conflict (inside the world of literature) between the writers that prefer the “ivory tower” W (showing indifference or even contempt towards the great mass of readers, manufacturers of material goods) and their more sociable peers, willing to step down into the crowd to “actively and revolutionarily take part in creating the bright future” (even by increasing the number of entries in the reading lists of the working class). These suggestions must have alarmed many of the representatives of the cultural world of the 1970s who feared that the abuses characterizing the early years of totalitarianism might come back (the prudent, yet numerous references to “the dogmatic complex” present in the literary press of the time stand proof to that). As it would soon become obvious, it all came down to a new ideological twist, (the national-communist trend) which was to be accompanied by new constraints and “complexes.” Thus, the recently rehabilitated books (and, in some cases, even their authors, if they were still alive) became only pretexts to strengthen the official ideology, against a background dominated by what Ioana Macrea-Toma calls “the reinstatement complex.”25 The almost “mission- ary” fervor most intellectuals put into the project meant to “valorize the cultural legacy”26 was justified, because beyond the self-justifying dimension, this “reinstatement” also had an emotional impact on the Romanian intelligentsia: it meant that books that had been previously banned could now be reinstated. And these were books upon which writers had projected “their aspirations of cultural liberty and autonomy.”27 It did not matter too much that the editions were, most of the time, combined or that some of the re-published volumes were delayed way beyond the usual dead- lines (as it was the case with G. Cãlinescu’s History of Romanian Literature):28 what was important was the fact that books long considered taboo could be read again. Besides, even at a glance, by examining the reading lists, the reporters could spot the names of famous poets and prose writers of the interwar period (Tudor Arghezi, Lucian Blaga, Ion Barbu, Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu, Liviu Rebreanu, Mateiu I. Caragiale etc.). Octavian Goga, recently rehabilitated, is also mentioned: “It is interesting to notice,” Ovidiu Ştefãnescu writes as a conclusion of his survey (but without a direct connection to it), “that good literature meets politics spontaneously, as preoccupations focused on world reality. Through them, man is reabsorbed in the community as a lucid conscience, a dynamo used to transform life. Goga is first among the poets in this category.”29 Paradigms • 23

Of the more contemporary writers, the subscribers of the factory libraries seem to prefer Zaharia Stancu, Marin Preda, D. R. Popescu, Fãnuş Neagu, Eugen Barbu, while international literature is represented by famous authors (Balzac, Flaubert, Dickens, Hemingway, Dostoevsky, Moravia etc.)

Heroes of the Socialist Reading List

ere are some examples worth mentioning from Dorin Tudoran’s survey: “Browsing the reading list of Sãlãjan Mihai, an engineer aged H 40, or of Teodoriu Niculaie, a ticket clerk, aged 53, one gets the feeling that one stands in front of avid readers, with good taste, accustomed to systematic reading. Their lists feature the names of distinguished authors and works: Benoit, Stancu, Eliade, Dickens, Balzac, Barbu, Grillet, Čapek, Preda, Minulescu, Flaubert.”30 The reading list of Pascale Silviu, a locksmith aged 24, the graduate of a secondary school and with 3 years of technical school education, containing 70 titles of books, both Romanian and international (among which Radiguet, Mora- via, Miller, Poe, Istrati, Teodoreanu, Beligan, Balzac, Dostoevsky, Hemingway, Hesse) could also confirm the presence of a true hero of socialist reading, if it did not rise suspicions of falsehood: Reporter: “Doesn’t it seem that 70 authors, even represented by only a single volume, is too much, given that this reading list belongs to a man that works 8 hours a day, is only 24 years old and that the list only covers the period between 1 January and 8 June 1970?” Librarian: “I, too, was surprised by the voraciousness of this reader. You might think that this list is . . . bogus. In a sense, it is, because when I asked comrade Pascale how come he reads so much, he confessed that not all the books appeal to him, and he finishes only those that truly attract him.”31 Reading such a dialogue takes us into the absurd (we have the feeling that we have just opened Mircea Horia Simionescu’s Dicþionarul onomastic/Onomastic dictionary), just as the next passage taken out from Bujor Nedelcovici’s article “Noi aprindem în fiecare searã luminile acestui oraş” (We switch on the city lights every night), also requires a discussion upon the absurdity of the “new man”:

Interviewee: My name is Zarifopol P., I am an engineer in the Technical Service department. Reporter: Are you related to the literary critic? Interviewee: You wanted to ask me something, right? 24 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

Reporter: Yes. What do you look for when you read a book? The plot, or… Interviewee: I understand. Today’s literature looks for that extraordinary event to maintain the reader’s attention, maybe this is the general taste. I remember a short story by Poe where nothing happens, he just describes a pub. You cannot make true literature with a sensational event which can only be a starting point for a good book . . . I can say that, when reading a book, I’m not always interested in the idea, but in that trampoline that projects me into another world . . . Maybe I am old fashioned, the public enjoys thrillers, I prefer Proust.32

In this particular situation the surprise comes neither from the numbers discussed, nor from the elevated discourse of the blue collar worker, but from the simple fact that the engineer’s name is none other than Zarifopol P. and from the fact that he inexplicably avoids to answer the question “are you related to the literary critic?” At Unirea factory in the city of Cluj, Romulus Barcani also discovers a “leader” of socialist reading, the young commuter Oşan Ion, whose reading list “has reached 300 titles.”33 The author of the survey mentions several of these titles: Moromeþii (M. Preda); Aventurile unui timid (The adventures of a shy man) (C. Omescu); Povestiri de dragoste (Love stories) (Z. Stancu); Somnul pãmântului (The slumber of the earth) (D. R. Popescu); Cazul doctorului Udrea (The case of Doctor Udrea) (Ben Corlaciu) etc. The librarian, Karczagi Iosif, also deserves some credit for this, as, although he works full time in the plant, he saves time for the library (working here voluntarily). But there are plenty of reasons to be satisfied, he says: “People read a lot of historical novels, especially about the Second World War. Most readers are young. They prefer spy thrillers, but also read other books.”34

“Modern Poetry Confuses Me. . . Maybe I Don’t Understand It”

his statement is mentioned time and time again, almost in the same words, nearly every time readers are asked if they are interested in poetry T or what they think about contemporary poets. We are under the impression that this lack of interest large audiences have for poetry risks to diminish even the poets themselves, since their poetic “production” has no echo among blue collar workers. On the one hand, there is a sort of nostalgia (among the masses of readers) for the propaganda poetry of the 1950s, which everybody could easily understand and, on the other hand, there is the writers’ fear that this model might, once again, return. This can explain, for example, the eagerness of Paradigms • 25 one of the reporters (Ovidiu Alexandru) who has decided to make workers understand and love modern poetry. After the rhetorical question he asks himself (“These workers have the right to beauty, just as we do. So who should read to them our contemporary poetry, so controversial and multi-layered, characteristic of the consciousness and sensibility of nowadays Romania?”)35 the journalist takes matters into his own hands and goes to factories and plants, armed with poems, in order to stimulate the readers’ appetite for such reading. To Socrate Vânãtoru, engineer at the Tractorul Braºov plant, he reads a poem by Ion Cara- ion (Timpule/You, time), to Bãbuş Gheorghe (lathe operator)—he reads Imnul garoafei (Hymn to a daffodil) by Ion Alexandru, and to Dobre Vasile (technical supervisior at Mecanicã I plant, 1 Mai Ploieşti)—Rondelul serii de duminicã (Rondel to a Sunday evening) by Leonid Dimov and so on. Some of them try hard to discover the causes for such a lack of interest (as if poetry was not, in almost all cultures, a genre less accessible to mass audiences). For example, librarian Haitã Lenuþa considers that the way poetry is taught in school and discussed by literary critics in magazines, using a forbidding phrase- ology, is to blame for this unfortunate situation. Another librarian (Sandu Nadia) invents an efficient strategy to stimulate the readers: “I gave to one reader,” she confesses, “both Baudelaire and Marin Sores- cu at the same time, in order to encourage him to choose. Also, on returning the books, we discussed the content and drew conclusions applicable in life.”36 There are many similar examples and most of them lead to a portrait (manufactured, of course) of the reader from the early national communist period: a homo universalis in all his greatness, who, while assembling tractors or fitting screws, finds the resources to read dozens of books. It is true that this voracious reader, sometimes even against his own will, has the duty, in turn, to (trans) form the writer. Both of them are first and foremost manufacturers of values (either material or spiritual) and both need to perform in as many fields of activity as possible. It is useless to say that, in such a context, reading mainly loses one of its essential functions, that of helping the individual to form his own opinions and make his own choices, and the writer sees himself constrained to give up his own freedom of speech: “The limited man is caught up in the realm of concepts and contemporary art just as much as the artist himself. In fighting space and time, his features and those of the poet are similar.”37 This is, of course, just one of the many aspects of the phenomenon of reading during the last decades of communism (in its manufactured or counterfeit state). Beyond the ghost of the model reader there is a large number of real functions that reading has (if we think just about the clandestine practices analyzed by Sanda Cordoş in one of her articles, not long ago).38 26 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

The party did not forget, even for a second, that in the end, all true reading is subversive (as Alberto Manguel proved, among many others)39 and that is why it tried to control this activity through any means possible (from oppression to persuasion). And, to a large extent, it succeeded. On the other hand, these surveys help us understand the environment dominated by confusion, characteristic for 1970s Romania and, also to reconsider, through this filter, the mutations (even the slightest ones) occurred in the collective mindset, during the transition from one stage of communism to another. q

Notes

1. Dorin Tudoran, “Cartea în uzinã I,” România literarã (Bucharest) 3, 30 (1970): 2. 2. Ibid. 3. Tzvetan Todorov, Omul dezrãdãcinat, trans. and notes by Ion Pop (Iaşi: Institutul European, 1999), 28. 4. Tudoran, 2. 5. Ana Selejan, Literatura în totalitarism (1949–1951) (Sibiu: Thausib, 1994), 174. 6. Tudoran, 2. 7. Ovidiu Ştefãnescu, “Cartea în uzinã II,” România literarã 3, 32 (1970): 2. 8. Evgheni Dobrenko, Making of the State Reader: Social and Aesthetic Contexts of the Reception of Soviet Literature (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1997). In this volume, Dobrenko drafts a history of the reader in Soviet literature and, at the same time, a history of the strategies used to this purpose; the way in which book trade used to be done and the way in which libraries, publishing houses, schools were organized served a single purpose: to shape the reader as the “new man.” 9. Ioana Macrea-Toma, Privilighenþia: Instituþii literare în comunismul românesc (Cluj: Casa Cãrþii de Ştiinþã, 2009), 241–242. 10. Ibid., 242. 11. Matei Cãlinescu and Ion Vianu, Amintiri în dialog: Memorii, 3rd edition (Iaşi: Poli- rom, 2005), 155. 12. Ioana Macrea-Toma, “La mise en valeur de l’héritage national et ‘le peuple des statues’: enjeux identitaires à l’époque de libéralisation,” in Identité nationale: réalité, histoire, littérature, eds. Ioana Bot and Adrian Tudurachi (Bucharest: Institutul Cultural Român, 2008), 133. 13. Bujor Nedelcovici, “Noi aprindem în fiecare searã luminile acestui oraş,” România literarã 3, 34 (1970): 2. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Thomas Pavel, “Culture and Control: The Legitimacy of Literature and of the Communist Regime in Romania (1948–1960),” in Literature in Totalitarian Re- Paradigms • 27

gimes: Confrontation, Autonomy, Survival, eds. Rodica Ilie, Andrei Bodiu, and Adrian Lãcãtuş (Braşov: Transilvania University Publishing Press, 2011), 71–72. 17. Ştefãnescu, 2. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid. 21. Tudoran, 2. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid. 25. Macrea-Toma, “La mise en valeur,” 161. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid. 28. During the same period of time, in an article also published in România literarã magazine, called “Douã cuvinte despre ediþii şi editori” (A few words about editions and editors) (no. 17, 1970), Eugen Simion asks some legitimate questions regarding the (re)publishing done at the time. For the second part of the question (how do we edit?), the critic notices some huge mistakes encountered especially when it came to republishing books of criticism: there was a tendency to offer a “just and beauti- ful image” to earlier criticism, eliminating all judgments that were not confirmed by posterity. This is a false opinion, of course, a critic being equally interesting through what he rejects, as well as through what he accepts, when he is wrong, or when his opinion is accepted by his followers. Not even in exceptional cases (such as Iorga’s, for example) must one “censure” post-mortem such a personality whose greatness depends on his contradictions and his wholeness. 29. Ştefãnescu, 2. 30. Tudoran, 2. 31. Ibid. 32. Nedelcovici, 2. 33. Romulus Barcani, “Cartea şi timpul,” România literarã 4, 9 (1971): 2. 34. Ibid. 35. Ovidiu Alexandru, “O lume poeticã,” România literarã 3, 36 (1970): 2. 36. Ştefãnescu, 2. 37. Alexandru, 2. 38. Sanda Cordoş, “Clandestine Reading in Communist Romania: A Few Consider- ations,” Transylvanian Review 19, 2 (Summer 2010): 73; the author also quotes Alexandru Vlad’s opinion according to which “the assiduous reading practiced by Romanians, up to a certain December night in 1989, must have acted as a sort of therapy . . . A group therapy in which we were, alternately and concurrently, objects and subjects, patients and confessors, sanitary agents and submissive guinea pigs.” 39. Regarding the inherently subversive character of true reading, Alberto Manguel argued that “all true readings are subversive, against the grain, as Alice, a sane reader, discovered in the Looking-Glass world of mad name-givers. The Duchess calls mus- 28 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

tard a mineral; the Cheshire Cat purrs and calls it growling; a Canadian prime minister tears up the railway and calls it progress; a Swiss businessman traffics in loot and calls it commerce; an Argentinian president shelters murderers and calls it amnesty. Against such misnomers, readers can open the pages of their books. In such cases of willful madness, reading helps us to maintain coherence in the chaos.” Alberto Manguel, A Reader on Reading (New Haven–London: Yale University Press, 2010), 8.

Abstract Reading in Communist Power Plants and Factories

In the early ’70s, the Romanian cultural magazine România literarã published a series of interviews with “common readers” (workers from factories, engineers, librarians) in order to demonstrate not only that Romanians were well-read people, but also that the communist rulers had reached their aim of creating a New Man. Analyzed nowadays, these pages show how absurd this homo legens invented by the communist propaganda actually was. They also prove how dangerous reading was considered, since the officials were continuously looking for ways of controlling it and monitoring its practices. The fake portrait of the Romanian common reader as a hero of the public sphere acquires several distinct significances when related to the political tensions of the ’70s, when all the small liberties granted to the intellectuals in the mid–60’s would prove to be but a house of cards, maneuvers skillfully effected by the communist authorities with the aim of achieving complete power. Even if this shift of Ceauşescu’s dictatorship towards an imitation of Stalinism, but bordering on the hilarious, did not have consequences similar to those of the ’50s, Romanian culture was once more diverted from its normal evolution.

Keywords reading, print culture, library, dictatorship, communist Romania, editions The Romanian Gulag As Reflected in the Novels

Ruxandra Cesereanu of the “Obsessive Decade”

The novel of the “obsessive decade” “Duplicitous all along, the (meaning the harsh Stalinist period in ‘revelationism’ of the 1970s Romania, 1950–1960) alternates, in fact, between dissent from the com- created yet another dubious munist regime and imposture. The product: the image of prolet- phrase “the novel of the obsessive decade” has become commonplace in cultism as seen from the po- literary criticism, but it is somewhat sitions of neoproletcultism.” inappropriate, a more accurate description being “the novel about the obsessive decade” (however, for the reader’s convenience, I will use the consecrated formula). These are writings belonging to authors who did not experience the Gulag directly (except for Alexandru Ivasiuc) and made thematic compromises lest they should irritate Ceauºescu’s regime, which sanctioned their publication. I will not deny the impact these writings had in their time, but as the critical reassessment of Romanian literature conducted after 1989 has shown, this impact Ruxandra Cesereanu has lost its consistency. The fact that Professor at the Faculty of Letters, Babeº- the novel of the obsessive decade no Bolyai University, writer and editor. Au- thor, among others, of the vol. Panopti- longer holds sway today is also due cum: Eseu despre torturã în secolul XX to the massive wave of depositional (Panopticum: An essay on torture in the literature, represented by detention 20th century) (2nd edition, 2014). memoirs and confessions (almost two 30 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) hundred such books were published between 1990 and 2010), which constitute a real “document of the Apocalypse.”1 Compared to this, the novel of the obsessive decade is but a minor presence as regards the theme of the Gulag and its treatment. Again, compared to those texts marked by a strand of atrocious realism that were published after 1989, the novel of the obsessive decade reflects the world of the Gulag through a fogged mirror. Without delving into an allegorical register, it adopts an Aesopian, allusive writing, which places it halfway between document-novels and antiutopias. In 1990, Cristian Moraru and Mircea Þicudean made two determined interventions against the novel of the obsessive decade. The former commentator defused the very raison d’être of this type of novel, voiding it of meaning: “The plethora of novels of ‘exposure’ were, in their overwhelming majority, the fruit of ‘outrageousness’ on command, as well as indirect justifications of a present that attempted to legitimize itself by scathingly dismantling the immediate past . . . the so-called anatomy of horror did not radically question . . . the system in its entirety, despite its having sanctioned aberration, deception, and murder; on the other hand, dissection did not exhaust the resources of a realism that was bleaker than any dark utopia . . . In short, the tactics of half-measures . . . compromised the chances of literature to gain full access to testimonial validity.”2 The latter commentator introduced a caustic concept for the novel of the obsessive decade: neoproletcultism. “Duplicitous all along,” Mircea Þicudean states, “the ‘revelationism’ of the 1970s created yet another dubious product: the image of proletcultism as seen from the positions of neoproletcultism.”3 The phrase “obsessive decade” was widely used in an era in which it was allowed to do that; disavowing the years of repressive fury, meliorism was a prof- itable solution for the alleged reformers of communism. First of all, the novel of the obsessive decade only rarely describes an infernal space (which is merely intimated), but one of purgatory, of expiation and transition. The meliorism implied by the space of purgatory is solely theoretical, because it is practically nonexistent. If we attempted now to fit the novel of the obsessive decade into the new classifications proposed after 1990 (for instance, the one advanced by Ion Simuþ),4 this type of novel would be subsumable partly to subversive literature, partly to opportunistic literature. What are necessary are several common reference points for this novel: 1. power and libido are obsessively entwined; 2. the Faustian pact is in vogue; 3. solutions of resistance to terror may be different, depending on the spiritual structure of the characters (mortification, revolt, excessive will, illumination); 4. almost all the authors adopt the logic of necessary victims, of an internalized and assumed evil, hence, of phármakos; 5. attempts are made to legitimize a dual narrative perspective, expressing the point of view of both victim and executioner; 6. symbols are the specific tropes Paradigms • 31 in these writings (cancer, an invasion of locusts, rats, crabs, a sanatorium, birds, water); 7. all the authors who are representative of this type of novel engage in fallacies and thematic compromises.

he protagonist of the novel A Gallery of Wild Vine by Constantin Þoiu is Chiril Merişor, a kind of Camusian “stranger” projected in Stalinist T Romania, the excluded one (the exclusion meeting features the typical Stalinist exposure mechanisms, the character being accused that he is a Platonist and a detractor of Marxists through subversive aphorisms); here is the truly outlandish definition given to communism: “man . . . entirely released from ser- vitude and even from the painful obsession of his own freedom.”5 On the front page of Chiril Merişor’s lost diary (which includes commentaries and reports about political prisoners, reflections on freedom, etc.) is the conclusion Un exclu pensif pour la patrie, that is, an exiled man meditating on his own country, the excluded one who has doubts about the future of the homeland, occasioning a “thought crime” that borders on lèse-majesté! The other characters around Chiril Merişor are “heretics” of sorts: Auricã and Axente prove to be eccentric communists, Cavadia is a hypocritical Faustian, who supports the theory that evil works towards a broader understanding of good and asks Chiril to choose philosophical evil, Harry Brummer is a skeptical advisor, because, he says, it is not believers who will be saved, but the great rascals (torturers, opportunists, denouncers). Finally, the most ambiguous character is the allegorical Gallery, which may be History, Memory and, in any case, a kind of political confessional of the times. In three places, the author makes risky compromises: first, as regards Chiril Merişor’s obstinacy of deeming himself a communist as a kind of life duty, although he is excluded from among the communists; then the episode in which Ceauºescu himself makes an appearance as a “progressive” communist leader; and Chiril’s questioning by Major Roadevin, whose techniques are enveloping and sophisticated, but improbable for the year 1958, when the second wave of terror (after the 1956 Revolution in Hungary) had seized Romania. Arrested and prosecuted for a “hostile manuscript,” his diary, Chiril Merişor is interrogated by Major Roadevin. Years before his arrest, Chiril had been zealously exposed, at a time when denouncements abounded and denouncers were encouraged, since, as a slogan of the period went, an informer who was loyal to the Party was not considered a snitch. The Securitate officer Roadevin is a “philosopher-policeman,” as he calls himself, “a contradiction in the flesh”: on the one hand, he is an agent of repression, while, on the other, he is a refined and highbrow polemicist, with a philosophical background. Earlier in his career, Roadevin had been the aide of a female commissioner, an iron lady with an aristocratic style, albeit ferociously ideological. Later on, Roadevin turns into 32 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) a deceptively seraphic investigator, subjecting Chiril Merişor to an interrogation strewn with philological, philosophical debates and quotation interpretations, sounding more like a piecemeal lecture rather than an inquest. Roadevin is adamant about distinguishing himself from amorphous Securitate men or from the brutes, regarding himself as an intellectual who has certain doubts, just like his victim. Still, his doubts are just bait, for his bonhomie and intelligence are backed by dogmatism, demagoguery and ideological fanaticism. Roadevin knows that in the basement, his bullying colleagues, the brutes, are conducting altogether different kinds of interrogations. He considers the victim, Chiril, to be an interesting solitary man and is fascinated by the strangeness and unique- ness of his “game.” That is why he subjects him to another type of questioning than the usual one, an interrogation that does not entail physical violence. He regrets Chiril’s suicide, which was, in fact, triggered by his miring interrogation, unfolding like a spider’s sticky web and forcing the victim to acknowledge that he was a mere “fly.” During the “thaw,” that is, after 1964, Roadevin gives Chiril’s “hostile manuscript” of yesteryear, a political-moral journal, as an offering to the Gallery of wild vine (understood as a political confessional of the times). At the time when Constantin Þoiu published this novel, in 1976, several years after Nicolae Ceauºescu’s July 1971 Theses, this perspective no longer tal- lied with reality. Having the Securitate represented by Major Roadevin, who passed for a refined-decadent character rather than for a technician and practitioner of terror, sounded like an artificial contrivance.

arin Preda’s novel, The Most Beloved of Earthlings, was conceived as an effigial writing for the situation of hounded intellectuals under M communism, but Preda’s cocktail of ideas proved to be satisfactory mostly for the average reader, with an avid taste for secondary, processed information. “You writers, you are uninformed, that’s why your books are no good, but unfortunately we can’t yet provide you with certain documents and materials that might inspire you. What can we do? We can’t do anything! History is still too raw and things might be misconstrued. But the day will come when many archives are opened and I don’t think this day is very far away.”6 Whether real or not, these words belong to Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and they seem essential, as they mark the official birth of the novel of the obsessive decade. Still, Marin Preda wrote this novel in a period when history was no longer excessively raw, and things could or could not be misconstrued! That is why the author could afford to reproduce a summary of the trenchant discussion (whether fictional or not is inconsequential, after all) between Gheorghiu-Dej and Stalin, which outlined three far-reaching repressive measures: the punishment of peasants Paradigms • 33 through the monetary reform, the liquidation of deviationists (communist heretics) and the digging of the Danube–Black Sea Canal. Marin Preda’s novel portrays both the comical stage of the communist revolution, and its tragic-grotesque phase, whose emblematic definition, “The Age of Villains,” is provided by the main character, Victor Petrini: people think they are masters of their own destiny, but they are not, and villainy is turned into a spectacle. Victor Petrini’s “hostile” manuscript seems to be informed by an inherent philosophical skepti- cism; had Marin Preda seized upon this and introduced the manuscript as such in the novel, it would have been the strength of his narrative. The pact with the Power is another dilemma afflicting the characters in the novel. Ion Micu, a lucid thinker who is nonetheless an admirer of Stalin (the character actually embodies the hybrid new man) speaks about accepting the pact subversively: this is but equivocal demagoguery, because Ion Micu pleads for a “time of [ideological] compromise.” By claiming that, because he is a communist, Ion Micu would not bear to be tortured by the communists themselves, Marin Preda provides an irrelevant explanation for the character’s moral downfall. Petrini’s situation, however, is entirely different. Arrested on suspicion that he is part of a subversive organization, and not for the “hostile-deviationist” manuscript entitled “The Age of Villains,” Victor Petrini adopts a moralizing stance towards his own investigator, again a deceptively seraphic one, who does not apply physical torture. Petrini’s intransigence increases as he accepts mortification, which puts an end to the investigation, and yet the danger looming over his head does not come from the refined investigators, but from the brutes. Dur- ing his incarceration, the character encounters Balkanized buffoons, as well as primitives. His classification of the members of the repressive apparatus is as follows: the berserker, harboring explosive frustrations (the captain who arrested Petrini would fall into this category); the buffoon, bordering on imbecility (this is the case of the Securitate colonel who considers himself “racially” superior to a policeman); the Securitate general with the attitude of a boorish, demagogical sergeant; and the illiterate and devious guard, who is allergic to intellectuals. The Securitate officers are seen as viruses and anomalies, generally recruited from among the ordinary people, so that they resemble their victims. “They were not automatons, as one might think. They felt they lived naturally by torturing me and put on a superior sneer whenever I protested.”7 In general, the Securitate officers are young, they possess no particular technique, but they have it in their blood and instinct how to be members of the repressive apparatus, parts of an “evidence-producing machine.” During the inquiry, Victor Petrini is alternately interrogated by a gentle investigator—a brutish investigator—a cynical investigator. They know that they are masters of the world, because for 34 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) them the reality and the people who inhabit it are malleable and manipulable, depending on whether they are inside or outside the system. The most interesting fragment in the novel is the episode of Victor Petrini’s detention, because he makes a concise portrait of the correctional environment and of the prisoner as a category: “A toothless wreck, with baggy eyes, craving a bowl with some dirt in it, which made him ravenous.”8 What is also inter- estingly treated is the relationship between victim and guard, the two reaching a sort of communion before the victim punitively kills the executioner (this reversal of power was very rare inside the Gulag). The illiterate guardian believes that Petrini’s being is opposed to his simple being as a guardian, which is why he wants to kill him. For his executioner, Petrini is a (thinking) enemy who must be tacitly executed, but, in a sort of Darwinian selection, it is the victim who suc- ceeds in annihilating the executioner. The fragment concerning Petrini’s investigation and detention (a case study, in fact) represents an essential piece about the Gulag, unfortunately submerged in the heterogeneous material of the novel.

he most exciting novel of obsessive decade was, at its time, Augustin Buzura Faces of Silence, even though I seriously object to the concessions T the author made on the subject (the deflation of the phenomenon of resistance in the mountains, one of the most active in Eastern Europe, prior to Ro- mania accepting Sovietization). At stake are two testimonies, of the executioner and of the victim, but the most striking one is the executioner’s, especially since he is a fallen executioner, who continues to wage a mental war against his victim, who, in turn, harasses him ruthlessly. It was not the endless digressions about freedom, Power, truth, courage and cowardice that rendered Buzura’s novel as an unusual text at the time it was published, but the projection of anti-communist resistance in the mountains through the agency of an activist-executor. Dan Toma, the protagonist, vacillates between good and evil, between victim and executioner, each claiming their own truth (objective truth is impossible) and demanding justice for themselves, the executioners being the ones who make history, the victims being those who suffer it. The problem of Gheorghe Radu (the executioner) is not only his harassment of the victim, extended in time, but also his avowed condition as a victim of his own theoretical masters, the eminences grises of repression in communist Romania. As an agent of cooperativization and as a persecutor of the anti-communist resistance in the mountains, he wants to account for the turbulent first years of communism, casting the blame on the theorists of terror, from the times when good and evil were seen as mere conventions. In a first version, Radu’s testimony is relatively credible, as is his victim’s (Carol Mãgureanu, the only survivor of a family per- secuted and exterminated by Gheorghe Radu), but it is deceitfully based on Paradigms • 35 the logic of false and necessary victims. Only the second time around does the executioner make a confession that is closer to the truth, forced by his victim’s decisive testimony and by Dan Toma’s role as a moral balance. In fact, the problem the novelist foregrounds, albeit indirectly, concerns the manner in which the younger generations react to the aberrations of the obsessive decade, acting as both confessors and judge-arbitrators between victim and executioner. The testimonies of the executioner and of the victim are equal in terms of scope and length, the problem raised by the author being that of culpability. In what follows, I will discuss in more detail the figure of Gheorghe Radu. He is a Securitate officer who participated in the mountain fights against anti- communist partisans; hence, his entire recollection aims to relate how he was initiated into the law of hatred and how he became a practitioner of terror and a harasser of people. Radu does not hesitate, moreover, to classify his former colleagues, above all, at a generational level: thus, those who acted and held the power during the first stage were the primitives, the barbarians, of a vio- lent and passionate disposition; during the second stage, there came to power colder individuals, rational and even ironic intellectuals. Next to Radu, there are three more “tough” men in the novel: Coza (the chief political officer), Brainea (the devious, fanatical Securitate officer) and Lupşe (the mercenary). Augustin Buzura presents the abuses perpetrated by the Securitate in the rural environment: frantic arsonists setting fire to forbidden books, in a sort of “tribal ceremony”; the torture of peasant women so that they would betray the anti-communist fighters in the mountains; the Securitate officers’ “boxing” and “football” matches against the brothers of Carol Mãgureanu; the torturing of Carol Mãgureanu’s mother, ritualistically led into the woods where she would lure her anti-communist sons, terrorized by her screams; the defilement of the captured partisans’ corpses. Gheorghe Radu confesses that he has become more savage as an agent of terror and because of the fear that he might also become an “enemy of the people”; however, even after his retirement, he considers himself a vigilant Securitate eye. In his youth as a persecutor, he was offended by the contempt shown by his victims; then, the fact that he was humiliated by Sterian (the leader of the partisans), who forced him to eat his party membership card, made him choose terror as a means of revenge. Although old, he is a Securitate officer who hates his former victims: he believes that all the troubles he has experienced since his political decay have been caused by those he had once hounded; he believes that he is also a victim. Obviously, he is a false victim: he is, in fact, an old executioner who experiences remorse, but who does not know how or does not want, in any case, to repent. In Pride, the interesting figure is that of the executioner rather than that of the victim. Here there are also two testimonies: the one provided by Constantin 36 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

Redman, the executioner (Redman actually has two versions of the “truth”: an edulcorated one, for those who are unaware of the years of terror, and another, real one, for his victim), and the one offered by Ion Cristian, the victim, a forced confession, in effect intended to counteract the executioner’s version. The relationship victim-executioner is more spectacular than in Faces of Silence because the victim and the executioner will not forgive one another, each of them re- maining what they already are. Ion Cristian will not forgive Redman; Cristian can forgive the brute (the Securitate officer Varlaam), but not Judas (his former friend Redman). The relationship between Cristian and Redman is also tense from another point of view, for these are two friends, one of whom chooses to become an executioner, while the other chooses to be a victim: theoretically, this is reminiscent of the Piteşti experiment (which took place between 1949 and 1951 and the victims, mostly students, were forced to torture one another). Moreover, Varlaam attempts, at one point, to force the two into reenacting the Piteşti experiment; Cristian refuses, however, the role of executioner, so this experiment is not possible. At first, Redman hits Cristian shyly, then, catalyzed and incited by Varlaam, he consents to become an ephemeral executioner; when Cristian, in his turn, is asked to strike Redman, the victim obstinately refuses to do so, realizing the danger of moral decay and dehumanization entailed by the Piteşti phenomenon. Augustin Buzura presents several types of Securitate officers-executioners. The first and most important is Varlaam, since he turns out to be a Janus Bifrons: both a brute and a Machiavellian investigator. At first, Varlaam expresses his condition as a fanatical mercenary; he is an “animal,” a primitive biped, con- sumed by his hatred and suffering from a superiority complex due to the fact that he is an executioner. Varlaam was once a butcher and an amateur boxer, but given his zeal in enforcing terror he has become an ambitious executioner (a more appropriate term would perhaps be that of “diligent” executioner), the tool of a deceitfully seraphic investigator, who would not get his hands dirty by torturing the victims. At first, therefore, Varlaam is one of the thugs, the primitive brutes. He stops beating Cristian when he senses that hitting him would irrevocably sanction the latter’s condition as a victim of the tortures he applies. What Varlaam is interested in is defeating Cristian, not just anyway, but by destroying his pride as a victim. The confrontation between victim and executioner, as both partners perceive it, becomes a battle of wits and a game of wills. Throughout his experience as Cristian’s investigator and torturer, Var- laam turns into something other than what he had been at first: he is no longer primitive and brutal, but has become a refined executioner, who absolutizes his omnipotence. That the time of his decay will also come is undeniable, but this is just history that keeps moving forward and may reverse the roles. Paradigms • 37

Redman represents something altogether different. He admits to being a coward and refuses to be a victim; hence, he accepts any compromise and be- trays his friend, not just anyway, but by resorting to the very dehumanizing techniques experimented in the Piteşti prison. He explains, moreover, the cata- lysts that drive someone towards becoming a traitor: fear, envy, the desire to make it in life. Sick with cancer and burdened with the guilt of betrayal, the former informer and witness for the prosecution tracks down his former victim (Cristian, who, many years after his political detention, is a renowned physician) and asks for forgiveness. However, his repentance is formal, it has no substance, and even becomes accusatory at a certain point. Gradually, though fallen, Red- man gets back into the skin of a Judas and accuses his former friend of being an arrogant victim. Then Redman resumes his delatorian ways, contributing fabricated information to the reports that the character Canaris makes in writing about Cristian and addresses them to the Securitate. The delations that are contrapuntally spread throughout Augustin Buzura’s novel plead in favor of the idea that the Romanian society of the 1980s was controlled through the agency of mercenary informers. The gallery of executioners also includes the guard Fasole, who harasses political prisoners, and master sergeant Olteanu, the latter representing a special case. Olteanu is, on the one hand, a brute, but he is also the one who helps Cristian (it should be noted here that the author outlines the typology of a hybrid Securitate officer, half monster, half human). Olteanu is a robot only to his superiors: he zealously beats Cristian up in order not to be suspected of helping him; on the other hand, he is also the one who feeds Cristian clandestinely, also passing on political information to him. If I were to classify him somehow, I would say Olteanu is a “self-reeducated” character. It may be inferred that through this gallery of executioners, Augustin Buzura intended to draw nuanced portrayals of the repressive apparatus members, to create verisimilar, not schematic types. Unlike Constantin Þoiu and perhaps Ivasiuc, too, Buzura does not exaggerate the role of the deceitfully seraphic investigator, granting a special place, if not to the exceptional torturer, then to the partly moderate torturer, which was probably the most common type of Romanian Securitate officers.

lexandru Ivasiuc is a novelist who, throughout his work, was marked most strongly by the obsessive decade and who had experienced the Gu- A lag directly; unfortunately, he was not a radical critic of the Gulag, as his former condition as a political prisoner might have encouraged him to become; instead, to use a formula that has been critically applied to him, he was “eyeless in the Gulag.”9 I will present his novels that tackle the period of the obsessive decade, under consideration here (including an exception, the novel The Crab, 38 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) which depicts the beginning of a far-right dictatorship that can and ought to be understood as a far-left dictatorship), in a linear thematic progression and not in the chronological order of their appearance. Alexandru Ivasiuc’s Interval, Night Knowledge and Illuminations are novels dealing with the subject of exclusion and the communist exposure trials, in which, besides victims, the typical characters include collaborationists and paid informants. Interval is the relived story of an exclusion, corresponding to the obsession harbored by the Camusian excluded character in Constantin Þoiu’s novel, Chiril Merişor; with the exception, that is, that here the perspective belongs to one of the accusers, not to the victim. It is strange that Ivasiuc portrays Ilie Kindriş as a split character, in an attempt to save him by this very duality of self: on the one hand, Kindriş is ancestrally tied to one of the Memorandum fighters and savors the taste of freedom, while on the other hand, his status is that of a new man, a reeducated communist. In Interval, the exclusion moment becomes a kind of excruciating Proustian core, but is resumed like a poisoned albeit necessary madeleine. Exclusion has a manifestly psychoanalytical character in this novel: Olga is excluded precisely because, unconsciously, she is coveted by Sebişan (the main accuser), who exorcises his own guilt and aggression through the meeting transfigured into a nefarious nocturnal ritual. In his speech, during the exclusion, Kindriş turns from a defender into an accuser of his own girlfriend, Olga: he is not a brutish, psychoanalyzable accuser like Sebişan, but one who brings logical and well-reasoned arguments, prefiguring the type of refined executioner (that is why Olga’s exclusion has the symbolic value of incarceration). This exclusion is recollected more than ten years later, in order for both the victim and the moral executioner to exorcize the unwholesome experience of yore, which, all in all, is an interesting end from a psychological point of view, but a failed one from an ethical standpoint. In Night Knowledge the theme of the obsessive decade is sieved through the alluvial reminiscences of Ion Marina. The novel has a nomenklaturist touch, for the flashes about Power are shot from “above,” adopting the stance of the mighty, and the approach is risky. Ion Marina is a communist leader who questions the exclusion of another “true” communist. The answer of the authorities is paradoxical: Dumitru G. is not guilty of anything, but he is a possible rebel, and his sacrifice is required as an example. In any case, Ion Marina’s compromise consists of having accepted this explanation, hence his passive attendance of the trial staged to his friend (he does not become an accuser, but neither does he stand by Dumitru G.). Moreover, he is blamed for having himself organized exclusion meetings, albeit less aggressive ones. At the end of the novel, through an emphatic nightmare, the author projects the image of Ion Marina as a giant Conqueror, the archetype of the winner who brings order to chaos, a civilizing Paradigms • 39 hero, who nonetheless turns into a nightmarish batrachian; hence, the conclusion: you may be initiated into Power, but that does not mean that you can hold it hierarchically or that you can be the puppet master of destinies. The institute in Illuminations is a microcosm with its own laws, a closed state, where the pact with Power and ambition are the only vital signs. Here, the obsessive decade is analyzed through the lens of two political generations: one conservative and dogmatic (Ghibãnescu and Donoiu), the other seemingly progressive and liberal, but in fact neo-Stalinist (Paul Achim and Nicolaie Gheorghe). Paul Achim is conceived as a hybrid: neither communist, nor anti- communist, he is but a mercenary who sacrifices the innocent. Ivasiuc takes some risks in depicting the characters in this novel as treacherous moralists, vaunting a philosophy that ignores the boundaries between Good and Evil! The novel is focused on dismantling the mechanism of meetings held for the indict- ment of researchers (“the nights in June”), who were sacrificed during practical lessons in exposure. In opposition to the hybrid Paul Achim, the figure standing out as an epitomic political prisoner is Stroescu, who experiences enlightenment in detention, through solidarity and truth (he is a victim who forgives his executioner). Another reprehensible character is Ionescu, the man with the files; once an employee of the Securitate, he is now displeased with the new political context (the alleged “thaw”) because fear no longer exists (of prison, death, exclusion). The lack of fear annoys and indisposes Ionescu, who has been demoted from his former position as the “brains” of repression. In the view of the former Securitate officer, who is currently the head of human resources at the institute, every researcher should have a file full of secret, informative notes, as Ionescu is in charge of the network of informants and monitors, like a totalitarian spider, the entire institute. He investigates delation cases among friends, taking advantage, according to his own confession, of human flaws and weaknesses. As a “totalitarian abbot,” he is perfectly camouflaged as a grim official, a power-craving mercenary lurking underneath this façade. Another character who belongs to the sphere of repression is Bobeicã, the cyberneticist informant. Paranoically, he wishes to excel as a specialist in compiling genealogies of “enemies” of the institute, advocating the encapsulation of humans in files. Paul Achim’s enlightenment occurs on a rather different level than Stroescu’s, at the end of the novel. It is a tardy enlightenment, because morally, it can no longer save the character: “Power and authority are necessary, but they should have a limit. And the means should not become ends in themselves.”10 In The Birds, the episodes relating to the obsessive decade are fragmentary, but explicit: Liviu Dunca is initiated into the microcosm of a site which is in- vaded by the agents of a suspicious and exterminating authority: drivers who pose as re-educators and Stalinist secretaries, who allow for the insinuation of a 40 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) gloomy, concentration camp atmosphere (a dull secretary turns, within the span of a few days, into a taciturn “she-commissar”). The site is metamorphosed into an ever expandable concentration camp (work is no longer carried out here, since investigations take place around the clock), as the syndrome of history’s aberrant mechanisms. Although Dunca’s arrest occurs decades after that of Kafka’s Joseph K., it is somewhat similar to it: Dunca is also clueless as to the reason why he is arrested, the point being that the very mechanism and motive underlying his incarceration are absurd. The author arrests (conserves) Dunca in a pure moral state, having him guide himself after the vestigial remnants of a firm and upright Decalogue (this is, perhaps, the best element of the novel). Liviu Dunca is arrested by two complementary Securitate officers (one is courteous, the other is a rascal), on charges of complicity in a staged trial of sabotage, the sole explanation given to him being that he is just a cog in the system. Since Dunca refuses to be a witness for the prosecution, he is indicted. His friend, engineer Mateescu, who will betray him, believes that self-sacrifice is pointless in a trial of exposure, for the strategy of the repression apparatus is as follows: “First, a few potential adversaries are liquidated, then other potential adversaries are deterred and inhibited.”11 The Securitate is, in Mateescu’s view, a “strict parent,” entitled to inspire respect and fear, to encourage or to punish; the model is that of the patriarchal family, and the revolted “sons” ought to be tamed and disciplined through violence: “Paternal authority is being restored, we are turning into a new family, with new ‘founders.’”12 The “myth” of the Se- curitate is explained through the idea of a foundational gesture, for the “founding fathers” are entitled to do anything: “There is an air of mythology about it all, even of exorcism, the washing away of burdens, of sins and shortcomings, through the victims.”13 In this world of victims, accusing witnesses and executioners, the sole, albeit reprehensible savior is the pact with Power and, hence, with the Securitate and the Party, as the collaborationist voices in the novel avow: the distinction between us (potential and actual victims) and them—a word pronounced with deferential respect to those in Power (here are included the Securitate officers and the nomenklatura)—is necessary, so as to allow the malleable victims to accede to the “higher” political rank of executioners. The second character who lectures Dunca on the “beneficial” role of the Se- curitate is Colonel Cheresteşiu.14 In his search for the latter, Dunca wanders around a building filled with mazes and dark corridors, with guards, secretaries and political prisoners. Cheresteşiu explains to his former friend that the idea of innocence has been eliminated and replaced with that of the necessary quest for victims. Although he is a Securitate officer, Cheresteşiu deems himself to be just a pawn in a hierarchy and a vast network of other pawns, in which abuses and injustice have a purpose of their own. That is why the victims’ only solution is surrender. Still, Cheresteşiu has his doubts, confessing pathetically that he can- Paradigms • 41 not afford to doubt “his own” (the communists): once he has chosen to be a Securitate officer, he must tread this path even if he has witnessed the torture of victims and even though he has never practiced such a thing (note should be made here of the complete lack of veracity of the “romantic” views that might have been espoused by a Securitate colonel during the years of the obsessive decade). Unable to convince Dunca of the need for collaboration and surrender, Cheresteşiu moves his former friend directly into the basement, where he will be subjected to brutal questionings (by another Securitate officer). Dunca’s detention is succinctly narrated by Ivasiuc.15 The victim is afraid, but holds on and discovers, in prison, the idea of a postponed destiny, and it is ultimately this idea that will actually save him. The Crab could be just a representation of the Gulag, for although Don Atha- nasios is a right-wing dictator, what is essential is his structural mold as an engineer of terror. What is also apparent here is the novelist’s propensity for the theme of anarchy and for hybrid psychological structures: Don Athanasios, for instance, shatters the concepts of innocence and guilt, for such a removal of boundaries highlights how reprehensible and, at the same time, how stringent the principle of extermination is perceived to be. Unable to write a Solzhenit- synian novel about the Romanian Gulag, Ivasiuc gives a reply that squares with the series of South American dictators portrayed by Miguel Ángel Asturias, Augusto Roa Bastos, Alejo Carpentier and Gabriel García Márquez, even though the model of his dictator is, obviously, Stalin, rendered as the fictional figure of Don Athanasios. The mental dictator (Stalin) invoked by the concrete dictator (Don Athanasios) recalls a similar sequence from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s First Circle, namely the famous dialogue between Stalin and his Minister of the In- terior on the logic of the staged trials involving the communist leaders. If Don Athanasios is the “creator of the new fear, the perfect technician not of mechani- cal terror, exerted brutally and virilely by an almighty father, but of systematic, cold-blooded terror,”16 Miguel is the commentator and passive disciple of terror, himself threatened to be swept away by the wave of terror, as a possible victim, but also as a possible executioner. Don Athanasios’s logic is contagious: anyone can become a victim, even those who are already dead, for the status of a victim is perfectible. The purpose of the coup initiated by Don Athanasios is to reduce the individual to a dull, gray person, with a mere skeletal conscience. Thus, to give a decisive lesson, multiple parallel executions are carried out on a hallucina- tory “South American” St. Bartholomew’s Eve. The world of terror is a reversed world, in a mirror, like the Orwellian dystopias. To be a perfect executioner, Miguel the disciple must pass through the stage of victim, at least theoretically: he becomes the guinea pig of Don Athanasios, who initiates him into the secrets of fear. The final image is that of a world dominated by carnivorous crabs, de- vouring crustaceans, led by the Grand Crab (Don Athanasios), a world in which 42 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) a virtual “crab” (Miguel) becomes the random victim of terror. The fact that Miguel does not get to be officially instantiated as a “crab,” perhaps as the very successor of the Grand Crab Dictator, is a mere mishap.

aving succinctly analyzed these writings, it should be noted that I did not set out to exhaust the series of novels of the obsessive decade, H but merely to mention the most important ones, choosing the least subversive or relatively subversive authors (I deliberately did not approach the novels signed by Petre Sãlcudeanu, Dumitru Popescu and Ion Lãncrãnjan, as these texts are not only devoid of aesthetic value, but also devoid of an ethical compass, being written by authors who were propagandistically acquiescent to the communist regime). The novels I have analyzed do not chart the central core of the Gulag except in certain stretches of the narrative, focusing rather on the totalitarian atmosphere and the political context, etc. The novel of the obsessive decade is thus a lame forerunner of the future demystifying writings about the Gulag (prison memoirs), its role being that of obscuring the refined terror of the Ceauºescu era by pointing an accusing finger at the brutal terror of the Gheorghiu-Dej era, but without engaging in a deep analysis of the Romanian repressive system. The collective tensions from the period of the Ceauºescu regime were neutralized by displacement onto a previous stage. The success of this strategy is attested by the wide readership that the theme of the obsessive decade enjoyed among all categories of readers: from refined connoisseurs to amateurs, from intellectuals to workers. The plan worked all the better since it gave the impression of genuine dissidence, aptly speculated by the eminences grises who approved the publication of this type of novel. q (Translated by Carmen-Veronica Borbély)

Notes

1. Florin Manolescu, “Literatura închisorilor,” Luceafãrul (Bucharest), n.s., 2, 4 (1991). 2. Cristian Moraru, “Literatura testimonialã,” Contrapunct (Bucharest) 1, 28 (1990). 3. Mircea Þicudean, “Vârstele minciunii,” Apostrof (Cluj-Napoca) 1, 3–4 (1990). 4. Ion Simuþ, Incursiuni în literatura actualã (Oradea: Cogito, 1994), 11–14. 5. Constantin Þoiu, Galeria cu viþã sãlbaticã, 2nd edition (Bucharest: Eminescu, 1979), 123. 6. Marin Preda, Cel mai iubit dintre pãmânteni, vol. 1 (Bucharest: Cartea Româneascã, 1980), 197. 7. Ibid., 2: 22. 8. Ibid., 2: 26. Paradigms • 43

9. Ioan Buduca, “Orbul în Gulag: Cazul Alexandru Ivasiuc,” Cuvîntul (Bucharest) 7, 9 (1996). 10. Alexandru Ivasiuc, Iluminãri (Bucharest: Eminescu, 1977), 398. 11. Alexandru Ivasiuc, Pãsãrile (Bucharest: Cartea Româneascã, 1970), 259. 12. Ibid., 261. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., 273–280. 15. Ibid., 281–290. 16. Alexandru Ivasiuc, Racul (Bucharest: Albatros, 1976), 129.

Bibliography

Buzura, Augustin. Feþele tãcerii. Bucharest: Cartea Româneascã, 1974. ——. Orgolii. Cluj-Napoca: Dacia, 1977. Ivasiuc, Alexandru. Interval. Bucharest: Editura pentru Literaturã, 1968. ——. Pãsãrile. Bucharest: Cartea Româneascã, 1970. ——. Racul, Bucharest: Albatros, 1976. ——. Iluminãri. Bucharest: Eminescu, 1977. ——. Cunoaştere de noapte. Second edition, afterword by Gabriela Omãt. Bucharest: Eminescu, 1979. Preda, Marin. Cel mai iubit dintre pãmânteni. 3 vols. Bucharest: Cartea Româneascã, 1980. Simuþ, Ion. Incursiuni în literatura actualã. Oradea: Cogito, 1994. Þoiu, Constantin. Galeria cu viþã sãlbaticã. Second edition, afterword by the author, editor’s word by Valeriu Râpeanu. Bucharest: Eminescu, 1979.

Abstract The Romanian Gulag As Reflected in the Novels of the “Obsessive Decade”

This study examines the novel of the “obsessive decade” published in communist Romania (especially during the period 1970–1985) and the manner in which this type of novel approached the theme of the Gulag, alternating between genuine dissidence and imposture. The phrase “novel of the obsessive decade” has become commonplace in literary criticism, but it is rather inadequate, a more accurate description being “the novel about the obsessive decade.” These writings belong to authors who did not experience the Gulag (prisons, labor camps, deportation, colonies) directly (with few exceptions); these authors resorted to thematic compromises so as not to aggravate the Ceauºescu regime, which sanctioned their publication. At the time of their publication, the novels of the “obsessive decade” had a real impact. After the Revolution of 1989, this impact faded away, due to the critical reassessment of Romanian literature after the collapse of the communist regime and to the disconcerting emergence of prison memoirs, related to the communist period.

Keywords the novel of the “obsessive decade,” Romania, communism, Constantin Þoiu, Marin Preda, Augustin Buzura, Alexandru Ivasiuc Home and Families L u m i n i þ a D u m ã n e sc u in Communist Romania

During the past few decades the I believe that the changes Romanian communist society has concerning habitation been evaluated from different angles, in an attempt to understend and ex- under communism could plain how the people lived in social- generically be expressed ism. Most of the studies were written through the phrase taking in a comparative way: communism versus postcommunism,1 continuity space into possession. and change,2 old habits, new morals and so on. The massive changes registered at the level of population structure and of the way of life, brought about by industrialization and forced urbanization, led to a vast project of housing construction for the working people in towns and villages. Blocks of flats were the pièce de résistance of the golden age, making possible the gigantic project of the country’s industrialization. These blocks housed wave after wave of workers, most of them landless peasants who had been displaced from villages and relocated into Luminiþa Dumãnescu urban spaces, in their pursuit of a new Senior researcher at the Center for Po livelihood or way of life. pulation Studies, Babeº-Bolyai University. It is no news that traditional rural Author, among others, of the vol. Romanian housing, specific to ordi- Familia româneascã în comunism (The Romanian family under communism) nary people, has been characterized by (2012) and editor of the vol. Intermar- poverty, overcrowding, and squalor. riage through History (2014). Irrespective of the ideological over- Paradigms • 45 tones of the discourse they adopted, the sanitation reports of the late 19th century showed Romania as a country that was steeped in poverty, inhabited by people who did not value the comfort of a home, content with having a roof over their heads, be it only a hovel, with a bowl of food and a few rags to cover their bodies.3 According to Constantin Bãrbulescu, living in overcrowded conditions, in a hovel or in a single room, appears to have represented “a genuine structure of civilization that would hardly be displaced by World War I.”4 Even if the dwelling had several rooms, the peasants would only use one, for cook- ing, sleeping, and making love! They were all huddled together, as attested by a report of the year 1906, which found that at the turn of the 20th century, 82.9% of peasant families lived, cooked and slept in a single room!5 After the world conflagration, during the interwar period, probably in line with the new habits acquired in towns, houses partially changed their appearance, as Ioan Scurtu shows in his book dedicated to daily life in interwar Romania.6 In 1930, according to the Encyclopedia of Romania, the average number of persons per inhabited building was 4.5 in the rural areas. In other words, the 14,420,718 individuals living in the countryside dwelled in 3,232,434 buildings. The largest congestion continued to be registered in Dobruja, with 5.3 people per house, while in Banat the average was 4.1, followed by Bukovina and Oltenia, with an average of 4.2 persons per building.7

An East-European Model of Habitation

fter 1990, western historiography brought into discussion an “East- European” model of habitation.8 Although Romania does not feature A among the countries whose systems of transition to private ownership in the 1980s have been analyzed (Germany, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Czecho- slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria), I believe that the elements associated with this pattern are also found, with minor differences, in the Romanian case. According to the theoretical model launched by these theorists, it was a political culture of the collectivist type that gave rise, in the first place, to systems of habitation which, in short, had the following characteristics: 1. the state was the owner and distributor thereof, which meant that homes were built and owned by the state, which distributed them according to necessi- ties (also defined by the state); 2. the centralized planning of production (any decision pertaining to housing was taken at the central level); 3. utilities were free of charge during the period of habitation; 46 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

4. the exclusion of market and private property mechanisms—central planning was intended as an egalitarian mechanism for resource allocation, and in order for this to work, the market economy had to be non-existent. As can be seen, in this model the former socialist states are presented as a monolithic group in which decision making was strongly centralized, as the state was the sole authority capable of solving the problem of housing construction and allocation. Housing and habitation were guaranteed by law and considered, in terms of price and availability,9 universal—everyone, regardless of their income, had to have a home, a desideratum that was put into practice: this explains the very high percentage of home ownership in Romania as compared with other states in Europe. A comparative situation from 1996 shows that, unlike the 50% that was specific of most European countries, Romanians owned their homes in 97% of cases.10 The same authors who have set forth the model of East-European habitation have identified two ways whereby one could get hold of a home: on the one hand, the official, party channel, through which the “beneficiary” of the system or, in other words, any individual who signed up as a member of the party organization and of the trade union automatically also filed an application for housing and, on the other hand, the way out (exit, in the original theory), understood as an orientation towards the private sector, whatever that may have meant during the years of socialism. In Romania, this model did not work exactly the same as it did in the bloc of states included in the aforementioned analysis. The private sector was tolerated after 1960 and then encouraged by the state (Law 26/1966), for reasons that pertained both to financial interests—providing the population with incentives towards the building of dwellings, thus stimulating the use of personal funds— and, especially, to the inability of the state to build at the pace and to the extent of the demand. The need for housing, also fuelled by unprecedented industrialization, played a particularly important role in defining the rapports between state and private ownership: the housing fund that had come into state ownership through the process of nationalization had ensured only part of the necessary housing resources; later, when demand exceeded supply and the authorities realized that it would be impossible to build housing for all the working people, various enterprises and, then, individuals were co-interested—the state providing them with credit facilities, as we shall see below. There are a considerable number of studies that have analyzed the phenomenon of habitation in communist Romania, concluding that if not in equal, then in varying proportions, the exodus of former agricultural landowners from the villages led to a ruralization of towns. These individuals, who had been disin- herited overnight, brought with them, to their new destinations, certain behav- Paradigms • 47 iors, attitudes and rules that were specific to the natural environments in which they had reached maturity. There have been documented diverse situations in which the peripheries of towns looked very much like villages, where, next to blocks of flats, there were jam-packed poultry cages, cattle stables, and vegetable gardens.11 Cramming the dowry chest of farmsteads within the boundaries of communist sanitation standards gave rise to the most peculiar and unfortunate aspects of the Romanian socialist urban landscape. Seen and analyzed postfactum, the displacement of traditional housing patterns and the massive relocation of the rural population to towns can be exam- ined from at least four vantage points: the official standpoint (of the communist state, which developed systematization plans, generating and supporting the construction of apartment blocks that would provide “accommodation” to those transplanted into towns, to work in various factories and plants); the viewpoint of those who were dislocated (dispossessed peasants, who left the village for the city, young people who went there to study, etc., people for whom an apartment meant, at the time, a reachable target); the perpective of those included in the “urbanization plans”—those whose houses were to be demolished to make room for the future workers’ neighborhoods) and, finally, the perspective of those who did not experience communism first-hand but who, from the safe distance of the years that have lapsed since the fall of the regime, have launched the so-called theories of “the country’s ghettoization”!

Housing Standards and their Evolution

n the immediate aftermath of the war, the construction of individual houses and small-size blocks of flats continued in Romania. As a result I of the massive process of internal migration caused by industrialization, the communist state began an extensive program of apartment block building, which, according to some authors, can be divided into three stages: 1948–1968, 1969–1979 and 1980–1989.12 During the first stage, housing did not represent a priority issue for the new regime, most of the urban plans continuing those from the interwar period and envisaging the construction of low-height blocks of flats, with a customary 3-storey structure that could occasionally feature a maximum of 4 levels, with small back gardens and walkways between them, built within a system of districts.13 Plurifamilial homes were in fashion. After 1952, the construction of blocks of 6 or maximum 10 storeys began in Bucha- rest, under Ministerial Council Resolution no. 2448. The practice soon spread to all major cities. 48 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

Specialists consider that apartment-block districts were the most successful socialist constructions, claiming, in support of this idea, that the architects of this period were, still, those who had built during the interwar period, and that the separation from the interwar, classicist city was not yet ostensive; as conclu- sive evidence, they cite the fact that these apartments were still in high demand.14 In 1962, the authorities took up from the Soviets the concept of micro-rayons, a concept that entailed housing facilities, public and social utilities, to which was added the easy access to industrial areas.15 Systematization sketches took the place of systematization plans, and the availability of nationalized land enabled the development of savage urbanism on the outskirts of towns and cities. These compounds of apartment blocks did not involve demolitions but exceeded the traditional confines of cities. Moreover, the year 1966 was a turning point in the history of Romanian housing construction, sanctioning the existence of privately owned apartments and the increased level of comfort they could offer. This was the “prevalently qualitative” period of housing construction. Between 1950 and 1960, modular design still referred to various types of constructions: apartment blocks that could meet the “most urgent demands,” private houses, brick buildings, prefabricated buildings, etc. Two-bedroom apartments represented the symbol of the period; rarely were provisions made for the construction of apartments with three or more rooms. The design of prefab apartments strictly complied with regulations governing habitable space, so that the usable area would not exceed 38 sqm. In 1956, a two-room apartment looked like this: “Entrance hall, living room, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom and toilet. The hall is fitted with a recess for a coat stand, a large wardrobe and a small closet (for brooms), both built-in. The living room has a small balcony (a so-called French window) that lets in light and opens onto the surrounding natural landscape. This room can accommodate a dining table with chairs, a sofa (as an extra bed), a set of armchairs and a small chest of drawers. In the bedroom, in addition to the two beds, the bedside tables and the dressing table, there is also a crib and three wardrobes.”16 This apartment was supposed to meet the needs of a family with one or two small children, the two rooms being constructed and furnished “flawlessly.” By contrast, the kitchen and the dependencies left something to be desired, as the text reveals: “There is absolutely no pantry space and there is no room for a cupboard in the kitchen.” After 1970, due to the inability of the state to continue building at the previous pace and prices, there occurred a transition to the system of housing construction based on the partnership between tenants and the cooperatives that had construction rights, with the aid of state loans, most of them granted with a guarantee from the company employing the loan applicant. After the entry into Paradigms • 49 force of Laws 4 and 5 of 1973, the state took up the annual construction of a set number of apartments, which it would subsequently rent, the rest being put up for sale, fostering thus the development of private property. Apartment prices had changed several times over the span of these 10 years, the selling price for a two-room, first category apartment reaching 98,000 lei in 1977. That same year, a one-room, 37-sqm apartment would sell for 63,300 lei, while a third category, 21-sqm flat was priced at 34,150 lei.17 This was the period in which blocks higher than 10 storeys were built and three-room apartments outnum- bered those with two rooms in the total number of apartments that were built. The third stage developed after 1980, when, given the decrease in spaces available for construction and the rising demand for housing, chaotic building with poor quality materials began. The “Investment Law” of 1980 (Law 9/1980) prohibited any deviation from the standard modular design of apartments. Apartment blocks cropped up wherever there was available space, including in the old city centers, much to the detriment of traditional housing restoration and historical center protection projects. Mention should also be made of the fact that that during the first two stages, the state built relatively little from its own funds, an analysis conducted by Ştefan Noica demonstrating that, at least prior to 1965, these housing spaces had been built from private funds or with the money of the population. The explanation Noica provides is that those who had saved some money before the war, taking advantage of the facilities offered by the state in terms of credit, had built massively until the sixth decade.18 Between 1956 and 1960, there were constructed 757,000 homes from personal funds, predominantly in urban areas, compared to 104,000 homes built from the state fund. In the period 1966–1970, a balance was reached, with 333,000 homes from state funds and 315,000 from the funds of the population, while from 1971 to 1990, the contribution of the latter type of funds to housing construction registered a dramatic downfall. Between 1976 and 1980, 755,000 homes were built from the state fund and a mere 85,000 from private funds, construction from private funds declining to only 30,000 homes between 1986 and 1990.19 After the conversion of the former owners into tenants and the adoption of the Soviet architectural model (the “architecture of socialism,” designed to “alleviate the plight inherited from the bourgeois-landlord regime of exploitation”), the main concern of the state, which faced an ever growing demand for housing rentals, consisted in regulating the distribution and use of the habitable area. The first regulations were laid down under Decree no. 78 of 1952, whose provisions are detailed above.20 As of this moment, the surface that a family of three could legally own was reduced to 24 sqm, to which, under Article 10, there could be added a bathroom, a kitchen and a toilet. These calculations included 50 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) both the actual rooms and the transition spaces (hallways and service rooms). The habitable area per person was established at 8 sqm and became a sanitary norm. Any surplus of space would draw the attention of those entitled by law to allocate housing and automatically became subject to a new distribution. Decree no. 68 of 1975 established the habitable and usable area of apartments built after that date from state housing funds: a one-room apartment could have a maximum habitable area of 16–18 sqm, a two-room apartment could not exceed 28–30 sqm, and the surface of a three-room apartment went up to 40 sqm (the usable areas were 27–36 sqm in the first case, 47–51 sqm in the second and 60–65 sqm in the third case). Four and five-room apartments were more spacious, with usable areas of 77 and, respectively, 94 sqm.21 Privately owned dwellings, built with the help of loans from the state, had to comply with the ground-floor/first-floor principle and surfaces could be extended indefinitely. In 1976, new housing prices were set, as were the standard finishings included in the price. For instance, for a two-room apartment with a maximum usable area of 55 sqm, a sale/purchase price of 98,760 lei was set. This was adjusted according to the construction material, the type of dwelling, the floor on which the flat was located, the degree of seismic risk in the area, etc.22 The standard amenities included in the price are probably well known to everyone who bought or lived in a modular apartment built after 1975. Let me repeat them here as they appear in the law: walls painted in watercolors, oil-based or alkyd paints for the carpentry, gridiron structures and radiators, 1.5 m-high tile plating in the bathroom and three rows of tiles for the kitchen backsplash, wood flooring or pvc carpets in the living room, terrazzo-floored staircases, bathrooms, toilets, kitchens, loggias and balconies, toilet fixtures: a 1,500 or 1,700 mm long bathtub, a 550–600 mm wide sink, a toilet, a shelf, a mirror, pegboard hooks, a towel rail and a toilet paper holder in the bathroom! In addition to the outlets for each room (double sockets in the bedroom), also provided were a mail box, pantry shelves, telephone and radio-tv appliances, as well as a lamp with a switch, in the bedroom! In three- and four-room apartments, there was an additional bathroom which, in five-room apartments, was fully equipped (if a scientific approach of the kind undertaken here were to permit the irony, we ought to say that the floor drain—a luxury habitation item under communism, according to Decree no. 447—could only be found in 5-room or larger apartments! Because the state thought of everything, each block was endowed with a launderette, which, in turn, was equipped with a washing trough, a soaking tub, a sink and a laundry boiling cauldron!). A typical apartment had two rooms and annexes. Paradigms • 51

Beyond Theory, the Practice of Habitation

t has often been said that the functions of housing were amputated in communism and reduced to that of rest and relaxation. Apartment block I districts have been perceived as bedroom districts.23 Miruna Stroe speaks about the dilemma of apartment construction under communism: architects had been conditioned to design exclusively modular housing in the design in- stitutes24 and precipitous industrialization put pressure on finding solutions for the “accommodation” of the successive waves of workers who were brought into towns.25 A major fault line was widening between the architects’ solutions and the newcomers’ perception of these homes: on the one hand, architects ensured—after Soviet models, in the first instance—the minimum needs of the anonymous inhabitants, while these inhabitants had to adapt to a way of living that was radically different from the traditional one.26 The result of this discrep- ancy between expectations and the actual situation was the adjustment and use of the living space according to the needs and possibilities of each and every one. In light of all the evidence available to me, I believe that the changes concerning habitation under communism could generically be expressed through the phrase taking space into possession, since the newcomers appropriated, “domesticated,” customized the standardized space. Marius Kivu provides several examples of the “personalization” or, as he calls it, the “individualization of the intimate space of an apartment”: decorating the walls with stucco, wainscoting or mim- icking paneling by painting the walls with oil paint, painting doors in other col- ors, closing up the balconies, triple glazing the windows, etc. Moreover, padded entrance doors made an appearance as a way of flaunting one’s social status; in Kivu’s opinion, they were symbolically equivalent to the black Dacia car. The census of 1966 had already evinced the ample dimensions of the Ro- manians’ relocation in towns and cities: over 60% of the respondents had been born in other places than that of residence and had moved to the city between 1950 and 1966. The 1977 census detected a “village-city” migration flow of 78.4%, the reverse, “city-village” flow being obviously much lower but not insignificant: 21.6%.

Homes and Housing in Communist Romania

previous research, conducted on a sample of 1,082 individuals from urban and rural environments (based on questionnaires referring to the A quality of life, circulated in 1980–1981) revealed that those who were 52 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) most willing to move, regardless of the environments, were the youth, which was only natural if we take into account all the arguments presented above!27 How did these people live? It should be noted, above all, that according to the respondents’ statements, 65% of these families consisted of parents and their children. This percentage remained essentially unchanged irrespective of the habitation area, the same proportion of nuclear families being registered in urban and rural milieus. At a general level, there were no significant differences in terms of the habitation regime, living in a house with a yard being preferred, at a difference of a few percentage points, to living in an apartment, in a block. When the geographical environment is introduced in the analysis, however, we find that a particular type of housing was largely characteristic of a particular type of environment. Living in a house was specific to rural areas (75.5% of the respondents stated that they lived in a house), but apartment blocks were not uncommon in this environment; 23.8% of the rural residents who filled in in the questionnaires lived in apartment blocks at that time. Villa-type residences were encountered in only two cases. As expected, the majority of the people from towns and cities lived in blocks of flats, in a proportion of 62.8%, but houses with a yard also had a significant presence, 36.4% of the respondents stating that they lived in a house. In the urban environment, living in a villa applied to only 6 people. Not surprisingly, the percentage of tenants who rented state- or privately- owned residences was higher than the percentage of those who owned a home. Nearly 65% of the respondents from the rural areas were self-avowed owners of their homes, while in cities private-owned property reached a rate of 40%. Ten- ants renting state-owned residences amounted to 53% of cases in the urban areas and to 25% in the rural areas, this gap being probably due to the availability of leasable state-owned property in towns and, especially, to the financially more advantageous conditions there, in the sense of lower rent. At the same time, given the circumstances of this period, what is noticeable it that the percentage of home ownership in the urban environment was relatively high. Unfortu- nately, we do not have data that might attest the manner of property acquisition and we cannot estimate how many of these homes were bought or inherited. However, considering the fact that of all the cities where the questionnaire was circulated, only Oradea was an urban center with a considerable tradition, we can advance the idea that some of this private property had been the result of intergenerational conveyance. The relation between the environment of origin, marital status and ownership status is very interesting; 66.7% of the married persons from the rural areas declared that they lived in a privately owned house, the unmarried and divorced individuals living in rentals. In urban areas, the proportion of married people with privately owned residences dropped to 40%; Paradigms • 53

60% lived in rental, mainly state-owned homes (53.2%). 56% of the divorced persons lived in rented apartments and 44% owned a home. It is possible that single or divorced people who stated that they owned a home referred, in fact, to their parents’ home, which they considered, according to older customs, their own personal property. For example, a young, 19-year- old female worker who reported that she owned a five-room house was one of the 5 respondents who declared that they had five or more rooms. It is unlikely that this was the de jure status, because the girl said that she lived with five people and that her monthly income ranged between 1,500 and 2,000 lei. If we focus on the structure of the home, we find that, on average, the two- room apartment and houses with two or three rooms were typical of the period and of the persons included in this sample. In the rural environment, most houses had three rooms (39.4%), followed by houses with two rooms (31.7%). Four- and one-room houses were few—14 in the former case, 10 in the latter situation. Only five respondents said they lived in houses with more than five rooms and no villa was reported in the countryside. There were also apartment blocks in the rural areas, as a consequence of the systematization law: the profes- sionals who lived in these rural blocks had been assigned, under governmental order, to fill various vacant positions in the area. Almost 60% of the apartments in the rural localities had two rooms, 25% were three-room apartments and only 15% were apartments with one room. In towns and cities, habitation was concentrated in apartment blocks, but houses were also numerous: 449 respondents said they lived in an apartment block, whereas 258 declared they lived in a house with a yard. 49.3% of the people living in blocks occupied two-room apartments, 32.7% lived in three- room apartments, 10% in one-room apartments and only 7.8% in four-room apartments. A single respondent said that his family lived in more than five rooms, in a villa. With regard to those who lived in a house in the urban areas, it may be stated that the population was concentrated in two- and three-room houses in relatively equal proportions, 37.6%, and that the number of those living in a single room was slightly higher than the number of those who occupied four rooms—12.9% as compared to 10.3%. Overall, it appears that an increase in family size was not accompanied, as one might think, by an increase in living space; on the contrary, most of the families comprising more than five members were concentrated in two- or three-room dwellings, as were those consisting of two, three or four persons.

54 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

Housing Facilities

t should be noted that the aim of the questionnaires distributed in 1980– 1981 was to document the quality of life in Romania. To this end, the I questionnaires also contained a series of questions regarding the quality of various goods, services, living conditions, etc. and the degree of satisfaction derived from them. Moreover, a set of questions about housing facilities allows us to assess the de facto situation in the year 1980. More than half of the respondents were satisfied with the state of their dwellings. 10% believed that the state of their homes was neither good, nor bad, while 23% deemed it to be satisfactory. This response can be interpreted in two ways: positively and negatively. A research undertaken in 2009 on the problem of the elderly, in which I participated directly, revealed that the respondents perceived the positive overtones of the word “satisfactory” and, although in many situations the contrary was found to be the case, the interviewees declared themselves to be content, pleased that things were actually not worse.28 Similarly, it may be ascertained that at least some of the respondents considered this positive nuance of meaning when they referred to the “satisfactory conditions” of their homes. I was interested in finding out whether there existed significant differences between male and female perceptions of home and what these differences were. It was surprising to find that male respondents positioned themselves, to a greater extent, on both sides of the hierarchy, for, compared to the women, there were both more men who were satisfied and more men who were dissat- isfied with the state of their homes. More men than women reported that the state of their home was very poor, poor or relatively poor, and it was men again who were more satisfied with the state of their home: 264 men, compared to only 227 women, considered that their housing conditions were good; 25 men, compared to 19 women, deemed them to be excellent. Of course, the sample structure can also be invoked, since it consisted of 53.9% men, but we should note the intriguing difference of perception on their residence, which we cannot explain satisfactorily in the absence of additional data. Whereas for the positive values—good and very good, excellent—we could invoke the less domestically- bound nature of men and, hence, their lesser degree of involvement in house- related problems, which might have determined them to be content with less or not to be fully aware of the problems pertaining to their own home, we cannot invoke the same explanation for the significantly higher proportion of expressed dissatisfaction. The degree of satisfaction/dissatisfaction with one’s home also depended on the manner of using the annexes. It is well known that the communal use of kitchens or bathrooms was one feature of life under communism. Even in major Paradigms • 55 urban centers, there were built 4-storey blocks, arranged around a courtyard, with 2 or 3 apartments per floor having access to a single bathroom.29 Over 70% of those who answered this question used their own kitchen, 8.3% had no kitchen and 20.7% shared a kitchen with others. By contrast, the percentage of those who did not have a bathroom was more than double the percentage of those who did not have a kitchen: 20.7%. Corresponding to this situation, there were fewer people using a shared bathroom—17%, and of individuals having access to their own exclusive bathroom. Pantries, closets, balconies and base- ments were, in varying proportions, subject to different exploitation situations, as can be seen above. I attempted to discover the prevalence of the main annexes, the kitchen and the bathroom, according to the area of residence. The rural areas were under-represented in this sample, but we can get an idea regarding this matter. Kitchens were, to a greater extent, absent in the urban areas, the number and percentage of those in the villages who did not have a kitchen being very small. Moreover, the respondents from the countryside had kitchens for their exclusive use to a greater extent than the respondents from the cities. However, when it came to bathrooms, the situation was unfavorable to the village, to the rural environment, where 30% of the respondents did not have a bathroom, compared with the 20% who lacked this fundamental facility in cities. A survey conducted in the late 1960s by the sociology laboratory affiliated to the Modular Construction Design Institute showed that practically no space was used exclusively for the purpose for which it had been designed: the kitchen served as a dining space and as a place for doing homework; the living room (dining room) could be transformed overnight into a bedroom; the bedroom served as a working room and so on.30 In fact, in the period after 1980, given the worsening living standards, one of the annexes, the kitchen, was to concentrate the presence of the entire family and most of the activities carried out in the home. To a greater extent than the living room, the kitchen rallied together the family’s daily manifestation of sociability.31 The research team also focused on the outfitting of the home with long-term housing facilities: a refrigerator, a washing machine, appliances (such as blend- ers, toasters), a radio and a tv set, a tape recorder, a cassette player, a record player, a telephone, a bicycle, a motorcycle, a car and, the last on the list, a library. In the latter case, the suggested response options were: up to 100 books, up to 1,000 books and over 1,000 books. Although the number of valid answers varied from case to case, it appears that the object most frequently present in the household was the tv set, followed by the radio, the refrigerator and the washing machine. Over 75% of those who answered this question said that they had a library, most of them a small library comprising up to 1,000 titles, about 25% having fewer than 1,000 volumes and only 39 people declaring that they 56 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) owned over 1,000 titles. Car ownership was reported in less than 30% of cases, attesting the fact that at that time cars still belonged to the category of luxury products.

n conclusion, it can be stated that, overall, despite the limitations and constraints imposed by the regime, people reported that they were satis- I fied with their homes, which they endeavored to outfit to the best possible degree of comfort. There were, of course, significant differences between homes in cities, mostly represented by apartment blocks, and those in villages, where ground-level houses remained the staple mode of habitation. For many of those who lived during the communist period, taking possession of an apartment in a block in the city was one of the signs of success in life, synonymous with climb- ing the social ladder. If the apartment was located in a famous city and in a good neighborhood, it was all the better for its owner. There were, however, huge discrepancies between those entitled to receive apartments: while many exceptions were made for those positioned at the top of the social hierarchy, both as regards the housing area and the facilities and the rent payment conditions, the people at the base of the pyramid had to accept whatever the system offered them, always cherishing the hope that something better would come their way. To end this study on the same paradoxical note, I should draw attention to the fact that demand for apartments built during the communist years still exceeds the demand for new constructions on the housing market. Despite their “matchbox” appearance, they are deemed by many buyers to have been built with higher-quality materials and, therefore, superior to the newer apartments. In addition to this, they have the extraordinary advantage of being situated in the central areas of the districts, even in the city centers, unlike the new districts that are being developed on the outskirts, in peri-urban areas. These are peripheries with changing boundaries, which have kept expanding since the 1950s. At one point or another, many of the current districts will have been born out of the dust-filled suburbs! q (Translated by Carmen-Veronica Borbély)

Notes

1. Ionela Bãluþã, “Child Care in Post-communist Romania between Familialist Ideology, Labour Market and Gender Roles,” Revista de cercetare ºi intervenþie socialã 46 (2014): 227–242. 2. Luminiþa Dumãnescu, “Consideration on the Process of Family Transformations in Commu- nist Romania,” Transylvanian Review 21, Supplement 3 (2012): 558–568. Paradigms • 57

3. For an excellent analysis of the Romanian medical discourse referring to the rural world, see Constantin Bãrbulescu and Vlad Popovici, Modernizarea lumii rurale din România în a doua jumãtate a secolului al XIX-lea şi la începutul secolului XX: Contribuþii (Cluj-Napoca: Accent, 2005). 4. Ibid., 17–18. 5. P. Cazacu, “Locuinþele sãtenilor,” Viaþa româneascã (Iaºi) 1, 10 (1906): 549, quoted in ibid., 18. 6. Ioan Scurtu, Viaþa cotidianã a românilor în perioada interbelicã (Bucharest: rao, 2001): 161– 192. 7. Apud ibid., 135. 8. Michael Mitterauer, “Family Context: The Balkans in the European Comparison,” The History of the Family 1, 4 (1996): 387–406; David Clapham, József Hegedüs, Keith Kintrea, Iván Tosics, and Helen Key, eds., Housing Privatisation in Eastern Europe (Wesport: Greenwood Press, 1996). 9. Sasha Tsenkova, Housing Policy Reform in Post Socialist Europe: Lost in Transition (Heidelberg: Physica-Verlag, 2009), 26. 10. Cristina Alpopi, “Contextul european şi tendinþe ale locuirii în România,” Revista Adminis- traþie şi Management Public (Bucharest), 8 (2007): 73–80. 11. Ruxandra Cesereanu, România înghesuitã: Cutii de chibrituri, borcane, conserve. Ipostaze ale ghetoizãrii în comunism şi postcomunism (Cluj-Napoca: Limes, 2006). 12. Ion Ianoş, Sisteme teritoriale (Bucharest: Ed. Tehnicã, 2000). 13. Ana Maria Zahariade, Dacia 1300—My Generation (Bucharest: Simetria, 2003), 70. 14. Timur Valetov, “Migration and the household: Urban living arrangements in late 19th–to early 20th-century Russia,” The History of the Family 13, 2 (2008): 163–177; Sergey Afontsev et al., “The urban household in Russia and the Soviet Union, 1900–2000: Patterns of family formation in a turbulent century,” The History of the Family 13, 2 (2008): 178–194. 15. Nicolae ªt. Noica, Între istorie şi actualitate: Politici de locuire în România (Bucharest: Maşina de Scris, 2003), 145. 16. From the work Studii sintezã de locuinþe din panouri mari (1956), quoted in ibid., 128. 17. A more detailed analysis of the evolution of house prices, of the normative regulations applicable in the field of housing construction and of the evolution of the number thereof between 1952 and 1989 in Noica, 125–150. 18. Ibid., 140–141. 19. Ibid., 141. 20. Decree 78/1952. 21. Decree 78, article 10. 22. State Council Decree no. 447/31 December 1976 governing the setting of reserve prices for real estate. 23. Marius Kivu, “Sentimentul românesc al locuinþei: Rezistenþa prin locuire,” Dilema veche (Bu- charest) 415 (26 January–1 February 2012). 24. The Modular Construction Design Institute operated throughout the communist period. 25. Miruna Stroe, “Aspecte comparate ale arhitecturii locuirii în fostele þãri comuniste,” Ph.D. thesis, Ion Mincu University of Architecture, Bucharest, 2012. 26. Ibid. 27. The study is based on the interpretation of 1,082 questionnaires concerning the quality of life, part of a national survey carried out by the Romanian Academy in 1980 and 1981. Cãtãlin 58 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

Zamfir published in 1984 the results of the survey: indicators and sources of variation for the quality of life (in Romanian), based on the interpretation of 3,000 questionnaires. Those 1,082 questionnaires used to document the book Luminiþa Dumãnescu, Familia româneas- cã în comunism (Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitarã Clujeanã, 2012) were discovered in Cluj- Napoca and they have not been included in the Zamfir analyses. 28. Project “Situaþia vârstnicilor în România: Cazul Podişului Someşan,” implemented by the Center for Population Studies at the request of unfpa Romania, 2009. 29. See Cesereanu, 33–55. 30. Max Lupan, “Anchetã privind condiþiile de folosire a locuinþei urbane,” Arhitectura (Bucha- rest) 3 (1967). 31. Vintilã Mihãilescu, Viorica Nicolau, Mircea Gheorghiu, and Costel Olaru, “Blocul, între loc şi locuire: Teme şi probleme de etnologie urbanã,” Revista de cercetãri sociale 1 (1994): 76.

Abstract Home and Families in Communist Romania

Approaches to the subject of family life under communism cannot overlook the problem of housing and habitation during this period. During the early years of communism, a flat in a block, in the city, was the dream of all the young people who did not own anything. In the 1960s, these blocks gave many the possibility of having a home. Post factum, that is, after 1990, the opposite trend, of escape from such blocks, began to emerge and apartments built during communism began to be labeled as “matchboxes,” offering improper housing and living conditions. Notwith- standing all this, the ambivalence of Romanian society persists and is stronger than ever: a large part of the population seeking housing continues to prefer purchasing apartments in old apartment blocks, which, ironically or not, are considered to be qualitatively superior to the new ones, as builders have recently often compromised on minimum quality standards. How can this ambivalence be explained? Some possible answers can be found in by combining the historical sources with a survey carried by Romanian Academy in 1981–1982 in some Romanian cities and villages.

Keywords families, communism, Romania, housing, habitation The Merchants of Human Beings The Securitate’s Role in the Emigration of Romania’s Germans C o sm i n B u d e a n c ã (1978–1989)

The repression effected by the “Bucharest Wants Money. authorities of communist Romania, Bonn Wants Emigrants.” together with the country’s manifold socio-economic problems, prompted many citizens to try to leave Romania legally or illegally during the 1945– 1989 period. Only some of them were successful. In this context, the ethnic Germans and Jews were helped in their efforts to emigrate out of Roma- nia by the governments of some non- communist countries. This study is centered on the post–1978 emigration of the ethnic Germans from Romania and the role of the notorious political police, the Securitate, in controlling emigration flows. Although party members could not emigrate without Cosmin Budeancã Postdoctoral researcher at Babeş-Bolyai This work was possible with the financial University, Cluj-Napoca, editor of the support of the Sectoral Operational Pro- vols. Experienþe carcerale în România gram for Human Resources Development comunistã (Prison experiences in com- 2007-2013, co-financed by the European munist Romania), vol. 6 (2012) and Des- Social Fund, within the project posdru tine individuale şi colective în comu- 89/1.5/S/60189 with the title “Postdoc- nism (Individual and collective destinies toral Programs for Sustainable Develop- in communism) (2013). ment in a Knowledge Based Society.” 60 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) the consent of the hegemonic Romanian Communist Party and the party-controlled Miliþia played an important role in the emigration of party and non-party members, the Securitate had the decisive input in the process,1 as it approved all legal emigration requests and was involved in tracking down and persecut- ing both those who successfully left the country illegally and those who tried, but failed to do so, as well as their families. A development with major implica- tions for communist Romania’s social, economic and cultural development, the emigration of the German minority after World War II has remained an insuf- ficiently studied topic, the studies available on this subject being rather few.2

Historical Perspectives on German Emigration

esearch on the emigration of Romania’s ethnic Germans has been carried out both before and after 1989. Communist-era analyses on emi- Rgration were severely restricted in their data collection and data analysis techniques. Such studies could be carried out only outside Romania (primar- ily in West Germany), because the Romanian authorities did not permit such analyses, and the topic presented interest mostly for journalists. Historians gave no attention to this theme both because of the limited access to information available at the time and because emigration was still ongoing. After the collapse of the communist regime research on emigration benefited from access to newly opened archives and the possibility to consult studies published abroad and to conduct interviews, surveys and focus groups with the emigrants. Several studies have been published as a result, in West Germany, Romania and other countries, but the limited access to the archives of the Securitate, the Romanian Communist Party, and the Miliþia has placed serious limitations on research. As such, very few books and studies have mentioned the crucial role of the Securi- tate in controlling the emigration flow.3 A notable exception is represented by the introductory study to the volume of documents edited by Florica Dobre et al. The book itself is also important, because it includes letters, address, information notes, official reports relevant for the way in which the political police was involved in the emigration of ethnic Germans. The volume covers the January 1962–5 December 1989 period and includes 468 original Securitate documents. Then come the remarkable efforts to document the history of the Germans of Romania undertaken by associations from various German towns and research institutes such as the Institut für Deutsche Kultur und Geschichte Südosteuro- pas, Munich, Das Südost-Institut, Regensburg, or Siebenbürgen Institute in Paradigms • 61

Gundelsheim, associated to the University of Heidelberg. Over the years, they have published books and studies, organized conferences, symposiums, debates and educational programs, collected documents on the history of the Germans living abroad and oral history interviews, or set up museums.

Historical Sources and Methodology

his study is focused on the role of the secret political police in the legal emigration of ethnic Germans from Romania after 1978, the year when TRomania and West Germany signed an emigration agreement following the visit to Bucharest of Helmut Schmidt, the West German Chancellor, and his discussions with the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu, who at the time was president of the republic and secretary general of the Communist Party. This analysis relies on secret Securitate documents, Romanian government reports, as well as on personal interviews with Germans who left communist Romania (4), Germans who decided to stay in the country after 1978 (5), and Roma- nians, neutral witnesses to this emigration (7). Respondents were selected through the snowball sampling technique4 with an eye to their age, gender, educational background, profession, and knowledge of emigration. The interviews were conducted during the 2002–2012 period, in Bucharest as well as in towns and villages of Transylvania. The interviews lasted between 30 and 180 minutes. Copies of the interview transcripts are available on request from the Institute for Oral History of Cluj-Napoca, the National Council for the Study of Securitate Archives and in the personal archive of the author. The 13 men and five women interviewed had ages ranging from 34 to 85. The secret documents consulted included 27 files of over 5,000 pages produced by the foreign branch of the Securitate, and five files (of 53 volumes of over 18,500 pages) that belonged to the Securitate document collection. This analysis draws on both oral history and the study of archival documents, which are seen as complementing one other. This complementarity of oral history and archival documents has been convincingly advocated by Paul Ricœur, who considered that oral testimonials were as valid as any written historical document.5 62 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

The Emigration of Germans during Communist Times

he dramatic decrease of the German minority in Romania under the communist regime represented a continuation of a demographic trend Twhich started at the end of the 19th century and increased after World War II and the consolidation of the communist regime during the late 1940s and the 1950s.6 According to the 1930 census, the German minority represented 4.12 percent of Romania’s total population of 18,057,028 (that is, 745,421 people), by 1948 their numbers were 343,913 (of 15,872,624), and in 1992 they represented only 119,462 (of 22,810,035).7 The demographic decrease was a consequence of numerous factors, of which emigration was the most significant. In turn, emigration had varying intensities, being influenced by national and international factors, such as the repression campaigns directed against the German population immediately after World War II, the communist policies targeting ethnic minorities, the economic difficulties of late communism, the establishment of diplomatic relations with West Germany in 1967, and these countries’ subsequent political and economic interests.8 Rudolf Poledna distinguished three important waves of German outmigra- tion from Romania, but the research available to date does not allow us to estimate how large these waves were.9 The first wave (1939–1950) included Ro- manian Germans who left the country during and immediately after World War II because they had voluntarily enlisted in the armed forces of Nazi Germany or became prisoners of war and refused to return to Romania after the war or their liberation; some had served in the Romanian army and, after the country turned against Nazi Germany on 23 August 1944, were imprisoned by the Ger- man army; others were evacuated from Northern Transylvania and Banat after 23 August 1944, or fled those provinces in fear of the invading Soviet troops; others deserted in Germany or Austria from the German or Romanian armies; and still others had been deported to the Soviet Union but, because of health reasons, were sent to Germany to recover. The second wave included the Ger- mans who emigrated in 1950–1989 as a consequence of the consolidation of the Romanian communist regime and the 1967 bilateral agreement with West Germany, through which Romania became the only communist country other than the Soviet Union to have direct relations with West Germany. The third wave consisted of those who left Romania after the December 1989 revolution and before 1993.10 During the 1950s, the Securitate played an important role in monitoring and suppressing the ethnic Germans. The Nazi sympathies of some ethnic Germans constituted a sufficiently strong reason to consider that the entire minority represented a potential threat to the Romanian communist regime. For this reason, Paradigms • 63 many ethnic Germans were arrested and convicted in political show-trials, being given long prison terms.11 On 7 March 1955, the war between Romania and Germania formally came to an end, and during the 1960s the communist regime started to encourage the emigration of ethnic Germans. There are two reasons for this policy change. On the one hand, the Romanian authorities found rather appealing the amount of money paid for the emigration of each ethnic German. That amount could reach 5,000 to 6,000 dm per head (which represented 1,250–1,500 us dollars).12 On the other hand, they considered emigration an important step towards the ethnic homogenization of Romania, which included sizeable ethnic minorities.13 This outlook resulted from the national-communist ideology promoted by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej until 1965 and afterwards by his successor, Nicolae Ceauşescu, who increasingly stressed Romania’s national character14 instead of the international communism promoted by Moscow. The process of strengthening diplomatic relations with West Germany continued after 1965. Two years later, Bonn chose Romania as the first country among the Soviet satellite states with which West Germany launched negotiations in view of opening diplomatic relations. Romania was preferred to Czecho- slovakia and Poland, with which West Germany had border disputes. On 31 January 1967, diplomatic relations between the two countries were established with the opening of embassies in Bonn and Bucharest. Both East Germany and the Soviet Union objected, but the representatives of Romania and West Ger- many continued to meet officially, and relations between the two countries were not affected.15 This diplomatic success created the premises for Germans to be legally allowed to leave Romania for West Germany. Also, during the 1960s and the 1970s diplomatic relations between the two countries stressed the importance of “reuniting the families of the Germans from Romania who had been separated during or at the end of the [World] war [II].”16 Unfortunately, the number of those who emigrated during the 1960s and the 1970s is unknown because of the inconsistency between the data published in Romania and West Germany, where most Romanian Germans emigrated. The Romanian authorities did not want to admit that many of their citizens preferred to emigrate than to stay in the country. There are no grounds to suspect that the West German figures are incorrect. According to Romanian sources, in 1945–1977 the number of ethnic German residing in the country decreased by 24,000, while West Germany registered 43,000 persons coming from Ro- mania. In 1977–1992, Romania registered 239,000 emigrants, while Germany reported 327,000 immigrants from Romania.17 According to Ernst Wagner, in 1950–1993, 407,605 Romanian German emigrants were officially registered in West Germany and, if to this figure one adds the people who emigrated to East 64 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

Germany, the total reaches 420,000, half of them being Germans from Transyl- vania.18 Andrei Roth argued that in 1977 the German population who lived in Romania reached 322,296, while at the end of 1989 it stood only at 179,592.19 The data suggest massive emigration of the ethnic Germans of Romania. Poledna suggests that in 1961–1968 some 1,561 Romanian Germans left the country per year, while in 1969–1976 the number reached 5,000.20 According to Wagner, in 1959–1969 around 1,629 persons left Romania every year, while in 1970–1979 around 7,141 persons did so.21 Aside from these numbers, during 1945–1977 the German minority decreased dramatically, a conclusion confirmed by the 1977 census, which registered only 359,109 Romanian citizens of German origin (representing 1.66 percent of the total population).22 According to Wagner, 1977 was the first year when emigration levels reached 10,000 per year, showing that communist Romania pursued a clear emigration policy with respect to its minorities.23 This number is slightly higher than the one mentioned in the Securitate documents, which note 9,500 emigrants in 1977.24 The Securitate documents reveal that the communist political police had an important role in the Romanian Germans’ emigration, as certified by a series of agreements between the Romanian communist and West German democratic authorities. According to Banu and Dobre, the Securitate’s involvement in the issuing of visas permitting Romanian citizens to leave the country started in Jan- uary 1962.25 The Securitate and the Romanian communist leaders became more interested in this matter, once they understood that they could obtain important financial dividends as a result.26 The proceedings were used to acquire Western technology and machinery necessary for Romanian industrial plants. In time, communist Romania’s need for foreign currency grew, determining important changes in emigration patterns. In 1969, the Romanian authorities found convenient non-financial solutions for compensating the Germans leaving the country, when they decided to sign with West Germany some economic agreements advantageous for Romania. As a result, besides money, Romania could receive technology, machinery for the steel industry, and five sedans free of charge (two Mercedes 230, two Ford Tau- rus, and one bmw 2000).27 A May 1973 confidential agreement obliged the Ro- manian authorities to permit the emigration of 40,000 Germans between July 1973 and July 1978, in groups of up to 8,000 persons per year.28 The arrangements through which, from 1970 to 1973, the Securitate received payments for allowing the emigration of ethnic Germans and bought Western goods were superseded by those it concluded after 1978. As secret operations, they had code names like “Pilgrims,” “Forest” and “Harvest.”29 Given the ties between the Se- curitate and the Communist Party, it is evident that all negotiations pertaining Paradigms • 65 to emigration unfolded under the vigilant eye and with the consent of the top party officials.

The Post–1978 Emigration

uring the late 1970s, the Romanian communist state was in dire need of hard currency to pay back its foreign debt to communist countries, DWestern governments and international organizations, which had accu- mulated during 1976–1981. The debt to Western countries increased from 2.81 billion us dollars in 1976 to 10.16 billion us dollars in 1981. The percentage of short-term loans in the total debt raised from 4 percent in 1979 to 22 percent in 1980. The long—and medium—term loans accounted for the remainder of the debt. In 1980–1981, Romania was faced with the need to pay back the first instalment of these debts. Given the large amounts in Western currency that Romanian authorities had to pay to creditors, at a time when Romanian exports provided insufficient cash, Bucharest had to delay the payment of some 1,143 million us dollars. As if the debt was not a serious enough problem, Romania faced major difficulties in paying for its oil imports, whose price increased as a result of the 1979 oil crisis. All these developments fuelled the “foreign debt crisis,” started by Poland in 1980, when it defaulted on its debt re-payments. As a result, Western banks adopted a cautious attitude toward communist countries, and refused to grant them new loans.30 Some of these new loans were sought to repay the foreign debt. In this unfavorable international context, Ceauşescu asked for the drafting of a new repayment schedule. At the suggestion of the International Monetary Fund, Romania decreased its imports and increased its exports, but the fact that it was obliged to accept these conditions represented a bitter pill to swallow for the excessively proud Romanian dictator. He isolated the country politically to make it less dependent on the Western governments who pressured him to respect fundamental human rights. In December 1982, Ceauşescu pledged to repay the foreign debt in full by 1990. To do so, he introduced a series of austerity measures unparalleled in other communist countries.31 This context explains the desperate need for hard currency of the Romanian state. The emigration of the Romanian Germans and Jews became an opportunity to obtain hard currency. The visit to Bucharest of the German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt on 6–7 June 1978 represented a landmark for the emigration of the Romanian ethnic Germans. This important historical moment has been widely discussed by researchers and reflected in the collective memory. The details of the visit and of 66 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) the discussions between the two leaders remain unknown, but apparently their conversations touched on the reunification of German families and the possibility to streamline the visa granting procedures on the Romanian side and renew the 1973 agreement.32 On this occasion it was decided that, in exchange of its support for the reunification of German families, the West German government would grant Romania a credit of 700 million dm for eight years to finance West German imports and 160 million dm, paid in biannual tranches, to partly finance the interest on that loan. In turn, Romania pledged to solve several “humanitar- ian” cases and grant permission to leave to those who needed medical treatment or interventions not available in the country.33 During negotiations, the German side unsuccessfully asked the Romanians to accept the emigration of 12,000 persons per year, while the Romanians asked the Germans to increase the amount paid per person from 3,000 to 4,000 dm.34 The Securitate recorded the selling of ethnic Germans with the code name “Recuperarea” (Recovery).35 During the visit of Chancellor Schmidt discussions on emigration were carried out by Vasile Pungan, head of Ceauşescu’s advisory group, and Günther Van Well, deputy minister of foreign affairs.36 After the agreement was signed, on 23 January 1978 the Securitate General Gheorghe Marcu and Edgar von Wietersheim, counsellor in the German Interior Ministry, agreed on the technical details of the agreement agreed upon by Schmidt and Ceauşescu. Thus, they agreed to prolong the arrangement on family reunification until 30 June 1983, and to raise the number of departures to the 1977 level (9,500 persons). For each person leaving Romania, the German side paid 4,000 dm in instalments delivered periodically, every two months.37 Schmidt’s visit was official, but emigration negotiations had to remain secret. However, the German media published several articles on the topic and thus citizens found out that their chances to emigrate had increased significantly. For example, on 6 January 1978 the Saarbrücker Zeitung published an article titled “Bucharest Wants Money. Bonn Wants Emigrants,” which declared that “Ac- cording to the federal government, last year the number of emigrants increased, but family reintegration remains difficult.38 In 1977, for the first time 10,000 Germans could leave Romania. Since the end of World War II, 60,000 have emigrated.”39 The same article argued that the number of approved emigration requests had increased after the visit, but those who wanted to leave the country continued to be under pressure from the Romanian authorities: “because of Schmidt’s visit the Romanian authorities have solved more emigration requests, but in most cases [prospective emigrants] lose their jobs and suffer retaliations. According to the last census, the number of ethnic Germans in Romania stands at 340,000, most of which would emigrate, if given the chance, according to some West German sources.”40 Paradigms • 67

The Securitate confirmed that most ethnic Germans wanted to emigrate. A secret document showed that, after Schmidt’s visit and his negotiations with Ceauşescu, on 13 January 1978, the passport office in Timiş county recorded 534 emigration requests filed by 1,589 persons. Some 443 families of 1,203 persons filed their first request, whereas the others had already been denied their requests by the Romanian authorities. Of the 1,589 persons who requested permission to emigrate, 1,552 were ethnic Germans and wanted to reach West Germany.41 It is most certain that similar situations were registered in other Romanian counties. Before 1978, the Securitate got involved in the emigration of Romanian ethnic Germans in a judicious manner. The secret documents present the manner in which the bilateral negotiations unfolded, often giving the impression of an oriental bazaar because each side wanted to get the best deal for itself, and negotiations explicitly detailed the number of persons to emigrate and the payment per each head. The Romanians wanted to get as much money as possible. The Germans wanted to make as few and small payments as possible. In fact, the Securitate was interested to obtain large sums of hard currency because part of the money, decided by the Council of Ministers and possibly reaching 20 percent of the payment, could be used for purchasing Western goods and electronic devices for the Interior Ministry, to which the Securitate was subordinated.42 Thus, Schmidt’s visit and the interest of the West German government in regulating emigration at the highest level constituted a golden opportunity for the Securitate, which thus could use the payments to address its own needs. In November 1979, the Romanian side asked for a payment increase of 30 percent per head, reportedly to cover high inflation rates and the expenses which the Romanian state incurred with the free education of those who sought to emigrate. This issue was re-discussed in 1980 and 1981. The German authorities accepted to increase payments from 4,000 to 5,000 dm if the Romanians increased the number of persons allowed to emigrate.43 Negotiations were ultimately successful, and an appendix to the 1978 agreement was signed in March 1981 in Bucharest and Cologne.44 Although a communist institution, the Securitate operated in a market economy as a monopoly that could maximize its profits. In spite of the 1981 agreement, the following year Bucharest asked again for higher payments. Moreover, on 1 November 1982 a Decree of the Romanian State Council provided that “the persons who request and obtain approval to leave Romania and settle in another country must pay all their debts towards the state, socialist organizations and persons, and the expenses the state incurred with their education.”45 The decree reflected the Romanian state’s desire to prevent the brain-drain and to recover the expenses with the training of prospective emigrants, since educa- 68 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) tion was free in the country. At the same time, the decree aimed at increasing the hard currency reserves of a state keen on repaying its foreign debt. Initially, the German side refused to increase payments and invoked the provisions of the 1978 agreement, but ultimately it accepted this condition. The decree set a new ground for negotiations for the Securitate representatives, the more so since the 1978 agreement was about to expire. A new set of negotiations ended on 21 May 1983 with the signing of an agreement covering the 1 July 1983–30 June 1988 period. According to that document, the Ro- manian authorities had to permit 11,000 ethnic Germans to leave the country each year, while the German authorities had to pay 7,800 per person to cover education expenses. Another agreement, signed on 30 June 1978 in Cologne for covering transportation and custom duties, remained confidential.46 The documents demonstrate the efforts of the Romanian authorities (represented by the Securitate) to maximize their profit. In 1984, they asked for the recalculation of payments because of the German mark’s depreciation relative to the American dollar. The German authorities accepted to increase the amounts paid, if Roma- nia agreed to use the money for purchasing West German products.47 The following years saw continuous negotiations, each party trying to obtain more favorable terms. During his visit to West Germany of 15–17 October 1984, Ceauşescu invited German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to Romania.48 The German authorities used this invitation to postpone discussions in an effort to gain the upper hand in the negotiations, although their overall goal was to facilitate the emigration of as many Romanian ethnic Germans as soon as possible. Ultimately, on 8 November 1988, after some tough bargaining, a new confidential convention and a special agreement were signed for the 1 July 1988–30 June 1993 period. The convention stipulated the emigration of 13,994 persons (the number for 1987) at 8,950 dm per head.49 According to the new agreement, the German state had to pay 390 dm for transportation by train, customs and other administrative expenses for each emigrant.50 Given these stipulations, both the convention and the agreement were more favorable to the Romanian state, which gained more money as a result. Although negotiations remained tense because of the Romanians’ insistence on ever higher payments, they proved to be favorable for both countries. Surprisingly, on 4 December 1989 the Romanian authorities decided to uni- laterally annul the confidential convention of the previous year. The reasons were the “failure [on the part of the German state] to comply with the economic, political, commercial agreements” assumed by the German state, the lack of reaction of the German authorities against certain persons involved in “acts or attempts at illegally leaving Romania by citizens of German or Romanian nationality,” and the fact that the confidentiality of certain data from the con- Paradigms • 69 vention had not been respected, the German state/German politicians being accused of releasing information to the press or using it for electoral gains.51 Many Germans with relatives in Romania or sympathetic to the plight of Germans living under the communist regime were represented by very active associations and formed an important electoral segment that German politicians could not ignore. This is why German politicians often publicly released information about emigration, which sometimes reverberated back in Romania, influencing political views in that country. The negotiations on emigration from Romania, including discussions about payments, took place in Romania, Germany or Austria. After 1968, the Ger- man side was represented by lawyer Günther Hüsch (mentioned in the Securi- tate secret documents as “Edward”), an influential figure with access to the top German political leaders, including the chancellor.52 The Romanian side was represented by several German-speaking high-ranking Securitate officers. Until 1978, when Ion Mihai Pacepa, head of the foreign division of the Securitate and personal advisor to Ceauşescu defected to the United States, the Romanian side was represented by the Securitate Major General Gheorghe Marcu. After 1978, Marcu was accompanied by a few Securitate officers like Major General Gheorghe Zagoneanu (deputy interior minister and Pacepa’s successor) or Ste- lian Andronic (head of the Securitate department in charge of hard currency transactions).53 The secret archives reveal that the Securitate was directly involved in the emigration process. The Romanian and German parties to the negotiations were seldom mentioned in the secret files under their real names and almost always under their code names. Code names were also used for locations and even countries. The conversations were marked “confidential” and the Securitate always sought to keep the documents and the details about the negotiations secret. Although the Securitate played a decisive role in this “operation,” it remained only a tool in the hands of the political decision-makers. The negotiations were always communicated to the Romanian ministers of the interior and of external affairs and even to President Ceauşescu, who were only very seldom mentioned in those documents, although they ultimately determined their fate. Indeed, Ceauşescu knew what was going on and supervised the “operation” because in 1982 the head of the Securitate, Tudor Postelnicu, told him that the German side was unhappy because very few Germans had been allowed to emigrate that year. Postelnicu asked that 1,100 to 1,900 people should be allowed to emigrate during the coming months, a proposal approved by Ceauşescu.54 70 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

German Emigration—Source of Illicit Benefits for Securitate and Nomenklatura

fter the Schmidt–Ceauşescu agreement of January 1978, a growing number of Romanian citizens left the country, their number often sur- Apassing the numbers stipulated in the agreements, obliging the Roma- nian authorities to restrict emigration. Thus, new difficulties and setbacks ap- peared in the process of obtaining a visa. The most common methods used by the authorities to stall emigration included delaying to answer emigration requests. Once the application was submitted, years passed before an answer, not always positive, came.55 In addition, the Securitate involved in the process a long chain of intermediaries, who facilitated emigration for significant amounts of money or presents.56 Obtaining such undeserved benefits was punishable by law, and Securitate officers with decisive roles in emigration used intermediaries to cover their own involvement. The Securitate archives mentioned names of people convicted for having asked for money to mediate emigration approvals. Lawyer Günther Hüsch, a German representative in negotiations, was often given such lists to demonstrate the good faith of the Romanian side in dealing with emigration without intermediaries. Such cases were also reported in the press, to discourage those who wanted to benefit from the desperation of those willing to emigrate and show the German side that the Securitate and the Miliþia were keeping the phenomenon under control.57 When the Securitate found out the names of intermediaries in West Germany, they were presented to Hüsch, so that the German authorities could prosecute them.58 At this time we do not possess information about the way intermediaries from Germany acted. They might have drawn up lists of persons in need of urgent departure from Romania, and subsequently submitted them to politicians. In fact, such cases are frequently mentioned in the Securitate archives, when top German politicians (even ministers) intermediated urgent cases. Hüsch submitted these lists to the Securitate; he was allowed to negotiate even larger amounts to be paid if these “special cases” were solved quickly.59 Besides the “official” amounts paid by the German state for each emigrant, additional amounts were sometimes paid, a point also underscored by the interviewees.60 Besides money, the Securitate officers and nomenklatura members with an important role in controlling emigration often showed interest in the assets of the Germans. The nomenklatura, born shortly after the communist regime was set up, consisted of social luminaries and the politically privileged. It enjoyed genuine class privileges related to membership in the communist party, not their own merits. The nomenklatura included three layers: 1) the top no- Paradigms • 71 menklatura (the several hundred top party members and state authorities, heads of the Securitate, the army, the courts, and other central organizations); 2) the thousand or so members of the local nomenklatura; 3) and other privileged categories (including tens of thousands of senior Securitate and Miliþia officers, heads of large companies, party and union activists, those working in foreign trade, professors, doctors, writers, actors, journalists).61 Their influence depended on their position in the party-state, but the closer they were to decision makers in the Securitate, the greater their influence. Their interests were similar to the Securitate: to obtain valuables, money or houses for facilitating emigration. Interest in German dwellings emerged because during communism it was very difficult to get permission to build a house in a city and, given the low revenue levels, it was hard to justify the money needed for building a multi-room house similar to those owned by ethnic Germans, which could be taken over relatively easily once they emigrated. The interest of the Securitate employees in the houses of those who intended to emigrate has been presented by Herman Pitters of Sibiu, who focused on this issue, pointing out that not all dwellings were targeted, only houses in the good city districts.62 Hans Klein remembers the interest of the nomenklatura in the emigration of Germans. In Sibiu, being appointed to a higher Communist Party position was a very good opportunity to change housing by “helping” a German family to emigrate in order to take over their home.63 In the last decades of communism, many Romanians from small towns or rural areas wished to live in larger cities, where the economic background and living conditions were better. But big cities were “closed,” and permission to relocate there was rarely given. Klein pointed out the interest of some Securitate officers in Sibiu to own a house in a rural area called Marpod, 32 kilometers away from the city. We have no information about the reason which made them want to own a home there, but we can assume that originally a few leading representatives of the political police and the nomenklatura obtained houses in this village and later, mimetically, other officers wanted to belong to “a select circle” of those who owned residences there.64 The issue related to the houses of those who wanted to emigrate was more complex, since Decree 223 of 3 December 1974 allowed the authorities to purchase the emigrants’ properties at fixed prices, well below their real value, to the great disadvantage of the Germans. To avoid highly valued houses being signed over to the state for less than the market value, some of those who intended to emigrate sold their houses before they applied for emigration papers. All sorts of difficulties encountered by the Germans who wanted to emigrate were evidenced by the Romanians and Germans I interviewed.65 As reflected 72 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) by these interviews, those who applied for visas were subjected to considerable pressure, and in many cases they faced the additional problem of children at- tending universities and there was the risk that they may have been forced to give up their studies because of their parents’ intention to emigrate. Another Romanian respondent stated that “all the Germans went crazy. Al- most everyone requested to leave, but weren’t allowed to do so. The moment they had a chance to go, they left. Some 90 percent [of them] never came back, but they weren’t allowed to leave the country. If they had been allowed to take trips or leave... they would not have come back. Some of them, I guess most of them, submitted requests 10 or 15 years in advance... [the Securitate] allowed only a few to go, 100,000 or so... I cannot give an exact number, but I guess there were over a million requests and only a few thousand actually left every year.”66 Even if the figures presented by the interviewees are inflated, they show how Romanians perceived this huge desire of the Germans to emigrate. This interviewee, like the previous one, insists that the long periods of waiting for the visa approval amounted to a high psychological pressure on the Germans. Another important problem was with those who requested temporary or permanent departure for medical reasons or relocation. These had to be dealt with on a priority basis, which did not happen regularly, and on such occasions some Securitate officers took advantage of the desperation of those families in order to obtain personal benefits.67

Conclusions

fter World War II most Germans living in Romania wanted to emigrate to Germany. Although Romania ratified several international trea- Aties which stipulated the respect for human rights68 (among them the right to leave the native country at any time), the communist regime constantly infringed these rights. This situation forced those who wanted to leave the country to resort to alternative solutions to emigrate, including trying to apply pressure on Romania through international bodies, by lobbying well-known political foreign representatives, or illegally crossing the border. Gradually, the desire for emigration became a social phenomenon, as a consequence of the large number of people who wanted to emigrate, important sums of money being used to facilitate emigration. The Securitate identified in the Germans’ desire to emigrate a potential source of foreign currency, indispensable for the communist state. After 1962 the Secu- ritate became increasingly involved in controlling the approvals for emigration. After the visit of the German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt to Romania in 1978, Paradigms • 73 the Romanian and West German representatives signed a series of secret “conventions” and “agreements.” A careful analysis of the secret police files demon- strates that both parties pursued their interests: West Germany wanted to help as many Germans as possible to leave Romania, while the Romanians claimed “damages” in exchange for emigration permits. Although these agreements were secret, a segment of the Romanian population (both Romanians and Germans) knew about the secret police’s involvement in this matter. The fact that the Germans knew about the Securitate’s involvement could be explained by the fact that the persons who wanted to emigrate were obliged to come into contact with the repressive institution. Although talks about emigration were held in secret because of the fear inspired by the Securitate, some Romanians knew details about this situation, especially those living in mixed Romanian-German communities. After the collapse of the communist regime, access to the Securitate’s secret archive allowed historians to better understand the involvement of this repressive institution in the emigration process. Although relatively few documents show the decisive role of the Romanian Communist Party leaders in emigration, their involvement is obvious. And the Securitate, as an instrument of repression and social control, implemented the decisions of party leaders and managed the emigration of ethnic Germans from Romania. The Securitate permanently tried by way of countless negotiations to obtain the maximum of benefits for the communist state and for itself, as an institution, because the money received could be used by the political police. Not just the Romanian state and the Se- curitate benefited from these “transactions,” but also some of the secret officers and representatives of the nomenklatura, who took advantage of the Germans’ desire to emigrate in order to obtain undeserved benefits. On the basis of the documents and the oral history testimonies, we can ap- preciate that after 1962, and especially after 1978, the Securitate behaved as a “company” specializing in human trafficking, and the communist regime in Bu- charest proved once again to be a totalitarian one for which some fundamental rights (to life, freedom of movement, a decent living) represented only words meant to be mentioned in the Constitution but never respected. q

Notes

1. The Securitate managed the emigration of the Germans, as its departments were directly involved in solving the problems of those willing to emigrate. From 1978 to 1989, emigration was controlled centrally by the “Centrul de Informaþii Externe– 74 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

cie” (Foreign Intelligence Center), in particular the officers of the “Aport Valutar Special–avs” (Special Currency Actions Unit), which secured the currency necessary to repay Romania’s foreign debt. Officers of other Securitate departments also played an important role given their ability to decide who received approval for emigration depending on a number of factors, including their own personal interest. Florica Dobre et al., Acþiunea “Recuperarea”: Securitatea şi emigrarea germanilor din România (1962–1989) (Bucharest: Ed. Enciclopedicã, 2011), passim. 2. For details about migrations and the general reasons of it, see Nicoleta Tufan “Mobili- tate vs. Migraþie”, in Revista de cercetare ºi intervenþie socialã 19 (2007): 99–114. 3. Georg Weber et al., Emigration der Siebenbürger Sachsen: Studien zu Ost-West-Wan- derungen im 20. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 2003); David Rock and Stefan Wolf, eds., Coming Home to Germany? The Integration of Ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe in the Federal Republic (New York–Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2002); Karl-Rudolf Brandsch, Flucht aus dem Reich Ceausescus: 40 km im Fluss Timisch (Aachen: Helios, 2006); Siegfried Chambre, Auf und davon oder Der Traum vom Roten Flugzeug (Stutgart: Rex Verlag, 1994); Herta Müller, Herztier (Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag, 1993); Rainer Münz and Ralf E. Ulrich, “Internationale Wanderungen von und nach Deutschland 1945–1994: Demogra- phische, politische und gesellschaftliche Aspekte räumlicher Mobilität,” Allgemeines Statistisches Archiv 1, 1996; Rainer Münz and Ralf E. Ulrich, “Changing Patterns of German Immigration, 1945–1994,” in Migration Past, Migration Future: Germany and the United States, eds. Klaus J. Bade and Miron Wiener (Oxford: Berghahn, 1997); Anneli Ute Gabanyi, “Die Deutschen in Rumänien: Exodus oder Neuan- fang?,” in Die Siebenbürger Sachsen in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Hans Rothe (Cologne–Weimar–Vienna: Böhlau, 1994); id., “Die aufnahme der diplomatischen Beziehungen zwischen Bundesrepublik Deutschland und Rumänien (31 Januar 1967): Voraussetzungen und Folgen,” in Punþi în istorie: Studii româno-germane, eds. Cãtãlin Turliuc and Flavius Solomon (Iaşi: Cantes, 2001). 4. Valerie Raleigh Yow, Recording Oral History: A Practical Guide for Social Scientists (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1994), 45; François de Singly et al., Ancheta şi metodele ei, trans. (Iaşi: Polirom, 1998), 149–150. 5. Paul Ricœur, Memoria, istoria, uitarea, trans. (Timişoara: Amarcord, 2001), 216. 6. Ioan Bolovan and Sorina Bolovan, “Contribuþii privind structura etnicã şi confe- sionalã a Transilvaniei în secolul XX,” in Sabin Manuilã: Istorie şi demografie: Studii privind societatea româneascã între secolele XVI-XX, eds. Sorina Bolovan and Ioan Bolovan (Cluj-Napoca: Centrul de Studii Transilvane, Fundaþia Culturalã Românã, 1995), 157–161. 7. Recensãmântul general al populaþiei României din 29 decembrie 1930, vol. 2 (Bucha- rest: Monitorul Oficial, 1938), 24; Recensãmântul populaþiei din 21 februarie 1956: Rezultate generale (Bucharest: Direcþia Generalã de Statisticã, 1959), 19; Recen- sãmântul populaþiei şi locuinþelor din 7 ianuarie 1992 (Bucharest: Comisia Naþionalã de Statisticã, 1994), 47, 708. 8. About the situation of minorities in Romania and minority policies of communist regime see Brigitte Mihok, “Minorities and minority policies in Romania since 1945”, in Patterns of Prejudice 27, 2 (1993): 81–93. Paradigms • 75

9. Rudolf Poledna, Sint ut sunt, aut non sint? Transformãri sociale la saşii ardeleni dupã 1945: o analizã sociologicã din perspectivã sistemicã (Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitarã Clujeanã, 2001), 89. 10. Ibid. 11. An important study about the discourse of the Securitate in relation with Germans was made by Corneliu Pintilescu, “Die Konstruktion politischer Vergehen im Dis- kurs: Eine vergleichende Analyse dreier Prozesse gegen Angehörige der deutschen Minderheit Rumäniens (1958-1962),” Transylvanian Review 22, 4 (2013): 116– 140. 12. Dobre et al., 32–33. 13. Ibid. 14. Katherine Verdery, “From Parent-State to Family Patriarchs: Gender and Nation in Contemporary Eastern Europe,” East European Politics and Societies 8, 2 (1994): 236. 15. Gabanyi, “Die aufnahme der diplomatischen Beziehungen,” 178. 16. Ibid., 179. 17. “Jahresstatistiken des Bundesausgleichsamtes” (Az.: I/2–Vt. 6.380), quoted in Ernst Wagner, “Minoritãþi etnice şi religioase în Transilvania din 1992,” in Transilvania şi saşii ardeleni în istoriografie (Sibiu: Hora, 2001), 186. 18. Ernst Wagner, Istoria saşilor ardeleni (Bucharest–Munich: Meronia, 2000), 94. 19. Andrei Roth, Naþionalism sau democratism (Târgu-Mureş: Pro Europa, 1999), 317– 318. 20. Poledna, 122. 21. Wagner, Istoria, 94. 22. Recensãmântul populaþiei şi locuinþelor din 7 ianuarie 1992, 47. 23. Wagner, Istoria, 94. 24. Dobre et al., 55. 25. Ibid., 29. 26. Ibid., 33. 27. Ibid., 43. 28. Ibid., 53. 29. For details, see Liviu Þãranu, “Afacerea ‘Peregrinii,’” in Pietre de hotar, vol. 6, eds. Constantin Moşincat and Dan Poinar (Oradea: Tipo mc, 2007), 221–229, and Do- bre et al., 51. 30. Liviu Þãranu and Elena Gherman, “Câteva consideraþii pe marginea evoluþiei econ- omiei româneşti în ultimul deceniu comunist,” in Sfârşitul regimurilor comuniste: Cauze, desfãşurare şi consecinþe, eds. Cosmin Budeancã and Florentin Olteanu (Cluj- Napoca: Argonaut, 2011), 108–109. 31. Mihai Bãrbulescu, Dennis Deletant, Keith Hitchins, ªerban Papacostea, and Pompil- iu Teodor, Istoria României (Bucharest: Corint, 2007), 545–546. 32. Dobre et al., 55. 33. Arhiva Consiliului Naþional pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securitãþii (The Archive of the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives; hereafter cited as ancssa), Document Collection, file no. 13381, vol. 13, fols. 12, 20. 34. Dobre et al., 56. 76 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

35. Ibid., passim. 36. ancssa, Foreign Intelligence Service’s Collection (fis Coll.), file no. 52873, vol. 6, fols. 4–5. 37. Dobre et al., 56. 38. About the problems with integration see Barbara Marshall, “‘Migration’ into Germany: Asylum Seekers and Ethnic Germans,” German Politics 1, 1 (1992): 124–134. 39. ancssa, Document Collection, file no. 13381, vol. 14, fol. 1. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid., vol. 13, fol. 39. 42. Dobre et al., 48. 43. Ibid., 57–58. 44. ancssa, fis Collection, file no. 52873, vol. 6, fols. 8–9. 45. Decree 402 of 1 November 1982, Monitorul oficial al Republicii Socialiste România, pt. 1, no. 95, 1 November 1982. 46. ancssa, fis Collection, file no. 52873, vol. 2, fols. 135–136. 47. Dobre et al., 65. 48. Ion Calafeteanu, ed., Istoria politicii externe româneşti în date (Bucharest: Ed. Enci- clopedicã, 2003), 547. 49. ancssa, fis Collection, file no. 52873, vol. 6, fols. 59–62; Dobre et al., 65. 50. Ibid., fols. 69–70. 51. Ibid., vol. 5, fols. 187–188. 52. The viewpoint on this matter of the lawyer Günther Hüsch was published in an interview with journalist Hannelore Baier in Allgemeine Deutsche Zeitung (Sibiu), 29 October, 1, 2 and 3 November 2011. 53. ancssa, fis Collection, file no. 52873, passim. 54. Ibid., vol. 6, fol. 10. 55. Interviews with Alice Pfaff (born in 1933, German, worker; the interview was conducted on 14 June 2002 in Orãştie); Helmut Weidenfelder (born in 1968, Ger- man, manager in Dinkelsbühl, Germany; the interview was conducted on 11 August 2002, in Orãştie); Cornel Buciuman (born in 1929, Romanian, tailor; the interview was conducted on 19 February 2004, in Orãştie); Vasile Restantia jr. (born in 1962, Romanian, plumber; the interview was conducted on 30 July 2005, in ªura Mare village, Sibiu county); Valeria Brendea (born in 1927, Romanian, farmer; the interview was conducted on 31 July 2004, in Petreşti village, Alba county); Aure- lia Vasiu (born in 1928, Romanian, worker; the interview was conducted on 20 October 2002, in Aurel Vlaicu village, Hunedoara county); author’s and Valentin Orga personal interview with Vasile Ghişoiu (born in 1920, Romanian, farmer; the interview was conducted on 31 July 2005, in Câlnic village, Alba county); Denisa Bodeanu’s personal interview with Klaus Werner Neugeboren (born in 1945, Ger- man, priest; the interview was conducted on 19 October 2010, in Bucharest, and is available in the Oral History Archive of ancssa). Cosmin Budeancã, “Emigraþia saşilor din Orãştie în ultimul deceniu al regimului communist,” in Analele Sighet 10. Anii 1973–1989: Cronica unui sfârşit de sistem, ed. Romulus Rusan (Bucharest: Fundaþia Academia Civicã, 2003), 243–244. Paradigms • 77

56. Renate Göckler-Timoschenko, “Retragerea germanilor din istoria românã,” in România versus România (Bucharest: Clavis, 1996), 63. 57. ancssa, fis Collection, file no. 52873, vol. 2, fol. 204v. 58. Ibid., passim. 59. Ibid. 60. Interviews with Helmuth Frauendorfer (born in 1959, German, writer; the interview was conducted on 26 august 2011, in Râmnicu Sãrat); Hans Klein (born in 1940, German, priest-teacher; the interview was conducted on 10 November 2011, in Sibiu, and is available in the personal archive of the author). 61. Vladimir Tismãneanu, Dorin Dobrincu, and Cristian Vasile, eds., Raport final (Bu- charest: Humanitas, 2007), 468–469. 62. Author’s personal interview with Herman Pitters (born in 1932, German, teacher of theology, dean of the Protestant Theological Institute of Sibiu; the interview was conducted on 10 November 2011, in Sibiu, and is available in the personal archive of the author). 63. Interview with Hans Klein. 64. Ibid. 65. Cosmin Budeancã, “Percepþia emigrãrii etnicilor germani în perioada 1945–1989 în memoria colectivã a comunitãþilor româneşti,” aio—Anuarul Institutului de Istorie Oralã 9 (Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitarã Clujeanã, 2008): 183; id., “Emi- graþia,” 235–251. Interviews with Alice Pfaff, Helmut Weidenfelder, Klaus Werner Neugeboren, Helmuth Frauendorfer, Paul Helmut Niedermaier (born in 1937, Ger- man, historian and architect; the interview was conducted on 9 November 2011, in Sibiu); Ion Badicã (born in 1940, Romanian, teacher, retired; the interview was conducted on 23 July 2003, in Batiz village, Hunedoara county); Hannelore Baier (born in 1955, German, journalist; the interview was conducted on 10 November 2011, in Sibiu). Interviews available in the personal archive of the author. 66. Interview with Nicolae Ieronim Gritu (born in 1955, Romanian, naval officer, hor- ticulturist; the interview was conducted on 31 October 2004, in Cristian village, Sibiu county). 67. Interview with Carmen Monica Bianu (born in 1955, German, chemistry teacher; the interview was conducted on 13 June 2002, in Orãştie, and is available in the Archive of the Institute for Oral History of Cluj-Napoca). 68. Romania had been a United Nations member since 1955 and was obliged to respect the United Nations Charter; in 1974 it ratified the International Agreement on Civil and Political Rights regarding economic, social and cultural rights; in 1975 it participated in the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe and it took note of the Helsinki Final Act, including its provisions related to human rights, without implementing them in the national legislation. 78 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

Abstract The Merchants of Human Beings: The Securitate’s Role in the Emigration of Romania’s Germans (1978–1989)

In January 1978 the German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt visited Romania and had discussions with communist President Nicolae Ceauşescu about the issue of Romanian German emigrants. After this, the two countries signed several ‘secret conventions’ which set the number of emigrants and the price to be paid for each of them. The former Romanian communist political police (Se- curitate) controlled this emigration in the period 1978–1989. The present study is based especially on documents of the former Romanian communist political police, oral history interviews, and bibliographical sources.

Keywords communism, emigration, Transylvanian Saxons, oral history, Securitate focus

Réflexions à l’occasion I o a n -A u r e l P o p d’une cérémonie

Mesdames et Messieurs, Aujourd’hui, la Grande Littérature est, une fois de plus, notre invitée dans cette vénérable aula ! Après avoir accueilli Mario Vargas Llosa, nous continuons la fête de la lati- nité, grâce à la suite généreuse que l’écri- vain António Lobo Antunes a donnée à notre invitation, lancée par l’intermé- diaire d’un messager de marque, l’écri- vain Dinu Flãmând. Depuis quelque temps, nous préparons fébrilement la venue de l’auteur portugais à Cluj et c’est le mérite de la Faculté des Lettres et du Sénat de l’Université Babeş-Bolyai d’avoir participé à ce petit « complot ». Son Excellence, l’Écrivain, n’a pas Ioan-Aurel Pop et António Lobo Antunes besoin de superlatifs et il n’aime pas non plus les éloges décontextualisés. Il serait, de ce fait, superflu d’exhiber hic et nunc ses grandes qualités narratives, son art de modeler la langue de Camões, ses formules uniques de s’adresser aux lecteurs, sa qualité de

La rubrique « Focus » est dédiée à l’écri- Ioan-Aurel Pop vain portuguais António Lobo Antunes, Recteur de l’Université Babeº-Bolyai, qui le 6 octobre 2014 a reçu le titre de doc- membre de l’Académie Roumaine, direc tor honoris causa de la part de l’Université teur du Centre d’Études Transylvaines. Babeº-Bolyai de Cluj-Napoca. 80 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) médecin des âmes, dans le double sens de l’expression… Ceux qui ont la qualité nécessaire le feront sans doute, avec les moyens spécifiques du métier. Dans une interview accordée récemment, à Bucarest, l’écrivain affirmait : « Je vous donne mon âme, j’essaye d’exister à vos yeux. J’existe, mais je ne suis pas celui que vous voyez. L’autre moi, celui qui existe derrière les paroles, est le plus important. Les gens ne voient pas mon âme, ils voient mes paroles. » Pourtant, la forme d’expression de l’homme des lettres est représentée par « les mots qui génèrent des mots » et qui expriment tout un monde. Un monde qui, doublé de talent, devient réalité. António Lobo Antunes avouait que son intention était de toujours « placer le monde entre les couvertures d’un livre ». Comme il n’est jamais satisfait du résultat, il continue sa démarche à la grande joie de ses lecteurs, dont nous faisons, nous aussi, partie. Il voyage d’une marge de la latinité vers l’autre, fasciné qu’il est de la variété du continent, des continents, des gens. Il vient d’un pays qui a déterminé un de nos grands prédécesseurs, Lucian Blaga, professeur dans cette université, à constater avec un grand étonnement la similarité entre les formes du vocatif fé- minin roumain, respectivement portugais, lorsque, un beau matin, à Lisbonne, il entendit une voix douce et ferme à la fois qui criait « Mãrio ! ». Les linguistes et les sociologues qui se sont penchés sur les ressemblances entre les deux langues, entre le parler de la région de Banat et certains parlers brésiliens, ont trouvé parfois des explications hallucinantes à cette situation : l’attraction des extrêmes, les bizarres évolutions identiques ou similaires des régions qui n’ont jamais été en contact, mais qui ont vécu pendant des siècles sous la même étoile. Antó- nio Lobo Antunes vient vers nous avec tout le charme du monde portugais, si généreusement présent dans ses œuvres, avec une richesse de sens exprimés par des mots et un « ordre naturel des choses » que nous avions oublié et qu’il nous rappelle avec une douce insistance. Nous sommes très heureux de l’accueillir dans cette université, endroit consacré « aux lettres et à la vertu » dès 1581, quand un roi de Pologne d’origine hongroise, à la fois prince de Transylvanie, né à Vilnius (actuellement en Lituanie, mais à l’époque dans le Royaume de Pologne-Lituanie), fonda à Cluj un collège jésuite important, dans lequel était censé étudier le fils d’un voïévode roumain orthodoxe… Cette université, dans laquelle les cours sont dispensés en plusieurs langues régionales et internatio- nales, rend aujourd’hui hommage à l’altérité, à la diversité, au multiculturalisme et à l’interculturalisme, à l’œcuménisme, donc, en un mot, au dialogue. C’est avant la lettre que la littérature comparée, l’esprit livresque des Lu- mières, les livres de sagesse, la fascination de la lecture, l’esprit sud-est européen, le mystère secret des mots ont animé, dans cette université, les sujets des écrits et des débats. Avec une force telle que d’aucuns étaient capables d’entendre « les rayons de la lune frapper aux carreaux ». Vous avez évoqué comme nul autre l’atmosphère de l’enfance et les figures des grands-parents, reconstruites d’après Focus • 81 une photographie ancienne, abîmée par le temps. Tout comme Jorge Amado, vous nous avez exhortés, Maître, à ne pas rater l’arrivée de « la licorne blanche », celle qui ne se montre qu’une fois ! Et ceux qui ne la ratent pas – les chanceux aux- quels la « licorne blanche » se montre –, pourraient même, comme vous le dites, être heureux. Nous le sommes, aujourd’hui, puisque vous êtes parmi nous. Nous le sommes parce que vous nous encouragez à prendre garde, à ne pas oublier les mots, à ne pas rater la communication et la vie, à ne pas compliquer la vie, si pleine de substance dans sa simplicité… Médecin des âmes, au sens littéral de l’expression, vous êtes devenu l’un des plus grands « médecins des âmes » de l’humanité avec vos méthodes simples et anciennes, mais oubliées, voire méprisées par certains. Cela fait longtemps que vous nous racontez l’histoire du monde et nous ne nous lassons pas de la lire, de la vivre encore et encore dans l’enchantement et l’ensorcellement perpétuel des mots qui bâtissent, ces mots dont vous nous parlez. C’est grâce au mot qui bâtit que nous vous célébrons en ce lieu privilégié, situé à la frontière de la latinité orientale ; c’est là que les Tristes et les Pontiques du poète de Sulmone côtoient « des princes du Levant » errant dans les « forêts de cuivre » et « d’argent » ; c’est là que la spiritualité du peuple qui a vu naître le Vasco de Gama, décrit dans Les Lusiades, rejoint le vécu d’un autre peuple, qui, vers 1500, cherchait à son tour, fiévreusement, un « monde nouveau », illustré, par exemple, à Voroneþ, par les peintres anonymes du Jugement Dernier. Quant à vous, Maître, vous êtes non seulement un explorateur, mais, à l’ins- tar de votre illustre prédécesseur, un découvreur de mondes, que vous partagez avec nous à travers les mots. Vous n’êtes pas toujours content des mots, mais ô, combien de joie vos mots procurent aux profanes que nous sommes ! Nous vous souhaitons d’avoir toujours le pouvoir de manier le mot capable de susciter révélations, sentiments extraordinaires, et, surtout, espoir… Puissiez-vous toujours avoir la force de manier le verbe qui suscite la révéla- tion et le merveilleux et, surtout, celui qui donne de l’espoir... q (Traduit du roumain par Renata Georgescu et Alina Pelea)

Abstract Reflections on the Occasion of a Ceremony

The text is the transcript of the laudatio delivered by the rector of Babeº-Bolyai University of Cluj- Napoca at the ceremony during which the Portuguese writer António Lobo Antunes was awarded the title of doctor honoris causa.

Keywords António Lobo Antunes, Western and Eastern Latin worlds, Babeº-Bolyai University António Lobo Antunes Ruxandra Cesereanu Un fado polyphonique en prose

La seconde moitié du XXe a été marquée par l’explosion retentissante de la littérature de langue espagnole qui, dans les pays de l’Est, surtout en Roumanie, a connu son plus grand succès. Mais la littérature portugaise n’a pas été en reste. Nominé à plusieurs reprises pour le prix Nobel, António Lobo Antunes est un des auteurs majeurs de la prose portugaise contemporaine, au même titre que José Saramago et Gonçalo M. Tavares. António Lobo Antunes est né à Lis- bonne en 1942. Il a suivi les cours de la Faculté de médecine dans la capitale Ruxandra Cesereanu portugaise et il s’est spécialisé, en suivant la tradition de sa famille, en psychiatrie. Après plusieurs années d’exercice dans ce domaine, il s’est finalement consacré à l’écriture. En 1971, il part pour l’Angola, en tant que méde- cin militaire (chirurgien et psychiatre), et rentre au Portugal en 1973. Il fait ses débuts en prose après la défascisation de son pays, à l’âge de 37 ans, avec deux romans publiés en 1979, intitulés Mémoire d’éléphant, respectivement Le Cul de Judas. Ruxandra Cesereanu Leur a suivi toute une série de Professeur de littérature comparée à la romans qui ont consacré l’auteur : Faculté des Lettres de l’Université Babeº- Connaissance de l’enfer (1980), Expli- Bolyai de Cluj-Napoca, écrivain. cation des oiseaux (1981), Fado alexan- Focus • 83 drino (1983), La Farce des damnés (1985), Le Retour des caravelles (1988, traduit en roumain en 2003), Traité des passions de l’âme (1990), L’Ordre naturel des choses (1992, traduit en roumain en 2009), La Mort de Carlos Gardel (1995), Le Manuel des inquisiteurs (1996, traduit en roumain en 2000), La Splendeur du Portugal (1997), Exhortation aux crocodiles (1999, traduit en roumain en 2004), N’entre pas si vite dans cette nuit noire (2000), Que ferai-je quand tout brûle ? (2001), Bonsoir les choses d’ici-bas (2003, traduit en roumain en 2006), Il me faut aimer une pierre (2004), Je ne t’ai pas vu hier dans Babylone (2006), Mon nom est légion (2007), La Nébuleuse de l’insomnie (2008, traduit en roumain en 2011), Quels sont ces chevaux qui jettent leur ombre sur la mer ? (2009), Au bord des fleuves qui s’en vont (2010), La Commission des larmes (2011), N’est pas minuit qui veut (2012). António Lobo Antunes écrit aussi des essais, réunis dans cinq volumes de Chroniques (1995–2013), publiées initialement en feuilleton. En reconnaissance de la valeur de ses écrits, l’auteur a reçu la Grande Croix de l’Ordre Saint-Jacques de l’Épée (2004) et le titre de Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres (2008). Plusieurs universités lui ont conféré le titre de doctor honoris causa : l’Université de Constantza (Roumanie), l’Université de Trás-os-Montes et Alto Minho et l’Université de Lisbonne. António Lobo Antunes a reçu de nombreux prix, dont nous allons rap- peler juste quelques-uns. Au Portugal : Grand prix de la fiction et du roman (1985, 1999), Prix du Club littéraire de Porto (2008), Prix Camões (2007). En France : Prix France Culture de littérature étrangère (1996), Prix du meilleur livre étranger (1997). En Autriche : Prix de littérature étrangère (2001). En Espagne : Prix Rosalía de Castro (2001). En Italie : Prix international de l’Union latine (2003), Prix Nonino (2013), Prix Europe de l’Université de Bari (2014). En Roumanie : Prix Ovidius (2003). En Israel : Prix Jérusalem (2004). Au Mexique : Prix Juan Rulfo (2008). La saga historique des romans d’António Lobo Antunes s’articule autour de la quête et de la découverte de l’identité du Portugal moderne, ou autour de la reconfiguration du passé (y compris de l’histoire coloniale en Angola et au Mozambique). Aussi les spécialistes de son œuvre l’ont-ils comparé avec toute une série de grands noms de l’espace épique universel : Faulkner, Hemingway, Lowry, Camus, Proust, Woolf, Joyce, Céline, Conrad, Cortázar, Nabokov, Dos Passos, Canetti, Bernhard. L’auteur lui-même avoue certaines de ces influences lors de plusieurs interviews alors que, dans certains de ses romans, il rend hommage, entre les lignes, à Faulkner, Hemingway, Lowry ou Céline. Le véritable défi pour tout critique consiste, pourtant, à commenter Lobo Antunes sans le comparer à personne d’autre qu’à lui-même, affirme Chad Post dans son article intitulé « Why Read António Lobo Antunes »1, publié dans The Quarterly Conversation, en 2011. Bien sûr, l’auteur portugais s’est approprié la 84 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) technique de plusieurs maîtres (tout particulièrement des maîtres du grotesque), mais, au-delà de sa double formation d’auteur et de lecteur, il est parvenu à éla- borer et à imposer son propre style, très particulier, reconnaissable entre tous dans le paysage de la prose contemporaine. Chad Post parle, à cet égard, de la méta-construction spécifique des romans d’António Lobo Antunes et de la tridimensionnalité de ses personnages, qui se manifestent de manière polyphonique et que l’auteur laisse, à bon escient, interagir à tort et à travers. Mais Lobo Antunes ne cesse de surprendre par la variété de ses centres d’intérêt et de ses préoccupations : par exemple, en 1978, donc au tout début de sa carrière de prosateur, le psychiatre Lobo Antunes a écrit, avec Daniel Sampaio, un article scientifique qui portait sur Lewis Carroll et Alice au Pays des merveilles.2 L’écrivain est souvent comparé à son compatriote, le prosateur José Sara- mago, lauréat du prix Nobel de littérature. Tandis que certains critiques dis- cutent dans des termes polémiques au sujet du duo épique Lobo Antunes/Sara- mago sur la carte de la prose contemporaine européenne et portugaise, d’autres considèrent que les deux auteurs se complètent parfaitement l’un l’autre. Dans son article « Doctor and Patient : A Portuguese novelist dissects his country », publié dans The New Yorker en 2009, Peter Conrad propose une comparaison utile et pertinente : pendant que Saramago déploie une fantaisie boulimique et fictionnalise assidûment, Lobo Antunes est un réaliste obstiné, un anatomiste de la psyché humaine et un analyste de l’histoire du Portugal (qui entreprend une autopsie du colonialisme et du postcolonialisme). Saramago est un « mage », un roi de l’imaginaire, tandis que Lobo Antunes est un diagnosticien et un « exor- ciste »3 ; Saramago est a-temporel et a-spatial, tandis que Lobo Antunes s’avère être une « conscience nationale » (une conscience sceptique, voire cynique), par ses leçons d’anatomie politique visant la dictature d’António de Oliveira Salazar (1932-1968), le régime de Marcelo Caetano (successeur de Salazar, celui-ci a cautionné le régime d’extrême droite jusqu’en 1974), mais aussi le Portugal de la Révolution des Œillets (avril 1974) et ses avatars. Lobo Antunes entreprend une véritable biopsie de la société portugaise des cinquante dernières années.4 Différents analystes de l’œuvre épique de Lobo Antunes s’accordent, en géné- ral, pour dire qu’il y a plusieurs étapes dans sa prose. Si, au début, l’auteur s’est fait remarquer par l’architecture de ses romans, il est devenu par la suite un maître du style narratif. La plupart des commentateurs parlent de trois étapes dans l’évolution de son style (une quatrième étant, selon eux, à venir). Ces étapes ne sont pourtant pas nettement définies et ne fonctionnent pas de manière auto- nome. Elles dépendent de plusieurs types de mémoires, que l’auteur manipule de main de maître. En général, il s’agit de mémoires secondaires qui modifient, partiellement, la mémoire centrale tout en la reconfigurant. En fonction de leur relation avec la mémoire (ou « l’imagination mnémonique »), Felipe Cammaert5 Focus • 85 distingue trois types de romans : 1. romans autobiographiques, 2. romans poly- phoniques et 3. romans poétiques.

ans le sillage de ces commentateurs, nous dirions qu’il s’agit d’une mémoire anti-messianique, une mémoire collective pathologisée et D pathologisante, marquée, en partie et dans peu de cas, par le saudade. Lorsqu’il commente ou fictionnalise de façon réaliste l’histoire du Portugal au XXe siècle, Lobo Antunes est déçu – on s’en doute – par le salazarisme et par ses prolongements, mais aussi par la Révolution des Œillets d’avril 1974, donc par l’étape de défascisation du Portugal. Chaque fragment de l’histoire moderne du pays est considéré, de facto, comme imparfait, corrompu, blâmable, d’où les accents satiriques et caricaturaux ou d’anti-utopie obstinée dont l’auteur fait montre. Il a l’obsession de la quête de l’identité d’un pays et d’une patrie qui devraient trouver une voie pour parvenir à une nouvelle genèse. Or, cette dernière est bloquée par des obstacles moraux et des réflexes socio-politiques impurs. Le Portugal colonialiste et postcolonialiste est caractérisé aussi par le nom grotesque utilisé par l’auteur : le « lusotropicalisme » (un des mythes du régime d’extrême droite au pouvoir de 1932 à 1974) est fermement dénoncé par António Lobo Antunes, comme abusif et atroce.6 Les livres de cet auteur portugais composent un fado polyphonique ; d’ailleurs, un de ses romans les plus importants s’intitule Fado alexandrino, un titre qui évoque à bon escient la mélancolie et la résignation devant le destin, qui ca- ractérisent le fado, genre musical typiquement portugais, paru au début du XIXe siècle, dont les paroles portent, principalement, sur les aléas du destin. Chez cet auteur, le fado acquiert également un sens politique, il devient un lamento face à la chute du Portugal et de ses colonies ; la mélancolie opère comme un verdict médical. Presque tous les romans de Lobo Antunes ont une musicalité fatale, de lamento national, de deuil portugais, tout en exprimant une déception constante en ce qui concerne la vie dans le Portugal contemporain. Le sentiment récurrent de l’auteur est la nostalgie (saudade) qui, dans ces temps, s’est transformée en déception et anéantissement. Ce fado polyphonique spécifique de Lobo Antunes confère à ses romans l’air d’une épitaphe, que l’on comprend comme telle dans une espèce de ralenti. Dans les livres où c’est la ville de Lisbonne qui constitue la toile de fond narrative l’auteur construit un tissu psycho-géographique subtil et complexe, articulé autour de la démythification des grands mythes et figures de la nation. Il raille et il s’amuse au sujet de la gloire d’antan et de la supposée gloire contemporaine de son pays. La psyché portugaise a été configurée par la géographie et par l’histoire, telle est la leçon d’anatomie spirituelle et nationale que nous donne l’auteur. 86 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

Consacré dans l’espace anglo-saxon au XXIe siècle, malgré son influence déjà reconnue dans les littératures romanes, António Lobo Antunes est considéré comme un prosateur fascinant surtout par l’originalité de sa conception narrative. Ses romans – organisés, sur le plan du style et de l’architecture, comme des poèmes en prose – sont une véritable poésie fictionnelle (« a perfect fictional poetry »).7 Maria Alzira Seixo, un de ses exégètes de marque, affirme, à juste titre, que ce n’est pas l’intrigue qui est l’élément essentiel dans la prose de l’auteur portugais (celle-ci n’ayant qu’un rôle minimal, de croquis censé offrir un cadre général au sujet), mais la « configuration de l’imaginaire », l’articulation épique- lyrique. Pour ce que Seixo appelle la poétique de la distorsion, nous utiliserions l’expression « technique de l’anamorphose », puisqu’une même chose est perçue de manière distorsionnée et dans une perspective multiple par différentes voix qui offrent, chacune à son tour, une autre version de la réalité. Les romans de l’auteur portugais dépendent, d’ailleurs, de ce palimpseste, de ce collage de voix et de réalités psychologiques. Grâce à ce polyperspectivisme, l’effet de la prose de Lobo Antunes est synesthésique : le monde qui y est présenté a des centres et des facettes multiples : c’est une fourmilière, un branle-bas de combat auquel participent humains, objets, voire atmosphère (malgré les maladies, les décès, les catastrophes, la misère et la terreur) ; ce monde est polychrome, il palpite d’une façon spectaculaire, il a des ramifications à nervures infinies. D’habitude, le polyperspectivisme se combine avec un style délibérément alluvionnaire, partie intégrante d’une stratégie narrative spécifique. Les romans de Lobo Antunes (en train de s’écrire) ne sont pas pudibonds, mais libertins ; ils trompent, ils tra- hissent et ils ont une manière bien à eux de se frayer un chemin jusqu’au lecteur, au-delà de l’auteur et de sa volonté. C’est la raison pour laquelle l’écriture de ce dernier n’est qu’une occasion, une ambiance, un pont. Mais, quels que soient le sujet et le thème des romans de Lobo Antunes, derrière le paravent épique, on entrevoit toujours, telle une présence ineffable, le Portugal extérieur et intérieur, savoureux et pittoresque ou brutal et barbare. Nous aimerions vous présenter, dans ce qui suit, sous forme de médaillons et de vignettes, deux de six romans d’António Lobo Antunes qui ont été traduits en roumain.

Le Retour des caravelles

e motif narratif central dans le roman Le Retour des caravelles (publié en portugais en 1988, traduit en roumain par Micaela Ghiþescu et publié L aux Éditions Humanitas en 2003) est la caravelle, le navire à voiles qui, dans le texte, transporte comme cargaison le sujet et l’action. La caravelle ou, Focus • 87 plutôt, les caravelles sont chargées de toutes les épices épiques, narratives et lyriques, et dévoilent la technique d’un prosateur qui, dans le laboratoire de création de ses romans, possède aussi une identité de poète. La quasi-totalité de l’œuvre en prose de l’auteur portugais porte, en général comme en particulier, sur le retour au pays vu dans un sens anti-utopique. Dans Le Retour des caravelles, le fameux poète national Luís de Camões (qui a vécu au XVIe siècle, auteur de l’épopée Les Lusiades, construite autour du destin de Vasco da Gama, navigateur et découvreur) revient dans sa patrie, mais au XXe siècle, avec le cadavre de son père, pour lui offrir un tombeau dans une terre appropriée. Le cadavre du père de Camões est un symbole-clé hyperbolique : c’est, en réalité, le cadavre du Portugal, de l’empire, de la gloire, du rayonnement d’autrefois, des con- quêtes géographiques. Le roman de Lobo Antunes est une critique du présent par l’intermédiaire d’un passé perdu, dans laquelle prévalent l’ironie et la verve satirique. Toute une série de figures célèbres évolue aux côtés de Camões, tel Vasco da Gama ainsi que beaucoup d’autres aventuriers ou navigateurs, mais aussi de nombreux rois du Portugal (Dom Pedro I, Dom Jo˜ao de Castro, Dom Manuel I, Dom Sebasti˜ao) ; la plupart de ces figures ponctue, de manière spec- trale et parodique, l’histoire du Portugal moderne. On y retrouve également des Espagnols célèbres, tels Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra, Federico García Lorca ou Luís Buñuel. Qu’est-ce qui unit toutes ces figures historiques et littéraires qu’António Lobo Antunes invoque et manipule de façon parodique, les concentrant, dans son roman, sur les quais de Lisbonne ? Les voyages, les guerres, la désillusion, l’utopie et son contraire, c’est-à-dire justement le sens d’une vie collective, celle du peuple portugais, du XVIe jusqu’au XXe siècle. Les noms des personnages sont, eux aussi, des noms-caravelles, des instruments textuels qui renferment l’histoire de la Péninsule Ibérique et de ses territoires adjacents. Il n’y a qu’un seul archi-personnage dans le roman, à savoir le navigateur, qui est à la fois poète, roi, militaire, prêtre, d’où les nombreuses personnalités de l’histoire et de la culture lusitaine (mais pas seulement) du Moyen Âge, de la Renaissance et du Baroque qui revivent au XXe siècle. Ils portent avec eux leurs coffres remplis de narrations, ainsi que de toute leur nostalgie et de leur aliénation décadente. Ce qu’ils savent tous bien faire s’explique par un don natif, hérité par le peuple entier : ils savent raconter, ils savent être des conteneurs épiques. Dans le roman, la mythologie et l’anti-mythologie lusitaine sont patronnées, de manière grave et ludique à la fois, par les nymphes du Tage (les nymphes tágides). Le Retour des caravelles est, par-dessus tout, un roman sur Lisbonne, une métropole vue de loin, aliénante afin qu’elle puisse être parcourue à nouveau, conquise à nouveau, gérée à nouveau par l’auteur et par ses lecteurs. D’où la minutie du détail dans la description synesthésique, topographique, spirituelle. 88 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

Selon les déclarations de l’auteur, Lisbonne est « une ville que je connaissais sans la connaître » ; cette distanciation de l’auteur conduit à une initiation progressive du lecteur dans une métropole turbulente, active, carnavalesque, que l’on peut traverser à pas, connaître par le regard. Ville réelle et fantasmatique à la fois, ville kaléidoscopique, Lisbonne est un espace qui dépend de la perspective en fonction de laquelle la fantasmation se produit : du passé vers le présent ou inversement. Aussi la métropole est-elle souvent synthétisée par António Lobo Antunes comme un vidéoclip-mosaïque, fait de flashes visuels-odoriférants, synesthésiques, minutieux, qui ne se limitent pas au topos de la capitale portugaise, mais intègrent également les anciennes colonies lusitaines, par l’intermé- diaire d’une série de séquences et de narrations. Lisbonne est unique « par le nombre incalculable de couvents et de constructions clandestines ainsi que par les séraphins ressemblant à des pigeons qui se ré- fugiaient sur les genoux des statues en lissant leurs ailes mouillées de leurs lèvres célestes ». La ville est appréhendée à travers « ce dédale de fenêtres à balcon en fer forgé rongées par les acides du Tage, les vaches sacrées de ces troupeaux de tramways ». Les détails qui constituent la ville sont imaginés par le prosateur comme un azulejo.8 Cependant, les scènes mythologiques, religieuses et florales d’autrefois ont été adaptées à l’agnosticisme et à la démythologisation du monde actuel, c’est-à-dire elles ont été pulvérisées : aussi les caravelles épiques de Lobo Antunes transportent-elles toujours de l’azulejo broyé pour toute marchandise. Il s’agit d’une mosaïque de faïences brisées, qui tantôt se contracte, tantôt monte telle une pâte. La technique azulejo, mise en œuvre au niveau épique et au niveau de l’image, sera reprise dans la plupart des romans de l’auteur portugais.

Le Manuel des inquisiteurs

ans la préface roumaine du roman Le Manuel des inquisiteurs (paru en version originale en 1996, traduit en roumain par Micaela Ghiþescu, D Bucarest, Éditions Univers, 2000), Dinu Flãmând constate qu’Antó- nio Lobo Antunes combine, dans ses créations, la gravité du sens (historique, politique et humain) avec une attitude irrévérencieuse envers les concepts de Portugal et de patrie au XXe siècle. L’auteur est un radical incommode, horripilé par le passé trouble de son pays. Dinu Flãmând suggère, à un moment donné, un parallèle incitant, renvoyant le lecteur roumain aux romans sur « la décennie obsédante » et aux proses roumaines sur la période communiste, qui pourraient prendre pour modèle les romans de Lobo Antunes. En présentant l’ascension et la déchéance d’un membre de l’appareil de ré- pression (thème central du roman Le Manuel des inquisiteurs), António Lobo Focus • 89

Antunes dissèque, en fait, l’infrastructure socio-humaine et politique de ses contemporains. Moralité : la croissance démesurée, l’abus et la corruption carac- térisent tout régime totalitaire, y compris post-totalitaire, le seul élément de pérennité étant l’influence dégradante que de tels systèmes exercent sur l’être humain. La dictature est une épidémie qui peut contaminer même une éven- tuelle étape post-totalitaire. L’abominable tortionnaire devenu ministre et chef de la Police secrète portugaise pendant le régime de Salazar, pourtant délaissé par son épouse, le pria- pique érotomane (avec ses phantasmes), le père inutile et ataraxique devenu le vieux décrépite abandonné dans un asile constituent la matière première dont l’auteur crée la métaphore du Portugal tout entier. La dégradation du personnage, la misère de la vieillesse laissée pour compte deviennent des ramifications métaphoriques et symboliques de la misère du pays pendant et après la dictature d’extrême droite. Le ramollissement du vieux ex-tortionnaire dépeint la décré- pitude morale et spirituelle du Portugal tout entier. Il y a, dans ce sens, une pa- renté entre ce père excrémentiel (qui mourra dans un asile de vieux, quand bien même il a été un maître absolu autrefois) et le cadavre du père de Camões dans le roman Le Retour des caravelles. Nombreux sont, d’ailleurs, les personnages de Lobo Antunes (non seulement dans Le Manuel des inquisiteurs ou Le Retour des caravelles) qui se trouvent dans un état pré-mortuaire, de semi-putréfaction, qui fait penser à l’autopsie, à la leçon d’anatomie d’un Portugal nécrosé, gangrené et qui explique, à la fois, la vocation de biopsiste littéraire de l’auteur. Ces deux romans sont représentatifs de l’univers narratif d’António Lobo Antunes et reflètent, à la fois, la thématique obsédante de l’auteur (l’histoire et la politique du Portugal au XXe siècle) et son style, devenu une véritable marque dans le monde de la prose contemporaine. q (Traduit du roumain par Renata Georgescu et Alina Pelea)

Notes

1. Chad Post, « Why Read António Lobo Antunes », The Quarterly Conversation, n° 25, 6 septembre 2011. 2. António Lobo Antunes et Daniel Sampaio, « Alice no País das Maravilhas ou a Esquizofrenia Esconjurada », Análise Psicológica, n° 3, vol. 1, avril 1978, p. 21-32. 3. Peter Conrad, « Doctor and Patient : A Portuguese novelist dissects his country », The New Yorker, 4 mai 2009. 4. Oliver Farry, « Lost in Translation : The Curious Obscurity of António Lobo Antunes », The Millions, 4 mai 2012. 90 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

5. Felipe Cammaert, « ‘You Don’t Invent Anything’ : Memory and the Patterns of Fic- tion in António Lobo Antunes’ Work », in Victor K. Mendes (dir.), Portuguese Lite rary & Cultural Studies : Facts and Fictions of António Lobo Antunes, n° 19/20, 2011. 6. Luis Madureira, « The Discret Seductivness of the Crumbling Empire – Sex, Vio- lence and Colonialism in the Fiction of António Lobo Antunes », Luso-Brazilian Re- view, n° 32, vol. I, 1995 ; Kathryn Bishop-Sanchez, « Post-Imperial Performatives : Sexual Misencounters and Engenderings of Desire in António Lobo Antunes’ Fado Alexandrino », in Victor K. Mendes (dir.), Portuguese Literary & Cultural Studies, n° 19/20, 2011. 7. Maria Alzira Seixo, « Still Facts and Living Fictions : The Literary Work of António Lobo Antunes. An Introduction », in Victor K. Mendes (dir.), Portuguese Literary & Cultural Studies, no. 19/20, 2011. 8. Faïence ornementale, peinte en bleu, représentant d’habitude des scènes mythologiques, religieuses ou florales ; azulejo est spécifique de l’art et la culture portu- gaises à partir du XVe siècle ; le mot azulejo provient de l’arabe zellige ou zellij/zillij.

Abstract António Lobo Antunes: A Polyphonic Fado in Prose

The present study is a synthesis of the historical saga featured in the novels of António Lobo Antunes. This saga revolves around the search for and the discovery of the identity of modern Portugal, or indeed around a reconfiguration of the past (including the colonial episodes of Angola and Mozambique). While José Saramago draws massively on fantasies and fictions, Lobo Antunes is a stubborn realist, an anatomist of the human psyche and an analyst of the history of Portugal (operating a post-mortem of both colonialism and post-colonialism).

Keywords António Lobo Antunes, Portugal, fado, saudade, azulejo, historical saga « Je chemine comme une António Lobo Antunes Dinu FlÃmÂnd maison qui brûle »

Dinu Flãmând : Je vais parler en français, quand même, parce que nous, António et moi, nous nous sommes habitués depuis longtemps à dialoguer dans cette langue, située quelque part au milieu entre le roumain et le portugais, dans cette grande latinité ; on est donc habitués à parler entre nous en Dinu FlÃmÂnd et António Lobo Antunes français, car je n’aurais jamais pu parler le portugais qu’il parle, si merveilleux, si, si, si formidable. Le portugais de sa grande littérature. António, je ne pourrais pas te dire l’émotion qui me comble, effectivement, de pouvoir te recevoir ici, dans cette salle à la Faculté des Lettres, qui a été ma faculté pendant quelques années d’études et reste toujours un lieu de référence… pour mes rêves et pour mes obsessions… lieu de mémoire très important… Tout cela pour te dire que j’aurais jamais, mais jamais de ma vie, imaginé que, un jour, un grand écrivain comme toi, António Lobo Antunes comme Vargas Llosa et comme tous Écrivain et psychiatre portuguais (né en 1942), auteur de presque 30 romans, les autres grands écrivains du monde dont le premier est Mémoire d’éléphant libre, pourront franchir le mur qui (1979). nous tenait, nous, de l’autre côté, dans

Dinu Flãmând Le dialogue entre António Lobo Antunes Écrivain, journaliste, traducteur et diplo et Dinu Flãmând a eu lieu à la Faculté des mate roumano-français (né en 1947), Lettres de l’Université Babeº-Bolyai, Cluj- ayant fait ses débuts en 1971 (Apeiron). Napoca, 7 octobre 2014. 92 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) l’obscurité, et venir ici, parler devant les étudiants, dialoguer avec nous. Je souligne tout ça car je considère comme un privilège pour l’actuelle génération le miracle de ta présence ici, mais et je considère qu’en même temps tu viens pour venger ma génération… Par ta présence ici, nous avons également la preuve qu’ils ne nous ont pas eus, les imbéciles qui voulaient nous enfermer ici, cloîtrés, sans contact avec le grand monde de la culture et de la liberté… Ton arrivée ici, l’arrivée de ta littérature, de tes romans, c’est le signe que nous avons vaincu et que nous avons gagné, car nous t’avons ici, parmi nous… Voilà, c’était ma déclaration pathétique, j’aurais voulu la prononcer en quelques mots hier, même en bousculant un peu le protocole à l’Université qui t’octroie le titre de doctor honoris causa, et te remercier effectivement les mots concernant notre amitié. Cette amitié est, peut-être – non, je suis certain ! – la valeur la plus sûre quand des gens se rencontrent et continuent de se voir, de s’apprécier et de se lire. C’est un privilège, je me répète, pour moi de te lire, et je te lis depuis des années et des années. Mais je vais commencer par te provoquer euh… au dialogue en prononçant le nom de ton prochain livre qui va paraître au Portugal à la fin novembre. Vous imaginez comment il s’appelle ? Je le dirai d’abord en roumain : Pãşesc precum o casã care arde. Je chemine comme une maison qui brûle. Voilà. Moi, je pense qu’on a tout ici, on a António Lobo Antunes, un auteur complexe, qui est statique et en mouvement, qui brûle et qui abrite les gens, et tout le Portugal et l’espèce humaine, dans cette maison qui est la maison de la littérature. Voilà, je lance, pour commenter, ton titre, éventuellement, pour essayer de toucher le mystère de ton travail… Qu’est-ce que ça veut dire, cette maison qui brûle et qui chemine en même temps ? António Lobo Antunes : C’est une question curieuse, mais c’est une question quand même. D’ordinaire, quand j’écris, j’ai pas de titre. Aucun titre. Le titre vient très souvent quand le livre est fini. Quelquefois y a des miracles. Quelque- fois vers le milieu du livre, ça commence à paraître, un titre. Mais d’ordinaire ça vient après le livre. Eh, bon, comment devrais-je l’appeler ? (rires) Je ne sais pas vraiment. Je ne sais pas vraiment. Bon… le livre… je ne raconte pas des histoires. J’aime pas raconter des histoires. Ce qui m’intéresse c’est que… c’est de parler du cœur du cœur. Et de structurer des émotions… parce que l’histoire, c’est rien. Quand vous pensez à l’intrigue des romans très connus, ça c’est rien. Le vieil homme et la mer, un vieil homme pêche un poisson, les autres poissons mangent le poisson. Il arrive en terre sans poisson, c’est ça l’histoire. Ou je pourrais parler d’Anna Karenina… Une femme s’ennuie dans son mariage ennuyeux avec un homme ennuyeux, elle trouve un amant qui n’est pas ennuyeux mais il est un salaud, elle se jette sous un train, c’est ça l’histoire. Le problème c’est qu’est-ce qu’on peut faire avec ces matériaux ? Comment les travailler ? Com- ment les utiliser ? Comment les structurer d’une façon qui nous aide à mieux Focus • 93 comprendre les autres et à nous comprendre nous-mêmes. Par exemple, y a des livres d’une extrême complexité structurelle, comme Heart of Darkness, Au cœur des ténèbres, de Joseph Conrad, un fleuve dans un fleuve dans un fleuve dans un fleuve dans un fleuve… c’est extraordinairement difficile à le faire. Et pourtant ce qu’il voulait nous transmettre… il voulait nous transmettre à la fois plusieurs choses très différentes l’une de l’autre : l’horreur, bien sûr, mais aussi une plon- gée dans les ténèbres du corps humain. Comment en sortir vivant ? Lui, il est sorti vivant de cette exploration, de cet étrange et majestueux voyage au plus intime de lui-même. Conrad est donc un bon écrivain, mais finalement, peut- être, il n’est qu’un pourvoyeur d’âmes qui essaie de nous montrer à nous-mêmes tels que nous sommes, nus et défigurés. Défigurés. Un bon livre est un miroir. Et chaque page est un miroir où on voit notre visage, non tel que nous l’ima- ginons, mais tel qu’il est en vérité et que nous refusons qu’il soit ainsi. Et nous avons toujours des désirs et des irisations de toute sorte et nous voulons toujours ou presque toujours donner une bonne image aux autres. Pour moi, un livre, la lecture est un plaisir infini, car j’apprends tellement de choses… et surtout la leçon de beauté. Je crois que Faulkner avait raison quand il disait qu’il avait découvert qu’écrire est une chose immensément belle. Parce qu’il nous oblige à nous lever sur les pattes derrière et à projeter une immense ombre. Je suis très, très reconnaissant aux écrivains, comme aux grands musiciens, comme aux grands artistes, parce qu’ils me redonnent la dignité que les hommes politiques essaient de me voler. Et que la vie, qui, d’une façon générale, n’est pas généreuse envers les hommes (c’est difficile de vivre et tout le monde souffre beaucoup) nous donne la profonde joie de la dignité dont nous sommes capables… dans les vraies ténèbres du corps humain… là où sont les autres et nous parmi eux. Car c’est là que nous habitons. Nous trouvons ça, d’une façon très claire, dans les pièces de théâtre de Tchekhov, n’est-ce pas, qui avec des mots apparemment très simples, dans une sorte de clarté obscure (« demain il va pleuvoir, l’arbre a fleuri », etc., avec des phrases tellement quotidiennes, tellement simples), arrive à nous redonner une dignité immense et en même temps à nous faire connaître toutes les souffrances et les joies de notre condition. Donc, finalement, je suis très reconnaissant aux artistes, et je pense qu’ils ont toujours raison. J’avais un éditeur français qui est mort, hélas, qui disait qu’il avait connu des chefs d’entreprise très brillants, des politiciens très importants, etc., mais qui ne l’avait jamais ni ému, ni touché comme c’est le cas d’un artiste. Il faut croire aux artistes, il faut croire que, finalement, ils ont raison. Et qu’un pays est, finalement, connu par sa culture, si vous pensez à la France, le prestige de la France maintenant repose sur son grand dix-neuvième siècle et sur les très grands écrivains, peintres, qu’ils ont eu au dix-neuvième siècle : Flaubert, Victor Hugo, Stendhal, la liste finit pas. Les français vivent encore de ce passé comme certaines veuves vivent de la 94 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) retraite de leurs maris. Et la France continue d’être, culturellement parlant, un pays très important à cause de cela, à cause de l’immense poids de ces artistes et de sa culture, car, finalement, on doit juger les peuples par leur culture et les rapports culturels. Imaginez-vous qu’on disait du dix-neuvième siècle que c’était le siècle le plus horrible du monde, qu’on n’y avait inventé que le bec à gaz et Napoléon III ? C’est pas vrai. Ils ont une peinture, une littérature et même une musique d’une qualité exceptionnelle. Je parle des Français. Mais d’une façon générale le dix-neuvième siècle était un siècle très important… D. F. : Même chez nous… A. L. A. : Et pourtant il est tellement dénigré. Moi, j’aime pas parler des mes livres, je les ai pas lus, je les ai seulement écrits, donc mon opinion est forcé- ment partielle et c’est très difficile de…, car nous travaillons avec de matériaux antérieurs aux mots, je veux dire les émotions, les pulsions, tout cela, antérieurs aux paroles, et le problème, mon problème à moi, c’est comment transformer en mots ce qui est antérieur au mot, ce qui, par définition, est intraduisible en mots. La tristesse est intraduisible en mots, la douleur est intraduisible en mots. Et comment faire partager ces sentiments-là ? Et comment les montrer ? Et… euh… comment communiquer aux autres vos abîmes, vos doutes, vos douleurs, mais aussi vos espoirs et vos joies ? Pour moi un bon livre est toujours… lire un bon livre est toujours une joie infini et j’ai une immense reconnaissance envers les écrivains qui ont fait de moi, j’espère, un meilleur homme et un homme plus attentif aux autres et à la vie. Car nous sommes beaucoup plus riches que nous ne le pensons. Nous avons en nous beaucoup de foi sans savoir, des richesses que les artistes nous apportent par exemple quand on regarde… (on pourrait passer des heures en regardant) Las Meninas de Vélasquez ou un tableau de Pollock. La littérature et le livre, pour moi, est une source de joie en tant que lecteur et une source de souffrance en tant qu’écrivain parce qu’écrire est très difficile. C’est très difficile d’écrire. Il y a très peu de bons livres, il y a très peu de bons écrivains. C’est une activité qui vous pompe complètement, vous ne faites que ça tout le temps. En même temps, face, par exemple, à la souffrance, le fait d’écrire peut être utile, car vous êtes toujours celui qui est en train de souffrir, et celui qui pense comment est-ce que je vais… oui, oui, profiter de cela pour mon livre ? Donc vous cannibalisez tout ; vous cannibalisez même la souffrance, même la douleur, même la joie. Comment est-ce que je vais profiter de cela pour écrire ? Ce qui est bien, parce la douleur diminue un peu… la douleur… écrire vous donne le temps de raisonner un peu… de voir… comment est-ce que je vais faire pour profiter de cette chose qui m’est offerte ? Car la vie nous offre toujours, tous les jours, des matériaux inespérés. D. F. : António, je ne veux pas t’interrompre, je veux te relancer. Tu penses que dans ce travail qui est inexplicable (parce que tu abordes des choses qui Focus • 95 précèdent les mots, les transigent), tu penses qu’il y a vraiment l’obligation pour l’écrivain de forer très profondément dans les mots. Toi même tu changes, tu élabores trois, quatre, cinq versions de chaque roman. Voilà. Est-ce que c’est le travail jusqu’à l’épuisement qui est, quand même, la solution ? A. L. A. : Oui, parce qu’un livre n’est jamais fini, n’est jamais achevé. Marcel Duchamp, le peintre français, disait qu’un tableau n’était jamais achevé. Il était définitivement inachevé. Car c’est toujours possible d’améliorer un livre en y travaillant encore et retravaillant et travaillant. Là se pose un problème très cruel : quand est-ce qu’un livre est fini ? Pour moi, je sais qu’un livre est fini quand le livre en a assez de moi… (rires) D. F. : C’est le livre qui te le signale ? A. L. A. : C’est lui qui commande. C’est comme la fin d’un amour. On se couche chacun au coin du lit, elle se couche au coin du lit pour qu’on ne la touche pas. Si je l’embrasse pour deux secondes, ces deux secondes durent une éternité atroce. D. F. : Le divorce du livre c’est le moment qui finit le livre finalement… A. L. A. : Oui, là je sens que c’es fini ; elle [la femme] n’aime pas que je la touche, que je lui parle, ni ma façon de croiser la jambe ou de répondre au télé- phone, tout l’embête, etc., etc., etc. D. F. : Donc le livre te signale… un peu de froideur et puis, finalement… A. L. A. : Ah ! Au début, comme tout le monde, il tente de ne pas le montrer. (rires) Mais tu sens, à la froideur de ses baisers, qu’il en a assez. (rires) Donc, c’est comme ça, mais je ne les ai jamais lus mes livres. Peut-être par vengeance. Peut- être parce que je me sens un amant trahi. Et abandonné. Je ne sais pas. Mais je ne les lis pas. Au fond, je pense que c’est par orgueil, par coquetterie, parce que je déteste voir les choses imparfaites. Et quand c’est fini, tu n’y penses pas. J’ai réussi à faire ce que je voulais. Et ce qui te fait recommencer à écrire c’est que tu comprends que tu aurais pu y aller plus loin. Et plus loin. Et plus loin. Donc, finalement, c’est un travail un peu décevant, car jamais tu n’arrives à faire le livre que tu voulais faire. D. F. : La solution c’est de perpétuer, de recommencer un autre livre ? A. L. A. : Oui, c’est ce que je fais, je commence un autre. D. F. : Donc y a une fugue permanente. A. L. A. : Tu sors d’un livre très fatigué, donc il te faut quelque temps, de la distance, etc., jusqu’à ce que un autre livre commence à demander d’être écrit. Ma méthode de travail est très simple : je m’assois et j’attends. D. F. : T’attends des voix. Tu m’as dis que tu… t’écoutes des voix. A. L. A. : Oui, il faut que je ferme une partie de mon cerveau, celle que j’utilise pour la vie quotidienne. Et puis il y a une autre partie que je ne connais pas et qui apparaît seulement dans les moments… D. F. : Quand tu commences à travailler. 96 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

A. L. A. : Oui, qui commence à s’ouvrir peu à peu. Tu commences à écrire sous la tutelle d’une voix… qui commence à parler en toi. Pas avec ce livre-là [Caminho como uma casa em chamas – Je chemine comme une maison qui brûle], mais avec le livre antérieur à celui-là, Na˜o é meia noite quem querer [« N’est pas minuit qui veut », vers de René Char] ; livre dans lequel la voix parlait trop vite et j’arrivais pas à l’accompagner. (rires) D. F. : Le livre parlait trop vite… ? A. L. A. : Je ne sais pas quelle région du cerveau on utilise là ; et encore d’où cela vient… J’ai eu des ennuis de santé il y a quelques mois. Et on m’a fait, cela fait des années déjà, et on m’a fait une résonance magnétique au cerveau. Et là j’ai vu tout mon cerveau. Bon. Et les médecins voulaient que je reste là pendant des jours parce que mon cerveau était différent, avait des choses étranges… pour étudier cela. Parce que évidemment cela doit venir d’un endroit quelconque, je sais pas d’où... Pourquoi j’écris ? Pourquoi les autres gens n’écrivent pas ? C’est qu’ils n’ont pas besoin de ça pour être… pour trouver leur équilibre intérieur. N’est-ce pas ? Et en même temps, quand tu n’écris pas… ça me fout une culpa- bilité très grande. D. F. : Oui, oui. Vis-à-vis de toi-même ou vis-à-vis de… A. L. A. : Comme si je n’étais bon qu’à ça. D. F. : Oui, bon qu’à ça, oui… A. L. A. : Bon qu’à ça. Les surréalistes ont fait une enquête dans les années 20, qui fut très, très célèbre en France. Pourquoi écrivez-vous ? Et, il y a quelques années, une dizaine d’années, peut-être plus, un journal français qui s’appelle Libération a refait cette enquête en demandant aux écrivains du monde entier « Pourquoi écrivez-vous ? » C’était très curieux parce qu’il a eu des centaines et des centaines d’écrivains ou des gens qui écrivaient qui ont répondu. Les ré- ponses les plus longues étaient des écrivains les plus mauvais. Parfois deux pages pour expliquer cela. Les grands écrivains ont donné des réponses très courtes. Par exemple Samuel Beckett, sa réponse était : « bon qu’à ça ». C’était tout. D. F. : Je ne suis bon qu’à ça. Voilà. En plus abrégé… A. L. A. : Moi, j’ai dit que… je ne savais pas quoi dire. J’ai dit que j’écrivais parce que je ne savais pas danser comme Fred Astaire. (rires) D. F. : Parce que tu ne pouvais pas danser comme Fred Astaire… A. L. A. : Si je pouvais danser comme Fred Astaire j’écrirais pas, bien sûr. Ou chanter comme Sinatra. D. F. : Oui, bon. Tu parlais déjà… Tu veux continuer sur cette… ? Je veux te lancer, te relancer un peu… Tu parles de… comment dire… organiser un délire. C’est une de tes phrases qui est répétée, à plusieurs reprises tu as écrit sur comment organiser un délire. Mais est-ce que t’attends de la part du lecteur qu’il entre dans ton délire avec la même dévotion que toi ? Parce que t’as besoin d’un Focus • 97 lecteur qui soit très dévoué ; comme j’avais écrit dans un article, t’as besoin d’un lecteur qui a du talent pour te lire. Comment tu vois cette relation ? A. L. A. : Ça je l’ai appris dans les hôpitaux psychiatriques, quand j’étais interne. La plus belle leçon de théorie de la littérature je l’ai reçue quand un malade qui avait le diagnostic schizophrénie paranoïaque s’est approché de moi comme s’il avait un grand secret, très solennel, et il m’a dit : « Monsieur le docteur, le monde a été fait par derrière. » (rires) Et j’ai pensé que ça ne fait aucun sens. Puis j’ai pensé, merde, qu’il m’a donné la clé pour écrire. (rires) Il faut que tu fasses ton livre par derrière. Tu comprends ? D. F. : Oui. Ça s’était pour la technique. A. L. A. : Ça s’était la première grande leçon. Puis c’étaient mes contacts avec des gens qui avaient des problèmes paranoïaques internés là. Qu’est-ce qu’un délire ? Un délire est un édifice logique construit sur une première prémisse fausse. Par exemple, je suis le roi de Roumanie. Et là maintenant je construis tout un édifice logique… D. F. : Sur cette affirmation… A. L. A. : Basé sur cette prémisse à laquelle je crois dur comme fer. Je me souviens qu’un jour j’étais de service, on m’a appelé pendant la nuit parce qu’un malade (comme ils l’appellent) ne laissait dormir personne. Il était à la fenêtre ouverte, il criait « à droite ! Vers la gauche ! », à 3 heures du matin. « Vers la droite ! » Il avait une voix très puissante. « Vers la gauche, vers la droite ! » Les infirmiers m’ont appelé pour le calmer. Et j’ai demandé : « Mais pourquoi criez- vous comme ça ? » Et il m’a expliqué : « Je suis en train de faire pleuvoir en Espagne. » (rires) « Mais pourquoi criez-vous ? » « Parce que… » D. F. : Il avait une responsabilité, il avait une responsabilité envers toute l’Es- pagne. Faire pleuvoir. A. L. A. : Oui, il était le propriétaire du casino de Monte Carlo, etc., il était très riche. (rires) En fait c’était un homme de la campagne, très pauvre. Bon, mais, donc, il avait mis deux mille chevaux sur la mer car il avait eut une longue période de sècheresse à ce temps. Il ne pleuvait pas en Espagne. Et ces deux mille chevaux galopaient, galopaient, galopaient… D. F. : Ah ! Il t’a expliqué la méthode… A. L. A. : Je le savais, sa méthode. Donc ils galopaient, ils galopaient, ils galopaient puis après ils sortaient de l’eau. Comme ils étaient très fatigués, ils avaient beaucoup galopé, ils suaient et la sueur au contact avec l’air froid… formait le nuage. D. F. : C’est logique. A. L. A. : Et donc il était en train de diriger les nuages vers l’Espagne pour faire pleuvoir là. Et il ordonnait à ces chevaux qui étaient chargés de transporter des nuages de les amener vers ses propriétés. « Vers la gauche ! Plus à gauche ! Vers la droite ! » 98 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

D. F. : Je t’ai connu quand tu travaillais à l’hôpital Miguel Bombarda, le plus grand hôpital psychiatrique de Portugal, c’est là que tu piquais les sujets… A. L. A. : Non, mais ça m’a beaucoup appris. Et j’ai pensé : Merde ! Ce qu’on appelle un roman c’est ça : c’est un délire organisé à partir d’une première pré- misse fausse. Je chemine comme une maison en flammes. Personne ne chemine comme une maison en flammes. D. F. : Mais tu peux le faire… C’est normal. A. L. A. : Les gens marchent comme ils marchent. Il n’y a pas de flammes, il n’y a pas de maison… D. F. : Quand même… Dans tes romans, ça se passe. A. L. A. : Oui, bien sûr. D. F. : Et c’est normal. A. L. A. : Oui, car c’est un délire, quoi ! D. F. : C’est le droit du romancier que de faire marcher des maisons qui sont en flammes. A. L. A. : Si tu commences à réfléchir à cela, peut-être la seule vérité est le délire. Nous délirons tous les jours, nous tous. Tu délires que tu t’appelles Dinu Flãmând… D. F. : Oui, c’est un délire assez encombrant… A. L. A. : Tu vois ? Tu délires que tu aimes une femme, qu’elle t’aime, que tu sois marié, que tu as des enfants… Tu comprends ? Est-ce ce que ça c’est vrai ? On ne peut pas être tout à fait sûr de cela. Là, je pense comme Villon, le grand poète français du XVe siècle : « rien ne m’est sûr que la chose incertaine ». Est-ce je suis marié ? Est-ce que j’ai des enfants ? Est-ce que je suis professeur, médecin, n’importe quoi…? Nous vivons dans un monde fantastique. C’est ce que Freud appelait le « fantôme ». Bon, j’ai fait une psychanalyse… D. F. : Tu as fait une psychanalyse, toi ? A. L. A. : L’autre est toujours désigné par « fantôme ». Le toit que je vois là n’est pas le toit que tu vois ou que voient les autres. Par exemple, quand tu entends parler de A., quand quelqu’un te parle de A., tu restes avec une idée de lui ; si tu entends quelqu’un d’autre, tu restes avec une idée différente. Chaque personne différente qui te parle d’une même personne te parle d’une personne différente. Et quand tu la connais, tu connais une personne différente. Donc, tu n’as pas connue une seule personne, tu en as connu une multitude, car chaque personne qui parlait de cette personne te disait des choses différentes : « il est un salaud », « il est bon type » etc. Le portrait était toujours différent. Finalement, où est le vrai portrait ? Finalement, quelle importance a la vérité ? D. F. : Oui… On n’a pas besoin de la vérité, n’est-ce pas ? A. L. A. : Chacun résout le problème à sa façon. Disons que l’art est un mensonge qui est la vérité. Focus • 99

D. F. : Mais je t’ai entendu faire référence à Freud. C’est la première fois que je t’entends en parler. On sait très bien que tu as une formation scientifique de psychiatre, de psychologue, mais tu n’y fais jamais référence, tu réponds rare- ment quand on te pose des questions concernant les liens entre la psychiatrie et ta littérature, qui se reflètent dans ton œuvre. Tu refuses de te rapporter à la psychanalyse, car ce sera une référence trop facile et réductionniste. Cela je le comprends, car la littérature reste pour toi la meilleure méthode de t’approcher de cette merveille peut-être illogique qui est l’âme. C’est la littérature qui est importante, ce n’est pas la psychanalyse. A. L. A. : Illogique au sens rationnel du mot. D. F. : Oui. A. L. A. : J’ai abandonné la psychiatrie pour deux raisons. D’abord, parce que je pouvais vivre des livres. Puis, écrire et faire la médecine c’était trop. Je faisais de la médecine toute la journée et je me mettais à écrire les soirs et les weekends. C’était très lourd. Et j’avais peur, bien sûr. Ma mère, quand je lui avais dit que je voulais écrire, m’a prévenu que j’allais devenir un futur de mendiant. D. F. : Mendiant ? A. L. A. : Oui, parce qu’elle disait que personne ne pouvait vivre d’un livre. D. F. : Elle avait raison. A. L. A. : Je crois qu’elle avait été étonnée jusqu’à la fin de sa fin que l’on puisse vivre de ses livres. Et c’était une femme qui a lu Proust, ce qui est très rare. D’ordinaire, Proust et les femmes ont une relation compliquée. D. F. : C’est pour cela que tu avais commencé à lire Proust ? A. L. A. : Et pas que La Recherche. D. F. : Qu’est-ce tu lisais quand tu étais adolescent ? Tu lisais Céline ? A. L. A. : J’aimais les pages nécrologiques, comme mon grand-père. Mon grand-père achetait le journal et l’ouvrait à la page nécrologique. Et il riait. Il riait tout le temps. Il pointait : « Ha, ha, mort à 40 ans ! Quel idiot ! », « Ha, ha, mort à 35 ans ! Quel stupide ! » Il triomphait d’être là, vivant, entouré de morts qui avaient commis la stupidité de mourir à 40 ans, à 50 ans, à 30 ans, tandis que lui, il était vivant. « Quelle stupidité ! Comment ces gens sont morts comme ça ! » Donc, quand j’ai commencé à écrire, comme ce que je lisais c’étaient des comics, j’écrivais sur la mort de Mickey Mouse, sur la mort de Donald. Parce que la mort était un sujet tellement joyeux pour mon grand-père, je pensais que ça pouvait être une vraie merveille que d’être mort. D. F. : Un de tes personnages, qui tient une boutique de cercueils, met une affiche : « Pourquoi continuer de vivre si on peut profiter d’un enterrement de luxe pour cinq escudos ? » A. L. A. : Pour un petit garçon de 5-6 ans, la mort était un état que j’enviais. D. F. : Comment ça ? 100 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

A. L. A. : J’étais là, couché, ne faisant rien, les yeux fermés. Il y avait des gens autour de moi, pleins de respect, qui pleuraient d’amour, qui m’embrassaient. Finalement, j’avais le respect des adultes, qui ne me regardaient pas ou m’em- merdaient tout le temps parce que je faisais des bêtises. De leur point de vue. D. F. : Tu faisais un peu de théâtre dès le début. A. L. A. : Et puis tout le monde disait du bien du mort : il était beau, généreux, magnifique, etc. J’ai une famille assez grande, donc les gens mourraient avec une certaine fréquence. Heureusement, parce qu’il y avait tellement d’éloges. J’étais émerveillé : ils étaient pleins de vertus. Et moi je voulais avoir toutes ces vertus. D. F. : Il fallait en profiter… Or, tu n’en profites qu’une seule fois dans ta vie… A. L. A. : Les emmerdants devenaient intelligents et avec beaucoup d’humour, les laids devenaient beaux. J’avais une tante, une sœur de mon grand-père, ter- riblement laide. Soudain, dans la prière, elle est devenue d’une beauté divine… Comme la mort améliore les gens ! Quand j’étais enfant, c’est ce que je voulais faire. C’était magnifique ! Je serais plein de toutes les vertus et peut-être que, dans la prière, ils me laisseraient manger tous les chocolats que je voulais. Ils les apporteraient à la Vierge et je les mangerais. D. F. : Ah, oui ? Parce que c’est la coutume que d’apporter du chocolat aux morts ? A. L. A. : Non, mais à moi, oui, car j’étais enfant. J’étais là en exposition. Ce grand-père était magnifique. Il y avait une idéalisation de la mort, de la souffrance, de la douleur… Car je ne comprenais pas ce que c’était la mort. Je continue à ne pas comprendre. Je me souviens d’un grand poète américain qui était à une cérémonie, il y avait un mort, etc. Il était là pour présenter ses hommages au mort. Et une petite fille est venue. Il l’a prise dans ses bras et l’a élevée jusqu’au visage du mort et lui a demandé : « Tu comprends ? C’est que moi, je ne comprends pas. » D. F. : Quelle belle histoire ! C’est formidable ! A. L. A. : Même moi, je ne comprends pas… D. F. : Qu’est-ce que c’est la mort ? A. L. A. : Je ne sais pas. Parfois, on peut communiquer… Les gens sont très intelligents et ils ont inventé des téléphones pour parler avec les morts : c’est les tables à trois pieds. C’est ce que faisait Victor Hugo. Il parlait avec les morts. D. F. : Est-ce qu’ils sont polyglottes, les morts ? On peut parler dans toutes les langues avec les morts ? A. L. A. : Cela, je ne le sais pas. Je n’ai jamais fait l’expérience. Peut-être volapuk ils ne parlent pas, mais je suis sûr qu’ils parlent espéranto. D. F. : Peut-être. Ils ne l’écrivent pas, mais ils le parlent. A. L. A. : L’allemand est une belle langue pour parler aux chevaux et aux morts. J’en sais quelque chose : j’ai une grand-mère allemande… Donc j’ai commencé par écrire des choses comme ça. Puis, la mort a commencé à me désintéresser, Focus • 101 car on fermait la radio et il fallait se tenir très bien. On ne pouvait pas aller jouer dans le jardin et donc ce qui venait après l’enterrement n’était pas aussi passion- nant que le fait d’être mort. Et puis les éloges commençaient à cesser. Et puis venait la question de l’héritage et le partage de l’héritage, pour lequel le mort laissait des instructions… D. F. : Mais tu comprenais ça, les problèmes d’héritage ? A. L. A. : C’était des problème de morts : « Fils de pute, il ne m’a rien laissé » etc. Donc, les morts qui avaient été pleins de vertus commençaient à avoir des péchés, parfois ignobles, et j’ai commencé à préférer d’être vivant et à penser que ce n’était pas mal. Et à partir de là, ç’a commencé peu à peu : des morts je suis passé aux vivants, à ceux que je croyais vivants, car il y a des gens qui ne savent pas qu’ils sont morts. D. F. : Ah oui, ça c’est une catégorie à part… A. L. A. : Par exemple, tu entres dans un café et la plupart des gens ont des yeux morts. Il y avait un poète espagnol qui disait que Madrid était une ville pleine de gens assassinés : dans les esplanades, dans les rues, dans les cinémas… D. F. : C’était qui le poète ? A. L. A. : Dámaso Alonso. Peut-être qu’il a raison. Je ne sais pas, je ne connais pas tellement d’Espagnols. D. F. : Mais est-ce que les Ibériques – parce que l’on parle un peu à ce chapitre-là – ont un penchant plus prononcé que les autres pour la mort ? Cela fait partie des coutumes religieuses, de la vie sociale, qui est très marquée par des cérémonies ? Parce qu’il y a des cultures, on voit surtout en Occident aujourd’hui, où la mort n’existe pas, on la cache. On y échappe, on dégage très vite, on boute en touche. A. L. A. : Écoute, si tu parles comme ça, les gens vont penser que je m’intéresse beaucoup à la mort… D. F. : Non, tu t’y intéresses en tant qu’écrivain. A. L. A. : Cela était vrai jusqu’à mes treize ans. Nous sommes six frères et, pendant ses cinq premières années de premier mariage, ma mère a eu quatre enfants, donc nous étions à peu près du même âge. Donc, à 13-14 ans, un de mes frères m’a attiré l’attention sur les fesses de la cuisinière. Et ça m’a changé de perspective. Et ça se mouvait, les fesses… D. F. : C’est arrivé au moment juste… A. L. A. : … tandis que les morts restaient là immobiles. Donc des morts je suis passé aux fesses. Et ce frère à moi, qui était un esthète et qui avait 12 ans, m’a fait voir que les fesses de la cuisinière étaient non seulement belles, mais aussi riches en mouvements, en capacités diverses etc. Après, il est allé s’informer auprès de gens plus âgés que lui et il a découvert d’autres subtilités. Finalement, après un congrès des frères, on a choisi la vie parce qu’il y avait beaucoup de fesses et beaucoup de cuisinières aussi. 102 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

D. F. : C’est à cette époque-là que tu as essayé la première fois d’écrire des sonnets pour gagner des sous pour tes bonbons et tes chewing gums. Tu as com- mencé à écrire des sonnets sur la vie du Christ… A. L. A. : La vie ! D. F. : … sur la vie du Christ, des sonnets présentées à ta grand-mère. Parle- nous-en un peu. A. L. A. : Mes grands-mères étaient très, très catholiques, très religieuses, et il fallait que je vive. J’avais besoin de l’argent. D. F. : … de l’argent de poche. A. L. A. : … donc je faisais des sonnets dédiés au Christ que je vendais à mes grands-mères pour avoir de l’argent. Dans les quatuors, ce n’était pas grand- chose, mais, dans les tercets, je faisais de mon mieux. D. F. : Et là tu pouvais acheter du chewing gum… A. L. A. : Elles me donnaient de l’argent qui me permettait d’aller à la pâtisse- rie acheter des gâteaux superbes. Ce qui était bien et substituait les fesses de la cuisinière. D. F. : Ah oui ! A. L. A. : Avec le grand avantage du plus sucré à coup sûr que les fesses. Donc je me suis spécialisé dans le sucre grâce à ces sonnets-là. Et puis, vers mes quatorze ans, j’ai commencé à envoyer mes petites productions pour les journaux. Je n’écrivais que de la poésie. Je pensais très sincèrement que j’étais poète. Et pas seulement poète, mais le meilleur poète du monde. Et là je fus déçu par un de mes oncles, mon parrain, qui était le frère de ma mère, qui m’a abonné aux Nouvelles Littéraires. Le premier numéro que j’ai reçu portait sur la première page ce grand poème de Blaise Cendrars qu’est Les Pâques à New York et là j’ai compris que j’étais l’ignare parfait. Je me suis dit : « Mon vieux, ce que l’on peut faire avec les mots ! » D. F. : Tu aimais Blaise Cendrars. A. L. A. : Et il y avait des poèmes d’Apollinaire en plus. « Pitié pour nous, qui travaillons aux frontières de l’inutile, de l’avenir » etc., « Sous le pont Mirabeau / coule la Seine / Et nos amours. / Faut-il qu’il m’en souvienne. La joie venait toujours après la peine. » C’était légèrement, très légèrement, mieux que ce que j’écrivais moi. D. F. : En plus, il était aussi plus vieux que toi. A. L. A. : Très légèrement mieux. J’ai découvert que tout ce que j’écrivais était très mauvais et un peu plus tard j’ai découvert que je n’étais pas du tout poète. D. F. : Là, bien sûr, tout le monde va te contredire, António. Car il y a une Qualité Poétique avec majuscules dans ton écriture, il y a un festival du style, une beauté de la métaphore, des images, une cadence des musicalités, et une densité d’images typiquement poétiques, que tu ne pourras jamais dire – personne ne te Focus • 103 croira – que tu n’es pas poète. Tu es aussi poète, un grand poète de la prose et un des seuls qui honorent la prose par les grandes difficultés de la poésie. Pourquoi tu dis que tu envies les poètes tandis que tu es un grand poète ? A. L. A. : Tu disais ça et je pensais à un de ces trois grands poèmes de Blaise Cendrars. Il y a un vers où il dit : « j’étais déjà si mauvais poète que je ne savais pas aller jusqu’au bout. » Et être artiste c’est être capable d’aller jusqu’au bout. D. F. : Dans la forme ? Dans quoi ? A. L. A. : Dans tout. Dans l’âme. D. F. : Dans l’âme ? A. L. A. : Quand tu écris, tu mets tout là-dedans. Tu as une relation corporelle avec le papier. Moi, j’écris à la main. D. F. : Oui, je sais. En plusieurs variantes. A. L. A. : C’est une relation physique avec le papier, avec le matériel. D. F. : Et avec la poésie, tu ne pouvais pas le faire ? A. L. A. : Oui, je pourrais… mais j’avais besoin d’espace. D. F. : Ah, voilà, on arrive à une explication, effectivement. A. L. A. : J’avais besoin d’espace. Je pouvais écrire des choses merveilleuses, comme ce poème… je ne me souviens pas le nom… qui commence par « Mélan- colie, mélancolie, quel joli nom pour une jeune fille / Neurasthénie, neurasthé- nie, quel vilain nom pour une vieille fille ». D. F. : C’est magnifique ça. C’est un symboliste ? A. L. A. : Non, non. C’est un surréaliste du groupe de Breton. Comment est-ce qu’il s’appelle ? Il est tellement connu ! Je me souviendrai le nom à un moment. D. F. : C’est beau. « Mélancolie, mélancolie, quel joli nom pour une jeune fille. » A. L. A. : « Neurasthénie, neurasthénie, quel vilain nom pour une vieille fille. » Et là j’ai compris qu’écrire c’était aller jusqu’au bout. Jusqu’au bout de toi- même. Moi, quand je vais me coucher après une journée d’écriture – et j’écris tous les jours – je suis complètement fatigué, tellement fatigué. Tu es assis, mais, par exemple, si tu es lié à des appareils pour mesurer le rythme cardiaque ou la tension artérielle – on l’a fait avec des écrivains – ça monte et ça descend tout le temps. Il y a des moments… ça me laisse tellement fatigué un livre ! C’est un travail horrible, c’est un corps à corps continu avec le texte, contre le texte, pour le texte, qui a toujours été ambivalent : « Comment est-ce que je vais dire ça ? » D. F. : Ma question est : t’as besoin d’un lecteur qui vit comme toi ? A. L. A. : Attends, attends : c’est Philippe Soupault, le poète. D. F. : Ah, Philippe Soupault. Mais, pour la lecture de tes romans, tu as besoin toujours de la dévotion absolue de ton lecteur, qui doit refaire ton dévouement, ton expérience, ta plongée dans les abîmes de l’écriture. A. L. A. : Ce que j’aimerais c’est que le lecteur pompe le livre, comme le livre m’a pompé moi. 104 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

D. F. : Justement. Mais comment faire ? Parce que, maintenant, même la lecture est médiocre. Il y a beaucoup de littérature médiocre, elle est abondante, mais les lecteurs médiocres sont assez nombreux aussi. C’est la nature qui élimine tout cela ? A. L. A. : Mon idéal, même comme lecteur, serait de commencer la lecture et de la finir à la fin du livre. Mais la fin du livre n’est pas la fin de la lecture, car tu continues à lire un livre qui est fini. D. F. : Ça trotte dans ta tête. A. L. A. : Ça commence à changer, à prendre des directions inespérées. D. F. : C’est le livre qui s’est installé en toi-même. A. L. A. : Un bon livre n’est jamais fini. On ne finit jamais Madame Bovary. À chaque fois que tu le lis, c’est un autre livre. Il y a cette chose dans les grands livres qui m’a toujours émerveillé : à chaque lecture, c’est un nouveau livre. Tu appréhendes autrement… D. F. : Dans les grands livres. Comme dans le grand cinéma. A. L. A. : C’est comme ça avec Fellini. Tu vois le film une deuxième fois, c’est différent. Avec les tableaux de Vélasquez. Tu peux rester là pendant des heures et ça change. D. F. : Oui, ça change. Quand j’étais au Portugal et j’habitais dans ta maison, je voyais sur ta table un livre de Faulkner. Tu continues de lire Faulkner ? A. L. A. : Faulkner est très bien pour les débutants, car ça donne envie d’écrire. D. F. : Comment ça ? A. L. A. : Au début, mes parents ne voulaient pas que j’écrive. Je n’étudiais pas, donc ils ne voulaient pas que j’écrive. Mais j’écrivais sur des feuilles de papier petites, des recettes de mon père à l’hôpital (il était médecin et prof à la fac). D. F. : Tu volais les recettes de ton père. A. L. A. : Oui et, sous les feuilles, je mettais les mathématiques, etc. D. F. : Tu cachais ton écriture. A. L. A. : Quand j’entendais des pas, je changeais l’ordre pour que mes parents pensent que j’étais en train d’étudier. Tous les enfants pensent toujours que leurs parents sont stupides. Par exemple, ma fille : « Papa, ce soir, je ne dors pas à la maison, je vais dormir chez une amie. » Mais c’est le même mensonge que j’ai utilisé quand j’avais son âge. D. F. : Oui et ça marche. Il faut la croire. A. L. A. : Oui, je vais passer pour stupide. D. F. : Justement, c’est ton rôle. A. L. A. : Je fais comme mon père a fait avant moi. D. F. : Là, t’as compris qu’il faisait semblant, hein ? A. L. A. : Avec nos enfants, nous devons êtres très stupides et sourds. Parfois, ils disent des choses et c’est mieux de faire semblant que tu n’as rien écouté, car, si tu écoutes, tu dois intervenir. Donc si tu n’as pas écouté officiellement… Focus • 105

D. F. : Officiellement, tu n’as pas écouté… António, raconte-nous un peu sur les quatre livres de Chroniques, parce que moi j’ai la joie d’avoir commencé à te tra- duire – je t’avais lu, mais pas traduit – et j’ai fait un choix de ces Chroniques. Tu les appelles Chroniques, mais ce sont des proses très denses, des proses courtes, qui donnent, dans la plupart des cas, des souvenirs d’enfance, des descriptions de lieux, des descriptions de personnages que tu as côtoyés quand tu étais enfant et tout se transforme dans des proses formidables. Ton art narratif et ta puissance d’imaginer, d’utiliser les métaphores et, en même temps, ta grande simplicité, malgré la phrase la plus riche… Parle-nous de cette expérience des Chroniques. Tu as l’air de dire que ça ne compte pas tant que ça pour toi par rapport avec tes romans. Et Dieu sait que tu as dépassé le nombre de 25 romans. C’est ça, 25 romans ? Je veux vous montrer, à vous qui vous êtes ici présentes, un livre de commentaires sur sa prose – mais il y en a 3 ou 4 comme ça. Ce sont les Actes d’un colloque dédié à Lobo Antunes à l’Université de Coimbra : « L’écriture et le monde : Lobo Antunes ». Mais je reviens à ma question au sujet des Chroniques. A. L. A. : D’abord, je crois que je n’ai jamais écrit de roman. J’écris des livres. Ce ne sont pas des romans. Ces Chroniques sont un truc alimentaire, parce que, il y a une vingtaine d’années, l’éditeur a eu un cancer. Il était portugais. Il pensait qu’il allait mourir. Il a cessé de me payer la mensualité. Il dépensait tout pour des femmes, des restaurants de luxe, etc. À l’époque la vente des mes livres ne marchait pas très bien. Ce n’était pas encore le boom Lobo Antunes. D. F. : Oui, tu est traduit actuellement partout, même au Viet-Nam… A. L. A. : Soudain, il a arrêté de me payer et je n’avais pas d’argent. Le directeur d’un journal, que je ne connaissais pas, m’a invité à écrire de petits trucs pour un supplément de dimanche. Il payait un peu, donc j’ai accepté ça jusqu’à ce que l’éditeur revienne me payer. Il n’est pas mort. Quand il a recommencé à me payer, j’ai cessé d’écrire des chroniques …. Plusieurs années passèrent dans la paix, je faisais mes livres en toute tranquillité et le directeur d’une revue m’a appelé. C’est un homme qui a un empire journalistique, la télévision, etc. Un homme que j’aime bien. Il m’a appelé en disant : « Je voudrais que vous écriviez pour moi etc. » Il avait un magazine hebdomadaire. Eduardo Lourenço est un essayiste très respecté… D. F. : Oui, je le connais. Il est très respecté. A. L. A. : Il a 90 ans. Il m’a dit : « Tu sais, j’écris, ils me paient 200 euros, c’est très bien, c’est merveilleux. » Une semaine après, ce mec-là m’appelle : « Je voudrais que vous écriviez des choses pour nous. » Je pensais : « Je veux pas. » Mais je ne voulais pas être mal élevé avec un homme qui a toujours été un comble de l’élégance. Et donc j’ai dit : « Oui, je fais ça pour 5000 euros. Je mets la patte sur le papier, mais pour 5000 euros. » Pour qu’il me dise « non »… D. F. : Et il a dit « oui »… A. L. A. : Il y a certaines putes que l’on paye… 106 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

D. F. : C’est bien d’essayer certains coups de bluff. A. L. A. : Il a dit « oui ». Je devais en faire deux par mois, ce qui m’embêtait. D. F. : Mais ça nous réjouit, nous, car tu es arrivé au 5e volume comme ça, à part les autres livres qui ne sont pas des romans. A. L. A. : C’est un travail pour une journée. J’écrivais deux trucs par mois et je gagnais cet argent. Je ne pouvais pas lui dire « non ». Je ne pouvais pas, puisqu’il payait tout cela. C’était une fortune pour quelqu’un qui écrit pour un magazine. Mais je n’arrive pas à accorder de l’importance à ça. C’est avec les livres que j’ai eu ma vie. Ça c’est des trucs purement alimentaires que je fais vite. Je fais une première version, je relis, je jette les mots répétés et j’envoie. C’est comme ça. D. F. : António, parmi les grands écrivains, tes contemporains, tu es un des rares dont les confrères parlent très bien. Les autres confrères, tes égaux, ont prononcé des éloges sur ton écriture : Vargas Llosa, Claudio Magris, Steiner et les autres. Comment tu t’expliques que tu as tant d’amis et que les autres t’appré- cient sans envie, très franchement. Ce n’est peut-être pas à toi de l’expliquer, mais j’aimerais quand même avoir ton opinion. A. L. A. : Tu parles des écrivains. D. F. : Oui, je parle des écrivains. Magris a fait un bel article. Tu as eu un grand prix en Italie récemment. A. L. A. : Cette année ? Combien de prix ? J’ai eu Nonino et je crois que c’est tout. Cette année, je crois que c’est tout. D. F. : Oui, tu m’as parlé de ceux qui étaient dans le jury. Il y avait Magris… A. L. A. : Le président était un écrivain que je n’aime pas. Je n’aime pas ses livres. Naipaul. Il ne parle pas. Il était tellement vaniteux. Je l’ai connu à Londres. C’est un mec comme ça, de cette taille. Et qui vivait avec deux Anglaises. Plus grandes que lui. Je l’ai connu à Londres avec ses deux Anglaises, deux dames très distin- guées. Une d’entre elles est morte et elle a été remplacée par une autre, tout aussi blonde, aussi lasse. Soixante-dix ans chacune. Ce qui faisait cent quarante années de femmes à côté de lui, une de chaque côté. Il avait cent quarante années de fémi- nité à côté de lui et il était vaniteux à n’en plus finir. Lui et ses femmes, car il était toujours escorté par ces deux femmes. Il est né au Trinité-et-Tobago, je crois… Il était donc président du jury, mais il ne pouvait pas parler. Les femmes étaient là, beaucoup plus âgées encore – l’une d’entre elles est morte, elle a été substituée ! D. F. : Celle de gauche ?... A. L. A. : Elles étaient toutes les deux à côté de lui. Il y avait aussi Claudio, il y avait Adonis, un poète syrien… D. F. : Adonis ? A. L. A. : Oui, Adonis. Qui encore…? Il y avait Michel Serres, Edgar Morin. D. F. : Que du beau monde ! A. L. A. : Il y avait beaucoup de monde et c’était très amusant. C’est vrai que mes camarades écrivains ont été très généreux avec moi. Quand j’ai su que Focus • 107

Vargas Llosa avait mon portrait dans son bureau, j’ai été très content. Je pense que c’est pour ma beauté, pas pour mon talent… Il est très difficile de résister à Mario Vargas Llosa. D. F. : Oui, oui. Les femmes l’ont vu ici à Cluj, il y a un an, quand il reçu lui aussi le titre de doctor honoris causa. Il est un charmeur. Grand comme ça, distin- gué. C’est Mario Vargas Llosa… A. L. A. : Non, il n’est pas grand. Il est comme moi. D. F. : Mais non, il est plus grand que toi, non ? A. L. A. : Márquez, oui, il est grand. Mario Vargas – non. La dernière fois que j’ai vu Gabriel García Márquez… – c’était un homme avec un humour extraordinaire. Un homme merveilleux – je lui ai dit : « Gab ! » Il ne savait pas mon nom, il ne savait plus son nom à lui, il ne savait pas qu’il avait écrit, il ne savait rien… c’était un spectacle atroce. Il avait un humour extraordinaire. Par exemple, il m’avait raconté la mort de sa grand-mère. Il adorait sa grand-mère. Elle vivait avec lui et ses parents, elle était très malade et elle lui a dit : « Mon petit-fils, quand je mourrai, ne me mets pas près de ton grand-père. » D. F. : « Je t’interdis de m’enterrer à côté de ton grand-père. » A. L. A. : On enterrait les familles côte à côte. « Mais pourquoi ? » Elle ne ré- pondait pas. « Je ne veux pas être près de ton grand-père quand je serai morte. » Et, finalement, après qu’il a insisté, elle a expliqué: « Tu sais, t’as vu cette photo- là sur le mur ? » « Oui et j’ai toujours trouvé ça un peu étrange, car grand-père est assis et toi, tu es debout. » « Ah oui, c’est que cette photo a été faite le jour après notre mariage. Et ton grand-père était un homme tellement puissant que lui, il ne pouvait pas se lever, et moi, je ne pouvais pas m’asseoir. Et, tu vois, il est mort depuis quatorze ans. Imagine comment il est maintenant. » D. F. : « Il m’a laissée seule. » C’était son reproche…? A. L. A. : Non, elle ne voulait pas être près d’un homme qui l’attendait depuis quatorze ans. Il était un homme très joyeux. Il aimait vivre, il aimait tout… D. F. : António, je pense que t’as répondu à toutes les questions, mais on aime- rait bien t’écouter jusqu’à la fin de ce jour et encore demain. Tu es un charmeur, tu es un grand écrivain, on le sait. Tu es aussi un très bon ami et tu sais aussi entrer en contact – je me permets de le dire – avec le public. Tu sais comment communiquer tes l’émotions. Chers étudiants, António ne veut pas communiquer des valeurs, des concepts littéraires, etc. Il veut communiquer son émotion. J’ai l’impression, j’ai la cer- titude qu’il nous a communiqué quelque chose de très émotionnel, émouvant, qui fait partie de lui-même, de son écriture, de sa grande personnalité. On le remercie d’être là. Merci encore, cher António. q (Transcription par Renata Georgescu et Alina Pelea) 108 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

Abstract “Walking Like a Burning House”

The dialogue between António Lobo Antunes and Dinu Flãmând (Cluj-Napoca, 7 October 2014) is multifaceted, addressing various themes: the function of literature, the autobiographical condition, and the carnival of writing and the playfulness of life. It is a literary dialogue in which the two partners complete and amicably tease one another on issues pertaining to literature, but in such a way as to propel ideas and speculations and memories that turn this dialogue into a prose of the autofiction type. It is just that, in this case, there are only two authors: a primary author (António Lobo Antunes, the guest) and a secondary author (Dinu Flãmând, who has assumed the role of a catalyst for the memory of his Portuguese friend). The quotations and the evocation of other famous writers also turn this dialogue into a mini-essay, uttered in near musical cadences and featuring narrative and poematic inserts.

Keywords António Lobo Antunes, Dinu Flãmând, literature, biography, the writer’s condition, death, mel- ancholy, beauty, memory

transsilvanica

Medieval Literacy in Transylvania Selective Evidence from Parish A d i n e l D i n c Ã Churches

A short memorandum written in the year 1544 (but most likely re ferring to an earlier occasion) by a certain Transylvanian Saxon named Michael, as he entered office as a priest in Ghimbav (in Romanian, Weiden- bach in German),1 lists various objects from the parish house and includes information that draws attention to the question concerning literacy in the parish churches of pre-Reformation Transylvania. Shortly after mentioning the first item, “a good table” (Item, Romanian National Archives, czum ersten, eynen gutten thysch . . .), Braºov County Division, Prima˘ria oras¸ului Michael records the fact that he also Bras¸ov. Colect¸ia socoteli s¸i impozite ale satelor found Item, des Bapst decret myth den din T¸ara Bârsei, XXX/1, fol. 1r (fragment) decretalen der ablas in das erst, das ander, das dryth, in das 4, 5, 6 decretalen bu-

The present study is part of a larger research Adinel Dincã project concerning pragmatic writing in Researcher at the Romanian Academy, medieval and early modern Transylvania, George Bariþiu Institute of History. cncs pn-ii-id-pce-2012-4-0579: “Între public Co-editor of Documenta Romaniae şi privat: Practici ale scrisului în Transil Historica (vol. 16, 2014). Author of several vania (sec. XIII–XVII)” (Between public and studies on medieval Transylvanian literacy private: Writing practices in Transylvania and church history. during the 13th–17th centuries), 2013–2016. 110 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) cher, auch die Clementina und dy Silvestrina: a papal privilege (an indulgence, perhaps), and a small collection of very useful legal texts, composed of six volumes (!) of Pope Gregory IX Decretals, a volume of the Clementinas of Clement V and finally the alphabetic compilation on ethics and canon law by the Dominican author Silvestro Mazzolini (1456–1527), known as Summa sum- marum (first edition, Rome, 1516). The information provided by this small inventory—obviously raising many questions of confessional or book-historical nature2—is for now to be seen simply as an illustrative embodiment of the prevalent forms of the manifestation of literacy in the late medieval environment of the Transylvanian parish church: we meet the “author” of a text, the “librarian” or “reader,” respectively, the “archivist,” the one who looks after the important privileges of his community. Beyond the lack of research and publications regarding the forms in which the written culture manifested itself in the parishes of medieval Transylvania, the historiographical approach concerned with this historic space and chronological segment faces two crucial theoretical issues: the first one concerns terminology, while the other deals with the methodological aspect, especially underpinning the sources for this type of investigation. Thus, the present few pages do not and cannot include a discussion on theoretical and methodological terminology; it is my belief that some examples based on various sources and lines of enquiry will illustrate, in a sufficiently convincing manner, various aspects that can be developed in a later independent monograph. In this limited editorial context it suffices to indicate that, at the present time, any approach to such a topic of cultural history should also include the corollary of Romanian scientific language and of the historical realities it covers, as everything must be filtered through the specialized terminology commonly used internationally. It is hard to find unambiguous matches in Romanian for the terms “literacy” or “Schriftlichkeit” (and their various combinations and derivatives, such as “written culture,” “pragmatische Schriftlichkeit” etc.); 3 this is a question that every Romanian researcher of medieval history faces when wishing to approach the topic according to the international analytical practice and historiographical discourse.4 A larger discussion on the precise Romanian expressions focused on the historical phenomenon of writing practices in the Middle Ages (in Latin), accompanied by a lexicographical recording5 of the main linguistic tools dealing with the sources of classical education, writing, reading, etc. would be a mandatory preliminary step. Other preliminary perspectives that should be considered complement the methodological plan of the debate. Anyone and everyone who will study in any detail the interaction between the phenomenon of writing and the parish Transsilvanica • 111 churches of Transylvania will have to take into account two essential facets of the topic. The involvement of the Transylvanian parish clergy in written culture occurs both in a direct, active manner, as a “transmitter,” therefore as a creator of text, author, issuer, glossator, scribe or editor—depending on the type of written text in question—and from an indirect and passive perspective, as the “recipient” of a document, either short or long, that is, as the beneficiary, addressee, reader, librarian, archivist, etc. Only by studying the fluid relationship between the two planes can one channel the survey results towards answers in agreement with historical facts. However, there are aspects that cannot be so easily assigned to one or another of the structures mentioned above. The parish clergy’s involvement in the educational process through elementary schools, established by the more important churches, emphasizes the ambiguity of an accurate attribution to the direct or indirect manners of interaction with writing. The same plurality can be observed when discussing the types of sources related to the topic. Traditionally, and not only in Romanian research, academics have approached the documents and other old texts by specific categories, mostly for the sake of the effective “management” and control of historical sources. However, in a manner analogous to the one already highlighted on the direct or indirect involvement in the flow of medieval writing, a complete image of the range of texts that came into contact with a parish priest or one of his assistant priests in the course of their careers may only be achieved by simultaneously combining the information conveyed by the archival document (under its many forms of expression) and the significant details mediated by the medieval book, handwritten or printed. It is this variety of texts accompanying the parish priest in the development of his career—from books for liturgical services, to volumes dedicated to solving other associated duties of his office, such as preaching, settlement of matrimonial disputes etc., to documents maintaining a formal contact with the church or secular authorities at every level, supervis- ing the parish finances, and much more—that makes it difficult to approach the topic in a uniform manner. Not only the variety of sources, but also their editing and processing have created a challenge for the researcher. A wider editorial effort focused on archival documents, covering a wider time range, is recorded only for the Saxon Urkundenbuch, whose online version reaches the beginning of the 16th century;6 two other major Transylvanian projects are still dealing with documents from the last decades of Angevin rule (the 14th century).7 As far as the medieval book, whether handwritten or printed, is concerned, things are more complicated. An overview regarding the volumes of manuscripts is beginning to emerge from those holdings that retain relevant material preserved in Transylvanian parish churches;8 for the early printed books, 112 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) the researchers of the Middle Ages can rely on a recent cumulative catalogue, which unfortunately does not contain, in addition to the identification of bibliographical data, the historical elements that may be associated with the former owners of books, namely, the Transylvanian parish clergy. Thus, the current state of research compels the book historian to call upon the older catalogues of individual collections. However, for the first half of the 16th century, that is, for the last decades of medieval Transylvanian Catholic unity, which, as we will see in this text, represents the pinnacle of the written culture’s evolution in the area under consideration, effective working tools are missing or are inefficiently substituted. 9 The time segment most generous in information starts with the death of King Matthias (1490) and concludes with the replacement of the Catholicism with the Protestant Reformation (chronologically placed between two moments: 1542, the adoption of the Lutheran Reformation by the Transylvanian Saxons, and 1556, the dissolution of the Bishopric of Alba Iulia by the Transylvanian Estates). It is precisely this time period which is poorly covered by document editions and catalogues. This imbalance between available sources and published editions described above has a fairly faithful correspondence in the geographical distribution of relevant sources for this topic. The territories colonized in the Middle Ages by hospites from Central and Western Europe, especially from German-speaking regions, focused around the Sibiu, Braºov and Târnava areas, supply the largest concentration of medieval documentary sources that provide a foundation for the cultural history of the Transylvanian parishes. They include archives of Saxon chapter churches, either privileged or subject to the jurisdic- tion of the Transylvanian bishop, and libraries that not only preserve the medieval bibliophile rarities purchased by modern collectors (Batthyaneum Library in Alba Iulia is a well-known example), but also books that prove beyond any doubt a local Transylvanian use since the Middle Ages. The history of the medieval parish in Transylvania is definitely not a history of ecclesiastical structures created by German settlers and their descendants; however, the quantity, quality and topography of preserved sources convey such a distorted image across the region. An essential contribution from historical sources outside Romania still available must not be forgotten, especially the excellent Hungarian National Archives’ digitization project10 of a very important part of the documentary heritage from the medieval kingdom of Hungary. This project makes an extremely important contribution to the topic discussed here, but cannot completely substitute direct research in Romanian document collections, mainly for the period after 1526. There is currently a very superfi- cial knowledge of the relevant documentary material preserved among the vast holdings in the Vatican archives of the Holy See. Such material could provide, Transsilvanica • 113 in many cases, unique information on the personal instruction of Transylvanian parish priests; this drawback is more difficult to overcome over the short term by Romanian medievalists. Some important details pertaining to European or regional historical contexts require and demand a special treatment of the development of literate education and of written culture within the parish churches of Transylvania before the Protestant Reformation. The main phenomenon that comes to support the working hypothesis is defined by the expansion of higher education in universities. Rational (i.e. efficient) production of handwritten books—facilitated by the increasing use of paper during the 14th century as material support for writing, which produced a wide range of texts used in administration and justice—organically evolved in the 15th century, bringing together the emergence and affirmation of printing with movable type and the spread of universities in Central and Northern Europe. The founding of the University of Prague in 1348, the first university north of the Alps and east of Paris, meant lower costs for education, and therefore a better access for interested students from those regions of Europe that had adopted Christianity around the year 1000 or later, thus filling an important gap in ecclesiastical institutionalization. Such realities are intertwined and affected by the efforts of states to create a modern bureaucracy and those of the Holy See, which asserted its continuous desire for reform of the secular clergy by imposing a higher level of education. A meaningful moment in the cultural history of the medieval Catholic parish clergy is represented by one of the famous Decretals of Pope Boniface VIII (1294–1303), a text known as Cum ex eo, issued in 1298.11 The pope intended, by means of this decree, to reply to those who criticized the uneducated parochial clergy, often associated with “the blind leading the blind,” as stated in the Bible (Matthew 15: 13–14 and Luke 6: 39–40), and allowed parish priests to take leave of absence for up to seven years in order to complete their studies (licentia studendi). The measure did not remain without consequences and recent investigations have demonstrated its impact: in the first half of the 14th century, therefore immediately after the promulgation of the aforementioned decree, around 1,200 priests from the Lincoln diocese, the largest in England, left for university studies according to the stipulated conditions;12 this type of information is confirmed by similar facts from other areas. Certainly, the dissemination of this generous idea must have met specific political and religious contexts in each medieval Catholic European state. There is only need to remember that Andrew, elected bishop of Transyl- vania, required papal dispensation in 1320 for the confirmation of his election due to his poor education13—and this episode is by no means the only one of its kind. A real increase in the Transylvanian parish clergy’s university attendance is recorded only in the second half of the century, after the founding of the 114 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

University of Vienna (1365) and other German universities. For the same time period (and especially after 1400) manuscripts from Sibiu (Brukenthal Library) have been found containing texts specific to university studies, especially the Sentences of Petrus Lombardus, in a form very similar (binding, writing, etc.) to other texts known to have circulated in Vienna’s academic environment in the 15th century (details taken from personal research yet unpublished). This phenomenon of a Transylvanian presence in the milieu of medieval universities highlights the privileged position of the Transylvanian Saxons.14 The need for a solid educational basis was required by the complex tasks the medieval parish priest faced. He was more than a liturgical official; he was also responsible for the moral integrity of the parishioners and was the mediator between the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the secular world, representing the local community in the outside world. The parish priest was therefore an administra- tor of the sacraments, a local judge in cases of moral and Christian conduct, a political, military and tax agent of the higher authorities, regardless of their nature, but also a messenger of the community. Moreover, local education was in the hands of religious institutions, as priests were responsible for primary education. All these activities involved a form of authority, an authority that ensured and involved the use of the written word in various forms.

eyond these brief theoretical considerations, necessary for positioning the research topic within medieval studies, some selective evidence can be brought forth by focusing almost exclusively on the Transylvanian B 15 Saxon parishes. Several perspectives for the analysis of the relations between Transylvanian parish priests and the written word can be highlighted. However, only some of them will be brought forward in the context of the present study: namely, the issue of documents drafted by parish priests, the role of writing in the administration of the parish and the very interesting phenomenon of the parish library. Other aspects, such as the recourse to the services of those offices specialized in issuing documents, places for authentication (loca credibilia) or notaries public, the differences between urban and rural parishes or some epigraphic aspects of the writing will be deliberately avoided in this study. Priests from the communities of German settlers in Transylvania are mentioned as issuing legal documents from the beginning of the 14th century on- wards in the context of trials involving several Saxon chapters against what was perceived as a series of abuses perpetrated by the episcopal authorities of Tran- sylvania. During the investigation it was concluded that the documents submitted by the Saxons, issued by secular and ecclesiastical authorities in the Sibiu area, had no probative value.16 During this early stage of development, during Transsilvanica • 115 the Angevin century, the deans of Sibiu sometimes sealed documents with the seal of the Sibiu administrative region.17 The evolution is rapid, and the documents issued by the Saxon parish priests grow in number: for example, a simple combined survey of the online version of the Urkundenbuch provides more than 70 documents issued before 1500. Other relevant documents are still in the archives, most of them as yet unpublished. For instance, from only two thematic collections preserved at the Sibiu County Division of the Romanian National Archives, Documente episcopale (Episcopal documents) (also known as “Bischofs urkunden” and “bu”) and Capitlul Evanghelic Bistriþa (Bistriþa Lutheran Chap- ter) over 30 documents could be extracted covering mainly the third and fourth decades of the 16th century.18 These documents present in a very interesting manner the literacy level of the parish priests, as many such documents bear the autograph signature, manu propria, of the issuers. The issuing process reaches maturity sometime in the second half of the 15th century, attested by the presence of a notary especially hired by the dean of the Sibiu chapter.19 If such documents, capturing various external aspects of parish life, represent a form of communication with the outside world, then the registers, called ma- triculae or ecclesiae libri, in an ambiguous terminology, represent written forms for the internal management of the church. Such administrative record books, widely used after the middle of the 16th century, are particularly interesting because they cover a complex variety of topics: the register of the parish church’s household contains inventories of goods, whether movable (books, vestments and religious objects, etc.) or property (Matricula Plebaniae Cibiniensis20 or the register from Jelna),21 while at a higher ecclesiastical level such inventories can evolve into strictly specialized types. Thus, in certain situations, such sources retain copies of documents important to the community (Liber promptuarius capituli Barcensis of Braºov)22 or, in the case of specialized registers held by chapters, even decisions and sentences issued during trials (Protocollum capituli Cib- iniensis).23 Depending on the status of the church that preserved such registers, the records were made directly by the parish priest, such as in Jelna, or by a vitricus in the case of the Sibiu Matricula, or even by experienced professional scribes, as attested by their handwriting, in the case of specialized inventories. Certainly, particularly generous information is provided by an analysis of parish libraries. Books from the 14th–16th centuries were gathered by parish priests through private donations of the local clergy or laymen; their purpose was to support priests in their complex work. As a result, the books best represented in the libraries were parochial liturgical texts, biblical exegesis and homiletics: interpretations and biblical commentaries, sermons and other thematic compi- lations of the same kind. They accounted for the majority of manuscripts preserved; less numerous, but still present, are texts referring to canon law. In the 116 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) parochial school, glossaries (Latin and German) were used as support material. In addition to Latin texts, parish libraries in southern Transylvania included texts in German, an important aspect of the early beginnings of writing in the vernacular in the region. There are several kinds of evidence concerning such parish libraries,24 which place this European phenomenon in the late 15th century. We encounter, on the one hand, those fortunate situations of contemporary sources, or “catalogues,” compiled and continuously adjusted whenever an important gift (rarely a purchase) of books was introduced into the library—such a case can be found at St. Mary’s Church in Sibiu. Then, there are the more numerous cases when only notes have survived about the former library, contemporary or not, as is the case of the library belonging to the Black Church in Braºov or the small book collection of Jelna (or even the abovementioned memorandum from Ghimbav). The third situation, represented by churches in Sebeº and Cisnãdie (we may as well add other similar situations, such as Sighiºoara, Mediaº, Braºov, etc.) are characterized by the preservation of medieval volumes, which are not accompanied by any adjacent written source. Certainly, the prime example for the expression of this phenomenon in Transylvania remains the parish church of Sibiu, where the 1442 list, to be found in the aforementioned Matricula, already lists over 150 books, which were later supplemented by other acquisitions. Several dozens of these can still be found in the collection of codices preserved at Brukenthal Library. Besides manuscripts, there are also some incunabula that can be linked to the same library, and future research on books in the first half of the 16th century could contribute enormously to a virtual reconstruction of the previous Catholic collection. Special mention must be made of the church and parish library at St. Wal- purga’s Church of Cisnãdie (Heltau in German) (today the Evangelical Church) where 12 manuscripts and 3 incunabula are still preserved today. This collection is one of the few parish libraries that are still in situ, i.e. in the place where it was constituted and used during medieval times. Around 1500, Cisnãdie library probably had at least 20 books, if one takes into account other manuscripts and printed books that can now be found in Sibiu, Cluj and Budapest.

he present considerations have, to be sure, an expository role rather than an analytical one. Nonetheless, despite these limitations, the impor- T tance of the parish milieu for Transylvania’s cultural history is obvious, and future detailed research would mark an important step forward in answer- ing questions concerning the importance of the parish milieu for Transylvania’s cultural history. q Transsilvanica • 117

Notes

1. Romanian National Archives, Braºov County Division, collection Primãria oraºului Braºov. Colecþia socoteli ºi impozite ale satelor din Þara Bârsei, shelf mark “Pachet XXX/1,” fol. 1 recto: Eyne Vermerkunk aller czu stand des pfarhoffs czwr weydenbach wo ychs Michael pfarrer bey der Warheyth hab yn meinnen beruffen eyngang entfangen (“A note about the status of everything that I, priest Michael, truly received in the parish house of Weidenbach upon entry in my profession”). The document is in fact a paper bifolium, written only on both sides of the first fol. The author of the present paper intends to deal thoroughly with this source in a separate article. 2. Michael Lieb (Amicinus), parish priest in Ghimbav from approximately 1529 to 1557, is mentioned at least one more time by his contemporaries dealing with books: dominus Michael ligavit libros 3 parocho Cibiniensi ex iussu domini decani . . . See Quellen zur Geschichte der Stadt Kronstadt in Siebenbürgen, vol. 3 (Kronstadt: Theochar Alexi, 1896), 602. 3. A short bibliographical list comprising theoretical and terminological approaches, not only aspects of historical evolution: Michael T. Clanchy, From memory to written record: England 1066–1307 (London: Edward Arnold, 1979; 2nd edition Ox- ford: Blackwell, 1993); Franz H. Bäuml, “Varieties and Consequences of Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy,” Speculum 55 (1980): 237–265; Hagen Keller and Klaus Grubmuller, eds., Pragmatische Schriftlichkeit im Mittelalter: Erscheinungsform und Entwicklungsstufen (Munich: Fink, 1992); Konrad Ehlich, “Text und sprachliches Handeln: Die Entstehung von Texten aus dem Bedurfnis nach Überlieferung,” in Schrift und Gedächtnis: Beiträge zur Archäologie der literarischen Kommunikation, eds. Aleida Assmann, Jan Assmann, and Christof Hardmeier (Munich: Fink, 1993), 24–43; Aleida Assmann and Jan Assmann, “Das Gestern im Heute: Medien und soziales Gedächtnis,” in Die Wirklichkeit der Medien: Eine Einfuhrung in die Kom- munikationswissenschaft, eds. Klaus Merten, Siegfried J. Schmidt, and Siegfried Wei- schenberg (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1994), 114–140; Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in fruhen Hochkultu- ren (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1999). 4. Adrian Papahagi, ed., Cristiana Papahagi, and Adinel Dincã, Vocabularul cãrþii man- uscrise (Bucharest: Ed. Academiei Române, 2013). 5. Mariken Teeuwen, ed., The Vocabulary of Intellectual Life in the Middle Ages (Turn- hout: Brepols, 2003). 6. http://siebenbuergen-institut.de/special-menu/e-transylvanica/urkundenbuch-zur- geschichte-der-deutschen-in-siebenbuergen-online/. 7. A recent overview of the publication of Transylvanian diplomatic sources from the voivodeship era (before 1542), can be found in András W. Kovács, Magyar vonat- kozású oklevélközlések Romániában (Kolozsvár: Az Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület kiadá- sa, 2009). The same author briefly presents the theme under the title: Ediþii de documente medievale privind Transilvania, available on-line http://enciclopediavirtuala.ro/ articoletematice/articol.php?id=80. 118 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

8. http://codex.centre.ubbcluj.ro/. 9. Useful suggestions on the topic can be found in Ádám Dankanits, Lesestoffe des 16. Jahrhunderts in Siebenbürgen (Bucharest: Kriterion, 1982). 10. http://mol.arcanum.hu/dldf/opt/a110505htm?v=pdf&a=start. 11. Leonard E. Boyle, “The Constitution ‘Cum ex eo’ of Boniface VIII,” in Pastoral Care, Clerical Education and Canon Law, 1200–1400 (London: Variorum Reprints, 1981), 263–302. 12. F. Donald Logan, University Education of the Parochial Clergy in Medieval England: The Lincoln Diocese, c. 1300–c. 1350 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014). 13. Adinel Dincã, “Aprecieri preliminare privind alegerea episcopului Transilvaniei în sec. XIII–XIV,” in Transilvania: Studii istorice (sec. XIII–XVII), ed. Susana Andea (Bucharest: Ed. Academiei Române, 2005), 162–186. 14. Georg Daniel Teutsch, “Über die ältesten Schulanfänge und damit gleichzeitige Bil- dungszustände in Hermannstadt,” Archiv des Vereins für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde 10 (1872): 193–232; Sándor Tonk, Erdélyiek egyetemjárása a középkorban (Bucha- rest: Kriterion, 1979); Maja Philippi, Die Bürger von Kronstadt im 14. und 15. Jahr- hundert: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Sozialstruktur einer siebenbürgischen Stadt im Mittelalter (Cologne–Weimar: Böhlau, 1986); Astrik L. Gabriel, The University of Paris and its Hungarian Students and Masters during the Reign of Louis XII and François Ier (Notre Dame, Ind.: United States Subcommission for the History of Universities, University of Notre Dame; Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Josef Knecht, 1986). 15. Marie-Madeleine De Cevins, “La formation du clergé paroissial en Hongrie sous les rois angevins,” in Formation intellectuelle et culture du clergé dans les territoires angevins (milieu du XIIIe–fin du XVe siècle), ed. Marie-Madeleine De Cevins (Rome: Ecole francaise de Rome, 2005), 47–78. 16. Franz Zimmermann, Karl Werner, and Georg Müller, Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der Deutschen in Siebenburgen, vol. 1 (Hermannstadt, 1892), no. 314, 239–292. See also Enikø Csukovits, “Egyházi és világi oklevelek hitelessége a szentszéki bíróságok eløtt (Egy vizsgálat tanulságai),” in Emlékkönyv Jakó Zsigmond szuletésének nyolcvanadik évfordulójára (Kolozsvar: Erdelyi Muzeum-Egyesulet, 1996), 126–134. 17. For instance 12 March 1372, Romanian National Archives, Sibiu County Division, U I 25. 18. Bishopric documents nos. 30, 52, 72, 103, 105, 110, 116, 117, 118, 119, 132, 133, 139, 146, 156; Bistriþa Lutheran Chapter nos. 13, 26, 44, 49, 56, 60, 62, 65, 67, 68, 69g, 70, 76, 77, 80, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 92, 93, 95, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104. 19. 4 May 1479, Urkundenbuch, vol. 7, no. 4306. 20. Robert Szentivanyi, Catalogus concinnus librorum manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Batthy- anyanae (Szeged: Hungaria, 1958), no. 294, 158–169; Endre Ivánka, “Két magyaror- szági plébániai könyvtára a XV. században,” Századok 72 (1938): 137–166, 332–334. 21. Gustav A. Schuller, “Ein Blick in das kirchliche Leben einer sächsischen Landge- meinde vor der Reformation,” in Beiträge zur Geschichte der ev. Kirche A. B. in Sieben- bürgen (Hermannstadt, 1922), 1–45. Transsilvanica • 119

22. Gernot Nussbächer, “Das Verzeichnis der Privilegien des Burzenländer Kapitels aus dem Jahre 1493,” in Emlékkönyv Kiss András születésének nyolcvanadik évfordulójára, eds. Pál-Antal Sándor, Sipos Gábor, W. Kovács András, and Wolf Rudolf (Cluj: Er- délyi Múzeum-Egyesület, 2004), 411–416. 23. Romanian National Archives, Sibiu County Division, Protocollum Capituli Cibinien- sis, I, 1523–1540, Holding: Sibiu Lutheran Chapter. 24. Adinel Dincã, Schriftkultur im südsiebenbürgischen Raum um 1500/Cultura scrisului în Transilvania de sud în jurul lui 1500, exhibition catalogue edited by Begegnungs- und Kulturzentrum Friedrich Teutsch der Evangelischen Kirche A. B. in Rumänien (Sibiu: Smart Print, 2013).

Appendix: Document samples

Peter Thwrck, priest of Batoº parish, 18 June 1528, Romanian National Archives, Sibiu County Division, Bischofsurkunden, no. 110

Peter Wol, priest of Richiº parish, 21 January 1530, Romanian National Archives, Sibiu County Division, Bischofsurkunden, no. 132 120 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

Michael, priest of Brateiu parish and general dean, 13 January 1531, Romanian National Archives, Sibiu County Division, Bistriþa Chapter, no. 26

Michael, priest of Aþel parish and general dean, 31 January 1531, Romanian National Archives, Sibiu County Division, Bistriþa Chapter, no. 44

Paul Benkner, priest and dean of Braºov parish, 11 February 1531, Romanian National Archives, Sibiu County Division, Bischofsurkunden, no. 139

Ownership marks on manuscripts from Sibiu and Cisnãdie Transsilvanica • 121

Ownership marks on manuscripts from Sibiu and Cisnãdie

Abstract Medieval Literacy in Transylvania: Selective Evidence from Parish Churches

For the first time in Romanian historiography, this article deals with the question of written culture among the parish priests during the medieval period in Transylvania, with specific emphasis on the theoretical approach to the topic. It highlights the importance of the parish milieu for Transylvania’s cultural history, surveying the written material generated in this environment and still available today in various collections, in an attempt to pave the way for a future investigation of the importance of the parish milieu for Transylvania’s cultural history.

Keywords Transylvania, Middle Ages, parish church, literacy europe

Human Rights M i ch a e l M e tz e l t i n As European Values

“All human beings are born 1. Historical Vectors of Today’s Europe free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed rom a civilizational vantage with reason and conscience point, today’s Europe is the pro F duct of several ideological vec- and should act towards one tors. One of them was the development of Greek philosophy, with its another in a spirit of broth- significant contribution to fields such erhood.” as the theory of ideas, logic, dialectic, and rhetoric. Another important vec- tor was the development of Roman law, which consecrated the existence of law as a judicial science relatively autonomous in regard to politics and religion, while the development of Christianity came to promote, in its turn, values such as monotheism, pa- triarchy, the mission, and the love of one’s neighbor. The emergence of the Michael Metzeltin ethos of chivalry and of courtly love Professor at the University of Vienna, contributed to the same process by member of the Austrian Academy of promoting the chivalrous virtues and Sciences, honorary member of the Ro- behavior, while the advent of experi- manian Academy. Recent publications mentalism and rationalism came to include: Theoretische und angewandte Semantik: Vom Begriff zum Text set experiment and reason at the very (2007), Erklärende Grammatik der foundation of knowledge, stimulating romanischen Sprachen (2010). the search for structural laws. The for- Europe • 123 mulation of human rights set natural law in opposition to positive law, while the development of nation-states gave renewed strength to ideas such as citizenship and constitutionalism. Last but not least, the emergence of a social market economy has demonstrated that high economic performance and social autonomy can be achieved through competitiveness and innovation. The outcome of all these developments is the common heritage of Europe, which we can see as a sum total of values, as indicated in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union and in the Treaty of Lisbon: “The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail.” If we consider the various definitions of the European identity proposed in the media, when it comes to the common European heritage we could use the following formula: in principle, the common heritage consists of the particular forms in which the peoples of Europe developed civilization and culture. Looking at the historical becoming of Europe, we can say that Europe ends where the dialectic and democratic spirit (of Greek extraction), the judicial spirit of the rule of law (of Roman extraction), the spirit of brotherhood (of Christian extraction), the spirit of freedom and equality (a legacy of the Enlightenment), and the separation between state and church (Cavour, Briand) met with failure, where a certain manner of developing the arts (main aesthetic trends such as the Renaissance, the Baroque, Classicism, Romanticism, Realism, Art Nouveau) and the sciences (the scientific spirit grounded in experiment, as developed by Roger Bacon and Francis Bacon) also failed to take hold. All these developments proceed at a slow pace and require a dialectic social cohabitation within a specific state framework.

2. The Anthropological Foundations of State Organization

n order to survive, an individual requires food and security (that is, protection against threats). For an entire group to survive, we also have to fac- I tor in reproduction (that is, the production of offspring), which naturally increases the need for food and security. In order to secure the necessary food and ensure safety one needs resources, meaning a “bountiful” territory that can be controlled and circulated as necessary. However, only an organized community can secure and guarantee such resources. 124 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

Consequently, in order to satisfy his own needs, each human individual is dependent upon another. All human beings have similar needs, which is probably the anthropological foundation of the recurrent idea whereby all human beings are equal. At the same time, however, each individual displays distinct features. The existing similarities engender solidarity with the others, and the development and preservation of one’s own identity (Germ. Selbstartigkeit, self-identity) implies the acceptance of otherness (Germ. Andersartigkeit, hetero-identity) and pluralism. This individual identity, combined with solidarity and with the acceptance of otherness, represents the human dignity of an individual. Consequently, human dignity could be defined as the human endeavor to ensure, for oneself and for the others (reciprocity) a secure and fruitful existence. Solidarity with the others, acceptance of diversity and the solving together of common problems make it essential that people ground their actions in certain ethical norms, such as honesty, dedication, moderation, and understanding. The observance of such norms engenders trust. Human dignity can only be achieved if there are guarantees concerning general safety, general freedom, general equal treatment, as well as the general right to ownership. As pre-requisites for human dignity, these elements could be considered fundamental inalienable rights, in the sense that they cannot be the object of negotiation. To the extent in which we are willing to defend them, they are fundamental values. However, these values can only be guaranteed in the framework of organized communities. In order to prevent a majority from taking undue advantage of fundamental guarantees, the best course of action is to institute the rule of law in the form of a direct or indirect, but definitely participative, representative parliamentary democracy, ensuring the separation of powers and the functioning of a multi-party parliamentary system. This rule of law must be in agreement with the general interest, namely, striving towards the common good, towards general well-being: “Denn Demokratie ist die Lebensform, in der Selbstbestimmung—rechtlich geschützt—möglich ist” (Lübbe 2012).

3. An Explanation of the Basic Concepts

undamental rights, which we deem to be the basis of the definition given to human dignity, are highly abstract concepts, developed and F elaborated upon by philosophers and politicians ever since Antiquity. Linguists are called upon to examine and compare the usage of these concepts in a variety of contexts, to identify their distinctive core semantic traits, to determine the actant models (who participates, how and to what process) and come Europe • 125 up with operational definitions, which could be used in reaching an agreement on a common and solidary existence. In keeping with this method, the basic concepts of security, freedom, equality, property and social welfare can be described as follows:

Security. As a fundamental right, this is the security guaranteed to all individuals by the political system, and it is understood as covering the integrity of a person and of its property, alongside the freedom of expression, action and movement; not even equality before the law can question the security of individuals and especially of their property. The security of individual citizens depends upon the internal and external security of their state, but this reality must not be abusively or arbitrarily used by the state authorities against individual citizens.

Freedom. In its Article 4, the Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du Citoyen of 26 August 1789 defines freedom in rather general terms: “La liberté consiste à pouvoir faire tout ce qui ne nuit pas à autrui: ainsi, l’exercice des droits naturels de chaque homme n’a de bornes que celles qui assurent aux autres membres de la société la jouissance de ces mêmes droits. Ces bornes ne peuvent être déter- minées que par la loi.” We distinguish three essential components of freedom. On the one hand, we have the freedom of movement, which means that an individual is not to be prevented from going wherever he or she wants. From a social point of view this means that an individual cannot be kept in slavery or serfdom, and from a territorial point of view it means that individuals can travel without impediment within the boundaries of their state. The hyponymous concepts include the freedom of assembly, of residence, the freedom to travel and, in a broader sense, to engage in trade. The opposed concepts are slavery, serfdom, arbitrary arrest or imprisonment. Arbitrary arrest is countered by the principle of habeas corpus, which means that a defendant is to remain free until such time as a court rules on the legality of his or her arrest. If individual freedom is an ideal, then those who are not free will try to gain this freedom. Second comes the freedom of thought, meaning that no one can prevent individuals from freely expressing their thoughts for as long as they do not tran- scend the boundaries of conventional morality. The synonymous concept is that of freedom of expression, and the hyponymous concepts are freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of education and the free and secret ballot. Its ant- onyms include censorship, forced religion, and the interdiction to speak in public. The third aspect concerns freedom of action, whereby no individual should be prevented from deciding how to live his or her life. In this case, however, individuals must respect the code of moral conduct, the absence of which would 126 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) mean libertinism. Freedom of action also includes the right to freely exercise a profession.

Equality. The concept of equality is a relational one which involves a comparative relation of the kind “A + being equal + to B.” The comparison entails a certain property, possibly quantified (tertium comparationis), the existence or non-existence of which can be used as a criterion in determining or certifying equality or inequality. Social and political equality can be defined as the situation of a person who, in the framework of a group or of a society, does not differ from the others when it comes to the obligations towards society or, on the other hand, to individual rights. In this context, in order to determine the existence of equality among citizens, we could take as tertia comparationis elements such as their treatment before the law, the possibility of participating in the political decision-making process, the possibility of holding public office, the obligation to pay tax, but also the existence of educational and development opportunities for all, as stipulated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, in its Article 2: “without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.” The antonym of equality is represented by unjustified “distinctions,” as indicated in Article 1 of the Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du Citoyen of 1789: “Les hommes naissent et demeurent libres et égaux en droits. Les distinctions sociales ne peuvent être fondées que sur l’utilité commune.”

Ownership/Property. Anyone has the right to possess an asset received or lawfully gained, but only in keeping with the law. This right also means the right of excluding others from the usufruct of one’s property. Ownership can be direct or indirect. Direct ownership can apply to things like real estate or land (an estate, a building, or a company) or to movable assets (clothing, household items, tools, cattle, merchandise, weapons, or precious metals). Indirect ownership applies to securities (stocks, currency, mortgages). Assets can also be imma- terial (intellectual property, whereby an author can freely benefit from his or her creations). The holders of this right can be private individuals, a group of people (for instance, an association), state institutions (e.g., a university) or, according to some, the state itself. To the benefit of the community, the state can protect but also limit ownership rights.

Utility and the Common Good. Common utility means the undertaking of a maximum number of possible actions by the individual members who live in a state, in order to meet some fundamental needs at the maximum possible level for a maximum number of people. The more or less successful fulfillment Europe • 127 of these needs is the common good or social welfare. This can be achieved only if individuals accept the fact that they must always consider the wellbeing of others. Common utility and the common good operate within a metonymical relation (cause-effect). The antonym of the common good is the exclusive self- interest.

4. Texts on the Rights of Man

undamental concepts such as freedom and equality, related to the very essence of the human being, are already discussed by Aristotle, but only F in the context of certain possible forms of the state: “Of forms of democracy first comes that which is said to be based strictly on equality. In such a democracy the law says that it is just for the poor to have no more advantage than the rich; and that neither should be masters, but both equal. For if liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost” (Politics IV, 4).

The basis of a democratic state is liberty; which, according to the common opinion of men, can only be enjoyed in such a state; this they affirm to be the great end of every democracy. One principle of liberty is for all to rule and be ruled in turn, and indeed democratic justice is the application of numerical not proportionate equality; whence it follows that the majority must be supreme, and that whatever the majority approve must be the end and the just. . . . This, then, is one note of liberty which all democrats affirm to be the principle of their state. Another is that a man should live as he likes. This, they say, is the privilege of a freeman, since, on the other hand, not to live as a man likes is the mark of a slave. (Politics VI, 2)

On the other hand, in the traditional treatises on the art of politics (Germ. Sta- atskunst), especially in the Specula regum (Germ. Fürstenspiegel), the common good is seen as the main objective of a community and the responsibility of a virtu- ous leader. Thus, Thomas Aquinas (De regimine principum, I, 1) contended: “Si ergo naturale est homini quod in societate multorum vivat, necesse est in hominibus esse per quod multitudo regatur. Multis enim existentibus hominibus et unoquoque id, quod est sibi congruum, providente, multitudo in diversa dis- pergeretur, nisi etiam esset aliquis de eo quod ad bonum multitudinis pertinet curam habens; sicut et corpus hominis et cuiuslibet animalis deflueret, nisi esset aliqua vis regitiva communis in corpore, quae ad bonum commune omnium membrorum intenderet.” 128 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

In a state, therefore, the initial tendency is to lay stress on the community and ascribe less importance to individuals. The community is more important than the individual, and the latter must defer to the community. Social power structures tend to limit individual freedom and an individual’s possibility of choosing from among several alternatives, of refusing something and proposing something else instead. The gradual and incremental rise of individuality begins with the Renaissance. It is especially in the 18th century that we see a proliferation of the ideas regarding the so-called natural rights. Without overlooking the importance of the community, attempts are nevertheless made at highlighting certain general individual rights. In his Leçons de droit de la nature et des gens (1769) the Swiss-Italian Enlightenment thinker Fortuné Barthélemy de Felice (1723–1789) defined natural right as follows: “Par loi naturelle on entend une loi que Dieu impose à tous les hommes, & qu’ils peuvent découvrir & connoître par les seules lumières de leur raison, en considérant avec attention leur nature & leur état. Le droit naturel est le systême, l’assemblage ou le corps de ces mêmes lois” (I, 7). Starting from this natural right and with numerous arguments, he concludes that all human beings are their own masters, that all are equal when it comes to social participation and happiness, that all give special attention to security and that all have the right to own property:

La liberté naturelle est le droit que tous les hommes ont par leur nature, de disposer de leurs personnes, de leurs actions, de leurs biens, de la manière qu’ils jugent la plus convenable à leur bonheur, sous la condition qu’ils ne blessent en rien leurs devoirs, ni par rapport à Dieu, ni par rapport à eux-mêmes, ni par rapport aux autres hommes. (I, 16) Voici donc proprement en quoi consiste l’égalité dont il s’agit: c’est que tous les hommes ont un droit égal à la société & au bonheur, tellement que, toutes choses d’ailleurs égales, les devoirs de la sociabilité imposent à tout homme envers un autre une obligation également forte & indispensable, & qu’il n’y a aucun homme au monde qui puisse raisonnablement s’attribuer quelque prérogative à cet égard au- dessus des autres. (I, 19) La première loi générale de la sociabilité, c’est de ne faire du mal à personne, & par conséquent de réparer celui qu’on a causé. C’est ici une loi absolue & générale; car c’est une conséquence de l’égalité naturelle; & comme nous sommes en droit d’exiger des autres hommes qu’ils ne nous fassent aucun mal, nous devons convenir qu’ils ont le même droit par rapport à nous. . . . La maxime que nous recomman- dons tend donc à mettre en sûreté notre vie, notre personne, notre honneur, nos biens, & tout ce qui nous appartient légitimement: c’est-à dire, non seulement ce que nous tenons immédiatement de la nature, mais encore tout ce [que] nous avons Europe • 129

acquis en vertu de quelque convention ou de quelque établissement humain, qui sans cela deviendroient entièrement inutiles. (I, 20) Personne ne peut refuser à l’homme le droit naturel de pourvoir à sa conservation: ce premier droit n’est en lui-même que le résultat d’un premier devoir qui lui est im- posé sous peine de douleur & de mort. . . . Or il est évident que le droit de pourvoir à sa conservation, renferme le droit d’acquérir par ses recherches & ses travaux, les choses utiles à son existence, & celui de les conserver après les avoir acquises. Il est évident que ce second droit n’est qu’une branche du premier; on ne peut pas dire avoir acquis ce qu’on n’a pas le droit de conserver; ainsi le droit d’acquérir & le droit de propriété ne forment ensemble qu’un seul & même droit, mais considéré dans des temps différents. C’est donc de la Nature même que chaque homme tient la propriété exclusive de ce qu’il a acquis pour sa conservation par ses recherches & ses travaux. (I, 25)

These ideas on the rights that nature bestowed upon each human being triggered the revolt against royal and ecclesiastical authority, the revolt against absolute monarchies and against the privileged society of the Old Regime, the revolt that led to the independence of the thirteen American colonies of Britain, to the French Revolution, to the abolition of feudal rights, to the creation of a citizens’ state, of the modern constitutions. Natural rights and democratic constitutions are essentially ideals whose development in text form and practical implementa- tion involved a slow and lengthy process. The explicit statement of certain rights led to the emergence of a new genre of texts, more precisely to the American Declarations of Rights, of European Enlightenment extraction (the first Declaration: The Virginia Declaration of Rights, 12 June 1776), and to the Déclarations des droits de l’homme et du citoyen (the first Declaration: Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du Citoyen, 26 August 1789). These texts are open lists of short articles or paragraphs consisting of declarative sentences which, on the other hand, state that certain quali- ties are inherent to human nature and, on the other, define certain attributions granted to state authorities:

section 1. That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. sec. 2. That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants and at all times amenable to them. (Virginia Declaration of Rights) 130 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

Article premier. Les hommes naissent et demeurent libres et égaux en droits. Les distinctions sociales ne peuvent être fondées que sur l’utilité commune. Art. 2. Le but de toute association politique est la conservation des droits naturels et imprescriptibles de l’homme. Ces droits sont la liberté, la propriété, la sûreté et la résistance à l’oppression. Art. 3. Le principe de toute souveraineté réside essentiellement dans la Nation. Nul corps, nul individu ne peut exercer d’autorité qui n’en émane expressément. (Déclaration de droits de l’homme et du Citoyen du 26 août 1789)

We find here references to certain essential characteristics of human beings, and also to the national rule of law. Obligations, the semantic complement of rights, are less or barely touched upon. They are explicitly stated in the French declaration of 1795 (Déclaration des droits et des devoirs de l’homme et du citoyen), but even in this case the rights are dealt with in 22 articles, with the obligations given only 9. The first Romanian Constitution of 1866 includes a tentative hint at obligations, in its Article 10: “There shall be no class distinction within the State. All Romanians are equal before the law and shall contribute without distinction to the fulfilment of fiscal and public obligations.” The institution of the democratic rule of law is therefore envisaged in terms of the state authorities that are to undertake or not to undertake specific actions in the interest of the citizens. The interest of the citizens includes the possibility of pursuing freedom, equality, security and property in society. These four possibilities, deemed essential, alongside the rule of law, are the pillars of the universal human rights. They are not self-evident, as indicated by the fact that the authors of the declarations considered it necessary to explain that rights are natural and imprescriptible. The basic reasoning (Germ. Gedankengang) underlying the understanding of universal rights in general is not explicitly stated, but it could be the following: “The human individual can live best in a liberal society, favorable to civil and political rights. Such a society becomes possible if individuals are granted comprehensive intellectual and physical freedom, if all enjoy equal treatment before the law, if their security is guaranteed and they are given the possibility to own their means of existence. These states often come under threat and must therefore receive special protection and verbalization.” Freedom, equality, property and security are present, as fundamental concepts, in all modern democratic constitutions, in the preambles (see the French Constitutions of 1791, 1793, 1795, 1848) or in the form of specific introductory articles (see the French Constitutions of 1814 and 1830, the Belgian Con- stitution of 1831, Art. 6, 7, 11, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, the Romanian Constitution of 1866, Title II with its 26 articles). Freedom, in particular, is often envisaged under several aspects (for instance, individual freedom, freedom of thought, Europe • 131 freedom of education, freedom of the press, or freedom of assembly). It takes a long time for these conceptual elements to be acquired. This is why, after the new Constitution of Tunisia was adapted on 26 January 2014, legal expert Yadh Ben Achour argued: “Cette constitution est révolutionnaire pour son article 6 qui instaure la liberté de conscience . . . poser comme principe la liberté de conscience est quelque chose de tout à fait inédit dans le monde arabe, voire au-delà” (Le Monde, 1 February 2014, p. 6). The horrors of World War II determined the United Nations (un), an organization founded in 1945, “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small” (United Nations Charter of 26 June 1945, Pre- amble) and set up a commission “for the promotion of human rights” (Art. 68). Under the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt, the commission outlined a general compromise framework for the defense of human rights. The Universal Declara- tion of Human Rights, while not legally binding, was adopted by the General Assembly on 10 December 1948. The text includes a rather lengthy explana- tory preamble and 30 articles. In what concerns the content, it preserves the core ideas of the American and French declarations (rule of law and freedom, equality, security and property as fundamental rights). The authors, however, contributed to the semantic and pragmatic development of the genre, by clearly expressing causal relations and highlighting certain aspects. The novel elements include, on the one hand, the initial introduction of the highly abstract concept of dignity and, on the other, the explicit references to gender equality, social progress, and brotherhood: “Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom” (Preamble). “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood” (Art. 1). The core of social rights could already be found in the French Constitution of 1848: “La République doit protéger le citoyen dans sa personne, sa famille, sa religion, sa propriété, son travail, et mettre à la portée de chacun l’instruction indispensable à tous les hommes; elle doit, par une assistance fraternelle, assurer l’existence des citoyens nécessiteux, soit en leur procurant du travail dans les lim- ites de ses ressources, soit en donnant, à défaut de la famille, des secours à ceux qui sont hors d’état de travailler” (Préambule, Art. VIII). In its Articles 22–27, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights explicitly lists these social rights. The importance of brotherhood as a norm of conduct can also be found in the French Constitution of 1848: “Elle [sc. La Répub- 132 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) lique française] a pour principe la Liberté, l’Égalité et la Fraternité” (Préam- bule, Art. IV). Freedom and security as fundamental rights are completed by the general right to life and by the ban on slavery and torture: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person” (Art. 3); “No one shall be held in slavery or servi tude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms” (Art. 4); “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” (Art. 5). These specifications as well were already present in the various traditional declarations and constitutions, especially in the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which speaks about “the enjoyment of life and liberty,” and in the French Consti tution of 1848 (cf. Art. 6: “L’esclavage ne peut exister sur aucune terre française”). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 is a remarkable development of the European “Declaration of Human Rights” text genre. While not a binding source of law, it remains a semantic and formal model for the new “declarations”—the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (today the European Convention on Human Rights) of 1950 and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union of 2000—as well as for some new constitutions. Thus, the Constitution of Ro- mania of 2003 says in its Article 1 (3): “Romania is a democratic and social state, governed by the rule of law, in which human dignity, the citizens’ rights and freedoms, the free development of human personality, justice and political pluralism represent supreme values, in the spirit of the democratic traditions of the Romanian people and the ideals of the Revolution of December 1989, and shall be guaranteed.” The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union has been inte- grated into the Treaty of Lisbon of 2007 and is legally binding (cf. Treaty on European Union, art. 6 (1): “The Union recognizes the rights, freedoms and principles set out in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union of 7 December 2000, as adopted at Strasbourg, on 12 December 2007, which shall have the same legal value as the Treaties.”

5. Conclusions

eginning with the Enlightenment Age in Europe, the outlining of individuality, on the basis of principles such as freedom, equality, security B and property, has gradually led to a new understanding of power relations in general and of the relations between men and women, parents and chil- Europe • 133 dren, governors and governed, in particular. Since that moment, in the modern states organized along the European model, people have been struggling for balance in a constantly dynamic exchange between individual and state rights, between fundamental rights and the needs of the state, between rights to protection and rights to power. q

Bibliography

Published Sources Constitution of France, 1848 (http://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/conseil-constitutionnel/francais/la-constitution/les-constitutions-de-la-france/constitution-de- 1848-iie-republique.5106.html, accessed on 01.03.2014). Constitution of Romania, 1866 (http://www.cdep.ro/pls/legis/legis_pck.htp_act_ text?idt=37755, accessed on 30.02.2014). Constitution of Romania, 2003 (http://www.cdep.ro/pls/dic/site.page?id=339, accessed on 30.02.2014). Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (nowadays the European Convention on Human Rights), 1950 (http://www.echr.coe.int/ Documents/Convention_ENG.pdf, accessed on 01.03.2014). Declaration des droits de l’homme et du Citoyen, 1789 (http://www.legifrance.gouv. fr/Droit-francais/Constitution/Declaration-des-Droits-de-l-Homme-et-du-Citoyen- de-1789, accessed on 01.03.2014). Treaty of Lisbon, 2007 (http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cmsUpload/cg00014. ro07.pdf, accessed on 01.03.2014). Treaty on European Union (http://europa.eu/pol/pdf/qc3209190roc_002.pdf, accessed on 01.03.2014). United Nations Charter, 26 June 1945 (https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/ctc/un- charter.pdf, accessed on 02.03.2014). Universal Declaration of Human Rights (http://www.ohchr.org/en/udhr/documents/ udhr_translations/rum.pdf, accessed on 02.03.2014). Virginia Declaration of Rights (http://www.constitution.org/bcp/virg_dor.htm, accessed on 02.03.2014).

Press Le Monde, 1 Feb. 2014 (http://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2014/01/30/la-liberte- de-conscience-principe-inedit-dans-le-monde-arabe_4357300_3246.html, accessed on 01.02.2014).

Books, Articles Aquinas, Thomas. De regimine principum (http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/orp. html, accessed on 11.05.2014). 134 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

Aristotle. Politica. Translation, commentaries and index by Alexander Baumgarten. Bu- charest: iri, 2001. English version by Benjamin Jowett at http://classics.mit.edu/ Aristotle/politics.html, accessed on 15.10.2014. De Felice, Fortunato Bartolomeo. “Leçons de droit de la nature et des gens.” In Droit de la nature. Vol. 1. Paris: J.-P. Aillaud, 1830. Lübbe, Hermann. “Forgelasten einer Erfolgsgeschichte.” Neue Zürcher Zeitung (http:// www.nzz.ch/aktuell/feuilleton/uebersicht/die-krisenbeguenstigte-und-die-herausge- forderte-demokratie-1.17472964, accessed on 10.05.2014).

Abstract Human Rights As European Values

The study analyzes the core values underlying contemporary European civilization, starting from their historical roots (Greek philosophy, Roman law, Christian values, the medieval code of chivalry and courtly love, rationalism and experimentalism). Also reviewed are the basic concepts of security, freedom, equality, property and social welfare. The author continues with a survey of the main texts devoted to human rights, from the writings of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas to documents such as the Constitutions of France and Romania, the European Convention on Hu- man Rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Declaration des droits de l’homme et du Citoyen, etc.

Keywords human rights, core European values, security, freedom, equality, property literature

“Salvific” Memory, “Enlightened” Oblivion

C a r m e n -V e r o n i c a Spectral Traces of the Past in Maria B o r b é l y Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent (1800)

In my exploration of tropes of mem- “There is a time, when in- ory and oblivion in Maria Edgeworth’s dividuals can bear to be ral- Irish Gothic narrative Castle Rackrent (1800), I start from a thesis advanced lied for their past follies and in the literature devoted to the dialec- absurdities, after they have tics between reminiscence and forgetting, according to which the latter half acquired new habits, and a of the eighteenth century witnessed new consciousness.” the emergence of new forms of memory deployed towards the esemplastic production, rather than the mimetic reproduction of the past, in such a way as to illuminate the present and open gateways into the future through the meaningful entwinement of their pathways of signification.1 Thus, during this period, it is argued, there occurred an “inward turn” of memory, featuring a shift from “classical and early-modern mnemonic systems” to Carmen-Veronica Borbély a vibrant metaphorics of remembrance Lecturer at the English Department, Faculty of Letters, Babeº-Bolyai University and its attendant phenomenon, obliv- in Cluj-Napoca. Author of the vol. Enlight- ion, which could be enlisted in the ef- ened Forgetting: Tropes of Memory and forts to grant meaning to personal and Oblivion in Eighteenth-Century British collective histories.2 In her survey of Fiction (2014). memory as an itinerant concept,3 for 136 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) instance, Anne Whitehead investigates the historical underpinnings of its cross- generational conveyance, showing that from antiquity until the early modern period, practices of remembrance were targeted at a retrieval of previously ac- cumulated information; by contrast, during the Enlightenment, memory was increasingly conceived less as a technical system of mnemonics, and more as a faculty that was adjunct to reason and imagination and served as a means of reviving the past and integrating it within the individual or collective consciousness.4 In putting forth the syntagm of esemplastic memory,5 I invoke the Coleridgean trace of secondary imagination, which organically forges new wholes out of disparate images,6 and also take heed of Edward S. Casey’s suggestion that mapping the present’s rapports with the past and the future entails accessing the complementary workings of memory and imagination: locked in a triadic dynamics, the proleptic flights of imagination into the “purely possible,” into “what might be,” are replicated in memory’s reverse, analeptic returns to the “already elapsed,” to “what has been,” chorographing the place of the present in between these two poles of becoming.7 In Edgeworth’s novel, by recourse to a generative and regenerative type of memory, the past is exhumed—analeptically and proleptically, retrospectively and prospectively—out of the historical archive and subjected to ceaseless acts of interpretation in the entwined present timeframes of the story’s narrator, editor and readers: what Frank Kermode defines as the “salvific” chronotope of fiction.8 The syntagm “enlightened forgetting”9 of my title captures the extrication, on the cusp between the Age of Reason and the Age of Romanticism, of both memory and its counterpart, oblivion, from a mechanistic paradigm that envisaged the former as a repetitive technique and the latter as an extemporaneous occurrence, and their reconceptualisation as processes whose interlaced interactions could structure the present’s rapports with the past in a meaningful manner. The Edgeworthian project of constructing the memory of the nation by focal limitation to a family’s lineage is expressed in the following terms in the so-called editor’s preface:

The author of the following Memoirs has upon these grounds fair claims to the public favour and attention; he was an illiterate old steward, whose partiality to the family, in which he was bred and born, must be obvious to the reader. He tells the history of the Rackrent family in his vernacular idiom, and in the full confidence that Sir Patrick, Sir Murtagh, Sir Kit, and Sir Condy Rackrent’s affairs will be as interesting to all the world as they were to himself. Those who were acquainted with the manners of a certain class of the gentry of Ireland some years ago will want no evidence of the truth of honest Thady’s narrative: to those who are totally unac- quainted with Ireland, the following Memoirs will perhaps be scarcely intelligible, or probably they may appear perfectly incredible.10 Literature • 137

Furthermore, Edgeworth’s recourse to the memoirist discourse as a means of correcting history’s lack of specific nuance and focalized impetus11 raises the question of the ethical dimension of narrative forms produced within the space of eighteenth-century literature. What might be seen as an act of deception (the writer’s dissimulation as the persona of an editor who simply transcribes a genuine discourse, the orally recounted memoirs of a marginal character, for the edification of the readers) becomes invested with the ethical weight of a restitutive gesture, designed to initiate the English readership into the realities of the cultural space of Irishness, which would otherwise be difficult to fathom from an extrinsic perspective. The ethics of novelistic writing—inherent not only at the explicit, thematic level, but also at the formal level of experimentation with points of view and other forms of discursive mediation—becomes entwined with the ethics of reading, for Edgeworth’s readers are enjoined to give more credence to the versions of truth articulated in the wings or behind the curtains of History’s grand events, among and by the extras, by the marginal “actors and actresses,” rather than by the “heroes,” the “splendid characters playing their parts on the great theater of the world, with all the advantages of stage effect and decoration.”12 Such ethical undecidability also marks other fictional narratives of the eighteenth-century, in their recourse to paratextual devices. I am referring here, for instance, to the prefaces written by the would-be editors of “found” manuscripts in Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders or in Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, or to the introductory chapters of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, which witness the immersion of the dissembled authorial self in the textual world, guiding the reader through the process of reading, or to Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, a classical case through its very atopicality in the context of the age’s preference for realistic verisimilitude, in which the author breaks the ontological boundaries between the real and the fictional universes, simultaneously posing as narrator, character and reader. Any act of reading—and, consequently, that of self-reading, too, through which an author engages in the meta-narrative gesture of writing the preface of his or her own novel—any act of reading, therefore, is “always already a matter of translation, wherein one is always caught in the snares of both fidelity and betrayal,”13 inviting the reader of this authorial (self)reader to a direct co-participation in the production of meaning, to commitment to present acts of interpretation of the text, as well as of the past in which this text was generated; ultimately, it is from this reflexivity and self-reflexivity that the transformative, emancipatory potential of the novel derives. In her Gothic narrative of the “Big House” psychocultural topos,14 Maria Edgeworth engages in an archaeology of temporal depths, concertedly invoking and dispelling, vivifying into remembrance and deadening into oblivion the ar- 138 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) chival image of Ireland qua Gothic territory in itself.15 The paratextual apparatus of the novel—comprising an editor’s preface and epilogue, supplemented by notes and a glossary of terms that might pose difficulties to an English reader, since they referentially encompass idiosyncratic and, to some extent, “exotic” realities—specifies the authorial intent: to balance the angle of approach to the past in-between the public’s penchant for the “anecdotal” and the critics’ aspira- tion towards “superior wisdom.”16 The author qua editor expresses therefore a preference for filigree approaches to individualized destinies, in keeping with “the good sense and profoundly philosophic temper of the present times,”17 and discards the option for an overarching historiographic grand narrative, which would capture the past from a higher, generalizing and universalizing, albeit sterile perspective and would prevent the readers from empathetically respond- ing to authentic, particular experiences:

Of the numbers who study, or at least who read history, how few derive any advantage from their labors! The heroes of history are so decked out by the fine fancy of the professed historian; they talk in such measured prose, and act from such sublime or such diabolical motives, that few have sufficient taste, wickedness, or heroism, to sympathize in their fate. Besides, there is much uncertainty even in the best authenticated ancient or modern histories; and that love of truth, which in some minds is innate and immutable, necessarily leads to a love of secret memoirs, and private anecdotes. We cannot judge either of the feelings or of the characters of men with perfect accuracy, from their actions or their appearance in public; it is from their careless conversations, their half-finished sentences, that we may hope with the greatest probability of success to discover their real characters.18

Castle Rackrent, subtitled An Hibernian Tale Taken from Facts, and from the Man- ners of the Irish Squires, before the Year 1782, locates historical truth not in the spheres of the public, the timeless and the universal, as Henry Fielding would have done in his attempts to “imitate” or omnisciently represent manners, not men, or species, not individuals, in his novelistic variations on the “comic epic poem in prose,”19 but in the realm of the private, the time-bound and the specific, for her novel is intended as a memento of Ireland’s particularized structures of the socius, exemplified through the intricate relations between the Ascen- dancy superstratum (the decaying Rackrents) and the Celtic substratum (the rising Thadys), prior to the 1801 Act of Union, which was to abolish Irish political autonomy and to erase the traces of Ireland’s identitarian past, hurled thus into the acculturative vat of Britishness: “When Ireland loses her identity by an union with Great Britain, she will look back with a smile of good-humored complacency on the Sir Kits and Sir Condys of her former existence.”20 Castle Literature • 139

Rackrent is introduced to the readers as a true “history,” in keeping with the eighteenth century’s emphasis on the non-fictional, on the factual, even though it could be more safely stated that while striving to stay within the realistic bounds of verisimilitude and credibility, the authorial gesture of having a “native” recount his memoirs to the editor performs the dual gesture of accommodating the fabulous alterity of Irishness within the minoritarian discourse of an Irish subaltern (acquiring thus the necessary distance before the envisioned English readers) and legitimizing the narrative as an authentic portrayal of Ire- land, merely transcribed by the editor, who “lays it before the English reader as a specimen of manners and characters, which are, perhaps, unknown in Eng- land.”21 J. Paul Hunter shows that most of the novels produced during this period featured titular descriptions that eschewed their fictionality, by posing as the more “authentic” and “authenticable” discourse of history: “These fictional narratives of present time that chronicled the daily experiences, conflicts, and thoughts of ordinary men and women,” Hunter says, “went by other names, too—‘romances,’ ‘adventures,’ ‘lives,’ ‘tales,’ ‘memoirs,’ ‘expeditions,’ ‘fortunes and misfortunes,’ and (ultimately) ‘novels’—because a variety of features and traditions competed for attention in this new hybrid form that in the course of the eighteenth century came to dominate the reading habits of English men and women of all classes.”22

aria Edgeworth’s decision to dissimulate her authorial persona as a male editor may have served this purpose of authentication, rest- M ing on the purported objectivity of one who collects and presents to the reader a genuine document: at the level of the authorial intention, however, Edgeworth claims to offer a nude, unadorned and crude transcript of an oral retrospective narrative, a memoir uttered by an indigenous, colonized man whose destiny is inextricably woven into that of the colonizers, but she refuses to editorialize the text in order to provide it with a unified formal structure or coherence, since “varnish[ing] the plain round tale of faithful Thady” would have solely rendered it “more dramatic and more pathetic,” without making it in any way more credible.23 Hovering between the generic categories of “history,” “biography” and “memoir,” Castle Rackrent aspires to construct a “picture” of Ireland from within and deconstruct the metropolitan cultural stereotypes about this colonial outpost, but manages to articulate an extimate or external- intimate standpoint that stereoscopically accommodates the perspectival angles of both the subversive colonized subject (Thady) and the empathetic colonizer (the author), the latter condensing the project of building a “faithful portrait of [Ireland’s] inhabitants” as a second-order discursive replication of the “accurate” description accomplished by the Englishman Arthur Young’s 1780 travelogue, 140 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) entitled A Tour in Ireland, which Edgeworth describes as “the most reliable portrait of the Irish peasantry ever printed.”24 To that effect, her narrative appears to activate the mnemic traces of a hetero- glossic archive of writings about Ireland, singling out Young’s travel narrative as a precedent because of their consubstantial vantage on “that mixture of quickness, simplicity, cunning, carelessness, dissipation, disinterestedness, shrewdness, and blunder” which is the peculiar stamp of Irishness in her cross-generic account.25 In fact, in The Origins of the English Novel, Michael McKeon approaches the destabilization of generic boundaries in the realm of prose fiction as the symptom of a “taxonomic disease,” manifested, in the long turn of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, through frantic endeavors targeted at discerning and maintaining the categorical confines between genres like romance, the novel, or history; these were, in effect, interchangeable descriptors, leading to the creation of “strange, hybrid forms whose very existence finally must vitiate the discrimi- natory function of the original taxonomy.”26 To this generic heterogeneity also contributed the still porous frontiers between a waning oral and a consolidating literate culture, memory and its potential to “preserve” historical fact playing a crucial role in this regard: thus, McKeon shows, the concepts of “originality,” “factuality” and “historicity” are differently inflected in the two types of culture, and while “the authoritative linearity of oral lineages is deceptive” and malleable, transformable in time, it is also the case that “writing ‘reifies’ memory,” since the “physical preservation of knowledge produces not only documents and archives but also conditions for the ‘objective’ comparison of data, even the inclination to regard knowledge as a collection of discrete ‘objects’.”27 In Castle Rackrent, consistent with an emergent Romantic interest in the local, the individual and the vernacular, the editor commits “himself” to de- bunking the detrimental effects that hegemonic distortions of public memory may exert in their forging of an aseptic stance on the past and foregrounds an atomization of History into a multifarious array of competing microhistories that can no longer be aggregated into a single, monolithic teleological totality. In other words, what Edgeworth’s self-reflexive commentaries from the preface and the epilogue attest is a shift from the novelist’s position as a historian to that of a biographer who draws her inspiration not from external facts but from an ordinary individual’s orally “enacted” memoirs, for her documentary sources no longer rely on officially-sanctioned historical verities, which would risk distort- ing or obliterating mnestic traces that might contribute to the articulation of altogether different, alternative histories, but, as she says, on “secret memoirs, and private anecdotes.”28 In anchoring her narrative of Hibernian history within the narrow scope of a family’s cross-generational trajectory, seen from the lateral- subordinate viewpoint of an ambivalently positioned raconteur (for Thady is Literature • 141 both an insider and an outsider to the “factual” truth of the Rackrents’ genealogical dissipation), Edgeworth captures the dichotomy between the “transmut- able” and the “reifying” transmissibility of data through oral v. written channels. The author opts, as seen above, for a performative, orally-delivered narrative of selfhood and otherness, and even though she attempts, at times, to buttress her foray into the prehistory of the Irish “Big House” she explores with certifying references to various written archives, she foregrounds the dynamic articulation of generational memory not only within the confines of an individual consciousness, but at the intersection of multiple such consciousnesses with the collective, hybridized Anglo-Irish mindset: “The editor hopes his readers will observe that these are ‘tales of other times’: that the manners depicted in the following pages are not those of the present age: the race of the Rackrents has long since been extinct in Ireland; and the drunken Sir Patrick, the litigious Sir Murtagh, the fighting Sir Kit, and the slovenly Sir Condy, are characters which could no more be met with at present in Ireland, than Squire Western or Parson Trulliber in England. There is a time, when individuals can bear to be rallied for their past follies and absurdities, after they have acquired new habits, and a new consciousness.”29 The narrative of Castle Rackrent—recounted not from a domineering vantage point but from a microhistorical perspective—pivots around the derelict man- sion of the title, playing upon the conventional trope of the Irish Big House as a site of familial and collective memory that condenses, in its “fading dilapida- tion,”30 the patterns of conquest and submission, usurpation and restoration that have riveted its four generations of owners apart. The “castle” of the Rack- rents, about to fall into the hands of the historically dispossessed and (self)-re- possessing Thadys, pertains to the trope of the Big Houses, enshrined as Gothic loci in the Irish collective memory of historical trauma, which may also be regarded as the realms of remembrance defined by Pierre Nora as places where “memory is crystallized, in which it finds refuge,” where, notwithstanding the severance of the past from the present through the counterforces of amnesia or oblivion, “a residual sense of [historical] continuity” may indeed be preserved; thus, in addition to the sites of memory identified by Nora (monuments, museums, cemeteries), the Big Houses of Gothic Irish fiction can be seen if not as milieux de mémoire, then as lieux de mémoire, as the architectural repositories of a “vast fund of memories” among which the sense of an intimate incorporation of the past into the present has been supplanted by the reconstruction of a dis- continuous, disjointed past through history.31 Castle Rackrent functions as such a t(r)opological “storehouse of memory,”32 which spatializes crystallizations of power and powerlessness, wealth and destitution, grandeur and degeneration, condensing the similar downward trajectory of its masters and owners. Thady 142 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

Quirk, the octogenarian narrator, performs the role of the archivist ostensibly intent on restoring and preserving the memory of the place, yet he speaks from the marginal position of a servant to the Rackrents, displaying, before the eyes of an intended British readership, not only the symptoms of a “servile, colonized consciousness, masking his own self-interest in a professed loyalty to his reckless and doomed masters,”33 but also the typical unreliability of an ambivalently nos- talgic and ironic Gothic narrator, who engages in palinodic retraction, evasive destabilization of meaning, and perspectival inconsistency as he charts the dissolution of the Rackrents’ genealogical line. In effect, in Castle Rackrent, the narrator’s convoluted imaginary, strewn with crossable boundaries and inverted hierarchies, with the signs of a propagation of the specters of past infractions into a disoriented present, his “gothic pathologies,”34 as it were, represent the symptomatologies of an ampler psychosocial process of accommodating the mutations and hybridizations that began with the process of colonization. Edgeworth’s confused, unstable, conflicted and con- flicting narrator is torn apart in-between repressed fantasies of aggrandizement (elevation, via identification with his upstart offspring, the land-appropriating lawyer Jason Thady, to the privileged status of the former Ascendancy) and nightmares of debasement (relegation to the marginality of the alienated Celtic substratum), but what he essentially maps are the muddled depths of the psychocultural métissage that Ireland’s dynamics of collision and conciliation has fuelled throughout time, the fragilities and vulnerabilities that the relinquish- ment of divisionism, through the bourgeois-driven economic deconstruction of aristocratic hierarchies, rather than through a national political settlement of the conflict, may engender in the social self. In Gothic Ireland, Jarlath Killeen undertakes a discursive archaeology of the manifest and latent epistemic formations of Hibernia Anglicana, uncovering “the codes” through which “Irish Anglicans possessed their social and cultural environments.”35 What Killeen detects is the fact that in the tempestuous history of Ireland’s colonization by the British, the psycho-emotional infrastructure of the Anglican self was predicated on conceptions of Irish Catholics as “monstrous” strangers, especially since these “others” were looked at through the lens of volatile colonizer-colonized relations, predicated on traumatic, confrontational historical moments, like the revolution of 1691 or the rebellion of 1798, which had challenged the solidity of the Ascendancy regime. In line with the well-established notion that the Gothic was coeval with the birth of an enlightened (Protestant) modernity out of the ruinous (Catholic) past, the two identitarian poles that were engaged in conflictual opposition, demanding their mutual abjection in order for one or the other to prevail, were configured thus: “If the Self is unitary, modern, rational, puritan, and in the center, the Self is Literature • 143

Protestant; if the Other is excessive, medieval, irrational, regional, and sexually perverse, the Other is Catholic.”36 In Killeen’s understanding, according to this binary logic of defilement/imperilment and purgation/abjection, Catholic Ire- land was ambivalently associated with a mixture of fascination and repulsiveness, being constru(ct)ed by the Anglo-Irish gentry (positioned at the higher end of the economic, social and political spectrum) as a “space of monstrous drives and apparitions which plague the Self.”37 In any case, as Killeen also suggests, such confrontational frames of self-definition through the rejection of the other were more or less characteristic of the pre-Gothic discursive representations of Anglo-Irish relations. The full manifestation of Gothic in Irish literature, which was coeval with the publication, in 1800, of Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent, and with the 1801 Act of Union, marked a definitive move towards reconcilia- tory hybridization, seen as a processual negotiation of identitarian boundaries: “The Act of Union theoretically brought Ireland closer to the center of British political life but . . . it only succeeded in highlighting the fractious nature of the colonial project. Castle Rackrent also attempts to bring together the voices of an Anglo-Irish gentleman and an Irish Catholic peasant but . . . this attempt breaks down due to the duplicitous character of both protagonists. What Rackrent did suggest, however, was the radical unity within the island itself, and instantiated a mode of history and fiction writing which could heal the horrific wounds of the past . . . and prepare the ground for a ‘Gothic’ rather than a horrific future.”38

hrough amusingly disconcerting splices of narratorial reliability and fallibility, the “biographical” rather than “historical” account provided T by the narrator in Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent deconstructs the aforementioned a(nta)gonistic premises of the Gothic, diffracted through the attempt to “archontically”39 accommodate and personally incorporate multifarious strands of Irishness (Protestant/Catholic, etc.) in a fluid reconstruction of colonial times, the most obvious symbol of which is the Big House and its fluctuating ownership, as it appears to pass from the hands of the landed gentry into those of the economically recalibrated natives. In effect, while Edgeworth is acknowledged as the initiator of the “Big House” Gothic strand of fiction in Irish literature, it is also the case that she prototypally launches another filiative chain of narratives written in this mode,40 namely “Bog Gothic,” which exploits, in comic-tragic fashion, the quirkiness of Irish mindscapes and excavates the stratified layers of the nation’s collective memory. As also conveyed in the works of contemporary writer Patrick McCabe, the universe of “Bog Gothic” enables a “warped” focalization on a “cast of grotesques” which set into higher relief “hu- manity’s baser impulses, as manifested through the particular mentality” of provincial Ireland.41 This “blarney” version of Gothic often exhumes the inconse- 144 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) quential nature of residual sectarian partitions and divisions, which wreak havoc amongst individuals left in abeyance on the frail/fraying threshold between tra- ditionalism and modernization, who plunge into flurries of psychological disar- ray, intensely charted through a unique blend of grisly pathos and droll bathos.42 Relevant, in this regard is the astounded reaction of Sir Kit Rackrent’s Jewish bride to the sight of the bog, the disorienting marshland that unsettles the foreign woman because to her, it is reminiscent of no other similar landmark. That the peatland is preserved with great pride in the family as a repository of relative wealth and inordinate pride is evinced by Sir Kit’s expostulation: “You’ll not see the bog of Allyballycarricko’shaughlin at-all-at-all through the skreen, when once the leaves come out. But, my lady, you must not quarrel with any part or parcel of Allyballycarricko’shaughlin, for you don’t know how many hundred years that same bit of bog has been in the family; we would not part with the bog of Allyballycarricko’shaughlin upon no account at all.”43 Uncannily serving as the familiar home territory of the Rackrent manorial owner and as the terrify- ing instantiation of a secondary, spectral dimension of space, which threatens to take over the real and plunge it into the engulfing void of a swampy terrain for Rackrent’s foreign wife,44 the bog becomes the locus of Gothic experience, of psychological dissipation and vacuity by excellence, representing what analysts like Zygmunt Bauman have defined as “empty places,” where identity and alterity become one and none, where no process of signification and meaning as- signation can be conducted, making them averse to epistemological decryption. Empty places are the residual baggage (“waste-products”) of being/non-being left after the structuration of the world into spaces “that matter,” the remainder or the detritus left behind and, as such, “they owe their ghostly presence to the lack of overlap between the elegance of structure and the messiness of the world (any world, also the purposefully designed world) notorious for its defiance of neat classifications.”45 The bog is also, and at the same time, a “phagic place,” according to the same classification undertaken by Zygmunt Bauman, based on the distinction operated by Lévi-Strauss in Tristes Tropiques between the anthro- poemic strategies of ejection and elimination and the anthropophagic strategies of absorption, ingestion and consumption of foreignness or otherness.46 The bog is a Gothic topos not only because it draws in, never letting go, not only because it rests on the oxymoronic trope of invisible carcerality, but because it poses the threat of annihilation not by mere death, but by the transformation of the living into decorporealized selves. The bog also functions, in Thady’s mnemonic account, as the site of a critical labor of liberation from the unprocessed mnemic effluvia or amnesiac blockages that confound the prospects of achieving a peaceful memory of loss. It is a trope of memory that keeps being articulated despite and through the disarticulating workings of forgetting,47 suggesting that Literature • 145 the construction of the past—and of the narrative thereof—is equally a deconstruction, both featuring as constitutive elements in a perpetual process of signification, whereby some of the mnemic and semic traces are retained, whereas others are inadvertently or deliberately lost. As Derrida shows, the imperative of acknowledging the revenance of the past as arrivance of the future must be heeded by accommodating the spectral traces of the dead within the inner scapes of a self that recognizes and respects the absolute otherness of his ghosts,48 and while Thady, the hypermnesic narrator, may only put on a pretense to that effect, the author’s restitutive glance at Irish history certainly grants hospitality to its spectral presences-in-absence. In light of Terry Eagleton’s diagnosis of the idiosyncratic “bogginess” of Irish literature,49 it could safely be asserted that like Seamus Heaney, the Irish national poet who transvalorised “bog,” turning it into the arch-meme of Ireland’s cultural horizons, Maria Edgeworth programmatically wrote in this mode, releasing “bog” from its ostracizing connotations and valorizing it as a trope of “salvific” memory and “enlightened” oblivion, fostering processes of cultural (self-)awareness. Unfolding between the poles of forgetfulness and remembrance, Castle Rackrent may be seen to reconceive the past’s terrific revenance as beneficent arrivance. q

Notes

1. Cf. John Frow, Time and Commodity Culture: Essays in Cultural Theory and Post- modernity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 228–229; Anne Whitehead, Memory (London–New York: Routledge, 2009), 48–49. See also Harald Weinrich, Lethe: The Art and Critique of Forgetting, transl. Steven Rendall (Ithaca, n.y.: Cornell Uni- versity Press, 2004), 4. 2. Whitehead, 48–49. As Weinrich shows, during this period, oblivion also began to be regarded less as a spontaneous, accidental jamming of memory’s mechanics and more as the processual counterpart of an organically restructured memory, in Weinrich, 4. 3. A construct that becomes differently inflected as it “travels” across disciplinary, chronological and psycho-geographical boundaries. See Whitehead, 4. 4. Ibid., 6–7. 5. See my analysis of this form of memory in the works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Laurence Sterne and Samuel Johnson in Carmen-Veronica Borbély, En- lightened Forgetting: Tropes of Memory and Oblivion in Eighteenth-Century British Fic- tion (Cluj: Presa Universitarã Clujeanã, 2014). 6. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Biographia Litteraria, eds. James Engell and W. Jackson Bate (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 304–305. 146 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

7. Edward S. Casey, Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), xvi–xvii. 8. In The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction with a New Epilogue (Ox- ford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 46-47, 72, Frank Kermode’s inquiry into the enfoldings of myth and fiction leads him to operate the well-known distinction between chronos, “passing time,” the temporal flow, and kairos, the moment of being “poised between beginning and end,” “a point in time filled with significance, charged with a meaning derived from its relation to the end”: the memory activated in contact with the Blanchotian “space of literature” may assist readers in accessing (“salvaging”) a moment out of time, caught between eternity and temporality, the aevum, which is “the time-order of novels.” See also Marina Warner’s references to the “salvific promise of art,” in Marina Warner, Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Meta- phors, and Media into the Twenty-First Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 348–349. 9. Used by Weinrich, 57–61. 10. Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent, ed. Susan Kubica Howard (Indianapolis–Cam- bridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 2007), 5. 11. As the author-editor confesses in the preface, “We are surely justified, in this eager desire, to collect the most minute facts relative to the domestic lives, not only of the great and good, but even of the worthless and insignificant, since it is only by a comparison of their actual happiness or misery in the privacy of domestic life that we can form a just estimate of the real reward of virtue, or the real punishment of vice,” ibid., 3. 12. Ibid., 3–4. 13. Julian Wolfreys, “Introduction: responsibilities of J or, aphorism’s other,” in J. Hillis Miller, The J. Hillis Miller Reader, ed. Julian Wolfreys (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), 10. 14. Cf. Kreilkamp, who speaks of Edgeworth as the creator of the Big House genre, which functions as the psycho-spatial centre of the Anglo-Irish fiction-writing or- rery, in Vera Kreilkamp, “The Novel of the Big House,” in The Cambridge Compan- ion to the Irish Novel, ed. John Wilson Foster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 61–63. See also Hennelly, who remarks that in Irish Gothic fiction, the “critical touchstone of the castle or house of British Gothic” is spliced with an “indigenous . . . big house with its attendant colonial concerns of unhomely displacement, ambiguous hybridity, and border violence,” in Mark M. Hennelly, Jr., “Teaching Irish Gothic: Big House Displacements in Maturin and Le Fanu,” in Approaches to Teaching Gothic Fiction: The British and American Traditions, eds. Diane Long Hoeveler and Tamar Heller (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2003), 140. 15. For the deleterious representations of Ireland in the Gothic fiction of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see Jarlath Killeen’s thesis of “Gothic Ireland” as “Zombie- land,” in The Emergence of Irish Gothic Fiction: History, Origins, Theories (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 1–33. 16. Edgeworth, 3. Literature • 147

17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Henry Fielding, The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and His Friend Mr. Abraham Adams (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1958), xx. 20. Edgeworth, 6. 21. Ibid., 64. 22. J. Paul Hunter, “The novel and social/cultural history,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Eighteenth-Century Novel, ed. John Richetti (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 1996), 9. 23. Edgeworth, 64. 24. Ibid., 64 n. 3. 25. Ibid., 64. 26. Michael McKeon, The Origins of the English Novel 1600–1740 (Baltimore–London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 25. 27. Ibid., 29. 28. Edgeworth, 3. 29. Ibid., 5. 30. Kreilkamp, 62. 31. Pierre Nora, “General Introduction: Between Memory and History,” in The Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, ed. Pierre Nora (New York: Columbia Uni- versity Press, 1996), 1. 32. Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (London–Melbourne–Henley: Ark Paper- backs, 1984), 294. 33. Kreilkamp, 62. 34. See David Punter, Gothic Pathologies: The Text, the Body and the Law (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998). 35. Jarlath Killeen, Gothic Ireland: Horror and the Irish Anglican Imagination in the Long Eighteenth Century (Portland: Four Courts Press, 2005), 9. 36. Ibid., 19. 37. Ibid., 20. 38. Ibid., 222. 39. See Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Frenowitz (Chicago–London: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 3. 40. Richard Haslam, “Irish Gothic,” in The Routledge Companion to Gothic, eds. Catherine Spooner and Emma McEvoy (London–New York: Routledge, 2007), 83. 41. See Stephanie Merritt, “Back to the bog,” New Statesman, 13 October 2003, http:// www.newstatesman.com/node/146491, accessed 24 January 2013. 42. Ciaran Ross, “Introduction,” in Sub-Versions: Trans-National Readings of Modern Irish Literature, ed. Ciaran Ross (Amsterdam–New York: Rodopi, 2010), 15. 43. Edgeworth, 21. 44. The bog also functions, despite its ostensive spatial openness, as a carceral trope, anticipating, at the level of the imaginary, the imprisonment to which Kit Rackrent’s wife is about to be subjected, like the prototypal “madwoman in the attic,” on account to her aversion to and scorn of all things Irish. 148 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

45. Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 103. 46. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques (1955), trans. John Weightman and Doreen Weightman (New York: Penguin, 1992), 389–390; Bauman, 101. 47. Thady’s insistence on his inability to forget is, of course, a conventional allusion to his all-encompassing memory, which conveniently selects and obliterates whatever is deemed fit to support his indigenous version of the conquerors’ destiny. 48. See Jacques Derrida, Spectres of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York–London: Routledge, 1994), 9. 49. Terry Eagleton, Heathcliff and the Great Hunger: Studies in Irish Culture (London– New York: Verso, 1995), 147.

Abstract “Salvific” Memory, “Enlightened” Oblivion: Spectral Traces of the Past in Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent (1800)

This study on Maria Edgeworth’s short novel of 1800 Castle Rackrent explores the dialectics between two types of memory—of the retentive or retrieval kind and of a productive, esemplastic type, through which analeptically and proleptically, retrospectively and prospectively, the past is exhumed out of the historical archive and subjected to ceaseless activities of interpretation and signification in the entwined present timeframes of the story’s narrator, editor and readers. In light of Terry Eagleton’s diagnosis of the idiosyncratic “bogginess” of Irish literature, the study argues that, like Seamus Heaney, the Irish national poet who transvalorised “bog,” turning it into the arch-meme of Ireland’s cultural horizons, Maria Edgeworth programmatically wrote in this mode, releasing “bog” from its ostracizing connotations and valorizing it as a trope of “salvific” memory and “enlightened” oblivion, which could foster processes of cultural (self-)awareness.

Keywords Maria Edgeworth, Irish Gothic, esemplastic memory, “enlightened forgetting,” spectral criticism Book Reviews

Ana Victoria Sima les deux bras de la chrétienté : le synode Affirming Identity : The Romanian de Ferrara-Florence (1438-1439) et le Greek-Catholic Church at the Time Concile de Trente (1545-1563). Le der- of the First Vatican Council nier surtout a cherché à identifier des stra- Milan, Vita e Pensiero, 2013 tégies de récupération du « troupeau » perdu, dans la tentative d’imprimer à l’Église ’ catholique un nouveau profil ecclésial. Lhistoire ecclésiastique a réussi, dans L’essentiel des règlements statués à cette ce dernier quart de siècle, à s’imposer dans occasion visait la consolidation des pré- le paysage de l’historiographie roumaine rogatives du souverain pontife et la réaf- comme un domaine distinct de la recherche firmation de l’idée que l’Église catholique scientifique. L’histoire de l’Église gréco- était l’unique dépositaire des vérités de la catholique en particulier a suscité l’intérêt foi, la seule à pouvoir ouvrir la voie de la à la fois des professionnels de l’écrit histo- rédemption. Or – et Ana Victoria Sima le rique et des passionnés de passé. C’est dans démontre à merveille dans son ouvrage –, ce contexte de prolifération des études dé- cette importante modification sur le plan diées à l’histoire de l’Église roumaine unie ecclésial sera désormais fort visible dans que voit le jour l’ouvrage de Ana Victoria les rapports entre l’Église catholique et la Sima. Il vient combler les lacunes relatives chrétienté orientale. Le pape Pie XIX a été, aux rapports de l’Église roumaine unie au milieu du XIXe siècle, l’artisan d’une avec le Saint-Siège dans la seconde moitié ouverture vers l’univers chrétien oriental, du XIXe siècle, constituant une approche qui ferait naître l’espoir de la restaura- sans précédent sous l’aspect de l’information de l’unité chrétienne sous l’égide de tion et de l’analyse historique. Rome. Comme les Église orientales unies L’historien Cesare Alzati, excellent au Saint-Siège devaient y jouer un rôle à connaisseur du passé ecclésiastique rou- part, la Curie romaine fit de son mieux main, considère dans la préface que ce vo- pour leur offrir une organisation cano- lume est une invitation à la réflexion adres- nique et disciplinaire pouvant servir de sée à tous ceux qui, après 1990, ont cherché modèle aux futures unions religieuses avec à dresser le profil canonique et identitaire l’Église de Rome. C’est dans ce contexte, de l’Église gréco-catholique roumaine. marqué par les tendances de centralisation Le premier chapitre fait une analyse des et d’uniformisation du Saint-Siège, que se avatars ecclésiaux que l’Église catholique a produisirent, vers le milieu du XIXe siècle, assumés tout au long de la modernité et les grandes mutations ecclésiastiques dans de la manière dont ces redéfinitions iden- l’espace habité par les Roumains de l’Em- titaires ont affecté la dynamique de ses pire habsbourgeois. rapports avec la chrétienté orientale. Deux Le deuxième chapitre dévoile les rela- sont les moments qui, avant le Ier Concile tions sinueuses de l’Église gréco-catho- de Vatican, ont marqué la relation entre lique roumaine avec l’instance pontificale 150 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) suprême et avec le pouvoir civil tout au ªuluþiu, raison pour laquelle le Saint- long de la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle. Siège renonça pour le moment à ses Pour une meilleure compréhension des intentions d’uniformisation. L’avène- événements, l’auteur entreprend une ana- ment de Ioan Vancea au sommet de la lyse détaillée du cadre législatif, à com- hiérarchie roumaine conduisit à l’amé- mencer par le Concordat de 1855 et conti- lioration des relations avec le centre du nuant par les principaux actes normatifs de monde catholique, ce qui permit l’orga- la période du dualisme qui ont réglementé nisation du premier synode provincial les rapports entre l’État et l’Église. À la qui mit les bases du corpus canonique différence des territoires de Cisleithanie – d’organisation et de fonctionnement de affirme l’auteur –, dans les provinces régies l’Église roumaine. par Budapest le processus d’instauration Le troisième chapitre nous intro- de la suprématie de l’État sur l’Église a été duit dans l’intimité des plus pressantes plus lent. Partant de ce contexte politique questions posées par l’organisation de et socioculturel compliqué, Ana Victoria l’Église roumaine unie. La première Sima s’arrête au moment de fondation de partie est dédiée à l’architecture ins- la Métropole gréco-catholique roumaine titutionnelle, plus précisément aux et à ses significations, tout en insistant modalités d’institution des hiérarchies, sur les différences de perspective en ce qui à l’établissement des prérogatives du concerne l’organisation institutionnelle et métropolitain et des droits et respon- disciplinaire de la nouvelle province ecclé- sabilités des hiérarques roumains. Les siastique. Ce dernier sujet bénéficie d’une attributions des chapitres-cathédraux et présentation détaillée, qui met en lumière la modalité de sélection des chanoines les significations de toutes les étapes im- constituent deux autres problèmes ma- portantes dans le processus de définition jeurs qui ont généré des désaccords et de l’identité institutionnelle et canonique même des tensions entre l’élite ecclé- de l’Église roumaine unie. Étant donné siastique roumaine et le Saint-Siège. que l’organisation des Églises catholiques Les intentions de la Curie romaine de rite grec de l’Empire habsbourgeois d’imposer à l’Église gréco-catholique était vaguement connue par le Saint- roumaine une série de standards latini- Siège, l’instance ecclésiastique suprême a sants se firent sentir aussi au moment initié plusieurs visites pastorales, afin de de la délimitation des attributions des connaître sur place le fonctionnement de synodes provinciaux et de la réglemen- ces Églises. Comme la mission apostolique tation des compétences des tribunaux de 1858 en Transylvanie fait le sujet d’un ecclésiastiques. Une question délicate ouvrage distinct en deux volumes écrit par après le milieu du XIXe siècle a été celle le même auteur, elle est synthétiquement des rapports entre l’Église roumaine esquissée dans ce chapitre, avec l’accent mis et le siège primatial d’Esztergom. Ana sur la série de neuf conférences organisées Victoria Sima n’hésite pas à dévoi- à cette occasion à Blaj et sur les proposi- ler dans son ouvrage les intentions de tions de rénovation disciplinaire formulées l’archevêque d’Esztergom de maintenir, par le délégué du pape. Tous ces projets après 1853, son autorité sur la province innovateurs se sont heurtés à l’opposition ecclésiastique roumaine, l’attitude fluc- ferme du métropolitain Alexandru Sterca tuante de Rome et de l’épiscopat rou- Book Reviews • 151 main à propos de cette idée, ainsi que les Manuela Marin solutions qui ont fini par s’imposer. Une Între prezent ºi trecut: cultul autre question épineuse à visé le mariage personalitãþii lui Nicolae Ceauºescu des prêtres et sa dissolubilité dans l’Église ºi opinia publicã româneascã gréco-catholique roumaine, question sur (Between present and past: Nicolae laquelle les Églises catholique et roumaine Ceauºescu’s cult of personality and the avaient des points de vue tout à fait dif- Romanian public opinion) férents. La seconde partie de ce chapitre Cluj-Napoca: Mega, 2014 s’arrête à quelques aspects majeurs cir- conscrits autour de la foi, telles que les dénominations du souverain pontife dans anuela Marin’s first book, Origi- la littérature ecclésiastique transylvaine, la M nea ºi evoluþia cultului personalitãþii lui mention du pape lors des cérémonies des Nicolae Ceauºescu (The origin and evolu- gréco-catholiques roumains etc. tion of Nicolae Ceauºescu’s cult of person- Dans le dernier chapitre, Ana Victoria ality) (Alba Iulia: Altip, 2008), provides Sima évoque les initiatives et les mesures an extensive and insightful analysis of the prises par le Saint-Siège en faveur de mechanisms which made possible the con- l’Église gréco-catholique roumaine dans la struction of Nicolae Ceausescu’s cult of e seconde moitié du XIX siècle, dont nous personality, from the perspective of the mentionnons surtout ses efforts d’amélio- official propaganda. Between Present and rer la situation matérielle du clergé rou- Past, reviewed here, represents the neces- main à travers des interventions répétées sary and logical next step in the study of auprès des autorités autrichiennes et hon- personality cults, investigating the actual groises ou bien la création d’un réseau de effects of such practices on the public opin- séminaires et l’octroi de bourses d’études ion. However, the new book is more than aux séminaristes roumains. Le projet le a simple turn toward another facet of a plus ambitieux destiné à consolider et complex phenomenon. Marin’s versatility étendre l’union religieuse en Transylva- in employing new theoretical and method- nie a appartenu à Joseph Fessler, qui a eu ological approaches, and her willingness to l’occasion de bien connaître les réalités take risks turn out to be the ingredients of roumaines lors de la visite apostolique de an innovative and ground-breaking book. 1858. Theoretically, Marin places her investi- Fruit d’une riche documentation et gation in the framework of the revisionist d’une investigation persévérante et pro- school regarding the history of the totali- fessionnelle dans le passé de l’Église gré- tarian regimes of the 20th century, pio- co-catholique roumaine, l’ouvrage de Ana neered by Sheila Fitzpatrick in the 1980s, Victoria Sima s’impose comme une réfé- which gained a new impetus with the rence dans le paysage de l’historiographie opening of the secret Soviet archives. To ecclésiastique roumaine. be sure, the revisionists do not deny the q accomplishments of the formerly domi- Lucian Turcu nant paradigm, the “totalitarian model.” Instead, they address new areas of investigation, overlooked in the past due to a top-down methodology focused on the 152 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) role of the state and its institutions, yet The term “public opinion” used ignoring the majority of the population, throughout this book is a bit misleading, implicitly considered passive receivers of considering both the specificity of the to- the policies implemented from above. By talitarian societies, and the evidence pre- switching the focus from state to society, sented in this book. Public opinion and the revisionists gain a more nuanced Ve r - civil society are terms of bourgeois and stehen of everyday life in dictatorships. liberal origin, and cannot be entirely trans- Their major achievement, used by Marin lated to the totalitarian space due to the as the organizing principle of her book, is different nature of the relations between the recognition of the (apparently) simple individuals, state, and communication fact that individual and group perceptions channels. In totalitarian societies, individ- of society are not homogenous, but range ual opinions do aggregate into a general from cheerful acceptance to the bitter re- mood, but they spread through less overt jection of the official message. Following channels, such as private discussions with in the footsteps of the revisionist historians close friends, gossip and hearsay, while the of the Soviet Union, Marin identifies the public space is monopolized by the state. categories of Romanian citizens who sup- Thus, two layers of communication coex- ported the regime, and their motivations, ist: the hidden transcript (the focus of this and, in contrast, the most common acts of book) has been contrasted by political sci- passive resistance offered by the majority entist James C. Scott with the public tran- of the population. Lastly, it is noteworthy script, the latter encompassing the official that Marin does not dogmatically apply communication, in his Domination and the the percepts of the revisionist school to Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New her analysis; her methodology is primar- Haven: Yale University Press, 1990); see ily guided by data, which compels her to also, for a discussion of civil society and adapt the theory and integrate the more its correspondent in totalitarianism, M. recent post-revisionist approach while Killingsworth, Civil Society in Communist maintaining revisionism as the dominant Eastern Europe: Opposition and Dissent in framework. The post-revisionist school Totalitarian Regimes (Colchester: ecpr narrows the analysis to the level of the in- Press, 2012). Moreover, the data used dividual, stressing the situational and in- in this book consists mostly of private teractional nature of individual opinions, documents, some of them only partially the same individual expressing contradic- made public by Radio Free Europe (the tory opinions on the same topic, in differ- content, but not the authors’ identities). ent contexts of communication. The data Following these considerations, the term analyzed in this book, necessarily sparse “popular opinion” employed in the Eng- due to its nature and diversity, make the lish-language literature cited in this book revisionist approach the logical choice for is preferable, better reflecting its quasi- the present inquiry. The collections of doc- underground nature. Marin’s defense of uments used here do not permit an inves- the term, as well as the book title, Between tigation of the individual’s evolution, and Present and Past suggest that this volume are best suited for observing the aggrega- is part of a larger project, which aims to tion of individual messages into a larger, scrutinize the evolution of the public opin- society-level, public opinion. ion of Ceauºescu’s cult of personality af- Book Reviews • 153 ter his demise and until the present day. authors celebrating Ceauºescu’s personal- In this context, the term “public opinion” ity, movies, etc. However, by considering has been chosen to convey the continuity popular/public opinion merely as a re between the totalitarian and the post-to- sponse to the themes imposed by official talitarian periods. If this is the case, I am propaganda, Marin admits the top-down eagerly looking forward to the forthcom- causality, implicitly acknowledging the ing publications. preeminence of the “totalitarian” approach The book is organized according to the in historiography. From this perspective, major themes suggested by the theory and the revisionists’ and post-revisionists’ con- considered by the author to constitute, to- tribution is the discovery that the same gether, popular opinion. However, each macro-cause had multiple micro-effects, of these themes required a different set of often contrary to those intended by the data, and the ingenuity in identifying the regimes. appropriate data for each of the themes Chapter 2, probably the most intrigu- constitutes the undeniable strength of this ing part of this book, analyzes the positive book. Moreover, the diversity of sources, responses to the cult of personality, rely- found in various archives throughout ing on congratulatory letters to Nicolae Eastern Europe, convey to the reader the Ceauºescu identified in the Archives of clear feeling of embarking on a journey, the Central Committee of the Romanian implying the same initial curiosity and Communist Party. Unlike the official let- fascination of discovery. A journey made ters, published in the media and represent- safe, however, by the honest assessment ing a central part of the personality cult, of the evidence. The author painstakingly in this case we are presented with personal cautions about the possible shortcomings letters, written by common citizens, and of the data, different for each source, and probably never read by their addressee. carefully distinguishes between what the Thus, the most often cited reasons for par- analysis can accomplish, and the questions ticipating in the cult of personality, namely, which require more, or different, resources its mandatory nature and the self-interest for an answer. of individuals hoping to gain certain ad- Chapter 1 summarizes the findings of vantages through their sycophancy, cannot Marin’s first book on Nicolae Ceauºescu’s explain these letters. Instead, Marin offers cult of personality, and lays the foundation two more accurate explanations, based on for her new inquiry. The unifying element her identification of two categories of let- of the two books consists in the focaliza- ters. First, there are individuals, from all tion on the main themes used by official social groups, but predominantly retirees propaganda to construct Ceauºescu’s im- and school children, who internalized the age, which stood at the core of his cult: the propaganda, and expressed their genuine young revolutionary, the architect of modern appreciation for the General Secretary, us- Romania, the champion of world peace, and ing nonetheless the same themes, and, in the guarantor of national independence and many cases, the same language consecrat- unity. An impressive array of public docu- ed by the media, making evident the direct ments has been employed in this analysis, effect of propaganda over certain individu- including but not limited to newspaper als. To be sure, this is not an unexpected articles, books by Romanian and foreign finding, but it remains hard to digest, due 154 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) to the still prevalent Manichean tendency cal discussion in the opening of Chapter 3, of blaming the cult on the dictator alone, setting high standards, upheld throughout while exonerating everybody else of any the rest of the section. Third, the analy- contribution. The second category illus- sis continuously returns to, and fulfils, the trates the economy of gift (Jeffrey Brooks, promises made in the first chapter, allow- Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public ing the author to maintain focus on the Culture from Revolution to Cold War, Princ- major themes identified earlier in the book eton: Princeton University Press, 2000) and to overcome the temptation to include and consists of letters from individuals all social criticism going on in the hidden who believed they owed their job or their transcript. And fourth, although maintain- new apartment to the General Secretary of ing objectivity, the researcher’s enthusiasm the party, but also from families who owed and joy of writing are the most evident in personal gratitude to Ceauºescu’s family, this section. Naturally, they are transmit- typically for godfathering their newborns. ted to the reader, making chapters 3 and I wish the chapter had been completed 4 the most enjoyable part of this book. with a longitudinal quantitative assess- The topic, to be sure, is in itself savory ment of how the amount of letters of sup- enough to make a good reading. People’s port varied, if it did, during the period negative reactions to the cult of person- under focus (1979–1989). However, such ality enforced through all official media an assessment could be misleading due to channels, ranging from subtly undermin- possible flaws inherent in the data, and ing it to outright rejection, is still captivat- therefore we should trust Marin’s decision ing, beyond the merely scientific interest, not to venture on such thin ice. demonstrating ingenuity and humor—in- Chapters 3 and 4 are grouped together tended or not. Such is the case of some in a distinct section of the book devoted to citizens of Roºia Montanã who attempted the adverse reactions of the public/popular to convince the workers in charge with re- opinion to the cult of personality. From a pairing the regional tv antenna repeater post-totalitarian perspective, this topic is to un-fix it, so it would be tuned on the risk-free and fashionable, since references Hungarian public channel, instead of the to it alleviate some of the natural embar- Romanian Television, whose programs rassment resented after living through a were devoted almost entirely to Nicolae personality cult. Nonetheless, Marin’s han- Ceauºescu’s cult. Sadly, without exception, dling of the subject stands out in the aca- the jokes (bancurile) selected by Marin to demic landscape, for several reasons. First, illustrate disbelief in the themes conveyed the diversity of conventional and non- by the media are based on untranslatable conventional data surveyed for these two Romanian language puns. chapters—including archival documents All in all, Marin’s book lives up to its of the Securitate, transcripts of Radio Free stated theoretical purpose, to identify and Europe broadcasts, edited collection of analyze the public/popular opinion’s reac- political jokes, and secondary sources— tion to the cult of personality constructed enables her to present a comprehensive by the official propaganda. Acknowledg- image of everyday resistance in the 1980s. ing that public opinion is never homog- Second, the concept of passive resistance is enous, but comprises different, and often clearly delineated through a rich theoreti- divergent perspectives, Marin choose to Book Reviews • 155 operate with a binary distinction between des recherches à fond dans les Archives na- genuine support for the leader and obvi- tionales centrales, ils ont fouillé la presse, ous discontent. The transparency and cau- les encyclopédies et les dictionnaires, ont tion in handling the data guarantee the complété leurs informations avec des objectivity of an otherwise challenging en- données puisées dans les documents déjà deavor; particularly by evidencing a certain publiés, réussissant à surprendre les prin- amount of popular support for Ceauºescu cipales évolutions survenues dans les rela- and his regime, this book is susceptible to tions politiques et diplomatiques soviéto- re-open wounds not entirely healed. How- yougoslaves, roumano-yougoslaves, rou- ever, I prefer to read it as a sign that the mano-soviéto-yougoslaves et roumano-so- time has arrived for a normal, more de- viétiques au fil de dix ans. tached, historiography of the recent past, Le choix de cet intervalle chronolo- and for an honest assessment of its marks gique n’est pas accidentel. L’an 1954 repré on contemporary Romanian society. sente pour l’histoire du régime communiste q le moment où Moscou, en tenant compte Adrian Popan du contexte international, a trouvé néces- saire d’implémenter un processus de « ré- conciliation » avec le passé et de révision de Mihai Croitor et Sanda Borªa ses rapports avec la Yougoslavie. L’an 1964 Triunghiul suspiciunii, vol. I, Gheorghe est celui où le bloc communiste a été secoué Gheorghiu-Dej, Hruºciov şi Tito (1954- de fortes tendances centrifuges, avec des 1964); vol. II, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, conséquences sur l’évolution ultérieure des Hruºciov şi Tito (1954-1964). Docu- rapports internationaux au niveau politique, mente diplomatique, économique et idéologique. (Le Triangle de la suspicion, vol. I, Le premier volume, composé de trois Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Khrouchtchev chapitres et de plusieurs sous-chapitres, et Tito, 1954-1964; vol. II, Gheorghe constitue une sorte de présentation et Gheorghiu-Dej, Khrouchtchev et Tito, d’analyse de quelques événements impor- 1954-1964. Documents) tants pour la période cible. Il commence Cluj-Napoca, Mega, 2014 par évoquer les modifications survenues dans les structures de direction du Parti communiste de l’Union soviétique après la ’ mort de Staline, en insistant sur la politique Lhistoire du régime communiste constitue l’un des sujets préférés aussi bien de Nikita S. Khrouchtchev de condam- des professionnels du domaine que des nation des erreurs et des abus commis à passionnés d’histoire. L’intérêt est d’autant l’époque stalinienne. La nouvelle politique plus grand que les fonds d’archives en Rou- économique visait le développement de manie et à l’étranger continuent à représen- l’industrie des biens de consommation au ter des sources d’informations inédites ex- détriment de l’industrie lourde ainsi que trêmement précieuses, qui n’attendent qu’à des réformes en agriculture. Un événement être découvertes et valorisées. C’est ce que à part dans le cadre du bloc communiste a les deux jeunes chercheurs de Cluj, auteurs été la « normalisation des relations soviéto- de cet ouvrage en deux volumes, se sont yougoslaves ». Cette nouvelle politique de proposés dans la présente démarche. Après Moscou envers Belgrade n’est pas passée 156 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015) inaperçue, les communistes roumains, à bonne source d’inspiration pour l’analyse leur tour, prenant des mesures censés fa- entreprise dans le premier volume. ciliter de nouvelles opportunités dans les En guise de conclusions, Le Triangle relations roumano-yougoslaves. de la suspicion est un ouvrage bienvenu La Révolution de 1956 en Hongrie et dans l’historiographie roumaine axée sur la manière dont elle a été perçue par les So- la politique extérieure et les relations poli- viétiques et les Yougoslaves fait l’objet du ticodiplomatiques et idéologiques à l’inté- deuxième chapitre. Les auteurs dévoilent rieur du bloc communiste. Nous saluons les vues différentes que les deux pays l’initiative des auteurs d’approcher un avaient de cet événement, ce qui n’a pas sujet aussi intéressant – surtout pour les tardé à conduire à une recrudescence des étudiants en histoire, relations internatio- tensions idéologiques entre les deux États. nales ou études de sécurité – et félicitons la Face à cette détérioration des rapports so- maison d’édition pour la qualité graphique viéto-yougoslaves, les leaders roumains ont de ce livre. adopté la stratégie du mimétisme, suivant q de près l’évolution des relations entre le Marcela Sãlãgean Parti communiste de l’Union soviétique et Liana Lãpãdatu l’Union des Communistes de Yougoslavie. Le troisième chapitre, qui est le plus long, met en discussion une série de ques- Mihai Croitor et Sanda Borªa tions liées aux débuts de la dissidence faite Moscova 1963. Eşecul negocierilor par la République Populaire Roumaine à sovieto-chineze l’intérieur du bloc communiste. Cette dis- (Moscou 1963. L’échec des négociations sidence est analysée dans le contexte des soviéto-chinoises) relations roumano-soviéto-yougoslaves, res- Cluj-Napoca, Eikon-Mega, 2014 pectivement roumano-soviétiques, mais aussi dans les circonstances du désaccord idéologique survenu entre les Soviétiques e e Le début de la 7 décennie du XX et les Chinois. En ce qui concerne les rela- siècle a été marqué de divergences idéo- tions politiques et diplomatiques rouma- logiques entre le Parti communiste de no-soviétiques, les auteurs se sont arrêtés à l’Union soviétique (pcus) et le Parti com- la période 1960-1964, évoquant des sujets muniste chinois (pcc), que les deux pays tels que les différends à l’intérieur du Pacte impliqués ont cherché à plusieurs reprises de Varsovie ou ceux liés au « plan Valev », à surmonter. La rencontre qui a eu lieu en ainsi que l’évolution des relations rouma- juillet 1963 à Moscou entre les délégués no-yougoslaves et l’importance politico des partis communistes des deux États est économique de la construction de la cen- évoquée par les auteurs du présent volume trale hydroélectrique de Porþile de Fier. sur la base des documents découverts dans Ce premier volume s’achève par des les Archives nationales centrales, fonds conclusions, la liste de la bibliographie et du Comité central du Parti communiste les abréviations. roumain, section des Relations interna- Le second volume est exclusivement tionales. Ils dévoilent aussi bien le ton dédié à la présentation des 75 documents souvent élevé de ces discussions que les d’archives, qui ont d’ailleurs constitué une espoirs des Soviétiques de réussir à apaiser Book Reviews • 157 la plupart des tensions idéologiques sovié- cette fois-ci la délégation soviétique de dé- to-chinoises. Malheureusement, et le ma- naturer la vérité et d’employer des expres- tériel archivistique le démontre nettement, sions hostiles à l’adresse du pcc. La réac- les négociations de juillet 1963 ont été un tion soviétique, évoquée dans le cinquième véritable échec. document, se fait entendre par la voix de La présentation de ce matériel est pré- Boris N. Ponomarev, membre du Secréta- cédée d’une brève étude introductive et de riat du cc du pcus. Celui-ci reproche à ses quelques précisions et analyses de ce que interlocuteurs d’être venus à Moscou sans les auteurs ont appelé « Les préliminaires nulle intention de réconciliation et de dis- des négociations soviéto-chinoises de juil- créditer la politique et l’activité du pcus. let 1963 ». Le sixième document présente l’entretien Les pourparlers entre les deux délé- du 15 juillet, lorsque Peng Zhen, membre gations, qui ont duré du 6 au 20 juillet du Bureau politique du cc du pcc, lance 1963, sont contenus en neuf documents, d’autres accusations à l’adresse de la délé- qui reproduisent les exposés et les réponses gation soviétique, lui reprochant que par alternatives des représentants soviétiques ses actions (qu’il n’hésite pas à énumérer et chinois. et qui sont publiées dans ce volume) elle Selon le premier document publié, les n’a cherché en rien à améliorer les relations discussions ont commencé par le discours soviéto-chinoises, par contre, elles sont du représentant soviétique, Mikhaïl A. devenues encore plus tendues. Le ton du Souslov, membre du Secrétariat du Co- discours se durcit, les Soviétiques étant mité central du pcus, qui, entre autres, a accusés d’impérialisme, de mensonge et tenu à souligner que cette rencontre avait de calomnie. Le document no 7 reproduit pour but d’examiner les positions des deux l’intervention de Yuri Andropov, membre parties à la lumière des résolutions des As- du Secrétariat du cc du pcus, qui souligne semblées des partis communistes de 1957 la tendance de la délégation chinoise de et 1960 et d’aboutir à un accord entre le remettre en discussion des questions déjà pcus et le pcc. Deux jours plus tard, le résolues et dont le contenu dénaturé ne fait 8 juillet, ce fut le tour de la délégation qu’entretenir l’état conflictuel. Lors des chinoise de faire connaître son point de débats du 19 juillet, mentionnés dans le vue. Ainsi, d’après le deuxième document document no 8, Kang Sheng, membre du du volume, Deng Xiaoping, le secrétaire Secrétariat du cc du pcc, se déclare rempli général du cc du pcc, après avoir fait men- d’étonnement à entendre les accusations tion des bonnes intentions de la délégation portées contre Staline par la direction chinoise, a mis en évidence les divergences communiste soviétique, en affirmant que apparues au sein du mouvement commu- « nous ne pouvons nullement comprendre niste international et a fini par incrimi- pourquoi la direction du pcus manifeste ner les Soviétiques des incidences qu’ils une haine aussi acharnée contre Staline, auraient provoqués à la frontière soviéto- pourquoi elle l’accable d’injures atroces, chinoise. La réponse des Soviétiques est pourquoi elle s’attaque à lui plus violem- à retrouver dans le troisième document, ment que le pire de ses ennemis ». À la alors que le document suivant, daté le 12 fin de son discours, il propose de procé- juillet 1963, contient le deuxième exposé der à la clôture des débats entre les deux chinois. Le même Deng Xiaoping accuse délégations, d’autres discussions devant 158 • Transylvanian Review • Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

être établies par des consultations entre les lecteurs. Son auteur est chercheuse scien- Comités centraux des deux partis. Le der- tifique au Centre d’Études sur la Popula- nier document, daté le 20 juillet, constitue tion auprès de l’Université Babeş-Bolyai de la sténographie des discussions entre les Cluj-Napoca et elle donne le cours d’His- représentants du pcus et ceux du pcc. Elle toire de la famille et de l’Enfance à la Fa- consigne l’interruption des négociations culté de Sociologie et d’Assistance sociale, soviéto-chinoises et la rédaction d’un com- dans le cadre de Joint-Master European muniqué commun concernant la rencontre Children’s Rights. bilatérale soviéto-chinoise de juillet 1963. Structuré en cinq chapitres, l’ouvrage La publication de ce volume de docu- cherche à surprendre l’évolution historique ments, fruit d’une recherche minutieuse du concept de famille, les lois ayant régle- dans les archives, est certainement bienve- menté la vie familiale, depuis le Code civil nue dans le paysage de l’histoire contem- de 1865 au droit de la famille institué après poraine. 1990, les changements démographiques q qui ont conduit à la désarticulation de la Liana Lãpãdatu famille traditionnelle, les théories démo- graphiques de la famille et l’impact de l’industrialisation dans l’apparition de la Luminiþa Dumãnescu mobilité spatiale et socio-professionnelle, Familia româneascã în comunism le comportement matrimonial des Rou- (La famille roumaine sous le communisme) mains et leur milieu d’habitation. Cluj-Napoca, Presa Universitarã Clujeanã, L’instauration du régime communiste 2012 en Roumanie s’est accompagné d’une réor- ganisation à tous les niveaux de la société, y compris par la réglementation du com- Dans l’après-guerre, les fondements portement fertile de la population, l’intro- traditionnels de la famille ont été rempla- duction de lois et de mesures destinées à cés par un nouveau type d’union familiale, conduire à une croissance démographique considéré généralement comme le fruit satisfaisante, la migration de la population de l’urbanisation, de l’industrialisation et villageoise à la suite de l’industrialisation de l’éducation dans l’esprit de l’idéologie. forcée des villes, les influences exercées sur Même si l’historiographie des régimes les relations interpersonnelles. L’étude du totalitaires s’est beaucoup enrichie dans milieu d’habitation de la famille permet les années 1990, les ouvrages dédiés à la l’identification des mécanismes censés avoir famille, et notamment à la famille rou- aidé à l’implémentation de la politique maine sous le communisme, y sont extrê- communiste au sein de la société roumaine. mement peu représentés par rapport aux N’hésitant pas à aborder directement les écrits consacrés à des aspects politiques ou « bénéficiaires » de la vie en commun dans économiques de la même période. les blocs d’habitation communistes, appe- Le livre est principalement un ouvrage lés généralement « boîtes d’allumettes », scientifique, bien que le thème abordé et les l’auteur cherche à comprendre et expliquer informations documentées qu’il fournit le la perception négative de ce type de pâté de recommandent à un éventail plus large de maisons dans la mentalité collective. Book Reviews • 159

L’analyse de la famille dans la société nescu réussit à passer au-delà du simplisme communiste, réalisée aussi à travers des du discours anticommuniste, dévoiler les comparaisons entre les sources historiques, paradoxes d’une période intensément sociologiques et démographiques autoch- contestée et répondre à la question « Où tones et celles de l’Europe de l’Est, met en va la famille ? », apportant une contribu- évidence la discordance entre le discours tion importante à l’historiographie actuelle idéologique et la réalité, le respect des du domaine. droits individuels et les soins à la familles q étant oubliés face à la suprématie absolue Roxana Dorina Pop du régime communiste. Luminiþa Dumã- contributors

Carmen-Veronica Borbély, Litt.D. Michael Metzeltin, Ph.D. Lecturer at the Faculty of Letters, Babeº-Bolyai Professor at the University of Vienna, Philologisch- University Kulturwissenschaftliche Fakultät, Institut für 31 Horea St., Cluj-Napoca 400202, Romania Romanistik e-mail: [email protected] Universitätscampus aakh, Hof 8 Spitalgasse 2, A-1090 Vienna, Austria Cosmin Budeancã, Ph.D. e-mail: [email protected]. Postdoctoral researcher, Babeş-Bolyai University 1 Kogãlniceanu St., Cluj-Napoca 400084, Romania Ute Michailowitsch, Ph.D. e-mail: cosmin.budeancã@yahoo.com Academic expert in German as foreign language 3 Am Wiesenbach St., Köflach 8580, Austria Ruxandra Cesereanu, Litt.D. e-mail: [email protected] Professor at the Faculty of Letters, Babeº-Bolyai University Ioan-Aurel Pop, Ph.D. 31 Horea St., Cluj-Napoca 400202, Romania Member of the Romanian Academy, rector of e-mail: [email protected] Babeş-Bolyai University, director of the Center for Transylvanian Studies Adinel Dincã, Ph.D. 12–14 Kogãlniceanu St., Cluj-Napoca 400084, Romania Researcher at the Romanian Academy, George e-mail: [email protected] Bariþiu Institute of History 12–14 Kogãlniceanu St., Cluj-Napoca 400084, Catrinel Popa, Ph.D. candidate Romania Assistant lecturer at the Faculty of Letters, Univer- e-mail: [email protected] sity of Bucharest 5–7 Edgar Quinet St., Bucharest 010017, Romania Luminiþa Dumãnescu, Ph.D. e-mail: [email protected] Senior researcher at the Center for Population Studies, Babeº-Bolyai University Roxana Dorina Pop, Ph.D. candidate 68 Avram Iancu St., Cluj-Napoca 400083, Romania Doctoral School, Babeº-Bolyai University e-mail: [email protected] 1 Kogãlniceanu St., Cluj-Napoca 400084, Romania e-mail: [email protected] Dinu Flãmând Writer, journalist and translator Adrian Popan, Ph.D. candidate 104 Président-Kennedy St., Paris 75016, France Department of Sociology, University of Texas at e-mail: [email protected] Austin cla 3.306, A1700, Austin, TX, 78712, United States Liana Lãpãdatu e-mail: [email protected] Researcher at the Center for Transylvanian Studies of the Romanian Academy Marcela Sãlãgean, Ph.D. 12–14 Kogãlniceanu St., Cluj-Napoca 400084, Associate professor at the Faculty of History and Romania Philosophy, Babeº-Bolyai University e-mail: [email protected] 1 Kogãlniceanu St., Cluj-Napoca 400084, Romania e-mail: [email protected] António Lobo Antunes Portuguese writer Lucian Turcu, Ph.D. 2 Rua Cidade de Córdova, Alfragide 2610-038, Faculty of History and Philosophy, Babeº-Bolyai Portugal University e-mail: [email protected] 1 Kogãlniceanu St., Cluj-Napoca 400084, Romania e-mail: [email protected]

Correction The original title of Mr. Alexandru Porþeanu’s article published in Transylvanian Review 23, 4 (Winter 2014): 54–74, is The Higher Raison d’État and the Imperative of World Peace in the Finalization of the Trianon Treaty (1920–1921). Its Ratification by Romania.