It takes an Irishman to write the best book on Romania since the WWII – the one before the war was yet another Irish – Patrick Leigh-Fermor.
William Blacker lived in Romania for over eight years in the early 1990s and went native, not just skin deep, but truly and convincingly: he learned the language, the customs, dressed as the other villagers of Maramures, learned their skills and traditions and listened to their stories steeped in ancient history: he was accepted as one of them surrounded with great affection and respect. He further went to one of the fortified Saxon villages, in Central Transylvania where he was “bewitched” by a beautiful gypsy girl with whom he lived for three years and by whom he had a natural son – Constantin.
Entries Tagged as 'Books'
William Blacker: “Along the Enchanted Way – a Romanian Story”
September 2nd, 2010 · No Comments · Books, OPINION, PEOPLE, Reviews
Tags:"Along the Enchanted Way - a Romanian Story"·"William Blacker'·Anglo-Irish·Maramures·Romania·Transylvania·writer
Romanian Foreign Affairs (II): REDGRAVE & CAPSA
August 13th, 2010 · No Comments · Books, PEOPLE, Reviews
The “Balkans” allude to the author’s maternal family who were Aromanians who fled the Ottoman destruction of Moscopole during the 18th century to settle, North of the Danube, in Romania. The family name was Capsa and they soon made their mark there as confectioners to the Royal Family but also Generals and aviators serving in WWI. Having been schooled under the most famous French patissier in Paris one of the Capsa brothers returned to Bucharest to open on Calea Victoriei the “Cafe Capsa” which became the Society’s favourite place and attracting Politicians and Literati alike.
Sir Roys description of his family roots and childhood in pre-war Romania is epic and full of fun: he brings back to life a world which has disappeared a good six decades ago under the sledgehammer of the Soviet occupation and their imported ideology.
The “Blues” are the Royal Blues of the British Army where he had a brilliant carreer as Commander of the British Forces in Berlin and Hong Kong.
The “Redgrave” have, of course, a long association with the Theatre, Television and Politics. Roy Redgrave’s father was involved in Romania’s oil industry in the famous Ploiesti fields, not far from Doftana, where the Capsa had their estate.
Tags:"Great Britain"·"Roy Regrave"·Army·Capsa·Doftana·General "The Royal Blues"·memories·Romania
Romanian Science (I) – Romania’s First-ever Plate Tectonics Model born in Cambridge
July 4th, 2010 · No Comments · Books, Diaspora, International Media, PEOPLE, Reviews
ROMANIA’S FIRST-EVER PLATE TECTONICS MODEL WAS BORN IN CAMBRIDGE – THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN “NATURE” (LONDON)
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The Lost World of Old Europe – The Danube Valley 5000 – 3000 BC
June 19th, 2010 · No Comments · Art Exhibitions, Books
The Lost World of Old Europe – The Danube Valley 5000 – 3000 BC
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Romanian Foreign Affairs (I): Rebecca WEST and Antoine BIBESCO
May 1st, 2010 · No Comments · Books, Diaspora, PEOPLE, quotations
Rebecca West: in Paris, on her way home, she had a brief affair with Prince Antoine Bibesco (who wore black crepe de chine in bed), a Romanian diplomat married to Elizabeth Asquith, daughter of the Liberal leader. She was to remember her own affair as ‘rapturous’ but at its close felt that some blight still affected her personal life. The evidence suggests that Bibesco’s sophisticated sex inventiveness frightened Rebecca and that she interpreted it as a further manifestation of male hostility and aggression and she continued in analysis when she returned to London this time with Silvia Payne another early Freudian. Neverthelsess the elation of her first days with Bibesco coloured the writing of ‘The Strange Necessity’ in which her meditations on art and literature are embedded in an account of a ’sun guilded autumn day’ wandering through a magically illuminated Paris.
Tags:"Antoine Bibesco"·"H. G. Wells"·"Rebecca West"·"Romanian foreign affair"·"Strange Necessity"·"Victoria Glendinning"·aristocrat·Asquith·Britain·Feminism·Literature·Romania·sex
QUOTATIONS: How other people see us (II) – Harold NICOLSON
April 27th, 2010 · No Comments · Books, Diary, OPINION, PEOPLE, quotations
The Harold Nicolson Diaries: 1907-1963
Sir Harold George Nicolson KCVO CMG (21 November 1886 – 1 May 1968) was an English diplomat, author, diarist and politician.
Amongst these diaries there a brief insightful portrait of King Carol II of Romania, whom Harold Nicolson visited in Bucharest:
“He had ordered he said, a purely Romanian luncheon. God, it was good! In spite of my feeling so faint, I gobbled hard. We talked agreeably. He is a bounder, but less of a bounder than he seemed in London. He was more at ease. His Windsor blue eyes were wistful and he had something behind them. He spoke with intelligence about Chamberlain and Eden and the Italian Agreement and the French cabinet and the league of Nations. He was well-informed and most sensible. We kept all debating topics away.”
Tags:"Harold Nicolson"·"King Carol II"·British·Bucharest·Diaries·MP·Politician·Romania
Ceausescu and Jonathan SWIFT – The Seditious Captain GULLIVER
April 25th, 2010 · No Comments · Books, PEOPLE, quotations
Surely, the Reverend Jonathan Swift never expected, in his wildest dreams to be ‘excommunicated’ by communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu: not that Ceausescu ever read Jonathan Swift! That was not necessary! Ceausescu did not read ANY books at all – he was instead famous for his semi-literacy and for professing a distinctly basic vernacular Romanian…
Yet, amazingly, in spite of such auspicious circumstances, Jonathan Swift managed posthumously to blot his copybook with the Communist dictator… Read on the problems encountered by an editor in Bucharest in the 1980s who tried to publish Swift’’s Satyres:
Publishing Swift’s satires in 1985, I myself fought a lot with the censor in order to include “A Modest proposal” concerning eating Irish children, which had become subversive here on account of meat shortage in Romania. Faced with the alternative of not publishing the book at all, or doing it without the famous text, I gave it up. The supreme level of censorship was a department of the (Communist) Party Central Committee.
“Publishing Swift’s satires in 1985, I myself fought a lot with the censor in order to include “A Modest proposal” concerning eating Irish children, which had become subversive here on account of meat shortage in Romania. Faced with the alternative of not publishing the book at all, or doing it without the famous text, I gave it up. The supreme level of censorship was a department of the (Communist) Party Central Committee.”
Tags:"Jonathan Swift"·Ceausescu·censorship·Communist·Ireland·Romania
António Mega Ferreira: “A blusa romena”
April 8th, 2010 · No Comments · Books, International Media, Reviews
O resultado é uma engenhosa urdidura onde cabe quase tudo: as duas histórias de amor em espelho (cheias de simetrias e curto-circuitos), mas também evocações de Paris e da Roménia de Ceausescu, referências eruditas (de Joyce a Schubert, de Sonia Delaunay a Espinoza), jogos metaliterários, auto-ironias e um quarteto de personagens bem desenhadas, a executarem na perfeição a sua música de câmara. Pela sua crescente importância ao longo do livro, destaco Lumena, a prostituta por quem Vasco se enamora, cuja beleza está algures entre uma Madonna de Rafael e a «terrível Judite» que decapita Holofernes num quadro de Caravaggio.
Tags:"A blusa romena"·"António Mega Ferreira"·Ceausescu·Matisse·novel·Portugal·Romania
Book Review: “Once Upon Another Time” by Jessica Douglas-Home
April 4th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Books, OPINION, PEOPLE, Reviews, Uncategorized, quotations
Once upon another time
by Jessica Douglas-Home.
Quotation from page 169-170;
"the Arbuthnots (British Ambassador to Romania, – LC note) second party took place that evening – a lavish buffet for twenty. As with the first one, people sat in huddles whispering on the stairs and in corners. A gaunt professor of architecture entered and for a time seemed frozen by the sight of the two tables piled high with unheard of delicacies. A waiter broke the spell by handing him a glass of wine from a silver tray whereupon he fell on the food like a starving man.
(LC note- Romanians had next to nothing to eat under Ceausescu in the 1980s, except chicken claws).
I have a picture of Plesu and Liicianu stretching their legs out from the deep velvet sofa, arms clasped behind their necks, their eyes glinting amusedly at me, relaxed and at peace with themselves.
Tags:"Andrei Plesu"·"British Embassy"·"Hugh Arbuthnot"·"Jessica Douglas-Home"·"Once upon Another Time"·book·Bucharest·Ceausescu·Liiceanu·memoirs·review
Book Review: “The Romanian” by Bruce Benderson (Prix de Flore)
April 2nd, 2010 · No Comments · Books, PEOPLE, Reviews
There are also the occasional hilarious interludes such as the one at the Romanian Cultural Centre in New York. Here, the Institute’s Director, Carmen Firan is a former protege of ex-President Ion Iliescu and Berensn describes her as “an intellectual”(sic) a matter of opinion on which the jury is still out. Benderson also mentions a meeting organized in NY where Firan’s choice guest is a certain Nina Cassian. In romania, Cassian is still remebered as an ex-communist sycophant but in spite of it in New York the subject is repackaged as a “dissident” (and how!).
Cassian was a poet who, during four long decades of communism enjoyed unashamedly, the spoils of the dictatorship. During her extended honeymoon with the Romanian Communist censorship Cassian published several dozen volumes of her grotesque poetry, before she absconded to USA, in the late 1980s. Bruce finds her in NY where she is hailed as a linchpin of Romanian culture…. now we know where are the sympathies of the Romanian Cultural Centre: well – birds of a feather!
A literary critic of “Le Monde” who is quoted on the front cover of this book states that:
“what astonishes and intrigues is Benderson’s way of recounting in the sweetest possible voice, things which are considered shocking… ”
If the French are “shocked”, then the Romanians would certainly be outraged, not by the lack of prudery, as by the fresco of the Romanian society of motley pimps, hustlers, prostitutes, bureaucrats, hangers-on, desperate people and the whole gamut of poor destitute of all ages, social background and ethnic origin, neither of whom come out too well, in the end: TOUGH!
Tags:"Bruce Benderson"·"Carmen Firan"·"Nina Cassian"·"Prix de Flore"·"Romanian Cultural Centre New York"·"The Romanian"·American·author·book·Bucharest·hustler·review·Romania·Sibiu
